Recycling idea finds green pastures for sales

Backing his faith in the durability of a consumer trend towards products with green credentials, Thanavate quit his job seven years ago to set up Thai TRS Co Ltd as a venture that makes use of recycled and other natural materials. The company has leveraged growing sales in the domestic market to reap export success in overseas markets, including in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Sales at the company – which Thanavate runs with his wife Rattanin Supurtipanish - now total about Bt2 million a year.
“We decided to establish our business and create our own brand for a green product line after Rattanin and I saw that we could draw on our long experience of working in advertising and from our background in design. We had graduated with bachelors’ degrees in product design in the architecture field," Thanavate said in an interview with The Nation recently.
For their first product, the couple struck upon the idea of making gift-wrapping paper that can have a second use. Their assessment of the market showed strong demand for gift paper, but they wanted to overcome the problem that such paper is produced as a throwaway product.
 “We designed our gift wrapping to be made from paper that can be used for a second time by making perforations in the paper. After a gift is unwrapped, people can cut the paper along the perforation line and then use the paper as a notepad,” Thanavate said.
Rounding out the green appeal of the product, the company uses recycled paper as well as environmentally friendly soybean ink.
Thanavate said they had secured intellectual property rights for the product from the Commerce Ministry.
In the first year of the product’s launch in 2012, the gift wrapping paper – sold under the Apiece(s) off Paper brand – notched sales of Bt100,000.
While the first-year sales came in lower than their expectations, Thanavate said they picked up after they displayed the product at an exhibition.
The wider exposure from the exhibition inspired Thanavate and Rattanin to create more green-themed and recycled products. They have since brought to the market notebooks, gift boxes, cosmetic bags, stationery bags and the like. Most of them use recycled and other natural raw materials.
The couple are particularly proud of one of their designs that won acclaim this year. The Eco-Envelope Folder is an envelope that can be transformed into a document file. It was among the winners in the Thailand Green Design Awards 2018 (TGDA2018). The Eco-Envelope Folder won in the category for resource efficiency for a product by entrepreneurs. The awards were conducted by the Kasetsart Agricultural and Agro-Industrial Product Improvement Institute (KAPI) of Kasetsart University, with the winners announced in March.
“As I receive many envelopes over a typical month, I asked myself how I can recycle them rather than throw them into the rubbish bin. As a result, I designed an envelope that becomes a document file after it is opened. The innovation that we came up not only reduces the amount of garbage but gives consumers a new product to use,” Thanavate said.
With their success in the TGDA2018 event, Thanavate plans to apply with the Commerce Ministry for intellectual property rights protection for the Eco-Envelope Folder. The company also plans to export the product abroad.
“After we gained that award, that helped us to promote our brand and was especially important for a small firm like ours,” Thanavate said. “This gave us recognition and encouragement to create more innovative and green products. In this way, we can differentiate our products from others in the market. This also creates value for our products.”
He said the growing awareness among consumers for green-themed and recycled products was a positive factor for their business and that they were determined to keep coming out with products that addressed this market demand.