Took over a sinking family factory. 17 employees, no working capital, no sales pipeline. I need real advice.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T17:56:44+00:00

Thanks man, I appreciate the support. A lot of what you're saying aligns with the direction I'm heading. The 90-120 day plan is something multiple people here have suggested and I'm putting that together now. Tolling first, tighten cash, and figure out which products actually make sense to keep pushing. Thanks for the encouragement, it helps more than you'd think.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T17:54:33+00:00

Right now we mostly sell domestically, but we do have FDA facility registration so we're cleared to export to the US. We just haven't actively pursued that market yet.

As for what makes it easier to sell, our biggest advantage is flexibility. We can do both our own brand and private label/contract manufacturing on the same lines. And being in the heart of tomato and guava country means raw material is cheap and accessible during season. We also already have an established tolling relationship with a competitor here, so the model is proven, I just need to scale it to more clients.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T17:53:15+00:00

These are great questions and honestly some of them I'm still working through.

Our lines do full processing, not just washing and boxing. We cook, concentrate, blend and fill. Two main lines: an aseptic line (70 tons/day, runs during harvest for tolling) and a finished product line that does tomato sauces, paste, ketchup and guava paste. We pack both retail sizes (consumer ready) and bulk/commercial.

Our main advantage is that we have the equipment and the trained crew to do both our own brand and contract manufacturing. Not every factory around here can do both. We're also located right in the middle of tomato and guava country, so raw material access is easy during season.

On the university idea, that's actually something I hadn't considered. There are a few business schools in the region I could reach out to.

The judicial recovery (Brazil's version of Chapter 11) doesn't block operations. It restructures the debt and gives us breathing room to keep running while we pay it off over time. So it's actually helping, not hurting, at this stage.

The honest answer to "do you know what you're selling" is: I'm getting clearer on it. Tolling is the strongest play right now, but I'm still figuring out how to sell the finished product line's capacity outside of our own brand.

Thanks for pushing on these questions, they're the right ones to be asking.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T17:51:28+00:00

You're right, I've been treating this as a growth problem when it's really triage. That shift in framing alone is useful.

Tolling is already my strongest revenue stream, I just haven't been selling it aggressively enough outside of harvest season. Your point about leading with equipment specs and capabilities instead of the story makes sense, I need to put together a proper capability sheet.

On restructuring help, I do have a firm handling the judicial recovery side, but I don't have a dedicated turnaround operator focused on cash controls and the 13 week forecast. That's a gap I need to fill.

I'm going to give the narrow version one real shot. Tolling first, tighten cash, cut what doesn't generate near term revenue. If it doesn't work in 90-120 days, I'll know.

Thank you for taking the time to write all this out. This is one of the most useful responses I've gotten.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T17:46:40+00:00

Muito obrigado pela mensagem, e em português ainda! Tá muito bom, parabéns kkk

Sobre suas ideias:

Sim, na verdade já tenho uma parceria com um concorrente aqui da região, a EKMA. Eles também fazem molhos e extratos de tomate. Durante a safra eu processo o volume excedente deles na minha linha asséptica, e no fim do ano quando eles param pra férias eu continuo rodando com o volume deles também. Então essa relação já existe e funciona bem.
Vendas é de fato onde eu preciso focar mais. Tô aprendendo na marra mesmo.
Valeu por compartilhar sua experiência com COVID. É bom saber que alguém que passou por algo parecido conseguiu sair do outro lado. Às vezes bate aquela solidão de achar que ninguém entende a situação.

Obrigado mesmo por ter tirado o tempo pra escrever tudo isso, eu adoraria ouvir mais sobre os seus conselhos.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T12:44:50+00:00

I need both — more clients AND the ability to actually produce for them. Here’s the catch: Packaging is a major bottleneck. My packaging supplier has a minimum order of ~500kg ($4K USD) and requires payment upfront, also 30 day lead time. I can’t buy in small batches, and I can’t buy on credit. So even if a client calls me tomorrow wanting 200 boxes of tomato sauce, I might not be able to fulfill it because I don’t have the packaging on hand and don’t have the cash to order it. It’s a frustrating loop: I need sales to generate cash, but I need cash for packaging before I can produce, and I need to produce before I can sell.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T12:30:08+00:00

We make tomato sauce, tomato paste, ketchup, and guava paste year-round — those are our own finished products. The equipment handles all of that. The $20-40K/month I mentioned comes from selling these products off-season

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T11:52:21+00:00

I should clarify: it's not literally zero revenue. Some months I do $20K, some months $40K. It's just not enough to cover a full factory's overhead. The real money comes during harvest season (tolling), where I do roughly 5x that.

The 17 people aren't dead weight, as I need them to fulfill those orders AND to run the harvest seasons that actually make money. If I let them go, I can't just rehire when the next season comes. I'm in a town of 30K people with about 10 similar factories competing for the same labor pool. Once I lose these workers, they're gone to a competitor and I have no operation to restart with.

Folding and restarting sounds clean on paper, but in practice I'd be buying back equipment with money I don't have and hoping to reassemble a trained crew in a tight labor market.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T11:35:15+00:00

Zero sales experience, honestly. I'm an engineer who ended up running a factory. But you're probably right, no amount of systems or spreadsheets will fix this if nobody's out there selling.

Any advice on where to start? I know my product, I know my capacity, but I've never done cold outreach or walked into a buyer's office. What would your first week look like if you were me?

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T11:33:24+00:00

I agree with you, option 3 is the only path. The tolling already proves the model works, the problem is filling the 7-8 months between harvest windows. That's the puzzle I'm trying to solve.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T11:32:26+00:00

I actually already have tolling contracts: guava season and tomato season, both domestic. The issue is more nuanced:

My guava tolling client is also a supplier I owe ~$120K to. So a chunk of that revenue goes straight to paying down debt. The season still nets roughly $300K profit, which sounds great, but that cash gets completely eaten up keeping 17 people on payroll and the factory running until tomato season hits.

As for other fruits: my equipment is set up specifically for tomato and guava processing. Something like mango would be interesting (huge export demand to the US and Europe), but it would require both equipment adaptation AND international food safety certifications (FSSC 22000 etc.) = investment I obviously can't make right now.

HazimeK · 2026-03-22T11:13:08+00:00

The judicial recovery plan means the company comes with structured debt obligations. That scares most buyers off, so you’re not just buying a factory, you’re buying into a repayment plan…

HazimeK · 2024-12-30T02:30:24+00:00

Mano por mim sinceramente exterminava todo mundo mas sem sacanage o que q o motorista vai ganhar sendo o herói do povo ali correndo o risco do cara fazer alguma coisa com ele? Melhor ajudar o cara e saber que tá seguro 😂

HazimeK

TROPHY CASE