Connection Thursday: pijat bayi, and the oldest ritual we know
Across Indonesia, many babies meet the world through warm hands and a little oil. On pijat bayi, the hands that carried it, and how to keep it gentle today.
Connection Thursday: the customers who carried Bali home, and wrote back to tell us
A look back through years of shop reviews: the customers who found our soaps, mists, and incense in Bali, Australia, and even Glastonbury, and why we read every note.
Connection Thursday: the team in Gianyar who decide when a batch is ready
Meet the quality-control lab and factory team in Gianyar, Bali, who check every Utama Spice batch before it reaches you.
Connection Thursday: the shoreline crews of Seven Clean Seas, and why a plastic credit comes last
For every gram of plastic we produce, Seven Clean Seas crews remove the same from the ocean. Here is who does that work, and why we treat credits as the last step after refill and reuse.
Connection Thursday: the women of Munti Gunung who thread every refill back to its source
Up in the dry hills of Karangasem, water does not arrive by tap. It arrives by truck, by walk, by the kind of patience that coastal Bali rarely has to practice. This is Munti Gunung, a village where water scarcity shaped daily life long before anyone used the word sustainability to describe it. It is…
Connection Thursday: the rider who carries your refill through Ubud’s back lanes
Before a refill order reaches your door, it usually passes through someone’s hands twice more than you would guess: once at the counter where it is weighed and poured, and once more on the back of a motorbike, riding narrow stone lanes that a delivery van could never fit through. In Ubud, this is Made’s…
Connection Thursday: the person who remembers your refill
Every refill station has a person behind it. At our Ubud shop, it is often Wayan, who has poured Lavender Liquid Soap into the same brand of glass bottle for three years now, and who remembers which customers prefer it a little less diluted. That memory is the part of refill culture that does not…
Connection Thursday: the Papuan growers behind buah merah, and why we source it the slow way
Buah merah, the deep red fruit of the Pandanus conoideus tree, grows almost nowhere outside the highlands of Papua, at the far eastern edge of Indonesia. For generations, Papuan families have harvested it by hand: climbing to reach the heavy, oblong fruit, then slow-cooking the pulp for hours over open fires until it renders into…
Connection Thursday: the root diggers and flower pickers behind our essential oils
Before an essential oil ever reaches a diffuser or a dropper, someone spent a full day with their hands in the ground. Vetiver is a good example. The plant itself is unremarkable, a tall grass that grows across Indonesia’s hillsides. What matters is underneath: a dense mat of roots that can take fifteen to eighteen…
Connection Thursday: the coconut farmers of Bali behind every body care ritual
Most coconut oil begins its life in a plantation where the pickers, pressers, and packagers rarely meet the brand whose label ends up on the shelf. The commodity system is efficient. It is also anonymous. Utama Spice does it differently. Our cold-pressed coconut oil comes through the Aluan Partnership, a sourcing relationship built to keep…
