October 28, 2025 • 45 mins
Mike talks with Komoka’s Josh Humbert about his family pearl farm in Tahiti rebuilt its methods around eco-farming and sustainable handling of oysters. Fish now clean their oysters, helping reefs recover, resulting in the harvesting of hundreds of beautiful pearls that shine with rare color that redefine what quality feels like.
The story of Kamoka illustrates what is possible when working WITH nature, instead of against it.
Learn more about Kamoka and their Tahitian Pearl Jewelry: kamokapearls.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:01):
Welcome to In the Loop.
What is up, everybody?
My name is Michael Burpo.
Thanks again for listening to Inthe Loop.
This week, it's one of myfavorite interviews I've ever
done.
250 something episodes in, andthis one is so cool.
I speak with Josh Humbert fromKomoka.
(00:22):
And Komoka Pearls, they make anPearl jewelry.
And these Pearls are absolutelyincredible.
But I found Komoka through theirInstagram.
I got an Instagram targeted ad,and it was the storytelling was
just so unique and so tangiblefeeling.
And I was really impressed bytheir environmental approach to
(00:43):
pearl farming.
So they have banded togetherwith a lot of the other families
on their atoll, and uh now theyno longer power wash their
oysters, they instead um usedfish to clean their uh oysters.
It was a really cool process.
And the fact that I was able touse Zoom to have this
conversation with this man, uh,you know, hundreds, uh thousands
(01:07):
of miles away from me to talkabout his jewelry making process
is just a really special thing,and it made me kind of really
proud to be able to bring thisto you.
I really hope that you checkthem out.
Their social media isincredible, their jewelry is
even more beautiful than you canimagine.
Uh, they might be getting intowholesale jewelry in the near
(01:29):
future, and I really hope thatthey do because I think that
they do an incredible job thatfeels very unique and different.
But I also talk about what it'slike dealing with uh you know
family and and working alongsideyour family to have a uh a mom
and pop business, what it'slike, do they eat the oysters or
do they try not to?
(01:49):
It was just so cool.
I even embarrassed myself byasking how pearls are made, and
he was very gracious to explainit uh very in-depth.
It was such a cool conversation.
If you can tell, I'm so excited.
I hope you enjoy.
Cheers.
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And now back to the show.
SPEAKER_02 (03:16):
Correct me if I'm saying this wrong, Komoka Pearl.
Okay.
Awesome.
And I found you guys onInstagram.
Uh, I mean, the coolestInstagram ads and targeting, and
uh, your guys' jewelry isabsolutely beautiful.
You have an incredible story.
This is one of the interviewsthat I'm most excited to have
done in in you know severalyears.
Uh, could you first of allexplain uh what Komoko is and
(03:40):
and where I'm actually reachingyou right now?
SPEAKER_00 (03:42):
Okay, so I'm sitting on the deck of our house in uh
in Tahiti.
Well, I'm not out at the farm.
Uh I was there a couple daysago.
Tahiti to bring the pearls here,go through all the all the hoops
to um to export them uh legally.
So that means sorting them anduh you know getting them through
through export control and allthat.
Komoka is it's a small mom andpop's and grandpa and son
(04:05):
operation uh here in Polynesia.
The name comes from the the landthat that we occupy.
There's actually two pieces ofland, two motus.
A motu is like a link in a in anathol.
And one of them was gifted to usby the the owner, who is
basically kind of family to us.
Uh, she's she's passed awaysince then, but she was kind of
my my mother's uh mentor when weuh lived there, whatever, 50
(04:26):
years ago.
Yeah, so uh really long timeago.
And then the the second piece ofland um also belonged to her,
and um my father bought it somesome years later.
So uh that's in a nutshell whatKomoko is.
It's uh it's a pearl farm and uhpearl jewelry business.
Um we've been uh we've beenselling pearl jewelry on the
internet since uh 2012,actually, or 2011, I think, is
(04:49):
when I first opened the the uhthe e-commerce store.
But uh yeah, we've kind of beengetting traction in recent years
with uh with the help of socialmedia and and all that.
SPEAKER_02 (04:59):
It's a very, very cool story.
And I want to get into all thedetails of pearl farming and and
eco-pro farming um that you guyshave uh been uh speaking about
so um in depth about.
I guess the first thing I wantto just kind of start talking
about is this eco-pro farming.
One of the corner kind of topicsthat you guys have um brought to
(05:21):
the forefront, at least in thecontent I've seen, is uh you
guys are very adamant about notpower washing oysters.
Could you maybe explain a littlebit about what that does and
also what your your alternativeis as well?
SPEAKER_00 (05:36):
Yeah, so power washing, uh it's something that
that we did in the early years.
You know, we we didn't know likethis is the the whole industry,
it's it's really new, you know,it's only really 30, 40 years
old, honestly.
Like, I mean, it's been going ona little bit longer than that,
but not not serious productionanyway.
And what we discovered umthrough power washing ourselves
and and then in seeing theeffect that it was having on the
(06:00):
lagoon of not just us doing it,but our neighbors as well, was
that there were certain uhcertain kinds of organisms, uh
asidians, um, basically like uhkind of like like jellyfish that
all kind of live together, sortof thing.
And and also um also other uhanemones and a couple other uh a
couple other creatures.
And basically like when you whenyou blast them with uh
(06:22):
pressurized water, they you knowthey break into all these little
pieces.
And uh a lot of them werebasically took advantage of
this.
Um and they, you know, if you ifyou take an anemone and you
break it into 10 pieces, itbecomes 10 uh different uh
anemones.
And so what we're seeing is hugeexplosions of of uh of certain
species in the in the lagoonthat was uh having really,
(06:44):
really bad effects.
It was basically uh allowingcertain species to to colonize
everything, like the like allthe oysters would be covered,
the lines, the the buoys, likeeverything would be would be
covered in certain like reallyreally aggressive species.
And so, you know, this wasmaking the oysters sick, it was
displacing um lots of things inin the lagoon that that were
doing just fine before.
(07:06):
So, and you know, it stoppedoysters from collecting in the
collector.
So we, you know, we were havinga hard time getting getting uh
new stock for for future futurework, and and it just had all
these kind of downstream effectsthat were really negative.
So we kind of uh bandedtogether.
Um, you know, we we talked withuh a number of our neighbors and
we basically like got everyoneto come to a consensus that this
(07:26):
is no good and that it had tostop.
And um, and so and so we did,you know, that there was no no
law was passed, like no, likenothing done in terms of uh
bureaucracy or or anything likethat.
It was just kind of a a commonsense uh collective that was
like, hey, that you know, we'renot doing this anymore.
And um, and there were peoplethat you know that that were
part of our crew that that uhthat came down heavy on on other
(07:49):
farmers that that were that wereuh using the the power washers.
And so so it was really kind ofa beautiful example of a getting
community together and andhaving having a positive uh
effect.
So what we did instead of that,we basically uh sustainable
pearl farming, it's in in myeyes, it's a lot like any kind
of uh permaculture.
(08:10):
Basically, it starts withobservation, right?
You you kind of sit back, youyou watch what's going on, and
then you act.
You don't just come in like sureof of what you're doing and uh
and go ahead and uh up aboutyour business.
So basically, um to cleanoysters, we we have to uh bring
them to the farm where there's alike a temporary holding
platform.
And the oysters they they growup over really deep water where
(08:32):
there's no fish.
So they, you know, like like aboat, uh a boat that that's at
anchor for for a while will haveits hull kind of covered in
different things that grow onit, right?
And you have to periodicallylike clean it.
So the oysters is it's the samething.
Um so we we had brought theseoysters in to clean, and we we
put them on our temporaryplatform.
(08:53):
And um, you know, we we wentabout our morning, cleaning
oysters all morning, scrapingand scraping, scraping.
It's really hard work, and youget like stuff like you know,
squirting in your face, and it'sjust it's it's uh it's just it's
tough.
SPEAKER_02 (09:04):
It's very manual, very, very uh intensive.
SPEAKER_00 (09:08):
Super labor intensive.
And and uh and then you know, westopped for lunch for an hour
and then we went back and I Iwent to go go get a string and I
went, wait a minute, the theoysters are clean.
Like we we knew already that thefish were were nibbling on the
on the shells and the stuff andthe oysters, but I just had this
kind of like this epiphany oflike, wait a minute, the fish
are doing our work.
(09:28):
Like, why are we doing this?
Like, stop, everybody stop.
Like, no more scraping, likethis is ridiculous.
Like we're we're creating allthis work for ourselves that we
don't have to do.
And so we we kind of went all inwith the with the fish cleaning
and we we built out all these uhall these uh platforms that are
underwater, um, unlike the oneat the farm.
At the farm, it's uh it's anabove above the water platform,
(09:50):
and you you have to you knowpull the oysters out of the
water and hang them down andthen they get cleaned butt by
the fish.
But so we we built these uh kindof lattice works like uh like
kind of like spider websunderwater, and uh and and we
we'd hang the oysters there andthe fish would come around.
And and basically after doingthat for over 30 years, we've
seen just this huge like uhincrease in in fish populations.
(10:12):
And and uh that's been reallyexciting because some fish like
uh like parrot fish, they theythey have really positive uh
effects on the on the uh laguanecosystem.
Basically what parrot fish do isthey they clean the algae off of
off of dead coral.
And what that does is it enablesthe coral to grow uh to grow
more.
Like the like dead coral getscolonized by algae and then the
(10:36):
and then it can't it can't growanymore.
So the parrot fish they comearound and they they just
they're just doing their thingand they they eat off the algae
and then the coral can canflourish.
So basically by by favoring thethe parrot fish um through the
the oyster cleaning, we're alsofavoring the the uh the the
reef, you know, all the all thecoral in the in the surrounding
area.
SPEAKER_02 (10:56):
That's incredible.
What a cool, what a coolsymbiotic relationship though
between the oysters, your thefish, and yourself.
Uh it seems like everybody is isbenefiting.
SPEAKER_00 (11:07):
Yeah, and and it just comes it just comes from uh
just the very simple anyone cando it, uh just observation, you
know, just like just watchingwhat's going on, thinking about
it, and then acting from fromthat.
You know, I mean it's just it'sa it's it's like the the first
tenet of of permaculture.
Um and whether that's done um inin this, you know, in soil or in
(11:29):
the ocean, it's really it'sreally the same thing.
SPEAKER_02 (11:32):
Wow.
It's very, very fascinating.
And the fact that you're able touh come to that conclusion just
through observation is justfascinating to me.
Um if you don't mind me asking,how many different families are
on this atoll?
Um it sounds like you had tocome to this uh agreement
amongst yourselves.
Um, how many different peopleare on this on this space?
(11:52):
It looks rather small.
SPEAKER_00 (11:54):
So um when at that period I'm talking about, there
was uh around four or fivehundred people living on the uh
on the atoll.
SPEAKER_02 (12:01):
Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00 (12:02):
Um so it wasn't like we had to go around and like
talk to everyone and be like,hey, this is what's going on,
but we just kind of like um inlike kind of public spaces like
like at the airport, forexample, you know, before flying
in or you know, uh before flyingout or or uh as you're flying
in, you know, uh people farmerswho just kind of get together
and chat, you know, and and uhAhe has this really, really, uh,
(12:24):
really cool culture.
It's really uh progressive.
Um all atolls are a little bitdifferent.
And um and uh that's becausethey're you know they're
geographically so so isolated.
But Ahe has this really, reallyneat kind of um uh just just has
a real kind of community vibe toit and and people people share
what what they're doing, and andthere's there's uh pretty
(12:45):
remarkable cohesion betweenfarmers.
Um, you know, it's it's sureeveryone's competing against
each other, uh more or less, butthere's also a a lot of sharing
that that goes on and and um andyeah, and and through that we're
able to actually you know movethe uh needle on it.
SPEAKER_02 (13:01):
That's incredibly uh encouraging to hear that a
community can can can bandtogether and and especially with
the with nature at the forefrontof it.
Um where I live as well is uhvery different uh location than
where you are.
Uh I'm very much uh surroundedby mountains.
And uh around here, there's sucha focus on uh sustainable um
(13:24):
like forestry and hunting andthings like that, because you
know, back in the back in theday, they logged everything um
completely to the ground.
And someone came to therealization, probably like
yourself, realized that, ohwait, if we cut all the trees
down, there's a lot of knock-oneffects that are going to have
lasting generational impacts.
(13:46):
Uh, maybe we should not do that.
And uh, but also there's also alot of uh thoughts like, oh,
well, if we need trees forcertain things, uh, how can we
go about you know harvestingtrees without having those uh
eventual effects?
And that's where likesustainable things are coming
into play, which is uh trying todraw the conclusion or the
(14:06):
comparisons between oysterfarming and logging, very far
jump.
But um, I guess I also wanted tokind of discuss with you when I
was reading, I've read yourguys' entire website because I
was fascinated.
Uh, you guys talk a lot aboutgrafting.
And I wanted to, first of all,ask if you could explain a
little bit about grafting, butalso it seems like the it has a
(14:30):
pretty recent history to it, inthat it's only been around for,
you know, a generation or two,uh seemingly.
Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00 (14:38):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, well, I mean, in French
Polynesia anyway, but I mean itstarted, there's some
controversy whether the Japanesestarted it or the Australians
started it.
I'm not real clear on the on thenitty-gritty of all that.
But um, I know in in Polynesiait first happened in the gosh,
the 80s probably, something likethat.
The like the late 80s, I'm I'mguessing, maybe before.
(15:01):
I don't know.
It didn't really take off thoughuntil the until the uh until the
the early 90s.
The easiest way to understand itis to think of it as uh a skin
graft, you know, like you youget in an accident and you lose
like a bunch of your face orsomething, and then they they
take skin from your butt orwherever and they stretch it and
they and they put it on yourface and then it fills back in.
(15:24):
Um so we're doing the same thingwith uh with oysters.
We we take a uh a piece oftissue from from uh a donor
oyster, um, and that tissuecomes from the the mantle.
And usually when I talk aboutthis stuff, I I kind of see
people's eyes glaze over and anduh I no I love this stuff.
SPEAKER_02 (15:42):
And believe me, the all the listeners, they're gonna
be into this too, becausethey're all retail jewelers and
they probably love this stuff.
SPEAKER_00 (15:47):
Okay, okay, good, good, good.
Yeah, I always kind of imaginethat I'm like the the teacher in
Charlie Brown, like so the theuh tissue that that that we use,
it's taken from from the themantle, and and the mantle is
the organ of the oyster thatstretches out over the shell and
and deposits shell and andbuilds the shell.
So we're taking very specificcells that are shell building,
(16:10):
and we're taking them from adonor oyster that's that's
sacrificed, and we cut out themantle and we we uh we process
it into little squares, and thenwe insert those squares into the
body of a host oyster along witha nucleus.
So then if all goes well, thatlittle piece of tissue will grow
over the nucleus and depositshell on it.
SPEAKER_02 (16:31):
And the nucleus is typically sand, correct?
SPEAKER_00 (16:34):
No, not correct.
Um uh sand is um sand is almostnever at the core of any pearl,
like natural or or otherwise.
SPEAKER_02 (16:44):
Um I guess I'm confused.
I thought that uh that's whatwas causing the the pearls to
grow.
SPEAKER_00 (16:50):
Right.
So that that's a that's a commonmisconception, and and I I blame
John Steinbeck from it for it.
Paul, cut that out, cut thatout, Paul.
Paul's our editor.
No, no, don't don't cut anythingout.
It's all good because becausethat that's a common
misconception, and and that'sthat's what people think.
And so it's good to be able toto to to clear that up.
(17:11):
So Paul, leave it in.
SPEAKER_02 (17:13):
So it's around a nucleus, and then uh I guess I
was looking further into your umlike the process.
And and like you said, rightwhen we got on this call, you
were in the middle of sortingthese pearls, and uh some of the
pearls are you know perfect andbeautiful.
Oh wow, he's so he just panneddown and is showing all these
(17:33):
pearls.
They literally look likesomething from a different
world.
They are absolutely stunning.
And there's there's gotta beseveral hundred of them on here,
or maybe, yeah, a couplehundred.
SPEAKER_00 (17:44):
Now I I think right there there's like I'd say
probably four, uh three or fourhundred, probably.
SPEAKER_02 (17:50):
Three or four hundred on this table, and
they're all beautiful.
Now, I see you have some smallerpiles off to the side.
Are those purely just based onnumbers?
Or like you're counting them.
Oh, here's 10, 10, 10, or areyou sorting by size, or um how
are how do you distinguish them?
SPEAKER_00 (18:07):
So I'm I'm I'm preparing an uh uh an
exportation.
So um I'm I'm uh pulling out theA Bs, putting them in a pile, uh
putting the C's in one pile,putting the D's in another pile,
and then I'm pulling out uhpearls that were that were
missorted to begin with that arethat belong in the in the
Baroque or semi-baroquecategory.
(18:27):
Um they got mixed in with therounds because they they look
really round, but when then whenyou if you look at them closely,
they're not actually round.
Um so I'm just kind of I'm justkind of cleaning all that up.
But I I like to go back to theto the uh to the uh sand thing.
Basically, um oysters are aresupremely uh suited to stop that
from happening.
Like they're really, really goodat keeping sand out.
(18:48):
And I actually have a friend, uhhe's a Mexican pearl farmer in
the city of Cortez, and he heactually stuffed a bunch of sand
in in oysters thinking, ha haha, I'm gonna make a bunch of
pearls.
And uh none of the oystersproduced produce any pearls at
all.
So it's not that easy.
Like they're they're really goodat at just getting rid of sand.
I mean, they they they liveamongst the sand, so that that's
(19:11):
not how natural pearls areformed.
Uh natural pearls are formedusually from a parasite that
that drills through the shell,it pierces through the shell,
and then the the mantle willform a like a cup and then
entomb the the intruder um inits own flesh to to suffocate
it, and then it and then itforms pearl around it.
So your your question is was nota bad question at all.
(19:34):
And in fact, it's it's a reallygood question, and and it's a
very common uh uhmisunderstanding.
Um it's not reallymisunderstanding, it's just it's
just bad information, and itjust comes from sort of uh,
yeah.
I mean, I I think I really thinkit comes all the way back, uh it
goes all the way back to JohnSteinbeck um in uh the Pearl
where he talks about this, youknow, this this giant pearl, and
(19:55):
and it all came from uh from agrain of sand.
Uh in the world.
SPEAKER_02 (19:58):
We read that in high school.
SPEAKER_00 (20:00):
Yeah, for sure we did.
It's poetic, you know.
It's like it's what you want tobelieve.
It's like, oh, you know, liketransforming the difficulty into
something beautiful, like justlike humans, like, oh, isn't
that nice?
Sure, it's nice, but it doesn'treally happen that way.
Um anyway, I I that's all I wantto say about the grain of sand.
SPEAKER_02 (20:15):
No, I love it.
Uh I've got so many questions.
Let's keep keep on this.
I wanted to also ask about umthe color of your pearls.
And you were explaining um thatit's a very specific uh type of
or species of oyster.
And could you maybe expound uponthat?
And is there is there anydifference?
(20:36):
Like, for example, if you wereto just find one that is not
part of your pearl farm, justlike you're, I don't know, go
out into the ocean and you'refishing and you find an oyster
uh an oyster and it happens tohave a pearl, would they be
indistinguishable from the onesthat you or would be pulling out
as well?
SPEAKER_00 (20:52):
So they they could be, but they they probably
wouldn't be.
I mean, so natural pearls, theythey tend to not have uh good
color.
Like it'd be really, really rareto have a natural pearl that had
any kind of uh decent color.
SPEAKER_02 (21:07):
And but there's a specific type of species that
you are um targeting orharvesting from.
SPEAKER_00 (21:13):
That's right.
Yeah, we yeah, we we work withthe the pinctata margarita
ferro, which is the uh the theblack lip uh pearl oyster.
And um, and it what's fun aboutit, what what I love most about
it is that it has thisincredible range of colors that
it'll produce.
So if you open a hundred shells,like you're not gonna have two
cells that that look identical.
(21:35):
They're all gonna be a littlebit different.
Some might be like completelygold colored, like uh like a
South Sea oyster, you know,super rare, but it does happen.
And others might be kind ofgreen, others kind of bluish,
others kind of uh with likestrong like red hues, others
more kind of copper, likethere's just this huge like
color palette.
And um, so basically, like theway the way that that we do our
(21:58):
work, the you know how I wastalking about how you need you
need the mantle tissue?
Well, so what we do to find ourmantle tissue is we go through
literally hundreds of oystersevery day to find the ones that
have the very, very best color,the the most intense color that
those are the ones that that wepick.
And if we do a good job of that,then we have pearls like this.
SPEAKER_02 (22:19):
You know, we we have we have all this uh he's showing
a bunch more of the pearls andthey're beautiful.
So a lot of them are look uhalmost green and and gold, but
also some of them are like veryjet black looking as well.
SPEAKER_00 (22:34):
Yeah, there's there's all colors really.
