Tissue hustler cleans up in Alex
Alex-born entrepreneur lost his job and hustled his way to start his own company that manufactures toilet tissue paper known as Phumula Toilet Tissue Manufacturing Company based in Orange Grove.
When Shane Malatji lost his job as a tissue manufacturing machinist for a Soweto company at the advent of Covid-19, he thought his world had collapsed on him.
“I didn’t know where to next as the only thing I had known was operating this machine and at the same time, I had four mouths to feed, including that of mine. I wondered how on earth I was going to manage to provide for my three boys [an eight, five and one-year-old] as a single parent,” the 32-year-old Alex-born single father told Alex News.
“This almost drove me berserk as it occupied my mind all the time and I had no answers. I had Kilimanjaro to climb to overcome my predicament but lucky enough, I was nowhere near suicidal but the thought of how I was going to provide for my children almost drove me insane.”
As a township boy with hustling skills, Malatji, a son of a former police officer and spokesperson for the Alex SAPS Captain Stephen Malatji, said he had the idea to approach his former employer Ekasi Tissue Manufacturing and propose to sell their products in Alexandra.
“I then picked up a grocery trolley and went from door-to-door, selling the tissues, and the hustle picked up steam quickly and I upgraded to a small bakkie.
“Once, as I was driving around on my selling errands, I bumped into a former woman workmate and she told me she had this tissue machine she had bought after being retrenched with me.
He added he decided to start his own tissue manufacturing company and rent the woman’s machine. “I then housed it at my father’s Orange Grove house and kicked off Phumula [wipe yourself] Toilet Tissue Manufacturing Company and the rest is history.”
He operates the machine himself and has five full-time workers and two casuals. Besides the door-to-door selling, Malatji struck a deal to supply his product to some schools in the township after being referred by Alex historian Thabo Mopasi.
“My dream is to have all the Alex schools in my books and even expand to those in greater Alex. I have a few more ideas up my sleeves and the Greater Alexandra Chamber of Commerce has taken me under its wing.
“I can see the company growing from strength to strength and hope to rope in engineering students from the CJC College to also gain practical experience from the company.”
Details: Shane Malatji 076 429 8554; shanemalatji11@gmail.com; Facebook, Shane Seabi Malatji.
Related Article:
