By Sabine Berendse | Founder & director
One of the activities STCC undertakes to generate income is selling merchandise items made from marine debris/ recycles plastic. Volunteers clean marine debris from the beach during the monitoring checks and the reusable plastic is brought to our partner LIMPI. They transform the plastic into new high quality items.
The first product that we developed was the ‘Turtle Buddy’. A small plastic sculpture on a driftwood stand. We started with 10, which we sold in a day. Then we ordered 20, which we sold in a week. All the money we earned with the sales were reinvested in the production of more buddy’s. Now they are sold in 10 different shops.
We received feedback from the shops, that although lots of people liked the idea, not all of them actually bought a ‘Turtle Buddy’ because it takes up a lot of space in the suitcase. That is why we experimented with the ‘Hanging Buddy’ in 2 different sizes.
We started in the same way, by only creating a few. But unfortunately they didn’t sell at all. The reason for this item to fail was that the customers didn’t feel they got enough value for money. It wasn’t possible to make them a lot cheaper than the original turtle buddy. After the first batch was unsuccessful we stopped with the production.
We still had the feedback that people wanted to contribute by buying something small and that is why the keychains were created. A small very well designed plastic turtle that can be offered for a relatively low price.
We started with selling recycle plastic merchandise items in August and we have sold over 1500 items so far. It helps STCC to create awareness, it generates some additional funding and also it helps to create a solution for the marine debris problem on our nesting beaches. WIN – WIN – WIN
In the near future we will expand the number of items and we will also sell the products at additional retailers, so we can make an even bigger impact and also work to a more stable financial situation for STCC.
By Sabine Berendse | Founder & director
By Sabine Berendse | Project Leader
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