SPEAKER_02 (22:36):
Now, are they typically a very similar-ish
size, or do you ever get onethat like comes out and it's
just like a a mammoth pearl, youknow, for a la from that from
the book?
SPEAKER_00 (22:49):
Yeah, that's a good question, actually.
Um, because there's there's sortof sort of like uh an average
growth rate.
You know, there's like mostpearls grow at at a certain
rate.
And uh yeah, so where where weare, um we have about a
millimeter in 12 months, uh,which is um a contrast to the
the Japanese, which consider uha pearl mature when it has uh a
(23:12):
quarter of a millimeter of ofthickness.
Like to them, like that's that'senough.
It's good.
Um but so we will have uhtypically four times uh what
what Japanese oysters have.
But there are oysters that umthere are outliers that are um
that will produce uh literallylike four times what a what an
(23:32):
ordinary oyster will.
And the those are the oystersthat produce the the truly
exceptional pearls.
And um that's like one out ofevery, I don't know, thousands
of oysters, but it's alwaysreally exciting to to see one.
Like you'll like this pastharvest, we had a uh we had a uh
a first graft oyster uh come outat 14 millimeters.
(23:54):
Wow and and it had a uh anucleus of um, let's see, it had
a nucleus of 7.6 millimeters.
So it had it had six, so so ithad three three millimeters on
each side of the nucleus, whichis like which, you know, after
like a little bit less than 12months, is just completely
(24:14):
mind-blowing.
SPEAKER_02 (24:15):
So with your jewelry, you're probably trying
to standardize the types andsizes of the pearls.
Do you can you use a a pearlthat big, or is that like kind
of just you just have that pearlnow and then you can't really
use it in jewelry?
SPEAKER_00 (24:31):
No, no, the the uh bigger the better.
The bigger the better.
SPEAKER_02 (24:34):
How nice.
SPEAKER_00 (24:35):
Yeah.
Um bigger they are, the morevaluable they are, and and um
there there are people that thatare looking for those pearls, as
as your your audience knows.
SPEAKER_02 (24:44):
I'm sure.
Now, one more question aboutthis harvesting, because uh it's
just fascinating.
Um say you pull up a uh like a astrand or a rope or uh uh
whatever term you're using, andthere's we'll just make a uh
what's like an average count ofof oysters on one of those
rooms?
20.
What number is average foractually having a pearl inside
of it?
(25:04):
Is it all 20 or because they'vebeen that you've added this uh
this graft?
Or I'm assuming that there'ssome amount of failure in it,
correct?
SPEAKER_00 (25:13):
There's always failure, yeah.
There's always failure.
Um, and there's there's uh acertain amount of mortality that
that depends on the on the skillof the of the technician.
If the technician is is good, heor she should produce uh 10% or
less basically of mortality.
And you know, that's that'spretty close to what the natural
uh mortality is amongst oystersjust due to you know sickness
(25:35):
and random things that you knowan oyster flu or whatever.
But yeah, there's there's uhthere's all there's always um
you know oysters that that areable to to reject the the
nucleus, but it's definitely uhlike a marker of the the talent
of the of the grafter.
At our farm, we we average uhabout 50 percent.
SPEAKER_02 (25:52):
Um fascinating, yeah, which is really cool,
which is pretty good.
SPEAKER_00 (25:55):
It depends who's who's harvesting.
I if I'm doing the work, I'veI've been doing this for a long
time, obviously.
Um it might be a little higher.
Um, and if it's you know uhapprentices that we have, like
younger guys that are that aredoing the job that maybe aren't
as experienced, it might be alittle lower.
But yeah, uh 50% is is a prettyuh is a pretty good really
(26:17):
interesting.
SPEAKER_02 (26:17):
And I I know I said one last one, but here's the
actual last one before we getinto talking about jewelry.
Do you I know a lot of your uhcontent also revolves around
environmentalism and uh livingoff the land and how you're able
to collect rainwater for foryour freshwater and things like
that?
And as much as I'd like to diveinto all of that, uh, I want to
(26:38):
be cognizant of your time.
I guess the one thing I wantedto ask is uh, do you guys eat
oysters?
Like I know they're delicacy inmuch of the world, but it's very
close to home for you.
Are you still eating them?
Or is that like, nah, we can'tdo that?
SPEAKER_00 (26:55):
Um no, we can definitely do that.
And and we absolutely do that.
Um the the actual viscera of theoyster, it's not amazing.
We have eaten it before.
We we had a friend come over oneday and he's like, Oh, you
gotta, you gotta, you gotta trytry it in this way, and and he
prepared it for us.
And it was actually very good,um, but it's not something that
we're used to eating.
But the uh the the scallop ofthe oyster, you know, the the
(27:18):
muscle that that holds the theuh shell closed, that's actually
really good.
Um kind of like a a cut ratescallop, like it's not as good
as a as a proper scallop, it'stougher, but it's it's really
good raw, like um carpaccio orum ceviche, but you don't you
don't want to overcook it or umyou know you you know you can
fry it as well, but it it getsit gets tough uh really quickly.
SPEAKER_02 (27:39):
Um but maybe that's a good thing that it's not super
delicious because then you'renot tempted to eat them.
And instead it's like, you knowwhat, we'll just we'll leave it
to you because it seems like youguys are uh spear fishing quite
often and and getting out there,and uh it seems and and you guys
have also developed um a wholeprocess of like some
pseudo-terra farming.
I guess it's more like um makingit so that you guys are able to
(28:02):
farm on the atoll.
SPEAKER_00 (28:03):
Um so we didn't we didn't invent that at all.
That that's that's uh 100% umPolynesian technology.
Technology is maybe a grandioseword, but it it's it's uh it's
what the the the people of ofthe the Tomotus used to do back
in the day before they had cargoships to develop their to to uh
(28:24):
deliver their their veggies, isthey would um they would dig out
trenches and um basically on acoral atoll you you have a
floating lens of fresh waterthat that goes up and down um
with with the tide every day.
So basically it comes up anddown through the the coral.
So what it does at high tide isif if you dig a trench, what it
does at high tide is it watersthe the bottom of the trench,
(28:46):
basically.
So like if you don't do that, ifyou're just if you're just
digging in the ground and andyou plant stuff, it's so dry
that um and and water water justkind of goes out.
The the ground is so porous thatuh you have to just be watering
all the time and and nobody hasaccess to that that much water
in the format juice because it'sit's dry and like the storage
(29:07):
you would need is crazy.
So so with this system oftrenches, it it allows us to
actually um develop soil and umand uh and to grow, you know, to
grow all sorts of things.
Like we've we've got bananas anduh pineapples and and limes and
uh and figs and you know allthis all this food that's uh
that's coming from from ourtrenches.
(29:27):
But yeah, no, it's definitelynot our own idea.
It's it's uh it's Polynesian100%.
SPEAKER_02 (29:32):
So cool.
Uh so Josh, I wanted to askabout uh your beautiful jewelry.
So you guys are using thejewelry or the the pearls that
you guys are harvesting, andwe've talked a lot about the the
harvesting process and what thatlooks like.
So I wanted to talk about uhfirst of all, your designs are
very are very different seemingthan what a lot of I feel like
(29:53):
99% of Pearl related designs arePearl Strands.
And but a lot of your yourpieces are uh much more
innovative with like you knowdrops and things like that we
have a lot of retailers that arelistening that I'm sure are very
interested.
I know that you have a jewelrydesigner on staff.
What is that like kind ofstaying inspired and and making
(30:14):
the jewelry um that you're harpfrom the pearls you're
harvesting um well I mean it's abetter question for our jewelry
designer um my wife oh no wayvery cool yeah she's she does
does quite a bit um for us umshe handles all the all the back
end stuff all the all the stuffthat isn't isn't as glamorous
but that is crucial to tokeeping the the business running
(30:37):
and and yes she's um she's superbusy with the the the designs
and and uh uh innovating on onthat front she she's actually
she's uh a uh uh a guidebookauthor she's she's written uh
well over a hundred titles umfor countries uh uh across the
world but uh but yeah but butthese days our pearls are kind
of taking up uh the bigger shareof of uh of of our lives but um
(31:00):
yeah she just um you know shetakes kind of what inspires her
I mean she's like I said she'syou know she's been to she's
been all over the world she'straveled um since um yeah she's
been traveling um all over theworld for over 30 years now so
that surely inspires her yeah Imean uh couldn't do it without
her sounds amazing it's reallycool because it seems like your
(31:21):
uh your jewelry is stays verytrue with the pearl as kind of
the the center of focus but Iknow that you also have to be uh
sourcing some of your pieces usediamonds some of your pieces are
using you know gold I'm assumingyou're not uh harvesting and and
mining your own gold anddiamonds um at the atoll as well
(31:41):
uh do you guys have to sourcethat from uh from like the US or
do you have a an agreement withany of the the retailers that
you work with if if you don'tmind me asking about your
business?
SPEAKER_00 (31:51):
So basically we we are farmers, right?
And like that's that's what wedo.
And it's really hard for us tostep out of that and to to try
to be something that that we'renot and to um you know like
we're obviously not going to gomining gold or whatnot.
It is important to us that thatwe feel good about the stuff
that that we use.
So we we do everything we can towork with um gold that's that
(32:14):
that has uh origins that arethat are ethical and our the the
diamonds that we use we just useum uh I know they're pretty
controversial but we use lab uhcreated diamonds which we we
love we think they're they'reamazing same um love that but uh
but yeah but I I know that umthat like the yeah I'm sure that
the the diamond miners of theworld are are probably not not
(32:35):
huge fans but um yeah I mean wejust kind of uh we uh we we do
the best that we can but like Isaid you know we we are farmers
and and it's important for us atthe end of the day to not lose
sight of that and to just kindof stay in our in our lane.
SPEAKER_02 (32:49):
Yeah and I'm looking at at your beautiful jewelry
here and is there like um likewe were saying pearls come out
and they're all sorts of colorsI'm sure that there's a grading
process for your pearls like youwere saying there's A, B, C, D.
When it comes to creatingjewelry, I know that jewelers
love you know standardizedgoods.
(33:09):
They don't want to have you knowa huge variety because I know
some of them are going to bemore desirable than others.
SPEAKER_00 (33:14):
Do you have like okay only these ones can be used
for our our stud earrings andonly these ones can be used in
the in the strands um is thatlike part of the the process
because I'm sure you're probablystuck with some um some pearls
that that you can't can't use Iguess right yeah yeah I mean it
it's it's a good question umthere's so much variety in the
(33:36):
in the kinds of jewelry thatthat we make we're basically
able to kind of fit everythingin here or there and up till now
we we've hardly done any anywholesale um we've actually been
sort of uh sort of beenscrambling to even get all of
our our retail jewelry out andyou know we we've been hit with
more more demand than than uhthan than we're we're used to.
