Ocean View teen’s clean-takkie solution a big hit
STYLIN’: Fifteen-year-old Aakifah Slarmie has invented a cleaning solution for sneakers. STYLIN’: Fifteen-year-old Aakifah Slarmie has invented a cleaning solution for sneakers.
Cape Town - What started out as seeking a solution for dirty takkies has now grown into a successful business for a 15-year-old girl from Ocean View, who has invented a liquid cleaning solution.
Today Aakifah Slarmie’s year-old business is booming! Grade 10 Fish Hoek High School pupil Aakifah named the business SneekerClean. Each month she sells about 300 bottles of her eco-friendly product.
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“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that it would turn into a business and receive the amount of support from others like it has. Right now I am nervous and anxious as this is a growing need among teenagers and sneaker-lovers,” she said.
Aakifah said her love for sneakers started at a young age. “My parents introduced me to the best takkies. Every Eid they would buy me new takkies. Sneakers became a big part of my world when I entered my teens and so my collection started growing. It just got really frustrating for myself and my friends when it came to cleaning our shoes. My dad, Nizaam, assisted me and I also found that there wasn’t a shoe-cleaning product out there that was cost-effective enough for a teenager to purchase and wasn’t harmful to your takkies,” she said.
Aakifah said the products currently on the market cost a fortune. “And they don’t clean your sneakers properly. Over time I experimented with a lot of products to get my shoes clean. One day I created the perfect liquid solution, which cleans your takkies but does not spoil them. I started giving free samples of it to other young people, who loved it. I also gave some to rapper YoungstaCPT, who sold it in his pop-up shops. Later, my dad helped me to start the business,” she said.
Aakifah and her father found a local manufacturer for the effective cleaning product she had invented and SneekerClean was born.
“Being a teen, I’m constantly surrounded by young people. They inspired me to create SneekerClean, because I was also looking for a solution to clean my sneakers. I believe in this product as it helped a lot of young people. It is cost-effective, eco-friendly and versatile - a waterless solution for all sneaker addicts. It works,” she said.
@RusanaPhilander