Designer finds booming business in used tyres
Isaac Pinielo | Monday January 30, 2017 18:00
As a graphic designer and an environmentally conscious youth, 30-year-old Kago Monageng believes that used car tyres can be recycled and reused to create luxurious lounge seats for households.
Having established a creative design agency called Demographix Communications, Monageng is running a booming business selling his products, dubbed ‘tyreseats’, a self-explanatory word that refers to seats made from tyres.
Explaining how he got the concept for the business, he said the global call for environmentally sustainable design, otherwise known as green design, inspired him to find solutions to global issues.
“More cars in the city generate an increased disposal of tyres, which are hard to decompose and this creates problems for our environment,” he said.
Monageng also noted that the reuse of tyres is at a low percentage, adding that the waste caused by tyres get to fill landfill sites thereby posing danger of pollution to the environment, especially in instances where the landfill catches fire.
Against this backdrop, he said he decided to ‘go green’ by designing and manufacturing furniture from used tyres as the primary material. “We thought that whatever we do we have to design it to be an indoor product as we give it colour and character by using it as a canvas,” Monageng said.
With a staff compliment of six people, Monageng said they are currently engaged on a project in the Main Mall where they are creating a public seating area using their tyreseats furniture products.
“We are striving to see our products, especially the tyreseats in each household. We want everyone to understand that great things can be made from waste,” he enthused. Situated at the Main Mall, his business mostly relies on cost-effective means of advertising such as social media and word of mouth.
“We have also made posters that we share on social media groups as well as flyers which we physically distribute periodically. We also attend expositions where we get to exhibit our work,” Monageng said.
He noted that they get used tyres from tyre service outlets and that at times they drive around picking dumped second-hand tyres along the roads, as a mini cleanup campaign. The main goal, according to Monageng, is to go national and promote sustainability through furniture design.
“We have managed to create the tyreseat to be an in-house multifunctional product since we strongly believe that creativity is the new economy,” he said.
He added that the more creative people can be with what they have, the more they can diversify. “Creativity is still taken lightly but we trust that with what our business sells, we can contribute to the global go-green movement in a very fresh thinking approach,” he stated.
Apart from selling tyreseats, his business also offers branding, web designing and digital media, domain registration and hosting, creative strategy and consultancy, photography and product design.