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Recycling related new venture - progress report post

postman pat

New Contributor
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Sep 22, 2020
6
5
UK
Hi All,

I read both MJ's books over the last year and they opened my eyes to many aspects of business that I have never considered before. Probably the reason that my previous attempts did not work out.

I will change this with my newest venture and I will start by talking to you guys so I can feel accountable and possibly reassured/corrected/told off as needed.

I will aim to give an update every two weeks or more often.

My latest venture is recycling-related so in my eyes, it is a tried and tested scenario - you take the trash and turn it into something useful.

The stuff I look to recycle is not yet in great supply, but in a few years time, the market will be scrambling to cope with the supply of that waste. I feel I am ahead of the trend and hoping to achieve the status of 'first' to the market in my country and at the same time to maintain the status of the biggest once I am in.

The fact that I am ahead of the game, gives me time to make some mistakes (which I will inevitably) and still remain relatively unharmed once the market booms.

My first step was to research the values of each of the components. There are 5 main ones of varying value. Least valuable - glass, most valuable - a particle that demand for will grow massively over the course of years and therefore I expect the price of it to grow as well.

The next step I took is to research if the technology exists for what I want to achieve.
By joining industry forums and newsletters, I quickly discovered that it does and it is advancing every year. This was very good news as removed the need for me to go through the design process of adapting other machines to do what I need them to do.

I scheduled a call with a representative of the manufacturer to find out more about their product and the prices.


In my next update, I will tell you how the call went. Over the coming days I will also be looking at choosing the location where to set up my plant and I will try to walk you through the process I followed to decide on it.

Apologies if this all seems quite cryptic, but I hope to reveal it all once the first profits start coming in towards the end of next year.

Pat
 
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postman pat

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
83%
Sep 22, 2020
6
5
UK
So I had the call today with the technology provider and it went better than I expected. The venture is going to be much cheaper than I initially anticipated!

This can be a good or bad thing depending on how to look at it because the barrier of entry is a bit lower (still high enough to weed out the entrants with minimal or no start-up capital).

Key points taken away from the meeting:
1) Market for what I want to do exists and is developing, but still in early stages
2) Technology is there and not as expensive as I thought
3) I can grow organically by starting with an investment of around €60k/$70k
4) there is demand for every component part of the recycled objects
5) I can charge money for accepting the waste material
6) I make money from reclaimed materials

and the most important of all

7) just one of the reclaimed components (not even the most valuable one) is enough to maintain the profitability of the business in the initial stages

The last point means that I do not need to initially invest €2.5M/$2.9M into the full-scale plant, I can sell one component and store the rest while I work on financing the larger plant. This type of proof of concept should be good enough to secure investors once I am ready to progress to the bigger game.

Overall I am pleased with the outlook after the call and will definitely pursue the idea further.
 

postman pat

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
83%
Sep 22, 2020
6
5
UK
I thought that I would bring up another point, that more experienced members here could help me with and steer me in the right direction.

As I am navigating a virgin territory, the information I need is not readily available by typing into google, I actually need to speak to people to get it.
In the past, I have always struggled to get replies to my emails and I partially put it down to the fact I was using my personal email address @hotmail.com I thought that this may have made me less serious and therefore not worth replying to. For this venture, I changed the approach, and for €2.00 for the first year, I purchased a domain with a mailbox name that relates to the industry. It was cheap enough to try and see if it worked.

So far there is no success in the sense that the only reply was from the guy I was interested in buying something from, but none of the ones that I will be looking to sell stuff to.

Can you recommend the correct/better approach?

At the moment I am open and honest that I am in the early stages of planning and in the 6-12 months I aim to have so much of the material. I know that they use it and I would like to know if they would be interested in buying it.
I think again that I may not be treated seriously because of the 'in the future' aspect and am considering changing my approach to a bit more direct.
I think about approaching them with an offer as if I already had a certain amount of the goods and negotiating a sale this way. Has anyone tried and did this work to establish at least a first positive contact?
 
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postman pat

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
83%
Sep 22, 2020
6
5
UK
Hi all, sorry for the long absence.

I spent a fair bit of time researching locations and found rents to be extortionate. I ended up deciding on my own land that I will develop a bit at the cost of 12 months rent. The location is not the best but will do for the initial period.

I will now be focusing on getting the premises ready and at the same time start contacting the potential suppliers of raw materials.

I will share my next update when there is something to share.

enjoy the festive season guys!
 

Ronak

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Speedway Pass
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Sep 13, 2013
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I thought that I would bring up another point, that more experienced members here could help me with and steer me in the right direction.

As I am navigating a virgin territory, the information I need is not readily available by typing into google, I actually need to speak to people to get it.
In the past, I have always struggled to get replies to my emails and I partially put it down to the fact I was using my personal email address @hotmail.com I thought that this may have made me less serious and therefore not worth replying to. For this venture, I changed the approach, and for €2.00 for the first year, I purchased a domain with a mailbox name that relates to the industry. It was cheap enough to try and see if it worked.

So far there is no success in the sense that the only reply was from the guy I was interested in buying something from, but none of the ones that I will be looking to sell stuff to.

Can you recommend the correct/better approach?

At the moment I am open and honest that I am in the early stages of planning and in the 6-12 months I aim to have so much of the material. I know that they use it and I would like to know if they would be interested in buying it.
I think again that I may not be treated seriously because of the 'in the future' aspect and am considering changing my approach to a bit more direct.
I think about approaching them with an offer as if I already had a certain amount of the goods and negotiating a sale this way. Has anyone tried and did this work to establish at least a first positive contact?
Ask the supplier's salespeople for leads on who buys the end product.

Find out the title of person who is in charge of buying your commodity. LinkedIn is a great resource for finding names and titles. Start reaching out via connecting, email, messages, etc. You can take the approach of, " Can you please help me-- I'm not sure who the right person is that deals with xyz purchasing, could you direct me to the right person?" You can also call companies with the same approach.

I would spend time on this aspect of the research first since it's crucial.
 

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