In 2017, Bathu sealed it's first corporate collaboration with an incubation hub in Johannesburg which led to the release of a further 1000 pairs of Mesh Edition sneakers. In that same year Bathu launched it's first limited edition Mesh Edition Sneakers in White, which sold out in days.

Bathu then bought it's first delivery vehicle and opened it's first store in Newtown, Jozi in 2018. The Newtown store was quickly followed by a second store in the heart of Pretoria, which later relaunched in a bigger space, providing customers with increased capacity and an innovative shopping experience. From there, demand grew and Bathu has since opened up additional stores in Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, Kimberley, Thohoyandou, Polokwane & Rustenburg where the responses have been nothing short of incredible. More recently, in January 2020, Bathu acquired a 3700sqm warehouse in Centurion. The warehouse is responsible for all aspects related to the production and distribution of the Batho products nationwide. At prese, the warehouse has a staff base of 68 people, (80% of whom are from Alexandra). This figure is expected to rise to 100 people by June 2020 to help combat the disastrous local unemployment figures by creating jobs and reigniting hope to families and individuals. Bathu hopes to achieve this target by continuing to use an end to end value chain approach encompassing a business model that maintains it's own vertical through direct production, sales, distribution and logistics. Bathu shoes are locally manufactured in Durban, with some of the components imported from Lesotho & the East. Bathu Shoes' long term vision is to have presence in Europe and South America, telling its' story in these parts of the world and be recognised and identified globally as a leading African shoe brand!

1. Differentiate between centralized and decentralized purchasing and identify with justification, the purchasing system that batho is using?