Neil van Schalkwyk is blowing his horn all the way to the bank

One of the things for which the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup will be remembered, is the vuvuzela. Loathed by some and loved by others, the notorious one-metre-long plastic horn was able to take the world by a deafening storm. From Cape Town to Amsterdam, from Sydney to New York, from Rio to Seoul: during the World Cup, the vuvuzela seemed to be omnipresent. The man responsible for this global rage is Cape Town’s Neil van Schalkwyk.

The idea behind the trumpet came into being in 2001 during a local football match somewhere in Cape Town. “I saw how some football fans were blowing crude tin horns whenever a goal was scored,” says the 37-year-old entrepreneur, who at the time was an apprentice tool and mould maker at a local plastic factory.

“This made me think. In my opinion, it would be far more convenient and safer to use horns made of a synthetic material. As a result, I decided to design and produce a mould to make plastic vuvuzelas.”

Van Schalkwyk’s mission took place after working hours, and it took him about half a year to have the right mould. “These were long days of 18 hours. I worked every day. It was hard, I had to sacrifice a lot, and I did not earn anything while doing so. In the end, it was worth it,” says the entrepreneur, who calls himself the innovator of the vuvuzela, which is slang for “to shower with noise”.

“A lot of people are making a lot of claims with regard to the vuvuzela. Look, I am not the inventor, as the vuvuzela has been around for a very long time,” Van Schalkwyk explains, noting how the Nazareth Baptist or Shembe Church in KwaZulu-Natal has been using the horn for the past century.

“The horn, which the church members call the izimbomu, has been used for worship and prayers since the church’s founding in 1910 up until now.

“However, while I did not invent the horn, I was the first person that developed a plastic version of the traditional instrument and the first one to bring it onto the market,” says Van Schalkwyk. “In other words: while we were on the forefront of popularising the product, this does not make us the inventors.”

Recently, the entrepreneur struck a deal with the Shembe Church, which took out a lawsuit against him and his company. The church’s objective of this was to request recognition of its religious and cultural heritage as well as some form of financial compensation. The nature of the settlement has not been disclosed.

After finalising the mould for the metre-long horn, Van Schalkwyk’s next step was to produce the first load of vuvuzelas. “I was given the first batch of raw material from my manager at the time, who is now my business partner. Following this, we got a company on board to make the first load of instruments.

“These were exciting times,” he recalls.

The following step was to create a market for his product. “During the first few weeks, we handed the vuvuzelas out for free during football games at stadiums. Because of this, the demand increased, which enabled us to increase our production and sell the horns at a price instead of giving them away.

“At first, our production was quite small. I remember how ecstatic we were when, for the first time, we sold 500 units in one month!” Van Schalkwyk adds.

A corporate order in 2003 of 20 000 vuvuzelas by Absa Bank was his first big breakthrough.

Motivated by this event, the entrepreneur quit his job at the plastic factory and set up his own company in 2004, called Masincedane Sport.

Currently, the enterprise comprises one production facility in Cape Town’s Northern Suburbs. “We employ 75 people across the board, from production to packaging and everything in between. Our maximum production capacity at this moment is 8 500 vuvuzelas a day,” explains Van Schalkwyk, who says he has sold approximately 800 000 vuvuzelas so far.

“We estimate our market share at around 20% – both locally and globally. Now we want to increase our production, so we are looking at branching out to, for instance, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in the near future,” he adds.

Apart from expanding in South Africa, Masincedane Sport has embarked on a mission to conquer the rest of the world, starting with Europe. The company recently made a deal with Urbas-Kehrberg, a German enterprise, to produce vuvuzelas for the European market.

In the interim, an application for a full trademark registration of the name Vuvuzela in Europe has been successful. “We applied for the trademark registration six years ago, just after I founded the company,” Van Schalkwyk says.

“This means that European companies are still allowed to produce plastic horns. You simply cannot trademark an instrument. These horns, as I said before, have been around forever.

“This trademark registration means that while companies in any of the EU [European Union] member states are allowed to make plastic horns, they are forbidden to call them vuvuzelas,” he notes. “Only we can use that name. In South Africa, we are still waiting for the trademark registration procedure to be finalised.”

Russia is also on Van Schalkwyk’s hit list.

