Seeddharta hemp food
Seeddharta is developing and merchandising healthy hempseed(products) to finance a (silent) hemp campaign (so shhh, keep them lips shut)
Sobre ti
Background Information
Nombre
branko
Apellido
van broekhuizen
URL en Twitter
URL en Facebook
The competition is only open to people between 18-34 years-old and resident in UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands. Does this apply to you
Sí.
Country of residence of entrepreneur
The Netherlands
Tell us about your personal background. Why are you passionate about this issue? Making an idea a reality takes innovation, dedication and strong leadership. Do you have the necessary entrepreneurial skills to realize your vision?
Vince & me are both students in our late twenties, who in our mid-twenties rather followed our dreams than followed our studies. Now, after 3 years, we came back to finish our studies, because we want this little paper ánd because we believe our study can help us realizing our dream (WH#M! 2 flies in one!).
The study we are following in Amsterdam is called "Social & Cultural Entrepreneurship". The study gives us the tools and the entrepreneurial skills to become social & cultural entrepreneurs. This time we came back totally motivated and dedicated to finish our study, because we have a dream to chase now, which gives meaning to our study.
Exploring, analyzing, doing research, managing people and processes, making project(plan)s, creating social & cultural programs, organizing events, networking, mediation, creating public consent; these are all entrepreneurial tools we are equipped with. But the main tool we want to use is collaboration; collaboration is the new competition. The collaboration is existing now out of 4 dedicated persons; me (the creative brain), Vince (the strong leader), Maarten (the financial brain) and Dieks (the Art Director), but as a cooperative we are welcoming everyone who can and wants to contribute to our mission; to put nature's most wonderful plant back in Gods spotlight, where it belongs
Sobre tu organización
Nombre de la organización
seeddharta
Sitio web de la organización
País de la organización
Holanda, NH, Amsterdam
Países en donde este proyecto está creando impacto social
Holanda, NH, Amsterdam
Tu organización es
No registrada
La información que brindes aquí será usada para llenar las partes de tu perfil que hayan sido dejadas en blanco, como intereses, organización, y sitio web. Ninguna información de contacto será hecha pública. Por favor desmarca esta casilla si no deseas que esto suceda..
Innovación
La necesidad: ¿Cuál es el problema que tratas de solucionar?
There is a plant here on earth everybody knows, but only few knows it's wonders. Some say the plant can save the planet, and we also know it can make a big contribution to the health of our planet. Then again, the problem is, that only a few people know. The plant has unfortunately a unfounded but big image problem. And why? Because of one of the 30.000 different products that arrives from it is weed.. The hemp plant is only known because of weed, but only a few know that from the industrial version of hemp (which doesn't even produce marihuana!) we can produce textile, paper, rope & sails, canvas, plastic, building material, medicines and even a super food. Our ancestors knew it and used it mainly for those purposes; if only the world would know it and used it for those purposes now...
La solución: ¿Cuál es tu solución? Sé específico.
So if the ailment is an unfounded bad image, the cure would be to re-brand this image. Hemp is a wonder plant; the hemp seed contains the solution to a greener world; hemp can save the planet; hemp seeds are a so called super food; and we can all found these statements. Even Ron Paul is preaching America in his campaign for becoming president of the US of A the truth and wonders about hemp, but the people of the world seem to have a hard time believing these wonder stories about this plant that is rooted in their sub-consciousness as "the weed with roots in hell". Yes, we do believe Ron Paul has an enormous influence on the public opinion, but still we do see in the world around us that big organizations do have even more influence. And Ben & Jerry's is a big organization. We do not believe Ben & Jerry's would need as much words as Ron Paul in advocating this wonder plant; if Ben & Jerry's would only launch one new flavor of ice cream made with hemp milk, than the world will know...
El Modelo: Muéstranos a través de un ejemplo específico cómo tu solución hace una diferencia, incluye tus actividades primarias
To be honest, we just started our company 3 months ago, so we still don't have a specific example to walk through with you. But if you let us be so free, we can take you through a specific example of "what could be a specific example in a world were dreams can get true"...
In our experience by now, most people don't even want to try our hemp nut bars if we first tell them the bars are made with hemp seeds. So we learned not to mention there is hemp in the health bar before they tried. After that and they liked it (they all do), than we tell it and then they like it even more. So after they taste the delicious hemp bars, they are open for information. Not the other way around; if we first tell them the information, they not open for trying anymore. So that is also how we want to promote the industrial version of hemp; first let people try, smell, touch, taste and experience it and afterwards tell them the story if they want to hear (and they all do).
After we learned this important lesson, we decided that our primary activity should not be activism (most people don't like activism), but selling a super food and homemade products based on this super food with the name hemp seeds. Our main products are the seeds (shelled, unshelled and roasted with sea salt) and the hemp bars. We also run a catering, on markets and other events, were we make vegetarian hemp burgers, smoothies based on hemp milk, and so now and then pitta hemp hummus, hemp pesto, hemp pancakes, hemp ice cream or whatever we feel like making (to prove that hemp seeds can be - and maybe even should be - used in every recipe).
