Who we Are...

Our company is quite small really.  We are a family run business - meet our family....

We have 6 employees in the US, including my husband and I and our daughter Michelle.   In Thailand, we have 49 employees, two include my daughter Kirsten and husband Andy.  Our production facility is in Thailand, but all product is tested here in the US, before it is packed and shipped to our customers.  

Mark has been in the barbecue business since the late 80’s.   He is the creative energy force behind all of the innovative designs in our business.   If you stop by, you can count the patents on our wall, but we’ve run out of room, so they’re not all there.

Karen is HRH, answers the telephone, and counts the nuts and bolts behind the scenes, literally.   One time a supplier sent us 30,000 nuts instead of the 3,000 we had ordered.   The box weighed over 50 lbs.   I had to count out our 3,000 to return the difference to the supplier.   Because of my klutziness, half of our 3,000 nuts scattered around the floor.   Aich, one of those days….

Today, Kirsten and Andy are now living in SriRacha Thailand, overseeing daily operations.   You can read about their adventures on this blog –click here.

In 2009, Mark and I, with daughter Michelle began Silk Road, a local fair trade store in Alameda, CA.   You can read more about it from our website –click here.

So, about us...

In the stories you are about to read, I avow they are not made up, they are all true, but names may have been changed (or not) to protect the guilty.   Time may erase some details, which is why I am scribing them.

EastWind began in Thailand from a bare factory room floor, about 3 hours south of Bangkok, in an industrial park called Pinthong.   Mark began purchasing equipment, hiring people, quoting material.   After a few months, he came home and asked me to come to work and help out.   So I found our daughter Kirsten a school – we had been homeschooling it up to then, not counting the few months she spent in the local Buddhist public school.   This School was a British International School and really deserves all capital letters - it is that excellent.   By this time we had lived in Thailand two years, so Kirsten was quite fluent, which caught many off guard, mostly the Thai.  Who would expect a blond American teen age girl, to be able to read and speak Thai so well, though not properly.  She had learned her Thai from neighborhood children in Ang Sila, the small fishing village where we lived.  You can imagine she knew a lot of slang.

So I went to work in Thailand.  After spending my first day trying to figure out what was going on, I decided that it might be a good idea to have a company meeting and talk to our employees – we had a total of seven people and that included the office staff.   They had been shearing stainless steel and bending it into pieces for about a month at this point.   When I asked them what they thought they were making, they told me they thought they were just cutting and bending the stainless into little parts – in essence, they probably thought we had no idea what we were doing, but hey, it was a job.   When I showed them photos of the future barbecue to be, they couldn’t stop laughing.   They were actually going to make something!!

My job involved accounting, human resources, supply chain management, international relations with government agencies (one time the Bureau of Industry asked me to wear nice clothes to come and act in a movie, so they could show it around the world how easy it was for foreigners to do business in Thailand). I really tried to be the grout - to fill in cracks just to help everything cohere together.

Mark’s only requirement for me when hiring was that I had to hire people who had no job, the unemployed.   Our mission in Thailand was to give these people a chance.  To give them an opportunity to better their lives, to build a strong community.   It is real irony in that when most people learn our production facility is in Thailand, one of the first things they say is – oh you’re running a sweat shop.  Well, yes it is hot, there is that.   But they are paid comparatively well. Our employees in Thailand all have health insurance, what we have not been able to offer here in the US!!
 
Our starting wage in Thailand is almost double the standard minimum wage there.  Most of our employees have been working for us since pre 2001 and are earning very good wages comparable to lifestyle and culture.  Our welders, who are some of the best in the world, have become a middle class.  They own nice homes, cars and trucks.

When we first began building water heaters, Mark had to weld them all.  We couldn’t find a welder.  We could not find a welder.   And we were trying to build a company that was going to build aluminum tanks, all welded.  Aluminum is very difficult to weld, it has been described to me as like attempting to weld with candle wax.  It is a very soft metal when heated, but very very strong when in it’s normal environment.

So people came to apply, insisting they could weld.   I would take them into the welding room and give them some aluminum pieces and just say, show me (Missouri style).   Weeks turned into months and not one could weld, not one.   One day, a guy named Wilat showed up and told me he could weld.  I thought, okay….show me.  I took him down to the welding room, gave him aluminum and said, weld them.   We left him alone.   An hour later, he brought it up and showed me.   It was ugly.   Really ugly, but they were welded together, the first guy who had been able to do it.   I hired him and put him to work pressure testing the welded tanks that Mark had done.

