Banned from the industry's leading magazine because their advertisements were considered unacceptable, the Dutchmen who run W-Supplies b.v. are not at all worried.
Owners of Europe's most successful suppliers and buyers of empty cartridges, Olaf and Mark are laughing all the way to the bank. Which is good news for their staff who daily scour Europe for empty cartridges which bring in the healthy pay cheques.

Advertising
As readers of The Recycler will know, the powerful advertisements are not only eyecatching but they are funny [see page three and inside the back cover]. At least, that's the way most of our readers saw them at the R&R Expo.
It was in Brussels that the American owned Recharger approached W-Supplies, offering them special rates to publish the advertisements in their magazine. But days later came the sad news.

The directors of Recharger felt they could not publish ads headlined 'Looking for Non-Virgins' above a photo of three admittedly provocative looking young ladies.
Olaf Weiss wrote to the magazine: "I am surprised to hear that our advertisements were not considered good enough, especially as they received lots of compliments from customers in Europe and the USA. Some even told me they were a stroke of genius."
The magazine had advised W-Supplies to mention reasons why customers should buy from them.
Olaf continues: "We thought about that but we dropped the idea because people already know our reputation for quality and service.
"The only thing we didn't achieve or receive was an award for the best advertising campaign in The Netherlands but that wasn't our goal."

The business
You can sum up the W-Supplies story in a sentence. The business is fun to run because that's the philosophy of joint owners Olaf Weiss and Mark Wierenga.
For starters they have booked places at September's World Expo in Las Vegas. They had a great time last year even though their business ties with America have dwindled.
Says Mark: "A lot of our European customers will be there. It's always good to meet with them. And Las Vegas is a great place to socialise, to network and meet new people. We don't go there with a list to sell this or that. That's not the way we do business.
"We make the contacts and only when we get back to the office do we talk business."
I asked if that wasn't an expensive way of having fun? "Yes," replied Mark, "But it's the biggest show of the year and it's always good to enjoy yourself now and then. Dutch people know how to do that well - especially young Dutch people!"
At 28-years-old Mark is the younger director. "Olaf is an old man at 30 and I've got more hair," he joked.
What about all the useful seminars at World Expo? Did they plan on learning something about the equally young industry?
"To be honest, we never go to any of them," said Mark. "Nearly all of them are focused on recycling and we only buy and sell cartridges. Of course, sometimes it's useful to know a little bit more about the product you are selling but recycling is not our core business."

In the beginning...
So how did W-Supplies get started?
"I really wanted to be a footballer with Ajax but instead I turned my attention to recycling cartridges and launched my own business called Ecopoint. Right away I could see that the recycling industry would stand or fall on getting empty cartridges," said Mark.
"That was two years ago. I collected some empties and sold them to Olaf who was working for ERS at the time.
"After a couple of deals he sent me a fax saying prices were falling. I said that wasn't very good and we should talk things over.
"We met and I discovered he had all the selling contacts and I had all the buying ones. If we put them together we might be able to start something beautiful.
" There's always a risk about launching a partnership. You just have to get along with each other. Fortunately, Olaf and I share similar views and we work well together. "
And their beautiful business is thriving like never before. Each month W-Supplies is handling more than 100,000 cartridges.
About 80% of their business is in Europe. "We did quite a lot in the States but today the market in Europe is developing very fast with countries like Italy and Spain booming at the moment, says Mark.
"They have become what we call throwaway countries'. People just do not know the value of the cartridges.
"Here in Holland things are a bit different with several firms collecting cartridges. Every big company knows that an empty cartridge is worth something. In Italy there's a shortage of empties."

