Member Interviews - A Conversation with Today's Green Leaders
Business Unusual : An Interview with Mike Thair
By ECOoutpost staff
Indochina (now known as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand) is still as exotic and mystical a place as the French Colonial period many decades ago. To this backdrop Indochine Natural was inspired. As you walk through the Old Quarter of Ha Noi’s narrow streets there is still bustling commercial activity where you will find “Herb Street”, or more precisely, Pho Lan Ong, named after a famous 18th century traditional medicine practitioner. A delightful treat of texture and smells from sacks of herbs in shops lined with rosewood herbal medicine cabinets will overwhelm your senses
Many of the raw materials used in Indochine Natural products come from the same traditional herbalists but with a modernized mission: dependable employment for the local farmers and disadvantaged.
Each product sold provides a sustainable living to Vietnamese farmers and producers.
In Vietnam, farmers remain the poorest sector of the population with high levels of poverty and unemployment, and there is an accelerating gap in the income and living conditions between rural and urban areas. Let’s face it, natural handmade skin and hair care products aren't necessities, they're luxuries. As far as we're concerned, indulge away. Because every time you wash your hair or skin with an Indochine Naturals product, you're improving the life of a small famer in Southeast Asia. That is a wonderful feeling. We ask Mike Thair, Indochine Natural Director, to give us the scoop.
ECOoutpost: What does Indochine Natural do?
We are a manufacturer of 100% handmade natural soaps, body wash, shampoos, loofah and other skin care products. We have been in operation for about 14 months and are still in the product development phase. We are currently exporting to a number of countries and supplying the local Vietnamese market including for example guest soaps and shampoos for a foreign owned Eco-lodge.
ECOoutpost: What makes Indochine Natural a Fair Trade company?
Our mission is to establish and maintain a small independent and profitable company applying Fair Trade standards in all our dealings, and in doing so provide opportunities for economically disadvantaged producers. Additionally we would like to demonstrate that small independent companies such as ourselves in Vietnam could apply Fair Trade standards without the direct support of large corporations or NGOs.
In the production of our soaps we have adopted Fair Trade principles in terms of how we relate to our staff. Our efforts have focused on working with two communes of 55 farmers in Ha Tay Province in developing their capacity to produce dried loofah. This vegetable is usually grown and harvested by these farmers as a green vegetable and at an early stage of growth sold in the local markets. We spent a fair amount of time and effort training the farmers to leave the vegetable on the vine to maturity, and then to harvest and dry the loofah.
As a result of a contract we have with an Australian importer for our bath loofah product, we were able to sign a contract with these farmers to produce 10,000 loofah at a pre-agreed price that we pre-purchased prior to harvest. On top of the purchase of loofah, we are also employing the families to wash, bleach, dry and package the loofah ready for processing and sewing by our workers in Ha Noi. This has produced a good injection of cash into the communes, and has now paved the way for future contracts with these communes.
Since this initial contract, we are currently negotiating other overseas contracts for the export of our loofah products, and our plan now is to inject more income into poor rural communities by having them actually manufacture the products themselves. Our target participants are poor ethnic minority communities in areas where there is limited opportunity for growing marketable crops.
One of our first objectives in the near future is to develop a sustainable cash flow and demand for our products. Once this has been achieved, we are hoping to bring some employment and other opportunities to groups such as those with HIV or women who have come out of the commercial sex industry or human trafficking.
ECOoutpost: What motivated you to start a Fair Trade business?
Two elements, need and opportunity.
ECOoutpost: What has been some of the biggest challenges of maintaining such high standard of social responsibility?
The concept of Fair Trade is not widely understood in Vietnam, therefore there is a lot of suspicion at all levels as we attempt to initiate new ideas, markets and products.
Another very significant challenge for us as a small independent Fair Trade company located in a developing country is gaining international recognition as being Fair Trade. The application processes for organizations such as IFAT for example are very west-centric and the membership costs are high. From our experience to date it appears as if Fair Trade has been established and maintained by those with vested interests to increase the margins and profits of commercial brokers and wholesalers located in developed countries. There is very little consideration given toward developing the capacity of artisans and small producers to become independent international traders in their own right. For example, if we could by-pass IFAT members (who add margins of 6-10 times the producer’s price) and consolidate containers for export with other small producers, we could be happy with 30% margins over landed costs, which in the end is a win-win for consumers and producers.
ECOoutpost: What is the most hopeful sign you have seen recently from the Fair Trade Community?
At this time none, especially within the context of the issues I’ve just described.
ECOoutpost: What's been your proudest moment as a Fair Trade business owner?
Seeing the happy faces of our farmers as we handed over the first payments for loofah, this was after a lot of skepticism and hesitation initially, which has now been replaced by enthusiasm for increased cooperation.
ECOoutpost: What are you working on right now?
After a period of email dialogue we had a visit from a Fair Trade company in the USA who wants to work with us directly to manufacture significant numbers of their loofah products. As a result we will be immediately seeking to cooperate with more rural communities for growing and production of loofah products.
ECOoutpost: Which Fair Trade and/or Green product can you not live without?
Our 100% natural Sage Lemongrass Shampoo!!!
