When husband-and-wife team Rachel Speth and Jeff Delkin launched their own brand of environmentally friendly bamboo homeware products, they drew on experience from the careers designing and marketing some of the world's biggest brands.
The American couple moved to Asia more than 14 years ago and left their high-flying jobs in 2003 to put the nest egg on the line to start Bambu - their brand of contemporary kitchen and home products made from renewable materials.
Speth spent 12 years at Nike designing products for the sportswear giant, while Delkin had two decades in advertising, formulating the marketing strategy for big international brands.
While Speth designs Bambu's products that range from baskets to salad bowls, plates and cutlery, Delkin deals with distributors and marketing and communication.
"We have very defined roles but we do collaborate all the time," Speth says.
"How do we work together: with respect and admiration," adds Delkin who spent 20 years in adverting, first in Ogilvy & Mather as accounts manager for a range of brands.
Chatting about the business over coffee, their enthusiasm for the entrepreneurial tangent their life took more than five years ago is clearly evident.
Speth quit Nike in 2000 to focus on the couple's burgeoning business dreams.
They regularly finish each other's sentences and are passionate about environmental issues, a passion that goes back to their roots in Portland, Oregon, on the US West Coast.
"It's a very clean, green area, with tall trees and a great respect for nature and everything related to it," Delkin says.
Many of their products are made from organic, sustainably grown and harvested bamboo from Vietnam and China and are sold in more than 1,000 retail outlets in US, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe.
With some of America's grandest natural landscapes as their backdrop, the couple says they always had an appreciation for the environment that is an essential element of their business and products.
The couple arrived in Shanghai in 2003 and have a retail outlet on Taikang Road. The couple has seen their global business more than triple during that time.
It has involved the massive task of developing and nurturing environmentally friendly and sustainable suppliers, developing global distribution and sales networks, accompanied with a tireless drive to educate the public about their products.
