Evergreen Labs

On this sunny morning, we meet Kasia at HealthyFarmShop and Coffee in Da Nang. Born in the US, she is the co-founder of Evergreen Labs, a firm that aims at building local, sustainable and eco-friendly projects in Vietnam and Southeast Asia – and has developed the very place we’re in.

With her partner Jan, they began the adventure three years ago, and after a few adjustments, have met with an exponential success. “We try to focus on market, what local people actually want, and to build community based business.”

Their first achievement was the development of markets selling naturally grown fruits and vegs – read organic. “We noticed that the naturally grown products were mixed with the low quality ones on the markets, a loss for the farmers and the clients. We were overwhelmed by the sucess of our markets, with thousands people coming.” This led to the creation of HealthyFarm Shop, which resell local and natural products. “We’re not interested in selling products from Saigon in Hanoi. We try to stay as local as possible.” The group leads many more projects, like Reform, which is about making new objects with the non-recycled types of plastics. “Since the project’s beginning, at the end of each year, we said to ourselves : we could try one more year. Now we think we’ll try a few more years !”