Sourcing against the shipping tide
This was a relationship that started with a long courting period. Vava was suspicious of Holly’s interest at first. “I tried to read them because many folks came to me saying ‘We really want to work with you’ only to go silent after getting samples or just sending a rejection”, Vava explains, pointing out that she had numerous DHL bills before getting any business done. “It took them [Holly and Alex] to travel to Kenya for me to trust them”, she starts. “But today this is one of the best relationships I have. Holly is one of the few strong female friends I have in coffee. When I need to ask her something she is all ears.”
The North Star couple flew out to Kenya in February of 2019 and spent a week with Vava when they also ran a couple of workshops for Vava’s youth and gender equity project Gente del Futuro. “It was an atypical trip from the beginning. Usually, you fly to Nairobi and go to Nyeri, which is 1 hour away. This time we were in the car for 10 hours. We were interested in Meru, which is 8 hours from Nairobi. There, Vava introduced us to Mutai Kinyua of Deman Estate”, Holly recounts. Ever since then, North Star has been sourcing through Vava anyway they can, struggling to match the shipping dates of the lots they want to importers’ schedules, which are heavily weighted to suit Central Kenya’s harvest. “The regions are far and the seasons are different, so we literally miss the boat”, she laughs.