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Basically Bamboo is a Hawaii based corporation started in 1996. The interest in bamboo was created by The Big Island Bamboo Conference held on the University of Hawaii Hilo campus in the spring of 1996.
It was a time in which I was often traveling to Hong Kong and China to connect with my roots and to investigate possible business opportunities.
It was a time also shortly after the announcement of the planned closing of several sugar operations on the island. Sugar was the primary industry on the island and the closure would devastate the economy. Everyone was desperately looking for alternatives to replace sugar. Bamboo was mentioned as a possible alternative.
It was with this background that we returned to China in early 1996. We were searching for bamboo products and manufacturers. We were able to find several in the area of Nanjing. Nanjing is located on the Yangtze River about an hour and half from Shanghai. It is also located in close proximity to Yixing, known for its pottery and Anji known as the largest area in China for cultivation of bamboo. We were successful in getting orders and samples to take back to the bamboo conference .
Five years after the bamboo conference we have found numerous bamboo  manufacturers in China. We have concentrated our efforts in Zhejiang Province because we believe this is an area where the industry has matured and shows the greatest concentration of bamboo resources. Here in Hawaii, we still have not progressed to the point we had hoped for. Bamboo as a replacement for sugar remains a distance dream. Bamboo as a replacement for wood in construction also remain a distant dream. However there have been a change in that fewer people are asking how to kill bamboo and more asking about bamboo products for interior design, gardens gates and fences and landscaping. There is a greater consciousness about bamboo and its vital role in the Asian culture.
Our mission is to increase bamboo utilization by offering solutions through use of bamboo.
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Basically Bamboo's mission is to stimulate the development of bamboo as an agricultural crop for wood substitutes, food, building material, and various other innovative uses. This will be accomplished by introducing products from China that we can use and by starting a program of product development to produce products that is focused on our market needs. We will also expand on the products that we import using them as raw material to manufacture a more "value added" end product.
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