On The Hunt

The clock is ticking and we desperately need to find another textile waste supplier.

Roughly 14 months ago I was handed the opportunity to add the punching bag business to our logistics warehouse business and this has gone from strength to strength. The problem previous business encountered when doing the punch bags was sourcing textile waste which is the stuffing that is used to fill the bags.

Having the family involved within the sports industry I heard so many horror stories over the years with the latest supplier wetting the filler to be able to increase the weight of the bag. Each punch bag size has a certain minimum weight criteria and wetting the filling back fired. The excuse was either the truck transporting the bags had a leaky roof or the warehouse was damaged during a rain storm ,but after the third time the excuses could not be the same and the contract was pulled.

Thankfully I was in the loop and kind of knew the business was coming my way and had time to hunt for textile waste material. I changed things up by using an inserted tube of river sand which forms the core before textile waste is packed around the core. No one had told me that this was the exact process being done internationally with the top brands and they could have informed me from the start.

The failures over the years by the local punch bag suppliers could have been avoided if they had used the river sand tube which I thought was just an obvious solution. In a way their stupidity handed me a great business opportunity that has just grown from when we started out with a test run till now which is business that now has a dominant market share.

The problem is the hunt for finding suppliers of textile waste is taking so much time and this week I would estimate there will be another 40-60 phone calls made. The current scenario is the business has enough stuffing for roughly 20 more punch bags and no more is expected until next month. We have one supplier who can possibly give us another 2 tons per week, but we have more orders this week that need fulfilling. The first orders for dispatch are due on Wednesday so tomorrow morning miracles have to happen or no order will be processed. Whatever happens my team will be working late tomorrow as a solution has to be found.

This month we have Black Friday and just for that event besides our normal monthly orders I would require an extra 7-10 tons of stuffing. The comfortable sweet spot is finding another 20 tons of textile waste so there is no stress. I will eventually find the source I am looking for, but this could take a few more months which is always the worry. No one really understands that the stuffing is so hard to find and without this you cannot grow the business.

If someone had told me a year ago I would be processing more than 50 tons a month of punching bags I would have thought you were mad. Southern Africa (includes exports to neighboring countries) is a small market in comparison to Europe or the States so I would hate to know what numbers they are processing monthly. I would guess 10 x what we are dealing with due to the population numbers.

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