Recently, an unidentified Russian company contacted him. “We’ve had an invitation to get into the Russian market, so it looks like we are going to get into Russia too,” he says, without disclosing any detail about the discussions.

Then there is Brazil, which will host the 20th edition of World Cup Football in four years’ time.

“We have been contacted by two companies in Brazil, so the interest is there. However, we will have to see whether Fifa allows vuvuzelas in the Brazilian stadiums like they did in South Africa,” Van Schalkwyk says.

His careful enthusiasm about the possible interest from Brazil is not without reason. Although most South Africans may have loved the vuvuzela, not everyone seemed to be pleased.

The global debate around the vuvuzela erupted many months prior to the kickoff of the 19th edition of the World Cup. “Ban them,” said Spanish midfielder Xabi Alonso a few weeks before the opening game in Johannesburg’s Soccer City. “That trumpet? It’s not nice. I think they should be banned. They make it very difficult for the players to communicate with each other and to concentrate. They are a distraction and do nothing for the atmosphere,” he added.

Scores of people, football players and their supporters alike sided with Alonso. France’s coach Raymond Domenech was one of them.

“We can’t sleep at night because of the vuvuzelas. People start playing them from six a.m.,” he told the media in the first week of the 2010 World Cup. “We can’t hear one another out on the pitch because of them.”

Fifa president Sepp Blatter, however, dismissed the complaints, and justified the vuvuzela’s role in South African soccer. “It’s a local sound and I don’t know how it is possible to stop it,” he said.

“I always said that when we go to South Africa, it is Africa. It’s not Western Europe. It’s noisy, it’s energy, rhythm, music, dance, drums. This is Africa. We have to adapt a little.”

Despite the vuvuzela’s controversial image, business went well during the 2010 World Cup, says Van Schalkwyk. “However, that does not mean we got rich overnight. On the contrary. I invested R1.8 million into the business to make it what it is now. One has to sell a lot of vuvuzelas, which are sold at a price from R30 to R50 each, to make up for this investment.”

Another hurdle that he has to overcome is the competition of plastic horns made in China. “Competition is stiff, indeed. The Chinese horns that have flooded South Africa are cheaper compared to our products. They are sold for as little as R20, or sometimes less,” says Van Schalkwyk.

“The problem with these knockoffs is that they are of inferior quality, made from cheap plastic and break easily. After leaving the World Cup stadium in Cape Town after the matches I attended, I have seen countless broken horns in the bins.”

His vuvuzelas are different, Van Schalkwyk underlines. “We use a high-density polyethylene, which makes it difficult for the product to break. It furthermore does not chap lips or give one blisters. People have been complaining about that quite often, so I have heard.”

“In addition, our vuvuzelas are individually wrapped. This is because of the hygiene aspect.

“The Chinese horns are not wrapped, which means that everyone can try them. I do not know about you, but I would not want to buy a vuvuzela that has been blown by strangers over and over again!”

Lastly, Van Schalkwyk’s vuvuzelas come with earplugs and produce 13 decibels less compared to the cheaper horns. “We did this on purpose, as we were aware of the fact that the sound vuvuzelas produce can be regarded as annoying to some,” he says. “That is why we designed them in such way that they produce less noise, which is less high pitched than cheap trumpets.”

Despite all the advantages, many consumers and companies prefer a lower price to quality, Van Schalkwyk explains. “Money talks, and for some reason many people have no interest in buying locally produced goods when they are more expensive than products from China.”

This specific attitude is his main objection when it comes to the Chinese horns and people buying them. “We have had some arguments with South African corporate companies that wanted to order from us, but complained about our prices. They were too high, they said. At the end of the day, they opted for Chinese horns. They did not look further and only saw a horn made of plastic.”

“At the end of the day, South African companies and consumers have the power to make a difference in this country by buying locally produced goods,” Van Schalkwyk underlines. “Buying locally produced goods enables local employers to provide jobs to local people, to keep them off the streets and off the path that leads to crime.

“Why spend your money in a different part of the world when you can spend it here and help create jobs so that people do not have to resort to hijackings out of desperation?

“I am convinced that if more South Africans would buy locally produced goods, that man on the side of the road would be at work instead of begging for your money,” he adds. ▲ ▲

Miriam Mannak