SPEAKER_02 (33:58):
Oh that's awesome that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00 (33:59):
Yeah but we we've been um you know we we've kind
of we've seen it coming for awhile now and so we've been um
working hard on on the farmingend and we've we've increased
our production and and we'reactually um expecting to be able
to supply uh wholesale demand uhcome uh 2026.
SPEAKER_02 (34:17):
Wow uh so yeah so we're kind of excited about that
to sort of branch out from justdoing retail into doing more
more wholesale yeah because Iwas seeing that you have a very
small collection of of retailersthat are um you know carrying
your jewelry with them and wehave a all the listeners that
are listening to this podcastare are typically retailers or
jewelry vendors and uh sothey're very involved in the
(34:39):
jewelry industry.
I guess I was my part of me waslike should we open like hey do
you guys accept applications tohave new new retailers or it
sounds like you already have a apretty high demand for your
pearls and I know how stressfulthat could be if you were to you
know far outstrip your um actualproduction means especially as a
farmer is that something thatyou you said wholesale is that
(35:01):
something that you hope to getinto specifically jewelry stores
or is it more for vendors to beable to use and then create
their own jewelry with?
SPEAKER_00 (35:10):
That's a great question Michael and I I
actually don't even have a havea good answer to that.
SPEAKER_02 (35:14):
I mean I at this point I think that um yeah just
kind of starting with what'seasy um just doing uh just uh uh
loose pearls probably yeah justbecause I wonder what the
feeling must be to be a to be afarmer and having this
incredible natural resource thatyou guys are pulling from the
(35:36):
from the ocean and are obviouslyvery tied to like you were
saying you you know everythingabout this passing it to a
jeweler to to use I'm surethat's a a very complicated
feeling you know because at theon the one hand you probably are
like hey you need to honor thesepearls because we we saw every
step of the way from uh fromnucleus like you were saying and
(35:59):
grafting all the way toexporting and and passing it
over.
Is that something that would beyou know you'd have to you know
make sure that they areupholding like make sure that
they understand how howimportant these these pearls
are?
SPEAKER_00 (36:13):
It's not really it's not and because I think the
reason for it is that the peoplethat come to us they they kind
of like they you know we sort ofattract who people that they're
like us you know like if peopleresonate with what we're doing
then then they they they alreadyget it.
Yeah they're they already get itthey're already kind of uh on
their way to honoring theproduct and to doing something
beautiful with it so it's uhpretty uncommon for us to to be
(36:37):
like oh god why'd you do thatwith it you know like it just
doesn't really it doesn't reallygo that way uh luckily maybe
someday but but uh no we'vewe've been really really lucky
to work with people that reallyget the you know get what what
we're doing and and honor it.
SPEAKER_02 (36:53):
And it's it's been really cool.
What drew me to uh Komoko wasthe incredible you guys'
Instagram presence is isexcellent.
And uh I get I always that uh myInstagram algorithm thinks I'm
like the most indecisivebachelor of all time because I'm
always looking at at engagementrings and jewelry and stuff like
(37:13):
that partially for my job butalso partially because I just I
really enjoy jewelry.
And I guess I wanted to say likeit seems like uh you know from a
pretty remote place you guyscan't really rely on on natural
advertising you might say likeno one is going to just stumble
across the fact that you guyshave incredible jewelry you guys
(37:34):
kind of have to reach out andadvertise it.
Was that something that was likea real cognizant decision to go
out and advertise and and umhave a social presence?
SPEAKER_00 (37:45):
No I mean it just kind of it just kind of came
naturally like wow um we justkind of um it it just kind of
seemed like the natural thing todo you know like to basically we
wanted to tell the story of ofwhat we're doing.
Like if we're able to tell ourstory we're able to sell
products it sounds kind of akind of like a I don't know very
commercial uh way to think aboutit but it's true like if if if
(38:06):
we're if we can explain what itis we're doing and how we're
doing it then people are arelike okay cool like I want to
buy it and absolutely so the thebest way to do that today for
for free is with social media.
Like there's there's no otherway to get in front of eyeballs
you know like like you can withwith social social media.
And so by by just making contentthat explains what what we're
(38:29):
doing we're able to to to tellour story and to and to reach
you know an incredible amount ofpeople I mean the numbers are
are absolutely you guys haveover a million followers on your
on your Instagram right now.
SPEAKER_02 (38:42):
It's absolutely insane.
So that that's that's Instagramon on uh youtube we're at 1.6
million um on on TikTok we're at1.8 million Facebook we're
coming up on I don't know 500000 or so yeah like the the
total number of views the lasttime we looked it was well over
uh four billion uh views like ifyou if you go uh across all the
(39:04):
platforms it's absolutely yeahit's it's hard to it's hard to
uh wrap your your your headaround but but the takeaway for
me is that is that what we'redoing is interesting to people
you know people are areresonating with it and so that's
been super gratifying and and umfeels good to know that that uh
that we're onto something it itdefinitely seems like it and I
guess just to kind of sort offeel like it wraps up a lot of
(39:28):
people that work at Komoka maybeall of them are family and maybe
that's just the nature of thebeast with such a small island
is that you don't gotta kind ofthrow out an indeed search you
know you're kind of you're goingto reach to people that you can
are there any do you haveambitions to scale your
operation because you mentionedthat you are hoping to you know
(39:52):
ramp up production when it comesto um farming the actual uh
pearls is that something thatyou crave like make even more um
I I don't I don't even know whatthat looks like.
SPEAKER_00 (40:04):
So that that's that's a really good question.
Um and we're actually reallyexcited about about that.
For us like for a long time wethought oh yeah we you know we
have sorry about the roostersorry you know for for for the
longest time we're like okaywe're you know we're we're
selling more and more pearlslike it's it's starting to get
crazy like we gotta we gottaramp things up we got to produce
more pearls and then it wasactually um my son Tevi um who
(40:27):
handles all the social mediawho's actually kind of a
business uh visionary uh in myopinion he's very good with with
uh strategy and and uh and he'sjust a very very sharp kid he he
was like wait a minute we don'tnecessarily want to make more
pearls like it's not us atKomoto making more pearls is uh
it's not scalable you know we'rea very small team we we have uh
(40:50):
we have a certain uh allotmentthat we can actually you know
we're we're a long ways fromfilling up our our legal
allotment we can we can produce75 000 pearls a a year and we're
like nowhere even close to thatum not even yeah yearly we do
maybe 10 15 thousand pearls likeit's not like we're we're you
know we're a long ways from whatwhat we're legally able to do
(41:11):
but it even if we were able todo it it would require you know
doubling tripling our ourpersonnel um more boats more
motors more gasoline more foodmore just more more headaches so
it's really hard to scale likeuh farming wise and what my son
was saying he was like yeah youknow we should we should be
buying pearls from farmers thatare that are like us and so what
(41:34):
we've been talking about is umis partnering with with other
farms and getting them tobasically sign on and work the
way that we work clean theoysters with with the fish um
you know implement these thesekind of like basic tenants of
our pearl farming um and thenonce they've done that then buy
their their pearls from them andso what that does is that that
(41:57):
enables us to sort of spread ourour gospel you know that that
enables us to to go well wellbeyond uh the reaches of our own
farm and and uh and have a muchgreater impact on on uh our
atoll and and maybe maybe evenfurther you know maybe branch
out to other atolls other otherislands um which would be very
exciting because that would meanthat you know not only we'd be
(42:17):
getting pearls but we'd be alsoum having a a really big uh
impact on um on the the ecologyof of all those places like like
just our farm like it's justteeming with fish and there's
just a ton of life there'ssharks everywhere and there's
there's all this uh uhbiodiversity and and biomass
that's that's uh that's that'scome of it and so if we could uh
(42:38):
scale that like that's that'ssuper exciting like that's like
to me that's so cool it gives mea goosebumps yeah it's really
exciting your son is tell himtell him that's a pretty amazing
idea and and we need more peoplelike like you all and and like
him that sounds very cool uh Ican only hope that you guys keep
doing that and that uh you knowmaybe when you guys scale up
(42:59):
enough some of our retailerswill be able to uh have your
beautiful pearls at their storesbecause they are absolutely
splendid.
SPEAKER_02 (43:06):
Josh just to kind of maybe tell people to leave them
with something else uh where canpeople find out more and and and
learn more about uh Komoca?
SPEAKER_00 (43:14):
Um just on on social media you know um just just
follow us on whatever platformthat that you're on we we
communicate what what we uh whatwe have going on there um and
people can also uh they can dropus an email uh comoca pearl at
gmail.com and if they'reinterested in wholesale they can
just put wholesale in the headerand then uh when we're ready to
(43:34):
uh launch wholesale operationsthen it we'll we'll basically
get back to all those peoplethat have ever that have ever
started the roosters here nextlevel Josh that might be the
best way to end it that soundsuh perfect um everybody I'll
have all that information in theshow notes below um Josh I can't
thank you enough this is one ofthe coolest uh interviews I've
had um the fact that uh I foundyou off an Instagram ad and I
(43:59):
literally got on there I was itwas so early in the morning and
I was scrolling through and Iliterally found a contact form
on your guys' website and thefact you even got back to me is
crazy.
SPEAKER_02 (44:08):
Uh you are thousands and thousands of miles away from
me and the way that we're ableto communicate through through
technology and hear about yourstory is just really inspiring
to me and something that I am Ifeel very uh lucky to be able to
do.
So thank you so much for yourtime.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (44:23):
Thank you Michael I I really appreciate talking to
you and um yeah thanks for thisopportunity.
SPEAKER_02 (44:28):
Awesome.
Thanks everybody we'll be backnext week Tuesday with another
episode.
Cheers.
Bye all right everybody that'sthe show thanks so much for
listening.
Really quickly I'll say so sorryabout the skip of an episode
last week uh I had a couple ofinterviews to move around and I
(44:50):
wasn't able to get one out.
So I apologize.
This episode is brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
hosted by me Michael Burpo.
My guest this week was JoshHumber from Komoko.
Thank you so much Josh forzooming in from thousands of
miles away it was really cool.
Go check them out.
They have all their links in theshow notes below leave us
feedback on punchmark.com slashloop and leave us a five star
(45:12):
rating on Spotify and ApplePodcasts is the best way to help
us grow.
Thanks we'll be back next weekTuesday with another episode.
Cheers.
Bye
Welcome to In the Loop.
What is up, everybody?
My name is Michael Burpo.
Thanks again for listening to Inthe Loop.
This week, it's one of myfavorite interviews I've ever
done.
