How the Flipflopi did it...
The Flipflopi Project’s business story
We’ve shared our business story here to show how we have learned and evolved our approach to respond to market conditions.
Our context
- We collect around 12 tonnes of plastic per month.
- Our location on an island archipelago in East Africa means transport is both expensive and challenging (dependent on the ocean tides!).
- Our local economy is sustained primarily through tourism, which is negatively affected by plastic pollution.
- Traditional local industries include boat building and furniture production using hard wood materials. This means we have access to local artisans who can use traditional carpentry techniques on plastic lumber (like planks of wood, but made from plastic).
- The main constraints to creating a sustainable upcycling furniture business we have encountered are:
- Labour
- Land
- Skills
- Capital
- Electricity
- Cannot process PET – this needs to be sold
Evolving from our original business idea
Our first venture was boat building using HDPE plastic lumber (HDPE floats on water – important for a boat!). Each boat took a long time to build and required large amounts of HDPE, which posed a challenge with monthly cashflow.
We decided to supplement our boat building activities with furniture production.
- Making furniture allowed us to use different types of plastic, including LDPE and PP.
- Each piece of furniture uses less plastic and is quicker to make than a boat.
- A 7m boat uses 1,000 kg plastic and takes 120 days to build.
- A piece of furniture uses 0.2-115 kg plastic and takes 1-15 days to build.
- Making furniture creates more employment opportunities among the local community, with carpenters, lathers and weavers required in the fabrication process.
Lessons we have learned from making furniture
- It takes more time to make furniture from plastic than from traditional hardwood.
- Plastic lumber is a harder material than hardwood, which increases the wear and tear on carpentry tools like chisels and blade saws, which we need to account for.
- On the other hand, the hardness of the plastic reduces the wear and tear on our furniture for customers. Scratch and water-resistant furniture is ideal for the outdoors and requires minimal maintenance.
- There is a market demand for artisanal furniture, and a growing demand for environmentally sustainable furniture.
- We decided to market our products under a “premium” brand to ensure we can cover all our costs and remain commercially feasible with the supply of plastic available to us.
The advice that follows is based on our experience at the Flipflopi Project. You are likely to find some similarities and differences to our experience, so it’s worth taking the time to consider everything carefully before making big decisions.
