Update from Scott

Everyone wants to know how the business is going. So, here it is.

Setting the business up has been a major struggle. Since the day that I have arrived, we have been trying to get the business registered with SARS (South African Revenue Service). It has been a long process that is still a struggle. The accounting firm that we are working with has stuggled with getting documents to them and SARS has managed to lose documents as well. We hope that by the end of this week SARS will have all the documents they need as long as they don’t get lost again.

For the past 2 months we have been working on getting a location to set up our block yard at. Our first location was a good spot but the owners could not agree with each other where we should be. After 3 weeks of trying to meet with them and get a contract set up we decided to look elsewere. As we were looking for a good supplier of sand, we decided to ask if they had a spot for us to set up. They felt confident that they could accommodate us but wanted to discuss it with all the parties involved. The next week they gave us the go ahead. This was a great opportunity because it meant that we didn’t have to spend money to ship the sand to our block yard (25% material cost saving), they had power and water available so we didn’t have to pay for the cost of installing a power drop and drilling a well, there is 24 hour security on the site, and we didn’t have to purchase a fork truck because they have one that we could use. This sounded great so we had our equipement sent to the site, bought all the necessary stuff to power up the machine and hook into their water system. Today we received a call from the sand quarry that we can no longer put our block yard there. Apparently they had a verbal agreement with their biggest customer that no one could set up a block yard on their sand quarry site or the customer would buy sand from someone else.

We have other options for a block yard, but this means we have to start over again with getting things set up. We will more than likely need to pay a bunch of money to get power to the site, get water, buy a forktruck, and also build a building with bathrooms and showers. We have been to 12 meetings in the past 3 weeks at possible block yard sites where the people don’t show up because “something else” came up. Which we would understand if they would at least call and cancel, but we have driven out to the site (20-30 minutes) and arrive to meet with no one. So 1 hour round trip x 12 meetings is a bunch of wasted time.

Sales have been slow. We are quoting a large church and are excited about getting that business. We are also still planning on doing a bunch of security walling for a large development. Both of these projects will probably start February of next year. This is probably good seeing as we don’t have a place to manufacture our blocks yet.

Our truck has been in for repairs twice in the past month, so we are doing a good job at spending money that we are not yet making. J The good thing is that Khensani hasn’t quit yet and we are still positive (most of the time) that we will get this thing going. We are learning patience and how to deal with set backs. Pray that things turn around and we can get things moving forward soon.

Check out our flyer!! (just click the picture to make it larger)