250 something episodes in, andthis one is so cool.
I speak with Josh Humbert fromKomoka.
(00:22):
And Komoka Pearls, they make anPearl jewelry.
And these Pearls are absolutelyincredible.
But I found Komoka through theirInstagram.
I got an Instagram targeted ad,and it was the storytelling was
just so unique and so tangiblefeeling.
And I was really impressed bytheir environmental approach to
(00:43):
pearl farming.
So they have banded togetherwith a lot of the other families
on their atoll, and uh now theyno longer power wash their
oysters, they instead um usedfish to clean their uh oysters.
It was a really cool process.
And the fact that I was able touse Zoom to have this
conversation with this man, uh,you know, hundreds, uh thousands
(01:07):
of miles away from me to talkabout his jewelry making process
is just a really special thing,and it made me kind of really
proud to be able to bring thisto you.
I really hope that you checkthem out.
Their social media isincredible, their jewelry is
even more beautiful than you canimagine.
Uh, they might be getting intowholesale jewelry in the near
(01:29):
future, and I really hope thatthey do because I think that
they do an incredible job thatfeels very unique and different.
But I also talk about what it'slike dealing with uh you know
family and and working alongsideyour family to have a uh a mom
and pop business, what it'slike, do they eat the oysters or
do they try not to?
(01:49):
It was just so cool.
I even embarrassed myself byasking how pearls are made, and
he was very gracious to explainit uh very in-depth.
It was such a cool conversation.
If you can tell, I'm so excited.
I hope you enjoy.
Cheers.
SPEAKER_01 (02:11):
This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the
jewelry industry's favoritewebsite platform and digital
growth agency.
Our mission reaches way beyondtechnology, with decades of
experience and long-lastingindustry relationships.
Punchmark enables jewelrybusinesses to flourish on any
marketplace.
We consider our clients ourfriends, as many of them have
(02:32):
been friends well beforebecoming clients.
Punchmark owns that comes fromthe fact that we have a much
deeper need and application tohelp our friends copy.
Whether you're looking forbetter e-commerce performance,
business growth, or campaignsthat drive traffic and sales,
PunchMark's website andmarketing services were made
just for you.
It's never too late to transformyour business and stitch
(02:54):
together your digital andphysical world in a way that
achieves tremendous growth andresults.
Schedule a guided demo today atpunchmark.com slash go.
And now back to the show.
SPEAKER_02 (03:16):
Correct me if I'm saying this wrong, Komoka Pearl.
Okay.
Awesome.
And I found you guys onInstagram.
Uh, I mean, the coolestInstagram ads and targeting, and
uh, your guys' jewelry isabsolutely beautiful.
You have an incredible story.
This is one of the interviewsthat I'm most excited to have
done in in you know severalyears.
Uh, could you first of allexplain uh what Komoko is and
(03:40):
and where I'm actually reachingyou right now?
SPEAKER_00 (03:42):
Okay, so I'm sitting on the deck of our house in uh
in Tahiti.
Well, I'm not out at the farm.
Uh I was there a couple daysago.
Tahiti to bring the pearls here,go through all the all the hoops
to um to export them uh legally.
So that means sorting them anduh you know getting them through
through export control and allthat.
Komoka is it's a small mom andpop's and grandpa and son
(04:05):
operation uh here in Polynesia.
The name comes from the the landthat that we occupy.
There's actually two pieces ofland, two motus.
A motu is like a link in a in anathol.
And one of them was gifted to usby the the owner, who is
basically kind of family to us.
Uh, she's she's passed awaysince then, but she was kind of
my my mother's uh mentor when weuh lived there, whatever, 50
(04:26):
years ago.
Yeah, so uh really long timeago.
And then the the second piece ofland um also belonged to her,
and um my father bought it somesome years later.
So uh that's in a nutshell whatKomoko is.
It's uh it's a pearl farm and uhpearl jewelry business.
Um we've been uh we've beenselling pearl jewelry on the
internet since uh 2012,actually, or 2011, I think, is
(04:49):
when I first opened the the uhthe e-commerce store.
But uh yeah, we've kind of beengetting traction in recent years
with uh with the help of socialmedia and and all that.
SPEAKER_02 (04:59):
It's a very, very cool story.
And I want to get into all thedetails of pearl farming and and
eco-pro farming um that you guyshave uh been uh speaking about
so um in depth about.
I guess the first thing I wantto just kind of start talking
about is this eco-pro farming.
One of the corner kind of topicsthat you guys have um brought to
(05:21):
the forefront, at least in thecontent I've seen, is uh you
guys are very adamant about notpower washing oysters.
Could you maybe explain a littlebit about what that does and
also what your your alternativeis as well?
SPEAKER_00 (05:36):
Yeah, so power washing, uh it's something that
that we did in the early years.
You know, we we didn't know likethis is the the whole industry,
it's it's really new, you know,it's only really 30, 40 years
old, honestly.
Like, I mean, it's been going ona little bit longer than that,
but not not serious productionanyway.
And what we discovered umthrough power washing ourselves
and and then in seeing theeffect that it was having on the
(06:00):
lagoon of not just us doing it,but our neighbors as well, was
that there were certain uhcertain kinds of organisms, uh
asidians, um, basically like uhkind of like like jellyfish that
all kind of live together, sortof thing.
And and also um also other uhanemones and a couple other uh a
couple other creatures.
And basically like when you whenyou blast them with uh
(06:22):
pressurized water, they you knowthey break into all these little
pieces.
And uh a lot of them werebasically took advantage of
this.
Um and they, you know, if you ifyou take an anemone and you
break it into 10 pieces, itbecomes 10 uh different uh
anemones.
And so what we're seeing is hugeexplosions of of uh of certain
species in the in the lagoonthat was uh having really,
(06:44):
really bad effects.
It was basically uh allowingcertain species to to colonize
everything, like the like allthe oysters would be covered,
the lines, the the buoys, likeeverything would be would be
covered in certain like reallyreally aggressive species.
And so, you know, this wasmaking the oysters sick, it was
displacing um lots of things inin the lagoon that that were
doing just fine before.
(07:06):
So, and you know, it stoppedoysters from collecting in the
collector.
So we, you know, we were havinga hard time getting getting uh
new stock for for future futurework, and and it just had all
these kind of downstream effectsthat were really negative.
So we kind of uh bandedtogether.
Um, you know, we we talked withuh a number of our neighbors and
we basically like got everyoneto come to a consensus that this
(07:26):
is no good and that it had tostop.
And um, and so and so we did,you know, that there was no no
law was passed, like no, likenothing done in terms of uh
bureaucracy or or anything likethat.
It was just kind of a a commonsense uh collective that was
like, hey, that you know, we'renot doing this anymore.
And um, and there were peoplethat you know that that were
part of our crew that that uhthat came down heavy on on other
(07:49):
farmers that that were that wereuh using the the power washers.
And so so it was really kind ofa beautiful example of a getting
community together and andhaving having a positive uh
effect.
So what we did instead of that,we basically uh sustainable
pearl farming, it's in in myeyes, it's a lot like any kind
of uh permaculture.
(08:10):
Basically, it starts withobservation, right?
You you kind of sit back, youyou watch what's going on, and
then you act.
You don't just come in like sureof of what you're doing and uh
and go ahead and uh up aboutyour business.
So basically, um to cleanoysters, we we have to uh bring
them to the farm where there's alike a temporary holding
platform.
And the oysters they they growup over really deep water where
(08:32):
there's no fish.
So they, you know, like like aboat, uh a boat that that's at
anchor for for a while will haveits hull kind of covered in
different things that grow onit, right?
And you have to periodicallylike clean it.
So the oysters is it's the samething.
Um so we we had brought theseoysters in to clean, and we we
put them on our temporaryplatform.
(08:53):
And um, you know, we we wentabout our morning, cleaning
oysters all morning, scrapingand scraping, scraping.
It's really hard work, and youget like stuff like you know,
squirting in your face, and it'sjust it's it's uh it's just it's
tough.
SPEAKER_02 (09:04):
It's very manual, very, very uh intensive.
SPEAKER_00 (09:08):
Super labor intensive.
And and uh and then you know, westopped for lunch for an hour
and then we went back and I Iwent to go go get a string and I
went, wait a minute, the theoysters are clean.
Like we we knew already that thefish were were nibbling on the
on the shells and the stuff andthe oysters, but I just had this
kind of like this epiphany oflike, wait a minute, the fish
are doing our work.
(09:28):
Like, why are we doing this?
Like, stop, everybody stop.
Like, no more scraping, likethis is ridiculous.
Like we're we're creating allthis work for ourselves that we
don't have to do.
And so we we kind of went all inwith the with the fish cleaning
and we we built out all these uhall these uh platforms that are
underwater, um, unlike the oneat the farm.
At the farm, it's uh it's anabove above the water platform,
(09:50):
and you you have to you knowpull the oysters out of the
water and hang them down andthen they get cleaned butt by
the fish.
But so we we built these uh kindof lattice works like uh like
kind of like spider websunderwater, and uh and and we
we'd hang the oysters there andthe fish would come around.
And and basically after doingthat for over 30 years, we've
seen just this huge like uhincrease in in fish populations.
(10:12):
And and uh that's been reallyexciting because some fish like
uh like parrot fish, they theythey have really positive uh
effects on the on the uh laguanecosystem.
Basically what parrot fish do isthey they clean the algae off of
off of dead coral.
And what that does is it enablesthe coral to grow uh to grow
more.
Like the like dead coral getscolonized by algae and then the
(10:36):
and then it can't it can't growanymore.
So the parrot fish they comearound and they they just
they're just doing their thingand they they eat off the algae
and then the coral can canflourish.
So basically by by favoring thethe parrot fish um through the
the oyster cleaning, we're alsofavoring the the uh the the
reef, you know, all the all thecoral in the in the surrounding
area.
SPEAKER_02 (10:56):
That's incredible.
What a cool, what a coolsymbiotic relationship though
between the oysters, your thefish, and yourself.
Uh it seems like everybody is isbenefiting.
SPEAKER_00 (11:07):
Yeah, and and it just comes it just comes from uh
just the very simple anyone cando it, uh just observation, you
know, just like just watchingwhat's going on, thinking about
it, and then acting from fromthat.
You know, I mean it's just it'sa it's it's like the the first
tenet of of permaculture.
Um and whether that's done um inin this, you know, in soil or in
(11:29):
the ocean, it's really it'sreally the same thing.
SPEAKER_02 (11:32):
Wow.
It's very, very fascinating.
And the fact that you're able touh come to that conclusion just
through observation is justfascinating to me.
