AS A TEENAGER
I PLAYED LOTS OF SPORTS. THAT WAS NORMAL.
What was a little strange was that I also worried a lot about the end of my life. Not about dying, but about how I’d feel lying on my deathbed, looking back over what I had done with my years on earth. It terrified me to think that I might only then realize too late that I had wasted the precious time given to me. I couldn’t let that happen. So I made a plan. Get a great education. Make a lot of money fast. Then use both the money and the education to make the world better.
I ticked off the first when I finished law school. I started on the second when I founded this company. Then I stalled. A few years into it the business was going great, but the big pay-day that would free me to the final phase was a long way off. I was saved by the inspiration provided by my Tibetan partner who led us into ways of impacting the lives of our employees immediately through out work.
FROM THE PROFITS OF OUR WORK, WE AIM TO LEAVE THE WORLD A LITTLE BETTER THAN WE FOUND IT.
We built an expansive medical center providing Eastern and Western medicine. A Montessori school for early education followed soon after. This grew along with the kids into a 700 student k-high school facility. We invested in solar power to fuel our production, and a recycling plant to help preserve the precious water of the Kathmandu valley. The goal was to give our workers every parent's hope - that their children would have opportunities far greater than they had.
The Maoist revolution in Nepal and the many changes it brought have made this the right time to explore India as an additional source of production. I have approached it with caution and with one clear lesson foremost in my mind - that our high standards of social responsibility and quality can only be achieved if we pay a fair price for the products we make. The relentless demand for 'cheaper and cheaper' is what drives suppliers to reduce their prices at any cost, and is the pre-condition for many of the most abusive labor practises that have been exposed in recent years. So I always pay a fair price, and make my demands from that high ground. While India is a huge and complex place, I am confident that guided by this foundational practise, I'll find the way to work there while continuing to evolve the Tufenkian human story that began in Nepal.
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