Our Story! Who is Handyfox?

We are Paul and Delmari de Vos from Humansdorp, Eastern Cape, South Africa. We have been married for 14 years and have two kids, Niel (9) and Leah (5).

How we started:
 

We are both employed full time, and started Handyfox Creative Products in 2021 to supplement our income as we, like everyone else, has been hit hard by Covid19. We decided that we're not going run our business as a side hustle, but rather as a fully CIPC registered company. We started small and made Baking mixes in bottles, like for instance Chocolate Brownie mixes, to sell as gifts at local craft markets. Delmari also baked Christmas Fruit Cakes to supplement this. Paul did installations of water tanks and water pumps, as our area was hit hard by an ongoing drought and water restrictions were applied. Then someone told us about Hot Chocolate Bombs.

The Hot Chocolate Bomb Squad
 

We immediately became the "Hot Chocolate Bomb Squad" and would sell 80 to 120 Hot Chocolate Bombs on a good day at the Craft Market. We became more ambitious and applied for a stall at Crossways Market, which is a very big Sunday Craft Market by Thornhill between Jeffreys Bay and Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth). We did really well and even made little snowman bombs for Christmas of 2022. The making of the merchandise is labor intensive so very soon Paul stopped doing installations and we focused on making Hot Chocolate Bombs and expanding our business. Remember, we are still employed in 8 to 5 jobs, so this took a lot of our time with our kids.

How did we get to where we are now?
 

Before we moved to the Kouga area at the end of 2019, we have looked into printing mugs and t-shirts. We were attracted to the idea a lot because we are both creative by nature but we never had the capital to purchase the equipment. By the end of 2022 we met a supplier who did Sublimation on Mugs, Tumblers and also did T-shirt printing. We started to collaborate with them to make gift sets with our Hot Chocolate Bombs and their printed mugs and ended up selling more of their products than our own. Supply was also a problem because they had to keep up with their own customers demand and now also ours, which meant that we had to wait for our orders.

In January 2023 while sitting at a market and selling more tumblers than bombs we realized the potential that sublimation printing had for our business. While sitting there we did some research and it didn't take us long before we derived an amount which we needed to purchase a printer, heat press and startup stock and consumables. The amount wasn't as much as we thought it would be but it was still more than we would be able to finance out of our salaries. We thought about borrowing from friends and family or even het boss and prayed about it. It was then that Delmari remembered that she still had a small annuity from het previous employment that was just sitting there. When she talked to the broker, it was just enough to cover the start up.

What happened to the Bomb Squad?
The Bombs went quiet and we can promise you that we still tried. Then we completely stopped with it after a while until one day we got a message from someone who asked if she couldn't start to sell the bombs for us. As Christians we believe in the principal that you reap what you sow, and after a quick discussion we decided to sow that business into her life instead. So we gave the molds and business model to her at no cost and also gave her a little bit of tips and training.

What is our business like at the moment?
 After December 2023 we were able to also purchase a Flat heat press and a vinyl cutter. At the moment we offer personalized printing on tumblers, mugs, t-shirt printing with vinyl, key chains and basically anything that you can print with the equipment that we have. We also print our own prayer journals. We have been doing very well. As we mentioned in the beginning, we decided to run our business as a business, so we make use of accounting software and we have shown a net profit for the year ending 29 February 2024. We are also showing a net profit for the current financial year which surpass the previous financial year.

We attribute our success so far to the grace of God and the fact that we are working together as a team.