Trans Water System Pvt. Ltd.

Hey, yes again its very long since my last post...too busy doing the legal stuffs. We have now changed our company's name to "Trans Water System Private Limited" and we have more people with us. We have established dealers in Salem, Coimbatore, Tumkur to sell our Imported Water Conditioner catalyst.

We can proudly say we have served a total of 240 customers till date and we are growing day by day.

We are trying to figure out how to scale, we are not worried about funding, because once we know how to Scale up we will be able to find funding options.

After many hours of Brain storming we have the following list of areas to be looked at for scale-up

1) Smaller / Cheaper product - Targeting Volume Sales: We dont have any small product, we have whole house system starting from Rs.25000 onwards but not smaller version, we are looking to make a smaller product and introduce a Line of Business and this product is a volume product.

We are also worried on the service aspect for the same.

2) Domestic Water Purifier Segment: There is enormous growth in house water purifier market, we dont have any product for the same, again we are not pushing the same, just because of difficulty in handling service for such a product.

3) Imported product - Raw materials target market being Water Treatment Company:

Our best revenue so far has been in this segment, we are looking to add few products to this segment and establish a stable market for the same.

4) Adding few more branches in Tier 2 / 3 cities in Karnataka. Places like Mysore, Tumkur.

Experts and Well wishers please give me any ideas which can be taken forward to scale our company. 

Blorebuy - How to Establish Dealers Netwrok

Again its been a while since my last post. Blorebuy needs support in terms of establishing dealers network. We have grown in terms of Turnover and client base but to meet our target for 2011-2012 we need to revamp the entire operations and process. I need advices to form a small dealer network. We have tried to setup a dealer network in Tumkur about 75 Kms from Bangalore but we are facing the following issues:

1) The dealer needs a detailed training about our product. We have a good sum going towards training them. Together with the challenge to embed technical competency into them is becoming difficult.

2) Once the training is done, they would know most of technology information and key product manufacturing strategies. How do we make sure that the dealer does not start on his own and become a competitor for us. Also hiding source information for dealer would not be possible in our industry. Any advices would be helpful.

3) Any other model to increase the sales and service by 3 times, please suggest.

We are proud that the Turnover for Blorebuy has been increasing it was 6 lakhs (August 2008 - Mar 2009), 22 lakhs (April 2009 - March 2010) and 60 lakhs (April 2010 - 18th Feb 2011)..we are expecting to touch about 65 Lakh before end of march 2011.

The next stage is a very challenging phase, we have to double to Turnover, but we are yet to identify ways...Advice us please.

Blorebuy is Growing and being watched

Blorebuy is now a member of a Business Network group called BNI and its a great marketing way identified. The blog has not been updated for a long time, i admit i was focusing heavily on business.

Blorebuy is no longer a startup we have few big esteemed clients with us. Though the revenue does not seem big, hopes and confidence is taking new shape. Since the last post we have achieved 50% of our high sales target. Blorebuy has also identified and has imported two new Environment friendly Water Treatment product. Selling these would cover the running cost of Blorebuy for year 2010-2011.

Current unsolved Challenges:

1) How to avoid being eaten up by Big companies entering your niche segment ?

Our product is slowly becoming visible to Big companies. We have taken all the efforts to get an new technology product to the market. We infact are creating a new market in itself and we are unable to anticipate the problems when big company enter the market with huge investment and covering the entire country.

2) How to multiply your current sales and increase margins keeping the running costs same ?

We have not increased the team since April last year, but our existing employees are more knowledgeable and experienced. We are in the "Chicken and Egg problem" should we put more people to generate business or should we make money and then invest to get people.

Management Consultant helping Blorebuy

To summarize "Business is NOT easy", 6 months went by with lots of changes, we have recently got a Management Consultant on board, a product from IISC to support the Environmentally friendly efforts of Blorebuy. We have an extra eye looking at the problems in GREEN Business.

Difficult Times Persists:

We are going through the phase which any company would go through, the budgets and credits. Customers would ask credits but company budgets would not permit for such credits. Analyzing the same lead us to decide on "not giving credits" which in turn made us loose few orders.

The number of orders are also decreasing since October, We have decided not to find reasons on having less order, but to to put in more efforts to get orders.

BLOREBUY needs encouragement and support.

March and April (Ups and Downs)

After few Insults and Sacrifice, March 09 turned out to be a good month
for sales, there was sudden surge in sales. The order were from unexpected
leads. Though there was good sales, it came with its own list of problems.
These problems were lot more tougher to solve.

Problems:
1) Payment - The payment policy was 50% Advance and rest on Delivery of the product.
I did manage to get advance from customers, but collecting the balances is a lot of struggle.

