Picture by Alistair Barnes
Ballo, based mostly in Cape City, has spent the previous eight years producing handmade sun shades from supplies equivalent to wooden, cork and promoting billboards. Now, like so many different companies, it’s battling to outlive the pandemic.
Ballo, a sun shades producer in Cape City, is a part of this new wave of sustainable vogue and equipment manufacturers that create merchandise out of recycled supplies and wooden offcuts.
Alistair Barnes, founder and CEO of Ballo, which he created in 2013, grew up within the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands; his father was an architect and his mom an artist. From a younger age, he was typically discovered drawing footage of footwear, vehicles and no matter he might lay his eyes on.
“Regardless that I by no means actually studied entrepreneurship, I all the time knew I needed to have a model,” he recollects.
After a quick stint in promoting, advertising and marketing and internet design, all of it modified when Barnes’ good friend despatched him a weblog submit of an organization promoting picket sun shades, that they claimed had been made in the USA. Barnes reached out and supplied to distribute the model regionally.
Nevertheless, a yr and a half after he began distributing the model, he came upon the glasses had been in truth not made in the USA, however imported from China – a far cry from their advertising and marketing pitches.
It was then that Barnes took the plunge and launched into beginning his personal sun shades firm. Ballo was born in 2013.
“I believed, let’s do that regionally and authentically and actually sustainably. So I discovered an engineer who helped me develop the product. We spent six months prototyping and growing the product… we discovered a solution to create (the sun shades) utilizing wooden offcuts and recycled paper laminated collectively.”
The enterprise began off small initially, with Barnes biking right down to the Previous Biscuit Mill Market in Woodstock, which, each Saturday, had cooks, recent produce farmers, creatives and artisans come collectively and arrange stands to promote their items for the day. When the Watershed opened in 2014 on the V&A Waterfront, Ballo prolonged its attain there as nicely.
Throughout the first yr, Ballo began exporting to Germany, along with promoting to locals and vacationers in Cape City. “Within the first two months on the Previous Biscuit Mill, this massive German man got here as much as me and requested me concerning the sun shades. He stated they had been the most effective picket sun shades he’d seen; seems he’s a third-generation German optician and he began importing them and promoting them to optometrists round Germany.”
The Ballo crew grew, with 14 individuals working for the corporate from 2014 to 2016.
Barnes expanded the fabric from which he made his frames whereas nonetheless conserving in step with the model’s values of sustainability and recycling; he used offcuts from different material producers, cork, African materials, in addition to promoting billboards from Sealand – an organization that makes equipment from upcycled supplies, together with promoting billboards, whose offcuts Ballo makes use of.
On the day of the interview, a Turkish Airways promoting banner lies stretched out within the workshop, able to be moulded right into a pair of sun shades.
In a time the place nearly all manufacturing is shipped abroad, Ballo has stored issues native. Whereas touring the tiny manufacturing facility, I meet Francis Blaidon, the workshop assistant, who’s busy getting ready the newest pair. Blaidon expertly works his manner across the manufacturing facility, putting a bit of wooden into the hydraulic press, quickly to be a part of a pair of Ballo signature sun shades. At its peak, the manufacturing facility produced 800 sun shades a month. Right now, they’re solely producing round 200.
“Each pair is inherently distinctive due to the character of upcycled supplies and the character of issues which can be handmade,” Barnes says.
For each pair offered on-line, Ballo vegetation a tree to offset the environmental affect of delivery or transporting the sun shades. To at the present time, the model says it has planted over 1,000 bushes; it has partnered with an organization known as Greenpop, who it pays each month to plant the variety of bushes wanted. Then, Ballo receives GPS coordinates to the bushes, most of which will be present in reforestation initiatives alongside the Backyard Route.
Nevertheless, the enterprise has not been with out its challenges, and much more so through the pandemic. Vacationers travelling to the Western Cape had been Ballo’s most vital clientele. Virtually in a single day, this income stream dried up.
Barnes noticed the warning indicators and geared the workshop in the direction of producing masks; it supported the corporate financially through the early phases of the lockdown when masks weren’t but simply obtainable.
Now, as Covid-19 continues to linger, the corporate needed to let go a few of its staff. Earlier than Covid-19, Ballo employed 12 individuals; now there are solely six left and gross sales are at round 10% in comparison with pre-pandemic ranges, with overheads, equivalent to lease, salaries and utilises, nonetheless remaining regular.
“Sustainability is a journey. It’s not about being good… it’s about doing the most effective you possibly can. So I’m simply doing my finest whereas making an attempt to please the patron,” he says. DM/ML