Europe and language
Having almost doubled the size of their business in the past year, W-Supplies are coping well with the European nightmare - the huge number of languages.
Olaf and Mark are fluent in French, German and English and their native tongue, Dutch - a language few understand. They have just signed up a general manager to look after the staff and logistics while they concentrate on the finer points of business and plan for expansion.
"We want to get the business on a sound footing before enlarging. If you grow too fast you can be heading for bankruptcy. There have been a lot of brokers in the business just for the money but they haven't lasted. We have learned from their mistakes. Our goal is to build a nice company and to stay around.
"Our new manager speaks Spanish and Italian so you can say we have the most popular markets covered. In countries where the language is particularly difficult, Olaf and I will go there to establish a relationship one way or another. We usually find someone who can speak a little of at least one language we know.
"In Holland we employ several girls whose job it is to phone end-users," says Mark. "Recruiting is not easy because so few people know the business. Olaf and I spend quite a lot of time teaching new members of staff who must get to grips with the strange vocabulary of the cartridge business."
The young directors are also seeking people who share their work-hard, play-hard and enjoy-yourself philosophy. They recently employed a girl with lots of qualifications but zero personality.
"It matters a great deal to us," explained Mark. "Take the R&R show, for instance. We had the smallest booth and only two or three posters yet the place was always filled with people. We enjoy what we are doing and people respond to that. "
W-Supplies have plenty of rivals around Europe including some that Mark refers to as having "invented the wheel". They have merely discovered that they can earn money for cartridges.
One newly-formed company phoned W-Supplies and said: "Hey, we want to
buy your cartridges."
Within weeks W-Supplies was buying their cartridges. Says Mark: "You need to collect a lot of cartridges if you want to make a living out of it. Things were a lot easier a couple of years ago with big margins. Today it's more difficult and margins are shrinking.
"When I first sold recycled cartridges I would come across people who thought the quality wasn't that good. Some still hold that opinion but times have changed. Today's remanufactured cartridges are of better quality but a lot of people do not know that."

Down-cycling
What happens to cartridges that cannot be recycled? "We break them down for use in other industries, says Mark. "We call it Down-cycling. We disassemble the cartridges, separating the plastic and metal and sell off the shredded plastic.
"It's not a very profitable line but it gets rid of the stuff safely., We want to let the government know that this garbage doesn't have to be burned any more.
"We also pass this message on to companies who send us cartridges, reassuring them that the environment is not being harmed, that this waste is not going to pollute the atmosphere."

Fiscal problems and the Euro
Doing business in Europe is complicated enough with the language differences, but what about the number of currencies W-Supplies has to deal in?
"There's always a risk of losing money on exchange rates but over time things seems to balance out, " says Mark. "You win some, you lose some. We work a lot with the US dollar."
How about the new euro which some companies in Europe are already using alongside their own currency. It will be officially introduced on 1 January 1999.
Says Mark: "The euro will be good for us although there will have to be a lot of adjustments. With every country trading in the euro it will be more stable."
But even the 28-year-old businessman admits to being old-fashioned about the phasing out of favourites like the guilder, the dollar and the pound.

The future
What's next on the agenda for W-Supplies?
"Inkjet cartridges will be the future. It is already a huge market and getting better and better. Soon everyone will be producing their colour photos on their homeprinter. The SOHO market is still the biggest but it's so hard getting hold of the cartridges because end-users are only likely to have two or three empties at a time and it will be too expensive to collect thed' says Mark.
"We could ask them to send cartridges to us but that involves expense for them and a lot of work us."

New markets
Eastern Europe is also catching on to the latest technological advances and W-Supplies are very surprised at the rapid growth of the russian market where all the big companies have the very latest printers.
But distances, currency and a thriving black market are hardly incentives.
On top of that if you are dealing with companies outside the EC there are import and export licences to be agreed and Customs checks. Even so, the markets are so vast they cannot be ignored.

A people buisness
When you meet up with Olaf and. Mark, don't worry if they'd rather talk about your holidays or your family rather than cartridges.
"Ours is a people business and we like to establish friendly relationships with our customers, says Mark. "We get around 20 or 30 calls from clients every day and we like to know where they went over the weekend or how their families are keeping. We can do business maybe the next day. Or the day after that."
The philosophy works. So does the team at W-Supplies.
And as their bosses often say, 'this is more fun than working for a living'.