I have now changed the company policy to get 75% advance and rest on delivery, there is a risk of loosing order but it looks like mandatory policy to survive for long time in business.

2) Issues with product usage conditions - One of product had a requirement for standard power, unfortunately there was power fluctuation (Outside the normal range) issue, this lead to issues for one customer. A new circuit has been designed to prevent problems like this in future.

Learning:

1) Be Strict with payment terms, if this policy is not strict, you may have to face huge problems in future. I have learnt it from few lakhs heavy cost but useful.

2) Clean manual explaining the product working conditions is necessary, but explaining the condition is even more necessary.

APRIL 09 - Very bad month for sales, i was expecting it to be a great month, but did not work as expected.
Problems:
1) Analyzing the reason for fall in Sales, i understood that i spent most of April 09 on execution of orders from March and Payment collection task from March.
2) Did not generate any leads during March 09, which lead to drop in sales.
Learning:
1) By 23rd of April 09 i realised that i did not contridute to marketing of the product but just was focusing on payment collection.
2) Allocate few hours each day for marketing, or else the next month would end up tough.

Also seeing the positive signs of March 09 i have decided to move to a bigger office, not sure if it is risk. I have started to feel the need for a bigger office. I feel it difficult to analyze if i have made the right move, atleast it would give me more reason to generate order to meet the increase in expenses.

Insults and Sacrifice

Its again a long time ago since the blog was updated. January and February was better than December and November last year.The business is picking up, but i am going through few though paths, meeting people who are very insulting and learning how to handle such people.

Whenever it is luxury product which is being sold, there is lot of convincing
that should be done. In India, most of luxury product is bought by either Politician
or Celebrity.

I would like to share a horrible experience with one of the politician named Sridhar Reddy, he actually is not a politician himself but some "CHAMCHA" for an MLA, meaning a person who says yes to anything that the politician say. I was selling my Nano technology unit Water Softener unit which is actually a costly unit, this person does not know what it is, but he wants it cheap about 90% discount to what i am offering ha ha... they even tease you / your product multiple times..You feel insulted when you speak to such people and wonder why r u standing in front of few idiots who has enormous amount of stolen money at their disposal. It took to 2 days to digest this customer.

How to handle such idiots who know nothing of the product but want that product at discount:

Based on the Advice from few business man, on how to handle these people there are few suggestions

1) Increase the price to Twice or thrice of the actual price and bring it down when they bargain, i feel it is a sort of cheap technique which people use in streets.

2) Don't sell products to customers who don't understand it even after explanation, i feel it is a good idea but it is difficult decession to loose a big order when you start a business, i have decided to ignore the order, may be a fault, but can't give up my Self esteem.

3) Understand that these CHAMCHA politicians as people who are Brain damaged, ignore their insults, if they give advance take it and execute the order or just leave the place.It is sure that they wont pay you the balance. Don't undertake the order without 100% advance.

Now, the next time i meet such a person i know how handle them. But these people can be very influential and can get you many orders.

Insults, upsets will happen in a new product selling business, but it is learning path.

Hope it is useful for someone.

December 08 - The Problems with recession

Recession is the buzz word in every industry during this month. Few big orders which would have possibly come is on hold, the reason being budget freeze. The running costs does not come down and no orders, how should one cope with such situations. I have been trying various methods but nothing seems to work for me. I am planning to sell one of my personal investments and invest it in my business to cover the next 5 months running costs. Based on inputs from ET i have decided to do the following during the period when the orders does not cover running cost:

1) Staying Positive :

Things like this keep on happening, for startups its even more difficult as any spending goes from the investment and also startups would not have seen recession before. Staying positive helps a lot in terms of finding new ways to reduce costs,
finding news cost effective ways of advertising/marketing. Myself, i have reduced direct marketing but planning to increase email marketing and may be Throw-away catlog in newspapers.

2) Increase efficiency:

Its easy to say but difficult to achieve, when there is no money coming in, it is always depressing and hence decreases our efficiency, i noticed it myself, i used to plan my day's marketing tasks, i recently stopped doing it, because i started feeling whatever i do to market the product, its not going to sell because of recession, but its not true, i have now realized at the end of the month that this is time when everyone spend time on increasing efficiency and not getting depressed. Its not our issue if someone else is not buying a product, we will have to do our things as usual until it is time for other to spend money on the product.

3) Ride the recession practically:

Its not just the startups who are facing problems, its everyone. So be confident and ride the tough times, this is what makes Startup enterprenurs stronger. When it is time to growth we would have the maturity to grow faster.

I am not going to loose hope and i have decided not to say the REASON as RECESSION. Lets fight the recession and grow our business.