From Bali to Rome, a wacky global green experiment

As for being received, Bali is a place where the westerner has no anonymity. We have expat friends who have lived here for decades and will never be treated as a local. Their children will never be Balinese. The Balinese are very tribal and they put up a wall between you and them culturally. They are very amiable and friendly, but it’s on a very superficial level. I’ve always felt accepted in italy – sometimes to point where they don’t consider me the extra-communitario that I am. My children are Italianized. It is the one place I’ve ever felt at home at.

Do you think there is a risk of diluting geographic identity by spreading it thinly across the globe? What is the difference between your use of Balinese furniture in Rome and the presence of Italian restaurants in London?
The only risk I’ve seen from globalization is from the Mcdonaldization of the world. The idea that when I’m in Toyko or Toronto I want to find an identical, cheap hamburger, is what undermines the particularities of an individual place. Bringing those particularities elsewhere, such as Balinese furniture to Italy or Italian food to London, spreads what is truly valuable in those cultures. What should spread is what is greatest about each unique place. The opposite is when a multi-national imposes their products, and thus – their way of life, by way of leveraging their costs and offering something cheaper that what is produced locally using tradition and better qualities. If I want olive oil in Bali, there is no local version to choose from. I see nothing wrong with having Italian olive oil available in Bali, but I see no point in buying rice from another part of the world that is made cheaper through dubious methods of genetic engineering when there is local rice right here.

The beehive has never tried to evoke a typical Italian atmosphere, and yet has emerged as an authentic Roman institution. Did you ever have any second thoughts about your aesthetic choices? Have visitors ever expressed disappointment at your not meeting their expectations or preconceptions of Italy (you know, checkered table-clothes, Chianti in straw flasks, fat ladies in black…)?
Our choices in Italy always seem dictated by the confines of what’s available and at what cost. Between Ikea and Minotti there is a nothing. We have Indonesian and other ethnic furniture that was bought long before we ever even considered coming here that was the only non-Ikea option still in our budget – that you could purchase and walk away from. Ikea is hugely popular not just because of the price, but because you don’t have to order it and wait 30 days for them to make it. If you want to buy Kartell furniture, you can’t even buy it direct from Kartell. You have to go through company who sells it but doesn’t even have it in stock. You have to write them with what you want and wait for a preventivo. It’s absurd. So no, we’ve never regretted it. We never wanted to do something akin to the “antica trattoria” look, and even if we did, I don’t know how easy that would have been either. Ever try to buy chianti bottles in straw flasks? Do you know where to buy those checkered table-clothes? I have no idea where they come from. Probably there is one supplier and he has one item.

By eliciting donations for the purchase of furniture are you experimenting with an alternative monetary model, one that bypasses the banks to favor a community-based currency, one through which instead of paying interest to an anonymous corporate bank you pay back your friends in less tangible but more focused, tailored ways? Or are you just hoping to get good stuff cheap?
When I first found out about crowdfunding I thought it was very cool and wanted to do it even though I didn’t have a project to fund. I just loved the idea. At some point we had to decide whether to get rid of the things we’ve acquired here (some furniture we bought for the house we live in, books, etc) or if we had enough to justify a shipping container, at which point we’d then have enough space already paid for to justify bringing things back. We new we’d need help and that if we didn’t raise some money that we’d pay for our things to ship back in a mostly-empty container, which is hugely wasteful. Banks aren’t particularly generous with me, nor are they easy to work with or speedy, so that was never considered. Initially, we feared that this would be seen as us basically asking for money, but really I think we’re offering enough rewards that are valuable on different levels that what we’re doing is seeking a fair exchange. We’re trying to raise some money, just like you’d do at a garage sale. Maybe the exact price asked isn’t completely comparable, but we’re also offering an opportunity for people who have enjoyed staying with us, or might someday stay with us, to be a part of our growth and their own comfort. We want people to feel as though their contributions were valuable despite what they got in return.

My parents owned a small grocery store that had been in my family for a few generations. In the 80′s I remember it was really fashionable to shop at big, mega stores (which if you compare them to today’s megastores are pretty small). My parents sold the business as they couldn’t compete. Now, in 2011, with main street dead, people realize that they liked buying things from the guy who knew their name. Part of the appeal of Italy is that main street never died there for a series of cultural and architectural reasons. So I see the world – and I mean the modern, Anglo world – as having a huge appetite for things that are bought from a real family business – something that many American kids under 20 years old have never really experienced. Now, when you pay for something at a big, impersonal store, you get the thing you paid for – and most times because of volume, you get it for less than what you’d pay at the family run business. But when you know that family, and you know your money is helping them pay for their kids’ education, or that the money is then going into the other family’s pocket who owns the bakery, you start to feel a benefit that is impossible to quantify and monetize from being part of an economy that grows more than just pieces of green paper. For me, crowdfunding and the kind of web commerce 2.0 you mention allows us to be global but always buy local and see the impact of where our money is going.

What strategies do you have for telling the story of Bali in the Beehive in Rome that will distinguish your project from the simple purchase of cheap foreign furniture?
Well the furniture certainly less expensive here than it is in Italy, but for good reason. When you add the costs of shipping, the cost of duty and IVA, the cost of transport from the Italian port to wherever it’s going (which is more than from Bali to Italy actually), and you put it in a shop and a pay a few people to stay there when the door is open, you end up having a price to the end user that is totally justified. For us, the benefit of buying it here ourselves is that we are bringing a container anyway, and are cutting out the costs involved in selling furniture as a business. But this is much different than buying cheap tomatoes in California that come from Mexico. In that scenario, they’re cheaper because someone is getting screwed. I don’t think we’re exploiting the Balinese or the situation, or even really capitalizing on a great opportunity. If that were the case, I’d bring back furniture and sell it. The story of what we’re doing is that we love it here and we love our hotel and we know that once we get back to Italy, and the half-empty container gets emptied and goes back to the port, the Beehive will be restricted to the Italian lack of choice at uncompetitive prices (because when there’s no choice, there’s no competition) and we’d end up buying ethnic, interesting, unique furniture anyway at prices that reflect the trouble someone else had to go through to get them there.