Earlier this year, I had a brainwave! A random article in the newspaper and the confidence of having all the synergies and expertise in place, propelled me to come up with a laundry startup for leather products! I took the plunge! A typical startup story unfolded! 6 months of going through the grind, and The Leather Laundry was launched! Yippee! I was super excited! Ready to take this unique market by storm. Who was to know what lay ahead of me! I got my first order for a pair of shoes! The boy had given his cherished pair of Nike leather sneakers to us!
He had given his shoes to a local cobbler a year back! The sod had generously applied dark shoe polish on his light tan/brown shoes, making them a horrendous dark brown/dirty black! Not to mention that he also managed to create a scuff mark on the shoe-tip in the process! The boy was aghast and decided to keep the shoes hidden away in some dark corner of his closet! Then TLL happened! I got his shoes picked up! There were spots of tan brown (the original colour) here and there but it was overall a dirty dusty black!
Our technician got down to the job. The first hurdle was getting the right colour! Colour matching is one hell of a task, not to mention that colours take on different shades in different lights! What looks like a tan brown on yellow light, looks orange in broad daylight and a chocolate brown in tube light!
Does the customer want a single colour/two-tone? Damn! I had to send him pictures of several iterations back and forth!
Finally he settled down on one!
Then I had to get the shoe fixed, to prevent colour bleeding! But the fixing coat spoilt the feel/finish of the shoe!
Once the original finish was restored , the last battle was to make sure that the edges of the shoe were fixed (white edges became a tan brown because of the colour sprayed by the air gun!)
Finally the pair of shoes were packed and ready to be delivered!
Phew!
End result : A happy customer!
Totally worth it!
It seems to be the tip of the iceberg – the trials and tribulations of running a laundry startup continue…
XXX
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