The local ‘Veldskoen’ is expanding its reach beyond South Africa.

The famous South African vellies have entered the US market through an investment made by American basketball team Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, and his partners.

Veldskoen is the first product released by DORP (Digital Online Retail Products and Platform). DORP is an e-commerce-driven business, founded by Ross Zondagh, Nic Latouf and Nick Dreyer, who is also the CEO.

Brian Joffe’s JSE-listed Long4Life (L4L) investment company owns a 49% stake in DORP’s Veldskoen business. (Joffe founded Bidvest and Bidcorp.)

Other products in DORP’s portfolio includes Plakkie. (Yes, you guessed it – that other South African icon known as flip-flops elsewhere in the world.)

Dreyer tells Engineering News Online that Veldskoen was registered early in 2018.

The sale to L4L was “to help scale up the business. They are in the lifestyle retail space and have added great value to us getting our brands to market.”

Veldskoen started sales in the UK in October last year, followed by Europe and the US.

Sales are online to start with, but DORP is negotiating intakes with major retailers, says Dreyer.

“I can’t confirm the retailers, because we are in the process of negotiating terms and prices. I can say that our focus is on the UK, Germany, The Netherlands and Austria.”

“Right now, we have seen good support in the UK and the US. Italy is a surprising good market, but it is early days.”

Veldskoen is made in Durban, at a third party, while DORP is based in the Western Cape.

“We use only local raw material,” says Dreyer.

“Right now we can produce what is required, but we would be happy with around two hundred thousand pairs a year in three years’ time, and more after that,” notes Dreyer.

“We have a very close working relationship with our manufacturer. Quality control is critical and we inspect every shoe with someone from their and our teams present. We also offer a 100% money-back guarantee.”

DORP consists of a team of seven people.

“We  also make use of some fantastic freelance content creators and designers,” adds Dreyer.

Veldskoen has, in fact, just expanded its product portfolio to include the Chelsea boot.