• Current manufacturing location and employment.
R&D for 9 years, and the first factory was all located in Sweden. The business grew exceptionally fast, and the knowledge about the Slow Feeding concept spread from non-existent to almost total international market penetration in approximately 5 years. The first designs were simple, too simple to protect, and easy to copy. These models were quickly copied from all over the world. Today, every tack store sells low-quality, low-price, look-alike copies of my original designs.
This shook us hard, but in retrospect, it might have been the best thing that could have happened, since today everyone in the international horse industry knows about Slow Feeding. SlowFeeding 2.0 Feeding-Freedom products are much more complex and difficult to copy, and no one can match my knowledge and experience when it comes to the design and production of SlowFeeding net-based products. I went to Beijing to discuss out sourcing of parts of the manufacturing with a net producer, but they declined to even bid against my Swedish manufacturing when they saw our production times.
Today we have a small production plant in the Czech Republic producing prototype series for real-life testing, SlowFeeding 1.0 models for the local market, and specially designed nets for a major US customer. This special design product is today sold through 451 North American retailers. Two models of SlowFeeding 2.0 Feeding-Freedom are today well tested but not yet in mass production.
•Annual production and sales volumes
SlowFeeding 2.0 Feeding-Freedom are unique products with no real competition. If Tractor Supply were to sell one unit per week and store of my flagship design, the new factory would need 50 sewing machines run by 100+ employees in manufacturing on a 5-hour, 2-shift system (8 AM – 1 PM or 1 PM – 6 PM) to better fit modern “family managers,” which has been the main target group for the recruiting.
Tractor Supply carries a lot of Slow Feeding products, but none that compete with “SlowFeeding 2.0 Feeding-Freedom”. The important question is why any horse caregiver would stay with SlowFeeding 1.0 when SlowFeeding 2.0 saves lots of time and is better for the horses. I have 2 new and well-tested designs and 6 more in development. “SlowFeeding 2.0 Feeding-Freedom” is not just an incremental improvement on SlowFeeding 1.0 but instead a structurally new product line that opens up the commercial market that refused SlowFeeding 1.0 due to the labor-intensive feeding work, i.e. stuffing of hay nets. The tedious and time-consuming stuffing of hay nets is completely removed with SlowFeeding 2.0. This cuts the feeding labor from taking minutes per horse 2-3 times a day to taking seconds once every other day, without any strict feeding schedule. This means that one person on a large commercial unit can be assigned to feed horses all day instead of only at meal times, and never during expensive unsocial hours.
45 seconds / 3 horses / 2 days = 7.5 seconds / horse / day,
and the feeding can be done any time during a 24-hour period.
Feeding-Freedom is by far the biggest evolution that has ever happened to horse keeping.
• Facility size requirements
Due to how the net material is produced, the clean open floor space needed for efficient net cutting is 150 x 45 feet for stripe cutting (this work is done walking), and 45 x 30 feet for cutting pieces at 10 feet wide cutting tables (this work is done standing). Each sewing machine needs at least 7 x 7 feet, which adds up to 2450 square feet.
This means that one such balanced manufacturing unit needs close to 10,000 square feet plus space for incoming and outgoing goods and staff areas. Altogether approximately 15,000 square feet. An available facility would be of great value since it would shorten the time for setup. Scaling is best done by adding more such manufacturing-balanced factory units and letting them produce different product models.
• Workforce needs
100+ workers are based on that one distributor, like TSC, were to sell one unit per week of one product model, but I don’t think TSC would be interested if they didn’t believe in bigger volumes, and the international market is much bigger than TSC. The biggest problem will be scaling up to balance the international demand.
•Distribution strategy and target markets.
Most of my new designs are a combination of rotation-molded polymers and HD polyester deep-sea fishing nets. Rotation molding is a wide spread practice and can be found all over but the initial investment is high, and shipping is usually expensive due to th the products are bulky. This is both good and bad for us since high investments are a serious threshold both for us and for potential competitors and it favors large volume production.
My supplier of high-quality deep-sea fishing nets has one factory in Slovakia and one in Peru, and their quality is far higher compared to the net material produced in Asia. Net material weighs one ton per shipping pallet, which is the opposite of rotation-molded polymers when it comes to shipping.
Having one supplier of the rotation-molded parts in Europe and one in the U.S. must be considered and evaluated based on investments and shipping costs.
Personally, I would prefer Joint Ventures with companies like TSC for the American-based business, since they could easily integrate the management of the administration into their existing business, and JFC-Agri (from Ireland) for the international distribution, since they already sell their rotation-molded goods in 65 markets. Efficient sewing production is very much dependent on manufacturing methodology and should be kept behind closed doors in Tyler.
• Whether you are considering a relocation, expansion, or new U.S. operation
The U.S. operation must be considered a “start-up deluxe” since everything has already been tested in smaller scale.
• Project timeline
ASAP.
I believe the project is like standing dominoes waiting for something to get the chain reaction started. As soon as I manage to get the TSC management to evaluate the project and do the math, they will come begging because the profitability would be exceptional for them, and the same goes for JFC who are present but weak on the international equine hay feeding market, and I would make them market leader in Europe and Australia/New Zealand, where the company group already is well established.