Um if you don't mind me asking,how many different families are
on this atoll?
Um it sounds like you had tocome to this uh agreement
amongst yourselves.
Um, how many different peopleare on this on this space?
(11:52):
It looks rather small.
SPEAKER_00 (11:54):
So um when at that period I'm talking about, there
was uh around four or fivehundred people living on the uh
on the atoll.
SPEAKER_02 (12:01):
Oh wow.
SPEAKER_00 (12:02):
Um so it wasn't like we had to go around and like
talk to everyone and be like,hey, this is what's going on,
but we just kind of like um inlike kind of public spaces like
like at the airport, forexample, you know, before flying
in or you know, uh before flyingout or or uh as you're flying
in, you know, uh people farmerswho just kind of get together
and chat, you know, and and uhAhe has this really, really, uh,
(12:24):
really cool culture.
It's really uh progressive.
Um all atolls are a little bitdifferent.
And um and uh that's becausethey're you know they're
geographically so so isolated.
But Ahe has this really, reallyneat kind of um uh just just has
a real kind of community vibe toit and and people people share
what what they're doing, and andthere's there's uh pretty
(12:45):
remarkable cohesion betweenfarmers.
Um, you know, it's it's sureeveryone's competing against
each other, uh more or less, butthere's also a a lot of sharing
that that goes on and and um andyeah, and and through that we're
able to actually you know movethe uh needle on it.
SPEAKER_02 (13:01):
That's incredibly uh encouraging to hear that a
community can can can bandtogether and and especially with
the with nature at the forefrontof it.
Um where I live as well is uhvery different uh location than
where you are.
Uh I'm very much uh surroundedby mountains.
And uh around here, there's sucha focus on uh sustainable um
(13:24):
like forestry and hunting andthings like that, because you
know, back in the back in theday, they logged everything um
completely to the ground.
And someone came to therealization, probably like
yourself, realized that, ohwait, if we cut all the trees
down, there's a lot of knock-oneffects that are going to have
lasting generational impacts.
(13:46):
Uh, maybe we should not do that.
And uh, but also there's also alot of uh thoughts like, oh,
well, if we need trees forcertain things, uh, how can we
go about you know harvestingtrees without having those uh
eventual effects?
And that's where likesustainable things are coming
into play, which is uh trying todraw the conclusion or the
(14:06):
comparisons between oysterfarming and logging, very far
jump.
But um, I guess I also wanted tokind of discuss with you when I
was reading, I've read yourguys' entire website because I
was fascinated.
Uh, you guys talk a lot aboutgrafting.
And I wanted to, first of all,ask if you could explain a
little bit about grafting, butalso it seems like the it has a
(14:30):
pretty recent history to it, inthat it's only been around for,
you know, a generation or two,uh seemingly.
Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00 (14:38):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, well, I mean, in French
Polynesia anyway, but I mean itstarted, there's some
controversy whether the Japanesestarted it or the Australians
started it.
I'm not real clear on the on thenitty-gritty of all that.
But um, I know in in Polynesiait first happened in the gosh,
the 80s probably, something likethat.
The like the late 80s, I'm I'mguessing, maybe before.
(15:01):
I don't know.
It didn't really take off thoughuntil the until the uh until the
the early 90s.
The easiest way to understand itis to think of it as uh a skin
graft, you know, like you youget in an accident and you lose
like a bunch of your face orsomething, and then they they
take skin from your butt orwherever and they stretch it and
they and they put it on yourface and then it fills back in.
(15:24):
Um so we're doing the same thingwith uh with oysters.
We we take a uh a piece oftissue from from uh a donor
oyster, um, and that tissuecomes from the the mantle.
And usually when I talk aboutthis stuff, I I kind of see
people's eyes glaze over and anduh I no I love this stuff.
SPEAKER_02 (15:42):
And believe me, the all the listeners, they're gonna
be into this too, becausethey're all retail jewelers and
they probably love this stuff.
SPEAKER_00 (15:47):
Okay, okay, good, good, good.
Yeah, I always kind of imaginethat I'm like the the teacher in
Charlie Brown, like so the theuh tissue that that that we use,
it's taken from from the themantle, and and the mantle is
the organ of the oyster thatstretches out over the shell and
and deposits shell and andbuilds the shell.
So we're taking very specificcells that are shell building,
(16:10):
and we're taking them from adonor oyster that's that's
sacrificed, and we cut out themantle and we we uh we process
it into little squares, and thenwe insert those squares into the
body of a host oyster along witha nucleus.
So then if all goes well, thatlittle piece of tissue will grow
over the nucleus and depositshell on it.
SPEAKER_02 (16:31):
And the nucleus is typically sand, correct?
SPEAKER_00 (16:34):
No, not correct.
Um uh sand is um sand is almostnever at the core of any pearl,
like natural or or otherwise.
SPEAKER_02 (16:44):
Um I guess I'm confused.
I thought that uh that's whatwas causing the the pearls to
grow.
SPEAKER_00 (16:50):
Right.
So that that's a that's a commonmisconception, and and I I blame
John Steinbeck from it for it.
Paul, cut that out, cut thatout, Paul.
Paul's our editor.
No, no, don't don't cut anythingout.
It's all good because becausethat that's a common
misconception, and and that'sthat's what people think.
And so it's good to be able toto to to clear that up.
(17:11):
So Paul, leave it in.
SPEAKER_02 (17:13):
So it's around a nucleus, and then uh I guess I
was looking further into your umlike the process.
And and like you said, rightwhen we got on this call, you
were in the middle of sortingthese pearls, and uh some of the
pearls are you know perfect andbeautiful.
Oh wow, he's so he just panneddown and is showing all these
(17:33):
pearls.
They literally look likesomething from a different
world.
They are absolutely stunning.
And there's there's gotta beseveral hundred of them on here,
or maybe, yeah, a couplehundred.
SPEAKER_00 (17:44):
Now I I think right there there's like I'd say
probably four, uh three or fourhundred, probably.
SPEAKER_02 (17:50):
Three or four hundred on this table, and
they're all beautiful.
Now, I see you have some smallerpiles off to the side.
Are those purely just based onnumbers?
Or like you're counting them.
Oh, here's 10, 10, 10, or areyou sorting by size, or um how
are how do you distinguish them?
SPEAKER_00 (18:07):
So I'm I'm I'm preparing an uh uh an
exportation.
So um I'm I'm uh pulling out theA Bs, putting them in a pile, uh
putting the C's in one pile,putting the D's in another pile,
and then I'm pulling out uhpearls that were that were
missorted to begin with that arethat belong in the in the
Baroque or semi-baroquecategory.
(18:27):
Um they got mixed in with therounds because they they look
really round, but when then whenyou if you look at them closely,
they're not actually round.
Um so I'm just kind of I'm justkind of cleaning all that up.
But I I like to go back to theto the uh to the uh sand thing.
Basically, um oysters are aresupremely uh suited to stop that
from happening.
Like they're really, really goodat keeping sand out.
(18:48):
And I actually have a friend, uhhe's a Mexican pearl farmer in
the city of Cortez, and he heactually stuffed a bunch of sand
in in oysters thinking, ha haha, I'm gonna make a bunch of
pearls.
And uh none of the oystersproduced produce any pearls at
all.
So it's not that easy.
Like they're they're really goodat at just getting rid of sand.
I mean, they they they liveamongst the sand, so that that's
(19:11):
not how natural pearls areformed.
Uh natural pearls are formedusually from a parasite that
that drills through the shell,it pierces through the shell,
and then the the mantle willform a like a cup and then
entomb the the intruder um inits own flesh to to suffocate
it, and then it and then itforms pearl around it.
So your your question is was nota bad question at all.
(19:34):
And in fact, it's it's a reallygood question, and and it's a
very common uh uhmisunderstanding.
Um it's not reallymisunderstanding, it's just it's
just bad information, and itjust comes from sort of uh,
yeah.
I mean, I I think I really thinkit comes all the way back, uh it
goes all the way back to JohnSteinbeck um in uh the Pearl
where he talks about this, youknow, this this giant pearl, and
(19:55):
and it all came from uh from agrain of sand.
Uh in the world.
SPEAKER_02 (19:58):
We read that in high school.
SPEAKER_00 (20:00):
Yeah, for sure we did.
It's poetic, you know.
It's like it's what you want tobelieve.
It's like, oh, you know, liketransforming the difficulty into
something beautiful, like justlike humans, like, oh, isn't
that nice?
Sure, it's nice, but it doesn'treally happen that way.
Um anyway, I I that's all I wantto say about the grain of sand.
SPEAKER_02 (20:15):
No, I love it.
Uh I've got so many questions.
Let's keep keep on this.
I wanted to also ask about umthe color of your pearls.
And you were explaining um thatit's a very specific uh type of
or species of oyster.
And could you maybe expound uponthat?
And is there is there anydifference?
(20:36):
Like, for example, if you wereto just find one that is not
part of your pearl farm, justlike you're, I don't know, go
out into the ocean and you'refishing and you find an oyster
uh an oyster and it happens tohave a pearl, would they be
indistinguishable from the onesthat you or would be pulling out
as well?
SPEAKER_00 (20:52):
So they they could be, but they they probably
wouldn't be.
I mean, so natural pearls, theythey tend to not have uh good
color.
Like it'd be really, really rareto have a natural pearl that had
any kind of uh decent color.
SPEAKER_02 (21:07):
And but there's a specific type of species that
you are um targeting orharvesting from.
SPEAKER_00 (21:13):
That's right.
Yeah, we yeah, we we work withthe the pinctata margarita
ferro, which is the uh the theblack lip uh pearl oyster.
And um, and it what's fun aboutit, what what I love most about
it is that it has thisincredible range of colors that
it'll produce.
So if you open a hundred shells,like you're not gonna have two
cells that that look identical.
(21:35):
They're all gonna be a littlebit different.
Some might be like completelygold colored, like uh like a
South Sea oyster, you know,super rare, but it does happen.
And others might be kind ofgreen, others kind of bluish,
others kind of uh with likestrong like red hues, others
more kind of copper, likethere's just this huge like
color palette.
And um, so basically, like theway the way that that we do our
(21:58):
work, the you know how I wastalking about how you need you
need the mantle tissue?
Well, so what we do to find ourmantle tissue is we go through
literally hundreds of oystersevery day to find the ones that
have the very, very best color,the the most intense color that
those are the ones that that wepick.
And if we do a good job of that,then we have pearls like this.
SPEAKER_02 (22:19):
You know, we we have we have all this uh he's showing
a bunch more of the pearls andthey're beautiful.
So a lot of them are look uhalmost green and and gold, but
also some of them are like veryjet black looking as well.
