Sea Cucumber Farm seeks to bring life to coastal communities through innovation, sustainability, partnerships, and joy in mariculture. They assist communities of traditional fishermen to successfully farm seafood products, specifically, the sea cucumber.

In most business strategies, it’s all about beating the competition through better innovation, faster service, providing quality products for less, cornering the market within a region, or getting to the customer before others do. 

When creating a business strategy that also includes social impact in a resourced-deprived community, several of those above strategies are not so relevant. That’s the balance Sea Cucumber strives to create in Indonesia. Not only do they work hard to employ locals for their own expanding production and sales in their sea cucumber hatchery facility and cages in the ocean waters, but they also seek to partner with and engage other communities to adopt the model for themselves.

Currently, Sea Cucumber has their own cages in 4 different communities with 1-2 hectares at each location. They are being approached by other communities every quarter asking them to work with them. Putting more cages in more communities requires a level of investment, size of location, and expected return. Their expanding production and sales employs 11 full-time and 13 part-time employees. This part is an expected sustainable business model.

Celebrating Cage Competition

However, they have also seen “competition” emerge. There are currently two local communities that have created their own private cages and productions because of the economic activity seen at Sea Cucumber. One of those private cages has already seen successful sales. Sea Cucumber rejoices with them in that accomplishment. They view the local economic growth (even if not their own) as a positive because poverty is so prevalent. 

Although they do not yet have investments in private cages, they are open to creating connections with other operations to produce hatchery stock or to sell them fingerlings and buy them back when they reach harvesting weight if there is a need or desire. If they are able to develop this strategy, smaller communities and individual cages might also benefit from the partnership. 

They have also seen other communities create cages for sea cucumbers that have failed due to location or lack of understanding on stocking densities. These instances are not in their region or they would be willing to share their insights with them. This value of being generous with professional knowledge is a core belief of Professionals International: “We believe that our professionalism is not meant for our own personal gain; therefore, we generously give our  knowledge, resources, time, energy, and finances.”

Revenue Sharing Partnerships

Sea Cucumber goes beyond creating economic growth of paying local workers and employees by developing a partnership with the local communities. Through these partnerships, they give 5% of their revenue (not profit) to the communities on a regular basis. Typically, this happens monthly after harvest. The community leader works with their own community to utilize these funds to meet other important needs.

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Learn more about Sea Cucumber Farm and donate to their cause here.