©Copyright 2013: Richard von Sternberg, All Rights Reserved
On my first business trip to Germany in the 1970’s, as I was there to purchase gemstones I would resell to American jewelers, I took advantage of an opportunity to gain product knowledge of the jewelry industry by visiting Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, which translates to: The Pforzheim Jewelry Museum. Pforzheim, located in Germany’s Black Forest, can honestly say it has an unparalleled museum honoring the fine art of jewelry making.
Being in the gemstone industry at the time, I fully appreciated what the museum represented and exhibited, but due solely to the museum’s creative method of display – chronological, rather than thematic – I took away a perspective that brought my dry high school history lessons to life.
OPULENT SYMBOLS OF THE RENAISSANCE
The decision-makers of the museum decided to arrange the exhibits so that the museum customer entered at the top of the building and began to spiral slowly downwards through time. The walk through jewelry time began in the 3rd millenium BC with artworks in the medium of gold. As you descended through the centuries, styles and refinement changed in gold and silver, and gemstones appeared, gems that could be found without sophisticated mining: coral, turquoise, amber, pearls, lapis lazuli, malachite, agates, etc.
During the time of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, a change occurred that deeply affected works of 16th century jewelry of the wealthy and the royal: the arrival of the superlative Colombian emerald. In the rings and pendants, earrings, pins, gem-incrusted collars, diadems, crowns and tiaras of the day, deep bluish-green, sizzlingly beautiful emerald crystals from the Muzo and Chivor mines, brought to Europe from Latin America, were gracefully transformed into faceted and polished important emerald gemstones, fashioned for the rich and powerful. What they sold for was thousands of times more than the exploited natives were paid to mine them because the ethic of the day allowed for conditions we later came to refer to as “The Age of Exploration”. 
Parts of the New World were so mineral rich with valuable, easily marketable resources, such as gold and silver, that untold wealth was amassed by claiming the resources for the Old World, extracting them from the earth hastily, with no concern about leaving open pits and mines, polluted landscapes and waterways, no plan to ameliorate the major ecological damage done by mining and clear-cutting forests. A kind of unbridled greed in an environment where “nobody was looking” allowed legendary explorers to exploit, conquer and enslave other human beings for riches, then return home with them and join the ranks of the super rich. One can observe this ironic symbolism in the sudden emergence of emeralds from Colombia, as well as aquamarines, tourmalines and topaz from Brazil, descending to the 1500’s in Pforzheim’s magnificent museum.
THE NEW RENAISSANCE, OPPOSITE OF THE FIRST ONE
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| Chris Mann receives his Cittaslow Sebastopol mug, founding donor |
The list of names we all learned in elementary school of famous explorers who brought the seeds of change to the New World was of exemplary Renaissance men of their day. These heroes of the past would be dumbfounded to see how much the criteria of heroism have changed as indifference toward the consequences of actions taken has given way to responsible stewardship of the land, unexploited craftspeople and farmers, concern for the health of those who consume products and foodstuffs. Today’s cultural hero models a user-friendly approach to living and the consciousness to act in ways that boomerang back as a palatable, desirable future for our planet.
The town of Sebastopol reveres people of such vision and scope and hosts its share of 21st century Renaissance types here. I have had the pleasure of meeting many of our forward thinkers over the decades I have lived here, but working with Sebastopol’s Slow City personages, I met a Renaissance man whose business practices emanate from a place inside him, unlike the international entrepreneurs of former exploitive centuries, a place in his heart that encompasses an ideal of goodness, a platform of business behaviors that sustain rather than consume, benefit rather than exploit, business behaviors that model the proverbial “Win-win” cycle of symbiosis: Mr. Chris Mann of Guayaki.
SLOW CITY MINDSET
I met Mr. Mann as a result of his generous offer to provide the venue for a meeting a couple of years earlier of the three small towns in the United States designated “Cittaslow” – Slow City—by the international organization of the same name. Because Chris found the principles of the international Slow City movement were generally concentric with his own principles, he was happy to lend his support. By the time I joined the steering committee of Cittaslow Sebastopol, its founders were putting the finishing touches on the infrastructure needed to receive a grant of encumbered funds to bring the Slow City movement to life here with the blessing and endorsement of our city council, under its rubric, in fact. Another member of the steering committee, Sarah Glade Gurney, and I met with Chris to let him know that Cittaslow Sebastopol had developed to the point that it was offering founding donorships to those for whom the Slow City ideology resonated.
And resonate it did. Chris became a founding donor for Cittaslow and an interviewee for my blog at the same time. The actual founding donor is Guayakí Yerba Mate, a partnership endeavor of a small group of Renaissance visionaries whose very compelling story is a click away: http://guayaki.com/about/134/The-Guayak%26iacute;-Story.html
GUAYAKI AND THE SEEDS OF CHANGE
Chris was one of five gentlemen who were the seminal force behind what has become a transformative Mate (pronounced MAH-tay) tonic-tea revolution. They refer to themselves as the “semillas” of their movement as the Spanish word semilla means seed in English. Here is a paragraph from their web site that capsulizes their beginning:
“In 1996, Guayaki was seeded in California's central coast by two university buddies. Alex Pryor from Buenos Aires, and David Karr from Northern California. As good friends and passionate yerba mate drinkers, David and Alex set out to share the yerba mate plant with the world, recognizing that people were in need of a nourishing source of energy and a healthy dose of optimism. As good fortune would have it, co-founders Alex and David were swiftly joined by three other pioneering partners to round out the original founding seed group: don Miguel aka the “The Journeyman”, Steven Karr aka “Shape-Shifter” and Christopher Mann aka “The Chairman of the Gourd”. These five ambitious friends aka the “semillas” (seeds) channeled their activist mentality into the creation of a new restorative business model, calling consumers to action by voting with their dollars.”
