Meet Paul Oliver | Founder & Operations Manager

We had the good fortune of connecting with Paul Oliver and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Paul, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
The original concept behind Beyond Bohemian’s ethically sourced crystal ideology started about 10 years ago. While I was in college, I worked part-time at a crystal shop for a couple of years. I would also assist and set up at all of the major gem shows and would get to meet so many different types of people and businesses. I have always been fascinated with geology and crystals since I was young, but the more I learned about the crystal industry the more disappointed and disillusioned I became. As someone that has always considered themselves environmentally conscious, I was completely unaware of the level of human suffering and ecological destruction taking place in an industry that seemed to be all about peace and love, at least on the surface.

Through interacting with hundreds of different wholesalers, miners, and individual vendors I discovered there often was a huge issue with transparency in the products. It was obvious when I asked questions about the origins or mining conditions to some of these people, they would try to be short and avoid directly answering, or their responses were clearly not being truthful. I came to find out a huge amount of the material being sold on the market had some connection to criminal organizations and had an illegal element to it, or the products were being mass produced by large corporations that had no concern for human safety or protecting the environment. In many cases the paper trail of the records of the materials only starts at the factories or processing facilities, not the true point of origin.

Out of everyone I met in the industry, I only found about 1% of them were doing things in a way I felt was treating nature and other beings with respect. After I graduated from college, I became motivated to build my own business focusing on supporting some of the people I met that were doing what I considered was the right thing. These were the types of people I had always envisioned the crystal community consisting of, but when it came to business ownership there was a huge void in conscious individuals. The major issue is that it is so easy to just focus on cheap imports and have a very good profit margin, and that is how most crystal businesses operate. Simply put, we could carry the cheapest crystals around and make a lot more money than we are now, but we don’t. Environmentally conscious material production and workers’ rights are very important to us and aren’t worth sacrificing for profits. When Beyond Bohemian first started, we only had about 3 different suppliers and an extremely narrow inventory of about 10 different types of items. Since then we have been able to build relationships with dozens of different businesses, cooperatives, lapidaries, and individual artisans to bring their products to market in the United States. Our current inventory consists of well over 100 different types of stones and crystals and thousands of individual products from all over the world, all meticulously researched and curated in a way that meets our strict ethical sourcing criteria.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Beyond Bohemian is one of the only truly ethically sourced crystal businesses in existence. While there is no official definition or certification of ethically sourced, we feel that it absolutely includes a sustainability component that many crystal businesses are completely missing. We have committed ourselves to eliminating all virgin and single use plastics in our packaging. All of our bulk materials come in reusable cotton bags that our supporters absolutely love. All of our packaging materials are either recycled or come from renewable sources, and even our shipping tape is plant based! We are powered by renewable energy and we are helping offset our carbon footprint by planting trees on our farm using regenerative agroforestry methods. Instead of using petroleum based mineral oils for polishing, we work with non-toxic grapeseed oil from our friends in California which is a byproduct of the wine industry that would otherwise go unused. Our ethical sourcing criteria is extremely strict, and it is constantly being reviewed and adjusted to see how we can improve and what we can suggest to our sources to do better in the future.

The biggest challenge is that there are many so-called “ethically sourced” crystal businesses out there that are not being truthful and are engaging in greenwashing of their products. Since there is no certification or universally accepted definition of ethically sourced, anybody can use it. It originally was very difficult to be able to create transparency within our products because understandably we cannot just give out the names of our sources that have taken us years of relationship building to acquire. Instead how we set ourselves apart from those deceitful and dishonest businesses is to build confidence in our products through clear objectives. Central to that is our commitment to sustainability and product analysis. We carefully assess each product we carry for its human and environmental impact, and we import our materials directly from the source to know exactly where things come from and how they are produced. We largely focus on inert minerals which are inherently insoluble or non-toxic. Additionally, there is a huge emphasis on crystals that can be mined or collected in a minimalist fashion with very basic tools and does not damage the surrounding environment. All of these things are very easy for our supporters to research and verify themselves.

I am optimistic that over the next few years ourselves and others in the industry will figure out a solution to create some sort of organization to perform audits that can be affordable to small scale producers and give others even more confidence in our products through a formal certification process. The issue is almost analogous to small farmers growing organically but cannot afford the certification. The same problem exists in the crystal industry as some of our products quite literally come from people’s backyards. Over 80% of the material we get comes from worker cooperatives. They offer an important and sometimes rare chance for individuals in rural and often impoverished areas of the world to make a good living while providing for their families. Without the cooperative, even if they theoretically had access to the right tools and equipment, it would be near impossible for them to market and sell to a wider audience.

I have seen the worker cooperative model grow significantly over the past few years and I can certainly envision it being able to play a huge role in the future. Each cooperative has guidelines and standards all members must strictly abide by. They have checks in place to ensure others have the proper licenses, and that permitting and environmental regulations are being followed. Each one is able to maintain a paper trail of the original material to ensure it wasn’t illegally mined or brought into the area from criminal organizations trying to use it as an opportunity to conduct deviant activities like laundering money. It seems the next logical step in the progression of many of these cooperatives would be to have a third-party certification.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
While South Florida isn’t exactly known for its diverse geology, unless of course you are into limestone formations, there are so many beautiful nature spots including the Everglades and Big Cypress Wildlife Preserve. No trip to South Florida can be complete without spending time at the beach, and each one has a different vibe. You can go to the west coast on the Gulf of Mexico for a very calm and tranquil beach experience or you can check out the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area for lots of restaurants and shops being a very short walk from the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, you could visit the Florida Keys too if you want a more tropical island type of atmosphere and go snorkeling and see some incredible coral reefs. The really cool thing is you could do it all in one day if you wanted or slowly space it out over a week since everything is so close together.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
We have to give a shoutout to our supporters. Our loyal supporters are such intelligent and conscious individuals that want to inspire positive changes in the world. They are the ones that keep the lights on for us and have contributed to so many meaningful projects throughout the world such as reforestation efforts, creating solutions for clean water, and increasing access to education. Without them we would not have experienced the level of success we have had over the years. Over the last several years we have been able to expand and offer wholesale and it has been so incredibly rewarding to see other ethical businesses grow and blossom.

Website: https://www.beyondbohemian.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondbohemian/