Our Story
2014-2015
ConneCticut to Columbia
It all started in 2014.
I was running a small coffee roasting company in Connecticut. I traveled to Colombia for the first time with the singular goal of meeting one coffee farmer to buy coffee from on a long-term basis. In the last days of my trip in Huila, I was introduced to Jose Jadir Losada.
I knew almost instantly that he was the person I wanted to partner with. On that trip, I bought every available kilo of coffee from his farm, El Mirador, in Suaza.
At that time, apart from being a coffee producer, Jose also worked as the Head of Quality Control for a major cooperative in Huila. He already had extensive experience cupping coffee and interfacing with international buyers.
Early in 2015, Jose expressed that he was looking for a new partner at his farm. After
months of searching and not finding the right person, he asked if I’d be interested.
At that point, I had only visited Colombia twice, spoke zero Spanish, and had no experience whatsoever in transactions like this. Come November, there we were in a lawyer’s office in Bogota, signing papers that would firm up our partnership for the long term. I still didn’t speak any Spanish so our lunchtime celebration for finalizing our deal was sadly quieter than you might expect.
2016-2018
The Beating Heart of Osito Columbia
Between 2016 and 2017, I traveled to Colombia frequently to be with Jose, learn some Spanish, and learn how I could best be a partner to him. I gained some experience selling our coffee to a couple of foreign buyers and continued to buy as much as I could from our farm for my roasting company. It was also during this time that we acquired two more farms in Garzón; El Esquilino and El Diviso. Eventually, our network of three farms would come to be known as Café Ticuna or just Ticuna.
It was in late 2017 that I was first approached by some financiers about starting a coffee-importing company in the US. While it was something that I had dreamt about, I never thought the money would be available to do something like that. That said, my dream was slightly bigger than just importing a bunch of coffee from various countries. The idea I pitched to them was to simultaneously start sister companies in Colombia and the US, creating a very short supply chain between producers in Colombia and roasters in the US, to focus solely on excellent Colombian coffee and trade relationships that would be an excellent example of sustainability in the sector.
On April 1 2018, our companies were simultaneously incorporated and we immediately set about the task of sourcing coffee. We started in four regions, Suaza, La Plata and San Agustín, Huila as well as Planadas, Tolima. To this day, these locations represent the beating heart of Osito Colombia. While we have certainly expanded into other new and interesting areas including Cundinamarca and now, Cauca, these four municipalities still draw most of our attention.
What sets Osito apart in Colombia is our willingness to operate on multi-grade, fixed-price contracts. This means our pricing is fixed, ideally for long stretches, so it isn’t fluctuating on a daily basis with the ups and downs of the stock market. We buy as many grades of coffee as we think we have a market for, with the goal being to buy every single pound from our committed producer partners. In so doing, we can give them the peace of mind of having a client (in Osito) who’ll always pay them prices that work in their best interest.
In the last week of December 2018, we landed our first container from Colombia!
El Mirador, Columbia
The warehouse and office in Garzon
Inside Garzon Warehouse
2019-2020
Shared Values and Bespoke Approach
2019 was our first full calendar year of business. It began with multiple containers of Colombian coffee being shipped to the East Coast of the US as well as our first shipment to the UK.
We also began sourcing and buying coffee from other countries. This started specifically in western Ethiopia and quickly expanded into Guji. Today, Ethiopia has skyrocketed to become our second biggest origin by a good margin and our sourcing has been refined year over year.
This was also the first year we worked with the Long Miles Coffee Project in Burundi. Though they manage direct relationships with many roaster partners in the US & Europe, they needed a bespoke approach to the import and local point of sale of their coffees; one which Osito was more than happy to provide given our shared values and approach to coffee farming, processing and sourcing. Today, we’re working with Long Miles coffees in the US & Europe, across their offerings from Burundi, Kenya, and hopefully soon, Uganda.
