São Paulo – Creativity and innovation make all the difference at the time of setting up a business, mainly in the case of small companies that do not have much capital to invest. Br Goods, headquartered in Indaiatuba, in the interior of São Paulo, started producing curtains for bathroom showers eight years ago, in the backyard of the owner’s house. In 2004, they launched on the market partitions for hospitals. The product is 30% cheaper than that of imported competitors. Today, in their factory, with 15 employees and being adapted to the Program for Technological Support to Exports (Progex), of the Institute for Technological Research (IPT), the organisation is also getting ready to operate on the foreign market.
"We exported shower curtains to Portugal in 2001 and 2002. But the demand was so much higher than our production capacity that we had to give up," explained director Beatriz Cricci. According to her, the idea of developing partitions for hospital wards arose by chance, during participation in a fair. "We noticed great demand for this kind of product and also that it was possible to produce with the same technological fabric we use in the curtains," she said.
The next step was to invest in development of the product. In a short period of time, the company sold their first load and orders started flowing in. "We currently have 15 representatives all over Brazil and supply great hospitals and chains," said Cricci.
After the sales success on the domestic market, the businesswoman decided to bet on the foreign market. She set up an export department in 2008 and has already got two representatives abroad, one in Argentina and another in Africa. "We have already made many contacts and the requests for orders are coming from several parts of the world. We are very confident about making the first contacts in the first half of this year," she guarantees.
The company is responsible for practically all the partition production process. The technological thread used as raw material for production of the fabric is imported from Germany. Only the weaving is outsourced. "We always work with great and renowned suppliers. They are fabrics with fungicides, bactericides, water and oil repellents and flame retardants."
According to Cricci, the great novelty in terms of technology is to apply fungicides and bactericides into polymers, before the thread is made. "This way protection lasts as long as the material," she explained.
Differential
The partitions for hospital wards by Br Goods still present a differential for the market. The product facilitates the cleaning process, as the curtain is connected to the frame by Velcro, and all that is needed is removal of one curtain and replacement of another, clean one – reducing time and avoiding the need for replacement of the whole partition. "Small businesses have a great capacity for innovation and development of original products. And the Progex supplies access to technology and resources necessary for such," pointed out the businesswoman.
Contact
Br Goods
Telephone: (+55 19) 3875-4213
E-mail: sac@brgoods.com.br
Site: www.brgoods.com.br
*Translated by Mark Ament
