Financial Times

Flying high after a bicycle ride with cut pieces
By Quintus Perera
As a 19-year old youngster, Herman Shanaka Perera cycled to the Katunayake Free Trade Zone (KFTZ) twice weekly in 1998 to collect cut cloth pieces - virtually rags -- thrown on top of garbage heaps and stitch them into garments.

Today these rags have literally turned into riches for the young man and -- seven years later -- Perera owns a four-storey garment super store with many employees under his wing at Ja-Ela. Moving with the times, this one-time struggling entrepreneur relies on the Internet to acquire knowledge on how to run garments' stores.

"I have achieved one of the most difficult tasks in life to reach such heights for any young man of my age. In the first few months even my friends called me all kinds of names when I tied three to four polythene sacks filled with cut pieces of cloth to the bicycle and brought them to Ja-Ela," he recalled in an interview with The Sunday Times FT.

After passing the GCE A Level Examination, Perera left school and looked for a job for economic reasons but without any success. As a last resort he decided to try his hand at getting the cut-pieces sewn together and made into fashionable garments.

Getting up at 4 am with a cup of tea and cycling to the KFTZ, twice a week, became a routine. He reaches the garbage dump at 5.30 am. By that time off cuts from various garment factories within the zone had been brought to the dump in lorries. A group of people would pay some money to lorry drivers transporting the pieces and in the night itself sort the pieces into different sizes, bundle them and keep them to be sold the following morning.

A 50 kg pack of cut pieces would cost Rs 5,000. Perera, a tailor at his young age, would cut the pieces into different garment sizes, especially T-shirts and distribute among several families for stitching.

Two T-shirts could be stitched with one kilo of pieces and sold at Rs 150 with Rs 15 paid for stitching one garment. His profits would be minus the cost of material and stitching.

He rented out a shop in the Ja-Ela town - a small cubical - and began selling these garments. From the early days he insisted on quality and the consistency in the design and whatever placed in the shop was sold.

Once his bicycle broke about two years ago, he bought a second-hand motorcycle and continued his journey to Katunayake to bring in cut pieces. With sales assured due to the consistency in quality, demand also rose. Perera then began going to Colombo and purchasing bales of quality cloth, cutting them himself and getting them stitched in the same process as cut pieces.

Currently some 10 families stitch these clothes. When sales rose with the hallmark of his success being quality he embarked on branding one line of clothing - trousers - as "Shanaka". By then his shop "Shanaka Dresspoint" has become a household name all over the area.

The hardships that Perera underwent and a determination to succeed saw him drive his business to be the best readymade garments seller in Jaela. He said,"Until August 2003 I have been visiting all the mega garment shops in Colombo and also got information through the Internet about these mega garment shops in foreign countries to understand the whole process of running such shops."

By August 2003 he was able to save as much as Rs 10 million and with that initial capital, bought a property almost adjoining his dingy shop and started work on his dream - a three-storey building to be expanded to six floors.

Around two months ago Perera moved into his new dream mega garment shop. The entire building is air-conditioned and fitted with an up-to-date security network. Unlike other mega shops, the front portion where the people enter and leave is not cramped with articles for sale but left free of any obstacles for the people to move about freely. The entire dealings of Shanaka Dress Point are computerized.

Even now occasionally he goes to Katunayake on his motorcycle to purchase cut pieces. Shanaka Dress Point moving into a large building and becoming one of the most modern garment sales centres in the area is not unique.

What is unique however is the young entrepreneur's perseverance and drive to reduce a long business journey to the shortest possible time - turning garbage scraps into a multi million-rupee concern in a matter of five years.

Unlike other young people whose ambitions are unlimited, Perera says, "My way of doing things is that most probably I would be able to complete the building of six floors by the end of next year. Then I would be satisfied with my achievements and I would not strive to go beyond. But I shall see that Shanaka Dress Point is the ultimate place for clothes for men, women and children."

A strong believer in God, the 26-year old entrepreneur said, "I have achieved unimaginable heights because God has been with me throughout. My parents also guided me on the right path and saved me from pitfalls". He intends to invest in passenger transport next year with all the profits from that venture going to a charity to maintain a children's home.

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