Finally, it was the first year we started working in Mexico. While Mexico doesn’t represent a huge percentage of our business, it’s become a priority for us. Fortunately, our customers seem to resonate with our efforts there and our purchasing has grown substantially year over year.
2020 began with healthy optimism about the growth of our business but come mid-March, all optimism was shattered by the COVID-19 pandemic. As our clients shut their doors for indeterminant periods and as our financing for coffee dried up due to fears in the marketplace, we were forced to entirely restructure our business on the fly. With a leaner staff tea, and an infusion of new shareholders, we went about the task of navigating sourcing and sales in the unknown.
That said, we don’t want to paint too grim of a picture because come July/August as businesses began to return to some semblance of normalcy, our business snapped back in lockstep and with more momentum than ever.
One key addition to our team in 2020 was Mike Mamo of Addis Exporter. Having worked with Osito as a contractor for a couple of years, Mike was familiar with our business and in September of that year became a partner in Osito US. Today, he’s one of the key people that makes our Ethiopia sourcing world-class.
Purchasing and sales across our major origins saw a significant uptick by Q3 and we even brought on new origins in Brazil and Peru. Brazil, specifically, has grown to be a major part of our offerings. It began in Espírito Santo, an origin well-known for some of the best coffees in the country but still is somehow an origin where importers struggle to put down roots. We’re fortunate to work with partners on the ground who make our jobs easy and have allowed us to grow our purchasing significantly.
Mike Mamo with producers in Jimma, Ethiopia
2021-2022
Global Coffee From The Roots
2021 was a banner year for Osito.
We saw the momentum of 2020 spill into 2021 and our business grew in ways that we could have never anticipated. Of course, that was coupled with a global logistics crisis that didn’t make any of our lives easy, but thankfully didn’t slow the growth of our sales.
Even the spike in the C Market didn’t slow our purchasing or sales of what became very expensive Colombian and Brazilian coffee.
Perhaps the greatest joy of 2021 was the growth of our staff. In Colombia, we grew to a staff of four full-time employees, and the most recent Marcos Antonio Figueroa as our staff agronomist has taken Osito Colombia to a new level.
On the import side, we added Stuart Ritson in early May. Stuart manages all of our business in the UK & EU and there are very few people as qualified as him to do so. Stuart, along with our friend, Thiago Trovo, was also now running point on all our Brazil sourcing.
In September, we also added David Stallings to our numbers. Previously, David had managed roaster relationships for Long Miles and even in this transition will continue to do just that. Moreover, he took the lead on ALL things Africa which meant that he and Mike took the reins of Ethiopia and would take us to new heights.
In the last week of December 2018, we landed our first container from Colombia!
David Stalling
Stuart Ritson
Finca Casa Blanca, a 200 year old cacao farm in Huila
Finally, in 2021 we also decided to firmly step outside the box of just sourcing and selling specialty coffee. For years, Jose and I had dreamt about building supply chains (similar to those in coffee) for cacao producers throughout Huila.
While Colombia isn’t a huge producer of fine cacao, it’s partly in the Amazon basin, the birthplace of Theobroma Cacao. Therefore, throughout many parts of Colombia, there are some of the oldest cacao trees in the world. With a growing craft chocolate market, increasing demand for quality, traceability, and transparency, and with remarkably few sourcing/exporting/importing companies focused on building supply chains on behalf of producers and chocolate makers, we saw both a need and an opportunity.
In August and September, we landed our first shipments of cacao in the US & UK from producers in Gigante, Huila. The early feedback was been overwhelmingly positive and we felt as though we were on the cusp of something big!
Currently, Osito is still a very small business (mostly by choice), from the perspective of global trade. Though we’re growing and trying to make waves where we can, we’re still more prone to get caught in the wake of much larger operations.
Since 2014 we’ve remained determined and focused on our original goals; to build short, equitable, and strong supply chains on behalf of producers and roasters/chocolate makers that are designed to hold up for the long term.