Because we truly believe in the potential of our company, we dream big (in 35 years we are so big, Unilever is going to be a brand of ours!) but try to be realistic at the same time. If we want to make a big difference, we need to collaborate with others (what we would love to do). And therefore we aim for the highest; Ben & Jerry's! Collaboration implies of course a two way direction, and we cannot give more than the tip to try for once to make an B&J's Ice cream based on hemp milk. That of course is up to Ben & Jerry them self. We will just go on with our primary activities, and develop, produce and bring hempseed(products) on the market!
El mercado: ¿Quiénes son tus pares y competidores? Identifica a otros que también estén trabajando para dar respuesta a las necesidades que tú abordas y en qué te diferencias de ellos. ¿Cuáles son los desafíos que estos jugadores podrían representar para tu éxito o crecimiento?
Imagine there would be just one goal and just one team... it would make one hell of a boring football game, but for sure this one team will win the game! We would rather collaborate than compete, and the funny thing is, is that our closest competitor (hemp-food.eu) asks their visitors on their website if they want to collaborate! So we guess a collaboration with them would be possible. But if they don't want to collabarote, we do think we can (get and) sell the seeds cheaper and with a more beautifull design. Also we produce more and better tasting products than them. And there is still an enormous market for hemp seeds in Amsterdam and Holland; many organic supermarkets don't sell hempseed(products) yet, so we can be the first. And we have our product ready now, ready for take-off!
Select the stage that best applies to your business
Operando menos de un año
Esta presentación se trata de
Impacto social
What is the social impact you have had to date and how you measure it?
The social impact we had to-date didn't stretch further than in our circle of friends, family, teacher and a handfull of costumers. We sold in one month after developing the bar more than 400 bars, and our aim is to sell another 1000 coming month. This is also how we measure our social impact; every hemp bar we sell, is a bar with a story and this story will be told by the consumers to their friends and family.
If we have grown bigger, than we want to cause a social impact via the media. Just like our hero Tony Chocolonely did with his slave free chocolate, we want to let us be arrested and create media attention around it. The industrial hemp plant doesn't produce marihuana, but it is still illegal to grow without a license, so we don't see how the law is making any sence.. does anyone?
Sostenibilidad
How does your model address financial, social, and environmental sustainability?
About the social sustainabillity, we can tell that our "employee relations" amongst eachother are good. We decided that the person who puts in the most time in our company, gets the biggest peace of the pie. We believe that this model is a new model which gives the possibility to people to invest time instead of money in a company (and time is more worth than just money). Our aim is to try to involve as much talented people around us, which as a start-up we cannot pay, but they will get a peace of the pie of the company; so when our joined efforts will bring up fruits in the future, everybody will gets it's fair share.
In the future we want our company to have fair trade products. Therefore we are doing research in Nepal, to find ways to make a farmer family happy with a fair trade deal. And even when it is a fair trade deal, if we buy the seeds from the farmers instead of from a German wholesale store, we can get it for a lot cheaper, which will give us an advantage over our competitors.
The hemp plant can probably be considered the most environmental sustainable plant on earth. Bringing the plant back from being away for so long, would for sure benefit the environment in countless ways. Of course we are going to use environment friendly packiging material also, because we want our eco footprint to be uplifting! Paper and plastic can be made from hemp, so all (our) packiging material too.
Awareness & learning
How do you see social entrepreneurship contributing to the improvement of developing countries?
A social entrepreneur recognizes social problems and finds solutions to address those problems. In a developing country there tend to be more social and economical problems. In a world with a thousand problems, there will be a million solutions, so it is hard to tell how we see social entrepreneurship contributing to the improvement of developing countries. What we can do is give a example to explain how we would like to contribute to a developing country in the future. We would like to have our own hempseeds from a farmer in Nepal. In Nepal hemp has been grown for thousands of years up to today for food and textile. In Nepal we would educate a farmer family about hemp and hemp farming and give them a fair trade salary for it in return. If the demand for organic hemp(seeds) is getting bigger in the Netherlands, than we will need more supply and we can make another family happy with a fair trade salary; we happy, they happy, everybody happy!
What aspects of your stay in Uganda as part of the competition do you think you will find most challenging and rewarding?
It might sound silly, but the aspect I think would be most rewarding, is the learning aspect. I would love to know how successful entrepreneurs like Ben & Jerry's did what we also want to do . We too want to cooperate with farmers in a developing country. Of course this is a plan for the future, but we are already doing research. A friend of us is already doing some research while travelling in Nepal and found some good contacts for us. Now Vince is going to Nepal in the summer, and hopefully I may go to Uganda to learn everything from Ben & Jerry's how they did it! I will suck up all the information like a sponge; what problems did you encounter? What do you do for climate change? What for the community? What is a fair trade price for a vanilla bean (in the Turkish supermarket we pay 1,50 for it!)? Will the Ben & Jerry vanilla factory be as I imagine, just like in Charly & the Chocolate Factory and will Ben & Jerry dance and sing songs for us?
| Adjunto | Tamaño |
|---|---|
| seeddharta_logo.jpg | 19.98 KB |
