My Journey
This is a story of how I grew my business that initially started out as a 'hobby'. I took a big leap of faith and left my fulltime job in 2020 to work solely towards making this passionate dream of mine a reality and taking it to a whole new level.
I have faced and overcome many challenges along the way, like, cyclones damaging the vanilla, lack of funding, workforce, land access and government support to create a lucrative and sustainable vanilla industry for my country.
Vaoala Vanilla is a niche, boutique and organic vanilla farm based in Samoa (South Pacific Islands) and is focused on quality and not bulk quantity. Vanilla beans are grown, harvested and processed by me, and all value-add products handmade by me as well.
We want our customers (you) to be a part of our vanilla journey too.
I am a proud, determined and strong indigenous Samoan woman, wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and I hope you enjoy following my journey just as much as I love taking it...Alofa tele atu, Shelley
My #RealTalk Interview with Rachel Petero, Rise Global