Weeks passed, and other people showed up to show me what they could do.  No one could do it.   I thought Mark was going to kill himself welding all the tanks, breathing the fumes.  

One day, a guy named Manit showed up.   I really didn’t have patience on that day for an interview, but he could hardly sit still, kept telling Jack, our purchasing/ translator, I can do it, tell her I can do it.  I finally took him down there, showed him the stuff and we left him alone.   He was back up stairs in minutes, it wasn’t perfect, but it was really good.   So we hired him immediately.   The next week I hired his brother, and then the week after that his cousin.   And then another cousin, and then another.   He taught them all. Within a month we had a team of welders, Wilat included; he wasn’t family, but when there was a funeral and everyone had to leave, Wilat is always there and dependable.   A few years since, Wilat has actually built a robot to weld the tanks together in the middle.   So now all he has to do is set it up.  Our team’s beautiful welds are hidden by the aluminum case and insulation – such a shame, I look at aluminum welds everywhere and haven’t seen any – anywhere- that are better than ours.  We make all our own aluminum fittings that are each welded into the tank.   The heat exchanger is a double walled aluminum tube that snakes through the tanks, welded in.   It is an excellent system.

One day Manit and brother Sakda came up and asked me if I would hire their cousin.   Sensing that something was up, I asked if their cousin Chailert was smart.   Manit chimed in, but he’ll do everything we tell him.   Miss Karen, he continued, Chailert is an orphan and not in school, and we will look out for him.  Please give him a chance.  So I did.   Chailert was/is a moron.  And they made him do all the grunt work.   He was a young kid – 18 and had been living with whoever would let him, his cousins included.  He began to call me mom and Mark Dad….And never stopped smiling.  He is still working for us today, and runs our 200 ton press, our most expensive piece of equipment.  He is happily married to Ann, who is our quality control person.   Who would have guessed.   

We've come a long ways...

One of our original four employees named King, came to me one day and asked if I would hire her younger brother Bovon as an intern while he was between terms at school.  She explained to me that he was at machinist school.   I reluctantly agreed, thinking it’s only between terms….

And then one day this 17 yr old boy showed up, nervous as heck, fresh from up country.   I walked him around, showing him our equipment and he seemed familiar with all, though his nervousness was palpable.   I really did not want to tell Mark I had hired this kid, I was just hoping Bovon could quietly stay out of the way…   I asked him if he could clean the milling machine.   He was so excited, he actually had done that before and went to it like flies in a pigpen.   Wonderful when Mark passed by, he was pleasantly surprised - someone was actually cleaning one of the machines, and cleaning it perfectly.

Although he was young. Bovon proved that he knew the machines and in addition, he was smart.   Not just educated, but brilliant.  I could take him down small machined parts and show him, and within minutes he would be back at my desk presenting my gift, the duplicated part.  He could machine anything.   He was so far from upcountry that even Thai people didn’t understand him.  

One day after we had just purchased a new lathe, he broke it.  He broke it…I thought Mark was going to cry.  I thought Bovon was going to cry.   We walked back there later and he had taken it apart into a million pieces.  I am not making this up.   The next day, we walked by and he was rebuilding it.   The next day he was using it.

Every day I went to work, I would walk through the factory and greet everyone.  What they didn’t know was that I was just checking to see who was at work or not.   One day Bovon wasn’t at work, and then the next day he wasn’t there, and then a third day.  I asked Jack where he was.   He wasn’t sure, I was told.   Then a bit later he came up to me and told me they found him.   Bovon was driving a motorcycle taxi, because he had no money for rent, his girlfriend had stolen his money, left him, and he was locked out of his apartment.  He was trying to get money for rent. 

I told Jack, take me to him.

So we drove to the nearby town, and along a back alley, and then another, and then we had to park and walk four blocks and finally we found a motorcycle taxi stand in the middle of nowhere in small town dusty hot Thailand.   One guy was sitting on his motorcycle taxi talking on his phone, and two others were sprawled under the wood stand sleeping.   Bovon’s motorcycle was in a million pieces spread around the dirty rubbled ground.   He looked surprised as we walked up, smiling.

