A short story

A short story:

The Increda-Peg was invented by Brett Potgieter and is manufactured right here in South Africa. Over the last few years, the Increda-Peg has quite literally taken the South African clothing peg industry by storm and we have successfully recycled over twenty tons of plastic in the process.

As the son of the inventor of the Increda-Peg I have witnessed and been involved in the 'Increda-Peg journey' first hand. In this blog post I seek to share some of this journey with you. 

The Increda-Peg all started with a vision. My dad has always had a way of seeing things from an innovative, abstract and/or 'efficient' perspective. Throughout our childhood we were constantly flooded with this perspective and it most definitely kept things interesting to say the least. From the 'next best invention' to next-level philosophical views, one could be assured that there was always a very interesting discussion at the dinner table.

I remember the day that he brought the idea of the new and improved clothing peg to the dinner table, an idea that would eventually transform into the Increda-Peg as it is known today. Months went by and eventually the old man did it, he made the first prototype of the peg, the 'multi-hook' as it was called back then. The multi-hook was eventually developed, with a new and improved design, into the Increda-Peg. 

With the nwe launched the new product coupled with a massive rebranding project. We were on markets all across the country and got formally aquatinted with our now well-known friends, Facebook and Instagram. 

Okay, so we had our pegs and we were over-the-moon about our branding which we had recently redone. What happened next? This period was probably best described as a 'goodbye weekends and hello markets' kind of scenario. Apart from the markets, we were also getting more formally acquainted with our now well-known friends, Facebook and Instagram.

We had a winning-product and all we need to do now was to get sales... Easy, right? Uhmm, not really. Have you ever tried to sell something to someone that they don't know they need? I have, it's tricky. We were selling the strangest-looking clothing peg in the world and most people had no idea what they were looking at until they saw a demonstration - things were challenging to say the least.

Time went by and the team was hard at work. What started with the family selling at the markets transformed into a team of salespersons all across the country. We were getting momentum, the brand was getting out there! While this was all happening, we were simultaneously establishing our online presence. It quickly became apparent that South Africa was receptive to our small business and the support was in abundance. This was probably one of the most exciting times in our small business's history because after years of effort we were taking the brand to new heights and doing things that, quite frankly, we never would have imagined doing. Things were great and we were really getting the hang of things. 

Goodbye markets, hello COVID-19. As with most small business owners, COVID-19 brought mass disruption to the way in which we were operating. We quite literally lost our main stream of revenue, the markets. In fear of the unknown, we started putting more and more time into our online presence and started getting more accustomed to Facebook's ad platform. Funny enough, what initially seemed to be a catastrophic disaster surprisingly started to turn into a huge opportunity for our small business. 

And so here you are on our website that was, quite literally, a product of COVID-19. The support has been truly amazing and we continue to strive on the daily to bring the most value we can to our customers. We have proudly recycled well over 20 tons of plastic at the time of writing this and we actively contribute to this figure with your ongoing support. 

Now that you know a little bit more about our brand, I would like to take this opportunity to say thank-you for all the ongoing support! None of this would be possible without your support. 

That's it for now, until next time.