Using things other people discard and throw away, thinking it’s worthless! But thinking from another perspective, it can become your fortune. Here is an amazing story:

From rag to riches!

There a man who came out from Europe, I think it was Italy. He came to South Africa on a boat. When his boat landed, he only had about two Rands (South African exchanged money) on him.  

Well, it’s so many years ago, I can’t remember for sure now, how much it really was. But it was something small like two rands anyway. 

Today in South Africa, that’s worth about a cent! But what he bought with it; was bread and stuff to put on it. He had to feed himself of cause, but he didn’t eat it all. 

No, he made sandwiches and sold them to the nearest business offices. With the proceeds of that, the next day he did the same. And so on for a month and sleeping on the beach at night. 

Then he bought a train ticket to Johannesburg and carried on his business as usual, until he had enough money to buy discarded cloth from a fashion house factory. 

He washed the cloth. And when it was dry, he sorted through all the material and folded the bigger pieces neatly. He then hawked it around Johannesburg, while selling his sandwiches in business offices.  

• He would ask what type of material people were actually looking for, and then buy that stuff in big bales.  
• He also knew trimmings are what make a garment more appealing and fantastic. 

When he had enough money, he rented out a small run-down building, down town in a slum area. Now you would wonder why did he start his shop in a slum area?! 

• Well rental is cheaper there in the slum area to start with.  
• And poor people can’t afford buying clothes ready-made and sold in smart shops. They are willing to sew together scraps of material and make their own clothes. 

It wasn’t long before rich woman heard of this shop that sold off cuts. Been highly talented with a needle and sewing machine, and wanting to create fashionable clothes, they started arriving at his shop. There they knew they could get pieces of material really cheap. 

One of my friends took me to that shop. Well I was blown away by what I saw, and the fact that he had made his fortune out of pieces of ragged material, and lace trimming off-cuts! 

• The shop wasn’t tidy or even clean in side. I suppose he didn’t have much time to wash the cloth any more or fuss with the details. Because there were crowds sifting through the huge brown sacks of material, stored higgly-piggly, anyhow in his shop.  

The women were digging in the bales of material, in the hopes of finding a special piece of trimming that would fit their idea of what they could produce, from what they had discovered there in that shop. 

Later I read a newspaper article on this man and how he had built his empire on only two rand! It was mind boggling to know, knowing what his shop was like, having seen it for myself!