I asked him what he was doing.  “Fixing my motorcycle”, he said.   “Jack, tell him to come over here, I have to talk to him,” motioning to come over to the building.   Bovon walked over.  Bovon starts to tell me about his girlfriend and his back rent.   I don’t care, I said.    I’m going to talk to you like your mother, because she’s not here.   I’m sorry about your girlfriend, but do not throw your life away because of a girl.   There will be another girl.  How much money did you make today being a motorcycle taxi driver?   Nothing he said.   Well you lost 240 baht working for me.   And yesterday 240 baht and the day before 240 baht.    And you could lose your job.    I don’t want excuses, put your motorcycle back together, get back to work, and we will figure out your rent problem.  You are smarter than this, you are more valuable than this.   He listened and smiled.

We left.   Bovon showed up to work soon after.   We gave him paint and a paint brush and he started on the walls.   Before he left that day, I ‘loaned’ him money to pay his back rent.   He worked it off.

Jack.   Oh Jack oh.   Jack was working as a bouncer in a bar, and another American Falang (Foreigner in Thai)we knew found him and offered him a job.  Offered him a job, because Jack spoke perfect English, well maybe not perfect, but perfect for us.   And of course Thai too.

Jack’s mother was Thai and had married a guy from New Zealand when he was 8 years old.   So Jack and his mother and new step dad went to Laos, his step dad was working for the United Nations.   Jack was enrolled in an American International School, but spoke no English.  They put him with preschoolers.   As his English improved, they moved him along, but he told me that for a long time he played with kids always younger than him.  

Jack is funny and charming and sweet.   He played tennis in New Zealand in high school and was on television.  But by the time he turned 18, his mother and stepdad had divorced, his mother was back in Bangkok and for his birthday his stepdad bought him a one way ticket to Thailand, landing him on the streets of Bangkok at 18, with little money and education and limited future.   He met Tay, they had a baby and then two, she worked singing in a bar and he got a job as a bouncer in a bar, they lived in a 1 room apartment 8 x8.   Until we met him.  They are now living in a house, they have a car, three beautiful children, pets. 

Jack came to work for us and became our Thai son.   We hired Tay, who worked as quality control.  She was very Thai, very beautiful, diseased from past employs, always pleasant, never trustworthy.   Tormented.  Jack is our son, good, bad and ugly.  We love him.   He is so good for us, but has also broken our hearts.  We love him.

I hired Mam in December 2000.   When I hired her, the next afternoon she brought her 3 best friends and I hired all of them.   Mam is very smart and very capable.   When we hired her, she started working on the machines but within weeks we promoted her to purchasing upstairs.   She couldn’t write English, but she did understand.   I learned later that her father was a Vietnam Vet – a guy from Kansas, her mother was Thai.   She had been raised by her father until she was a year, but when he had been called stateside, he wasn’t allowed to take her.   By then her mother was long gone.  Her father then took her to families in Thailand begging them to take her.   She grew up amid various families as an orphan.  

Her sons look at Mark and believe he is their grandfather.  If you were to see Mam, she looks more like a Kansas farmgirl than a Thai girl.   It also explains why she always understands my Midwest dialect, she understood my English more than my ‘college educated’  employees.   They would sometimes ask her, “why do you always understand Karen, but we don’t?”  She never had an explanation, but I believe that in the first years of life, brain paths for language are set.   She heard her Kansan father speak to her as an infant and those pathways were set so that 28 years later, when I speak she understands.  The two of us never need a translator…

One day Mam came to me and asked if I would hire a young girl living in their neighborhood under a tree.   Dthan was 16 and had three younger brothers; they would beg from the neighbors for money to buy cans of tuna at the local market.  She had recently dropped out of school to watch her brothers.  The teacher had come around looking for her, trying to get her to reenroll.   But there was no money for food, let alone for uniforms and tuition.   Dthan’s mother was a drug addict and a prostitute.   Dthan looked like she was 11.

So, I hired Dthan and she worked in our offices, filing papers and putting the manuals together.   She was very bright - only had to be shown how to do something one time.   Before we knew it, she was growing up into a beautiful young lady, had gotten her own apartment and was taking night classes.   She has graduated from high school, gone on to college nights and weekends.   A few years ago, I attended her wedding.

And then there is Gang, but his story will become a book….