Khmer Heritage Goods

The first investor I pitched Khmer Heritage Goods to was my grandfather. He was eighty-six, in his garden in Battambang, and he asked me three questions in a row that I think about every time I am about to sign anything.

What we mean by heritage

The word is overused, and we have tried to use it precisely. We mean: goods produced by techniques older than industrial scale, in places where those techniques are still actively practiced, by people who can name their own teachers.

Cambodian silk from the looms outside Siem Reap qualifies. Silver from the Kompong Luong cooperative qualifies. Anything mass-produced — however beautiful — does not.

A bridge is not a slogan. It is the thousand small crossings nobody photographs.

— Field note, Battambang, 2024

Twelve suppliers, by name

We have, at the time of writing, twelve supplier partnerships, each signed under terms drafted to be readable by the suppliers themselves. Margin structure is on the second page of every contract, not the twelfth. Minimum payment lead times are forty-five days. We do not require exclusivity. The suppliers can sell to anyone they choose; we are simply one of their distribution paths.

France, before America

We chose France as the first market for reasons more practical than romantic. The French specialty retail and concept-store networks are denser than their American equivalents, more receptive to provenance stories, and structurally smaller — which means a single Lyon or Paris account can move volumes that take six Brooklyn accounts to match.

Year one

Twelve suppliers signed. Six retail accounts opened across Paris and Lyon. One container of textiles shipped, with two more on the schedule. By the standards of the businesses I have previously run, this is slow. By the standards of building something that does not embarrass the people who made it, it is approximately on time.