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Semillas Group (left to right): Steven Karr, Michael Newton, Chris Mann, Alex Pryor, David Karr.
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PAPER ROUTE CAPITALISM
One of the first things that Chris thinks of as important early-life building-block experiences, not surprisingly, is generally thought of as one of America’s launch pads of Entrepreneurship, the paper route. For Chris it was the Daily News of the San Fernando Valley in his history that did the one thing that school wants desperately to do, but cannot, allow an individual the opportunity to control an environment independently, one that requires self-discipline, a strong work ethic, a desire to make it, one whose ultimate reward for good behavior is the payoff that the society at large deems regal: profit in real dollars. I remember this building block as well. On the other side of the hills that separated the San Fernando Valley from the Los Angeles plain and ocean beaches was a daily called the South Bay Daily Breeze that offered me analogous building blocks.
Chris told me that he “waited tables in college, was a bag boy at Albertsons and once had a job backing up computers the old way (reel-to-reel)”. Like most entrepreneurs, Chris had a multifarious string of employment opportunities from the most basic to more esoteric ones such as his tenure leaning the ins and outs of institutional lending. It is not my place to speculate what it was, or when, that opened Chris’ heart to his perspective of harmonious existence, his work, his education, his family, coincidences, but his philosophy synopsis is: “Chris got his BA in Economics from Harvard University but quickly realized that economics conveniently forgot about sustaining the environment and protecting people. Through his experience with Guayaki and previously with Natural Flavors, a 100% organic, vegan restaurant that employed 25 people and 60 local farmers, Chris is finding that by recognizing common purpose, seemingly disparate groups can integrate social justice, environmental restoration and economic success.”
HOW GUAYAKI CHARACTERIZES MATE
The buzz that surrounds Guayaki mate is the nourishing stimulation the centuries-harvested plant has provided indigenous peoples in Latin America. Once again, from the web site of Chris’ company:
“Yerba Mate has the “strength of coffee, the health benefits of tea, and the euphoria of chocolate" all in one beverage. “Yerba mate (yer-bah mah-tay) is made from the naturally caffeinated and nourishing leaves of the celebrated South American rainforest holly tree (Ilex paraguariensis). For centuries, South America’s Aché Guayakí tribe have sipped yerba mate from a traditional mate gourd for its rejuvenative effects. These rainforest people find tremendous invigoration, focus, and nourishment in yerba mate.
“The leaves of the rainforest mate tree naturally contain 24 vitamins and minerals, 15 amino acids, abundant antioxidants. In fact, The Pasteur Institute and the Paris Scientific society in 1964 concluded "it is difficult to find a plant in any area of the world equal to mate in nutritional value" and that yerba mate contains "practically all of the vitamins necessary to sustain life."
“Yerba mate contains caffeine, theophylline, and theobromine, well-known stimulants also found in tea, coffee and chocolate. The caffeine content varies between that of green tea and coffee. Unlike tea, yerba mate has a low tannin content so it can be strong like coffee with out becoming extremely bitter. Unlike coffee, yerba mate is not oily and acid forming, so it is less likely to cause stomach acid and jitters.”
TRANSMIGRATION NORTH
Chris started in Southern California and moved north, little-by-little, through Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey and, finally, to Sebastopol. The Guayaki seeding took place in San Luis Obispo. Chris feels he has found the perfect business and personal match here in Sebastopol. He refers to our Slow City as a “perfect fit”. He is enamored of our local schools with such a variety of learning options available to kids. The open space around us, itself, is transformative to one whose roots are in mile-to-mile suburbia. Very high on his list of appealing qualities is the “high consciousness” he finds in this part of America.
Chris clearly shares the consciousness with those he admires for having it, for it appears to have been granted him at birth. It is not the case that external characteristics – the easiest things to notice about somebody – are the primary windows into somebody’s consciousness. Since he does not dress or act in any conspicuous way, there are no surface clues to “read”. His actions speak for his beliefs, clearly. What he has helped to create with the “semillas” reflects on a work of art they have created with all the integrity, complexity and scope of a musical masterpiece.
While the Renaissance character of the 16th century had to be a poet, musician, educated statesman and courtly, today’s counterpart is further equipped with some innate and some acquired bent to commerce. A Renaissance entrepreneur, one of many descriptions that fit Chris, keeps today’s ship afloat with smart marketing based on the truth. Chris wreaks marketing prowess. With their Guayaki commitment to international fair trade, the highly touted status of their beverages, a loud splash in their marketplace, the truth seems to be working well. To the extent that it is necessary to keep the core philosophy of their endeavor pristine, like all enterprises, a thinker must sit at the helm, postulating the course to a successful future, mindful of the kaleidoscopic nature of life itself. The creative thought juices need to flow continually as they appear to in Chris. His business acumen and adaptability were showing as our first interview ended and he said: “We have a national footprint, but we only go deep regionally.” He attributed this to his product being somewhat esoteric.
A passenger on his ship can know that the helm is held by a savvy person aimed toward the most symbiotic possible future, free of exploitation. Richard von Sternberg
