Salt, Sweat & the Christmas Season
Greetings from Bali,
Hope you had a safe and fun Bonfire Night. Outside the UK, mention Guy Fawkes and people mostly look at you blankly. Sometimes we forget that setting fire to an effigy while eating a jacket potato isn’t a worldwide tradition.
Last week I was telling you about our trip to a Toddy bar in Kerala and getting a little squiffy on the local moonshine. If you missed that adventure, you can catch up here.
Well, I made it back to Bali, and this week I’ve been working at our beach office, where our marketing team and talented developers work just a stone’s throw from the surf. We even have a small swimming pool - which does get used. When we moved here a few years ago, it seemed like the dream. A tropical beach, ocean breezes, surfers catching waves just outside the window… what’s not to like?
Turns out, salt.
Salt is an invisible invader. It creeps into everything, slowly but surely eating the place. We’ve already had to replace the roof this year. Now the electricity keeps tripping, and it seems the whole office needs rewiring. The air conditioning keeps breaking down too, which means the tropical dream can become more of a communal sauna. With spreadsheets.
But the team are resilient. They crack on, while Bondhan has added emergency maintenance man to his already rather varied job description. Designer, sourcing expert, and now defender of the beach office against the Indian Ocean. The sea hasn’t actually come inside yet, but it seems to be sending the salt ahead.
Meanwhile, just up the road at our AW warehouse, it’s a hive of activity. Watching the team checking, wrapping and packing, I’m reminded just how much of what we sell begins with a piece of wood and a talented pair of hands. Which brings us back to those four letters causing so much head-scratching: EUDR. In India I was telling you before it's causing massive consternation. Here more scratching of heads.
The EU Deforestation Regulation means that wood products covered by the rules, entering the EU market, must be shown to be legally produced and deforestation-free. That involves tracing the wood back to the land where it was grown, with the information and checks to support it. Protecting forests? Absolutely. We depend on them. So do the people making these products. They already have systems in place here.
Indonesia is hardly new to timber paperwork. There are already government departments, export standards, inspections, papers and stamps. Depending on the shipment, there can be samples going off to laboratories at the airport too. Getting everything ready at this end is a full-time occupation before a container has moved an inch.
Now EUDR is looming over the handicraft industry like a very large filing cabinet balanced on a very small carving stool. An extra layer of EU-created bureaucracy is arriving here like a summer storm.
From the conversations I’m having, it certainly doesn’t feel as though everyone is ready. A small workshop might know its timber merchant very well. Getting the complete trail back through that merchant to the original plot of land is another matter. Getting people to focus and take it seriously is only going to happen when orders get cancelled - I fear.
This week we despatched a container to Spain, it may or may not reach Malaga before the EUDR deadline on the 31st December. We have prepared paperwork, as much as is possble.. but nobody here seems to think it's an actual issue. Local V-Legal wood regulators just say it's not in force yet so they didn't get organised. We pointed out that goods shipped now will arrive when it is in force. So it is de facto in force now. They say they already have a strong system called V-Legal, so why do they need another one?
That’s the worry: talented people can make beautiful things, but producing the extra paperwork to keep selling them could become the harder craft. We’re working through it with our suppliers, because there are livelihoods behind these boxes, carvings and little wooden treasures.
As I write this over an early breakfast in Bali, the last of the Bonfire Night fireworks are probably still popping back in the UK.
So I think I can now announce, without fear of being told it’s too early…
Wishing you full shops, busy websites, lovely customers, and plenty of those “I’ll take one of those as well” moments.
Happy Christmas trading, everyone. We’ll keep the stock moving — and, with a bit of luck, the beach office lights on.
Take care,