SPEAKER_00 (22:34):
Yeah, there's there's all colors really.
SPEAKER_02 (22:36):
Now, are they typically a very similar-ish
size, or do you ever get onethat like comes out and it's
just like a a mammoth pearl, youknow, for a la from that from
the book?
SPEAKER_00 (22:49):
Yeah, that's a good question, actually.
Um, because there's there's sortof sort of like uh an average
growth rate.
You know, there's like mostpearls grow at at a certain
rate.
And uh yeah, so where where weare, um we have about a
millimeter in 12 months, uh,which is um a contrast to the
the Japanese, which consider uha pearl mature when it has uh a
(23:12):
quarter of a millimeter of ofthickness.
Like to them, like that's that'senough.
It's good.
Um but so we will have uhtypically four times uh what
what Japanese oysters have.
But there are oysters that umthere are outliers that are um
that will produce uh literallylike four times what a what an
(23:32):
ordinary oyster will.
And the those are the oystersthat produce the the truly
exceptional pearls.
And um that's like one out ofevery, I don't know, thousands
of oysters, but it's alwaysreally exciting to to see one.
Like you'll like this pastharvest, we had a uh we had a uh
a first graft oyster uh come outat 14 millimeters.
(23:54):
Wow and and it had a uh anucleus of um, let's see, it had
a nucleus of 7.6 millimeters.
So it had it had six, so so ithad three three millimeters on
each side of the nucleus, whichis like which, you know, after
like a little bit less than 12months, is just completely
(24:14):
mind-blowing.
SPEAKER_02 (24:15):
So with your jewelry, you're probably trying
to standardize the types andsizes of the pearls.
Do you can you use a a pearlthat big, or is that like kind
of just you just have that pearlnow and then you can't really
use it in jewelry?
SPEAKER_00 (24:31):
No, no, the the uh bigger the better.
The bigger the better.
SPEAKER_02 (24:34):
How nice.
SPEAKER_00 (24:35):
Yeah.
Um bigger they are, the morevaluable they are, and and um
there there are people that thatare looking for those pearls, as
as your your audience knows.
SPEAKER_02 (24:44):
I'm sure.
Now, one more question aboutthis harvesting, because uh it's
just fascinating.
Um say you pull up a uh like a astrand or a rope or uh uh
whatever term you're using, andthere's we'll just make a uh
what's like an average count ofof oysters on one of those
rooms?
20.
What number is average foractually having a pearl inside
of it?
(25:04):
Is it all 20 or because they'vebeen that you've added this uh
this graft?
Or I'm assuming that there'ssome amount of failure in it,
correct?
SPEAKER_00 (25:13):
There's always failure, yeah.
There's always failure.
Um, and there's there's uh acertain amount of mortality that
that depends on the on the skillof the of the technician.
If the technician is is good, heor she should produce uh 10% or
less basically of mortality.
And you know, that's that'spretty close to what the natural
uh mortality is amongst oystersjust due to you know sickness
(25:35):
and random things that you knowan oyster flu or whatever.
But yeah, there's there's uhthere's all there's always um
you know oysters that that areable to to reject the the
nucleus, but it's definitely uhlike a marker of the the talent
of the of the grafter.
At our farm, we we average uhabout 50 percent.
SPEAKER_02 (25:52):
Um fascinating, yeah, which is really cool,
which is pretty good.
SPEAKER_00 (25:55):
It depends who's who's harvesting.
I if I'm doing the work, I'veI've been doing this for a long
time, obviously.
Um it might be a little higher.
Um, and if it's you know uhapprentices that we have, like
younger guys that are that aredoing the job that maybe aren't
as experienced, it might be alittle lower.
But yeah, uh 50% is is a prettyuh is a pretty good really
(26:17):
interesting.
SPEAKER_02 (26:17):
And I I know I said one last one, but here's the
actual last one before we getinto talking about jewelry.
Do you I know a lot of your uhcontent also revolves around
environmentalism and uh livingoff the land and how you're able
to collect rainwater for foryour freshwater and things like
that?
And as much as I'd like to diveinto all of that, uh, I want to
(26:38):
be cognizant of your time.
I guess the one thing I wantedto ask is uh, do you guys eat
oysters?
Like I know they're delicacy inmuch of the world, but it's very
close to home for you.
Are you still eating them?
Or is that like, nah, we can'tdo that?
SPEAKER_00 (26:55):
Um no, we can definitely do that.
And and we absolutely do that.
Um the the actual viscera of theoyster, it's not amazing.
We have eaten it before.
We we had a friend come over oneday and he's like, Oh, you
gotta, you gotta, you gotta trytry it in this way, and and he
prepared it for us.
And it was actually very good,um, but it's not something that
we're used to eating.
But the uh the the scallop ofthe oyster, you know, the the
(27:18):
muscle that that holds the theuh shell closed, that's actually
really good.
Um kind of like a a cut ratescallop, like it's not as good
as a as a proper scallop, it'stougher, but it's it's really
good raw, like um carpaccio orum ceviche, but you don't you
don't want to overcook it or umyou know you you know you can
fry it as well, but it it getsit gets tough uh really quickly.
SPEAKER_02 (27:39):
Um but maybe that's a good thing that it's not super
delicious because then you'renot tempted to eat them.
And instead it's like, you knowwhat, we'll just we'll leave it
to you because it seems like youguys are uh spear fishing quite
often and and getting out there,and uh it seems and and you guys
have also developed um a wholeprocess of like some
pseudo-terra farming.
I guess it's more like um makingit so that you guys are able to
(28:02):
farm on the atoll.
SPEAKER_00 (28:03):
Um so we didn't we didn't invent that at all.
That that's that's uh 100% umPolynesian technology.
Technology is maybe a grandioseword, but it it's it's uh it's
what the the the people of ofthe the Tomotus used to do back
in the day before they had cargoships to develop their to to uh
(28:24):
deliver their their veggies, isthey would um they would dig out
trenches and um basically on acoral atoll you you have a
floating lens of fresh waterthat that goes up and down um
with with the tide every day.
So basically it comes up anddown through the the coral.
So what it does at high tide isif if you dig a trench, what it
does at high tide is it watersthe the bottom of the trench,
(28:46):
basically.
So like if you don't do that, ifyou're just if you're just
digging in the ground and andyou plant stuff, it's so dry
that um and and water water justkind of goes out.
The the ground is so porous thatuh you have to just be watering
all the time and and nobody hasaccess to that that much water
in the format juice because it'sit's dry and like the storage
(29:07):
you would need is crazy.
So so with this system oftrenches, it it allows us to
actually um develop soil and umand uh and to grow, you know, to
grow all sorts of things.
Like we've we've got bananas anduh pineapples and and limes and
uh and figs and you know allthis all this food that's uh
that's coming from from ourtrenches.
(29:27):
But yeah, no, it's definitelynot our own idea.
It's it's uh it's Polynesian100%.
SPEAKER_02 (29:32):
So cool.
Uh so Josh, I wanted to askabout uh your beautiful jewelry.
So you guys are using thejewelry or the the pearls that
you guys are harvesting, andwe've talked a lot about the the
harvesting process and what thatlooks like.
So I wanted to talk about uhfirst of all, your designs are
very are very different seemingthan what a lot of I feel like
(29:53):
99% of Pearl related designs arePearl Strands.
And but a lot of your yourpieces are uh much more
innovative with like you knowdrops and things like that we
have a lot of retailers that arelistening that I'm sure are very
interested.
I know that you have a jewelrydesigner on staff.
What is that like kind ofstaying inspired and and making
(30:14):
the jewelry um that you're harpfrom the pearls you're
harvesting um well I mean it's abetter question for our jewelry
designer um my wife oh no wayvery cool yeah she's she does
does quite a bit um for us umshe handles all the all the back
end stuff all the all the stuffthat isn't isn't as glamorous
but that is crucial to tokeeping the the business running
(30:37):
and and yes she's um she's superbusy with the the the designs
and and uh uh innovating on onthat front she she's actually
she's uh a uh uh a guidebookauthor she's she's written uh
well over a hundred titles umfor countries uh uh across the
world but uh but yeah but butthese days our pearls are kind
of taking up uh the bigger shareof of uh of of our lives but um
(31:00):
yeah she just um you know shetakes kind of what inspires her
I mean she's like I said she'syou know she's been to she's
been all over the world she'straveled um since um yeah she's
been traveling um all over theworld for over 30 years now so
that surely inspires her yeah Imean uh couldn't do it without
her sounds amazing it's reallycool because it seems like your
(31:21):
uh your jewelry is stays verytrue with the pearl as kind of
the the center of focus but Iknow that you also have to be uh
sourcing some of your pieces usediamonds some of your pieces are
using you know gold I'm assumingyou're not uh harvesting and and
mining your own gold anddiamonds um at the atoll as well
(31:41):
uh do you guys have to sourcethat from uh from like the US or
do you have a an agreement withany of the the retailers that
you work with if if you don'tmind me asking about your
business?
SPEAKER_00 (31:51):
So basically we we are farmers, right?
And like that's that's what wedo.
And it's really hard for us tostep out of that and to to try
to be something that that we'renot and to um you know like
we're obviously not going to gomining gold or whatnot.
It is important to us that thatwe feel good about the stuff
that that we use.
So we we do everything we can towork with um gold that's that
(32:14):
that has uh origins that arethat are ethical and our the the
diamonds that we use we just useum uh I know they're pretty
controversial but we use lab uhcreated diamonds which we we
love we think they're they'reamazing same um love that but uh
but yeah but I I know that umthat like the yeah I'm sure that
the the diamond miners of theworld are are probably not not
(32:35):
huge fans but um yeah I mean wejust kind of uh we uh we we do
the best that we can but like Isaid you know we we are farmers
and and it's important for us atthe end of the day to not lose
sight of that and to just kindof stay in our in our lane.
SPEAKER_02 (32:49):
Yeah and I'm looking at at your beautiful jewelry
here and is there like um likewe were saying pearls come out
and they're all sorts of colorsI'm sure that there's a grading
process for your pearls like youwere saying there's A, B, C, D.
When it comes to creatingjewelry, I know that jewelers
love you know standardizedgoods.
(33:09):
They don't want to have you knowa huge variety because I know
some of them are going to bemore desirable than others.
SPEAKER_00 (33:14):
Do you have like okay only these ones can be used
for our our stud earrings andonly these ones can be used in
the in the strands um is thatlike part of the the process
because I'm sure you're probablystuck with some um some pearls
that that you can't can't use Iguess right yeah yeah I mean it
it's it's a good question umthere's so much variety in the
(33:36):
in the kinds of jewelry thatthat we make we're basically
able to kind of fit everythingin here or there and up till now
we we've hardly done any anywholesale um we've actually been
sort of uh sort of beenscrambling to even get all of
our our retail jewelry out andyou know we we've been hit with
more more demand than than uhthan than we're we're used to.
