Seems fitting that a pair of entrepreneurs raised in once logging-dependent Oregon are launching an enterprise based upon bamboo, one of nature’s most renewable forest resources.  This month “bambu, LLC” launches a line of contemporary homeware at the international Gourmet Products Show in San Francisco.   Jeff Delkin, his wife Rachel Speth and a college cohort of Jeff, Chris Kidwell, are co-founders of a company with a mission to design, manufacture and market on a wholesale basis to homeware and gift retailers worldwide.

The Oregon couple, currently living in Shanghai, have well over a decade of experience in Asian commerce during stints in Taiwan, Thailand and China.  Rachel served Nike as a product development director throughout Asia, while Jeff has worked with two international advertising agencies (Leo Burnett and David Ogilvy).  Rachel, Managing Director-Asia, leads bambu product design and development and supervises manufacturing resources.   Jeff, with background serving such global heavyweights as Coca Cola, Kraft, Heinz and McDonald’s, carries the title of bambu Business Director.  Kidwell, with a background in small business development and management (including architectural woodworking products), serves bambu as Managing Director-USA, based in Portland, Maine.

This team rallies around a resource that botanically is not a wood, but a form of grass native to southeast Asia, with over 1200 species (bambu favors Moso Bamboo, phyllostachys pubescens, and Rachel notes this is not a species consumed by the Panda, which dines exclusively on other bamboo varieties).  Bamboo can grow noticeably in a single day and stands may be harvested in three years, underlining its renewability. 

Bamboo ecology & economics rule

Bamboo is nothing if not versatile.  It serves millions as food, fuel, housing, furniture, artisan products and offers soil and water conservation benefits.  Its tensile strength rivals steel.  Only recently has the western world embraced it as an ideal flooring material.  It is touted by bambu founders as “the preferred altenative, naturally.”

The bambu product line concentrates on homeware, including plates, serving dishes, flatware & cutlery (stainless steel with bamboo handles).  Designs are contemporary with a Scandinavian aura.  Bamboo has the happy trait of resisting moisture, flavor absorption and cutting or scratching.   Natural finishes range from blond to golden brown, with definitive grain patterns.  A collection of lacquerware is also offered with bowls and plates coated with a durable finish in bright colors.  All bambu products are hand-finished.

bambu has passionate purpose

Principals of this new enterprise radiate commitment to a renewable, sustainable resource they stress as “an alternative to timber and petroleum products.”  They express a desire to “continuously explore new applications for today’s home.”  These purposes play well when you’ve grown up surrounded by clear-cuts and other forest traumas known in the Northwest.

While bamboo has been a buttress of Asian culture, both its practical and artistic benefits remain to be discovered and utilized widely by those of us residing in the west.  This is the inspiration fueling  the dedication of bambu’s founders.  They report favorable reactions from top level New York City contacts made prior to bambu’s San Francisco unveiling.   Rachel’s Nike background alone engenders belief that this new enterprise has a future…and it serves as an example of what the concept of “globalization” can bring to capitalist growth.  Now, if the airline industry withstands its economic doldrums and continues to provide a way to shorten international commercial contacts, prosperity remains a promise.  Then, of course, there’s a communications phenomenon known as “The Internet.”  The bambu story has taken wing at www.bambuhome.com

(OMED: Full disclosure requires that we notify our readers that Jeff  Delkin is the son of Fred Delkin.  Jeff is a fine writer, and has done a piece or two for a magazine in past years.  This enterprise seems a natural for him, since his father, the former owner of Jakes Crawfish in Portland, is one of the Northwest's leading experts on wine, regional food products and the art of cooking just about anything.)

© 2003 Oregon Magazine