As a child, Julieta Figueroa used to collect garbage on the beach in Rada Tilly, Chubut, the town where she was born. She later dabbled in recycling when it was not a socially promoted culture like today. And now, at 35, she’s channeled her sustainable DNA to found Bóer Good Hope, a venture that recycles broken car glass to manufacture terrazzo for decoration pieces, bazaars, and floors.
Married life had led her to work for four years in a scrap metal buying and selling company, an experience that would forge in her business spirit the green footprint. After the divorce and the pandemic, Julieta found herself one day in 2021 alone in her house, without children to care for or work that monopolizes her attention.
A call fell from heaven for a project that –spoiler: it did not prosper-, but it paved the way for his venture. A friend knew of a company that manufactured heated floors and given his experience in the field added to the knowledge acquired in the Business Management degree, he considered that it might be a good place for Julieta to invest. In a few months that plan was frustrated but the process had crossed her with what she would become his star project.
“I had researched and I knew that the terrazzo was coming strong so I took a course to learn how to do it. At first it turned out horrible, I got very frustrated and it took me a year to develop the product I wanted”, he admits, and acknowledges that he started the venture not out of passion for the material but because “it was the first train that passed in front of me and I got on ”.
“My objective was to develop a company, it was the same if it was made of terrazzo, cement or whatever”
Juliet Figueroa
For her, the terrazzo referred to the green or pink mosaic floors that she saw when entering old buildings. But like all fashion, a few years ago she returned to the ring and became popular once more. In a market analysis, she found that the option she liked the most was the one with intermixed glass and she decided to do it herself. However, the path to getting to the right glass was made uphill. Another friend who worked with the raw material had offered her the discard from the factory, but following endless attempts she might not shred it as necessary.
The opportunity to find its differential came in the form of a crisis. “One day, going south on vacation, the windshield of my car broke. When I took it to be fixed and I asked what they did with the material, they answered that a dump truck came once a day and took it to the dump”, he says. And right there the light bulb went on and he found what he had been looking for so much.
The next step was taken, without a doubt, by agreement of the parties: she asked for it and they delivered it. “The first time they emptied a vacuum cleaner on me and I said: ‘I am taking the real garbage even with hair and dust´”, says the entrepreneur regarding how she found part of her raw material for free. She admits between laughs that no one in the workshop knows exactly what she does with the glass that they collect and that the amount she needs is such that soon she will have to go with dump trucks to look for more.
Each square meter of flooring carries between 700 grams and a kilo of glass
To start the engine of entrepreneurship, like any business, you need money. In his case, he used US$1,500 that his mother lent him and financing from all banks that – in the promotional calls that most people tend to ignore – they offered him credit cards. “I’m still paying the interest on the cards and they lend me the workshop where I produce,” he points out, but he points out that it was a good option to give the project a boost.
A year and a month was what it took to develop the ideal product, from an investment for the workshop and materials of $297,000 between September 2021 and February 2022 (when the dollar blue traded between $287 and $376). His attention, however, was diverted in the middle of the process.
Another miraculous call was the one that later became his first sale. In April 2022, a friend who had moved to Chile and owned a store online decoration asked him to quote an order for terrazzo trays. The units were small in size and following a few tries he came up with the right finish. The price offered by Julieta was more accessible compared to other ventures that did so in Argentina, and this sum of factors was what led her to make her first sale. Something unexpected, he confesses, is that his first transaction was an export that brought US$400 into his pocket.
From that first sale to the present, barely a year passed, but the business increased its volume by far. Together with his team of three people and the financing of his boyfriend as an investor in the project since September of last year, he sold more than 2,200 units on a wholesale scale to decoration, gift-giving and bazaar stores in 2022.”I have no competition in the world of decoration that I manufacture in large quantities, to make a thousand units in a week. On the other hand, on the floor, yes, because it is granite, ”he points out.
One of the drivers to reach this volume was the participation in the Expo Cafira in August 2022, the renowned international exhibition of manufacturers and importers of decoration, gift and related items. With a product that she trusted but was still floundering in the borrowed workshop, friends of hers helped her put together a stand and she jumped in to try her luck at the fair. There, as in other exhibitions of which she has been a part up to now, She caught new clients such as decoration houses and even important references from the decoration industry approached her interested in doing business. For example, received orders from brands including Wanama and the iconic Savoy Hoteland today he is preparing budgets for projects at the San Isidro Hippodrome and different real estate developments.
It is precisely a scarce offer in the market that positions entrepreneurs like Figueroa. “Builders and architects ask me for a budget to put the product on kitchen countertops in houses, apartments and offices because the big companies cannot cope, they are more than two months late and they rush over time to deliver the property,” he points out. .
This public, as he analyzes, is the one that is most inclined towards the white cement with glass: “Entrepreneurs, developers and young people have the sustainable chip installed and ask me for this variant”, he says. On the other hand, the decoration category that seeks bathroom accessories is more traditional and asks more for the combination of light cement with brown stones or black cement with white stones.
Cement, sand, water and stone are the necessary ingredients to make the terrazzo. The age-old technique born in the 15th century arises from joining these elements to form a liquid mass that then rests in a mold for a day. To this process, Figueroa adds one more step that is tedious on the one hand, but honorable on the other: “To clean the glass For discarded cars we pass it through different sieves, by water, we pass a magnet to remove metals and then manually we spread it and remove hair, plastic and dirt that is mixed with the waste”.
It takes approximately two to three days to clean 40 kilos of waste, he points out, adding that It is not a process that lowers costs; Due to the time it takes, it would cost him the same to go buy stones -which are his replacement- but he insists that it is worth it for the contribution to caring for the environment to reuse the glass that would be thrown away.
In addition to using recovered glass, his venture is distinguished by the diversity of shapes in the products. “One of the The problems I encountered is the molding because the producers they do with what they have and don’t get out of it. I understood that I had to buy a thermoformer or go out and look for alternatives. For example, cup molds don’t exist so I had to go to a factory to look and I ended up using kitchen gauges for the model I currently sell,” he says.
He anticipates that new forms of terrazzo will soon be imposed on the market, such as parquet and that what is most seen outside is terrazzo with artificial colored stones.