SPEAKER_02 (33:58):
Oh that's awesome that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00 (33:59):
Yeah but we we've been um you know we we've kind
of we've seen it coming for awhile now and so we've been um
working hard on on the farmingend and we've we've increased
our production and and we'reactually um expecting to be able
to supply uh wholesale demand uhcome uh 2026.
SPEAKER_02 (34:17):
Wow uh so yeah so we're kind of excited about that
to sort of branch out from justdoing retail into doing more
more wholesale yeah because Iwas seeing that you have a very
small collection of of retailersthat are um you know carrying
your jewelry with them and wehave a all the listeners that
are listening to this podcastare are typically retailers or
jewelry vendors and uh sothey're very involved in the
(34:39):
jewelry industry.
I guess I was my part of me waslike should we open like hey do
you guys accept applications tohave new new retailers or it
sounds like you already have a apretty high demand for your
pearls and I know how stressfulthat could be if you were to you
know far outstrip your um actualproduction means especially as a
farmer is that something thatyou you said wholesale is that
(35:01):
something that you hope to getinto specifically jewelry stores
or is it more for vendors to beable to use and then create
their own jewelry with?
SPEAKER_00 (35:10):
That's a great question Michael and I I
actually don't even have a havea good answer to that.
SPEAKER_02 (35:14):
I mean I at this point I think that um yeah just
kind of starting with what'seasy um just doing uh just uh uh
loose pearls probably yeah justbecause I wonder what the
feeling must be to be a to be afarmer and having this
incredible natural resource thatyou guys are pulling from the
(35:36):
from the ocean and are obviouslyvery tied to like you were
saying you you know everythingabout this passing it to a
jeweler to to use I'm surethat's a a very complicated
feeling you know because at theon the one hand you probably are
like hey you need to honor thesepearls because we we saw every
step of the way from uh fromnucleus like you were saying and
(35:59):
grafting all the way toexporting and and passing it
over.
Is that something that would beyou know you'd have to you know
make sure that they areupholding like make sure that
they understand how howimportant these these pearls
are?
SPEAKER_00 (36:13):
It's not really it's not and because I think the
reason for it is that the peoplethat come to us they they kind
of like they you know we sort ofattract who people that they're
like us you know like if peopleresonate with what we're doing
then then they they they alreadyget it.
Yeah they're they already get itthey're already kind of uh on
their way to honoring theproduct and to doing something
beautiful with it so it's uhpretty uncommon for us to to be
(36:37):
like oh god why'd you do thatwith it you know like it just
doesn't really it doesn't reallygo that way uh luckily maybe
someday but but uh no we'vewe've been really really lucky
to work with people that reallyget the you know get what what
we're doing and and honor it.
SPEAKER_02 (36:53):
And it's it's been really cool.
What drew me to uh Komoko wasthe incredible you guys'
Instagram presence is isexcellent.
And uh I get I always that uh myInstagram algorithm thinks I'm
like the most indecisivebachelor of all time because I'm
always looking at at engagementrings and jewelry and stuff like
(37:13):
that partially for my job butalso partially because I just I
really enjoy jewelry.
And I guess I wanted to say likeit seems like uh you know from a
pretty remote place you guyscan't really rely on on natural
advertising you might say likeno one is going to just stumble
across the fact that you guyshave incredible jewelry you guys
(37:34):
kind of have to reach out andadvertise it.
Was that something that was likea real cognizant decision to go
out and advertise and and umhave a social presence?
SPEAKER_00 (37:45):
No I mean it just kind of it just kind of came
naturally like wow um we justkind of um it it just kind of
seemed like the natural thing todo you know like to basically we
wanted to tell the story of ofwhat we're doing.
Like if we're able to tell ourstory we're able to sell
products it sounds kind of akind of like a I don't know very
commercial uh way to think aboutit but it's true like if if if
(38:06):
we're if we can explain what itis we're doing and how we're
doing it then people are arelike okay cool like I want to
buy it and absolutely so the thebest way to do that today for
for free is with social media.
Like there's there's no otherway to get in front of eyeballs
you know like like you can withwith social social media.
And so by by just making contentthat explains what what we're
(38:29):
doing we're able to to to tellour story and to and to reach
you know an incredible amount ofpeople I mean the numbers are
are absolutely you guys haveover a million followers on your
on your Instagram right now.
SPEAKER_02 (38:42):
It's absolutely insane.
So that that's that's Instagramon on uh youtube we're at 1.6
million um on on TikTok we're at1.8 million Facebook we're
coming up on I don't know 500000 or so yeah like the the
total number of views the lasttime we looked it was well over
uh four billion uh views like ifyou if you go uh across all the
(39:04):
platforms it's absolutely yeahit's it's hard to it's hard to
uh wrap your your your headaround but but the takeaway for
me is that is that what we'redoing is interesting to people
you know people are areresonating with it and so that's
been super gratifying and and umfeels good to know that that uh
that we're onto something it itdefinitely seems like it and I
guess just to kind of sort offeel like it wraps up a lot of
(39:28):
people that work at Komoka maybeall of them are family and maybe
that's just the nature of thebeast with such a small island
is that you don't gotta kind ofthrow out an indeed search you
know you're kind of you're goingto reach to people that you can
are there any do you haveambitions to scale your
operation because you mentionedthat you are hoping to you know
(39:52):
ramp up production when it comesto um farming the actual uh
pearls is that something thatyou crave like make even more um
I I don't I don't even know whatthat looks like.
SPEAKER_00 (40:04):
So that that's that's a really good question.
Um and we're actually reallyexcited about about that.
For us like for a long time wethought oh yeah we you know we
have sorry about the roostersorry you know for for for the
longest time we're like okaywe're you know we're we're
selling more and more pearlslike it's it's starting to get
crazy like we gotta we gottaramp things up we got to produce
more pearls and then it wasactually um my son Tevi um who
(40:27):
handles all the social mediawho's actually kind of a
business uh visionary uh in myopinion he's very good with with
uh strategy and and uh and he'sjust a very very sharp kid he he
was like wait a minute we don'tnecessarily want to make more
pearls like it's not us atKomoto making more pearls is uh
it's not scalable you know we'rea very small team we we have uh
(40:50):
we have a certain uh allotmentthat we can actually you know
we're we're a long ways fromfilling up our our legal
allotment we can we can produce75 000 pearls a a year and we're
like nowhere even close to thatum not even yeah yearly we do
maybe 10 15 thousand pearls likeit's not like we're we're you
know we're a long ways from whatwhat we're legally able to do
(41:11):
but it even if we were able todo it it would require you know
doubling tripling our ourpersonnel um more boats more
motors more gasoline more foodmore just more more headaches so
it's really hard to scale likeuh farming wise and what my son
was saying he was like yeah youknow we should we should be
buying pearls from farmers thatare that are like us and so what
(41:34):
we've been talking about is umis partnering with with other
farms and getting them tobasically sign on and work the
way that we work clean theoysters with with the fish um
you know implement these thesekind of like basic tenants of
our pearl farming um and thenonce they've done that then buy
their their pearls from them andso what that does is that that
(41:57):
enables us to sort of spread ourour gospel you know that that
enables us to to go well wellbeyond uh the reaches of our own
farm and and uh and have a muchgreater impact on on uh our
atoll and and maybe maybe evenfurther you know maybe branch
out to other atolls other otherislands um which would be very
exciting because that would meanthat you know not only we'd be
(42:17):
getting pearls but we'd be alsoum having a a really big uh
impact on um on the the ecologyof of all those places like like
just our farm like it's justteeming with fish and there's
just a ton of life there'ssharks everywhere and there's
there's all this uh uhbiodiversity and and biomass
that's that's uh that's that'scome of it and so if we could uh
(42:38):
scale that like that's that'ssuper exciting like that's like
to me that's so cool it gives mea goosebumps yeah it's really
exciting your son is tell himtell him that's a pretty amazing
idea and and we need more peoplelike like you all and and like
him that sounds very cool uh Ican only hope that you guys keep
doing that and that uh you knowmaybe when you guys scale up
(42:59):
enough some of our retailerswill be able to uh have your
beautiful pearls at their storesbecause they are absolutely
splendid.
SPEAKER_02 (43:06):
Josh just to kind of maybe tell people to leave them
with something else uh where canpeople find out more and and and
learn more about uh Komoca?
SPEAKER_00 (43:14):
Um just on on social media you know um just just
follow us on whatever platformthat that you're on we we
communicate what what we uh whatwe have going on there um and
people can also uh they can dropus an email uh comoca pearl at
gmail.com and if they'reinterested in wholesale they can
just put wholesale in the headerand then uh when we're ready to
(43:34):
uh launch wholesale operationsthen it we'll we'll basically
get back to all those peoplethat have ever that have ever
started the roosters here nextlevel Josh that might be the
best way to end it that soundsuh perfect um everybody I'll
have all that information in theshow notes below um Josh I can't
thank you enough this is one ofthe coolest uh interviews I've
had um the fact that uh I foundyou off an Instagram ad and I
(43:59):
literally got on there I was itwas so early in the morning and
I was scrolling through and Iliterally found a contact form
on your guys' website and thefact you even got back to me is
crazy.
SPEAKER_02 (44:08):
Uh you are thousands and thousands of miles away from
me and the way that we're ableto communicate through through
technology and hear about yourstory is just really inspiring
to me and something that I am Ifeel very uh lucky to be able to
do.
So thank you so much for yourtime.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (44:23):
Thank you Michael I I really appreciate talking to
you and um yeah thanks for thisopportunity.
SPEAKER_02 (44:28):
Awesome.
Thanks everybody we'll be backnext week Tuesday with another
episode.
Cheers.
Bye all right everybody that'sthe show thanks so much for
listening.
Really quickly I'll say so sorryabout the skip of an episode
last week uh I had a couple ofinterviews to move around and I
(44:50):
wasn't able to get one out.
So I apologize.
This episode is brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
hosted by me Michael Burpo.
My guest this week was JoshHumber from Komoko.
Thank you so much Josh forzooming in from thousands of
miles away it was really cool.
Go check them out.
They have all their links in theshow notes below leave us
feedback on punchmark.com slashloop and leave us a five star
(45:12):
rating on Spotify and ApplePodcasts is the best way to help
us grow.
Thanks we'll be back next weekTuesday with another episode.
Cheers.
Bye
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