Sithole�s Upholstery Business Flourishes
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday January 30, 2017 13:39
Lobatse-born Sithole crafts his products perfectly to furniture shops standards that one can be mistake them for imports. Situated in a busy street of Woodhall 1 ward, his business attracts customers as far as distant districts in the southern part of the country. Sometimes he gets tenders to renovate office furniture’s from the town council. Couch renovations, chair covers designing, bed renovation, designing special wedding chairs are Sithole’s areas of specialisation.
Sithole said he started upholstery back in 1998 after learning from his late father.
“I started learning this job from my father back in 1987, he later passed on in 1998 and I ran the business from there because I was then a professional in upholstering. “I do all kinds of upholstery work from fixing coaches, beds, office chairs to car seats and many other products including producing special wedding chairs,” he said.
Sithole said he has managed to establish himself a solid market since he has long been operating his business. “I have enormous experience in this field and I have been in Lobatse for quite some time now. I now have a well established market and despite the fact that I operate from home, I am doing well. I have never worked before and the job is bringing food on the table as sometimes I do bulk projects,” he said.
He further added that his challenges are lack of operational space and lack of machinery and he intends to be a reputable employer in the future.
“Challenges in upholstery are quite limited except that I need to move from home and industrialise my business. I want to see my business employing more than just one person in the next few years. “I also have a serious problem of machinery, I have never benefited from any government financial assistance scheme and I only use machines that I could afford to buy. These are manual machines and they take the whole time to complete a single piece of a job,” he said.