Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to episode eight of the Green and Healthy Places podcast with me, Matt Morley. I'm the founder of BioFit Nature Gyms and Biofilico Interiors. With this podcast series, we explore the themes of sustainability, wellness, and community in the real estate and hospitality sectors. So if you like this type of content, please share, like, or follow along.
Speaker: Episode 8 is with Paul Evmorfidis, the Greek serial entrepreneur behind Kokomat. Founded in 1989, this high -end natural bedding company now has a global presence, with stores in 17 different countries, over 3 ,000 B2B hotel clients, its own Kokomat -branded hotels around Athens, and their own eco -residences on a Greek island too.
Speaker: You'll be fair to say that pool has by now made a genuine contribution to making bedrooms around the world healthier, more sustainable and above all, more natural. But the story doesn't end there. As you'll discover in this free flowing interview via Skype that was conducted
Speaker: literally from a factory floor somewhere near Athens while he was actively prototyping his latest product which is an organic cotton sanitary pads and makeup pads plastic free obviously. Pool just refuses to be put in a box and plays by his own rules he innovates with the infectious energy of an 18 year old so whether it be wooden bikes green hotels eco -friendly rucksacks
Speaker: handmade shoes or indeed his signature all -natural mattresses packed with seaweed and other natural materials. He applies that same nature -first people and planet -centric philosophy to everything he touches. Check out their website that's coco -matte with one t dot com for more information on his wonderful world.
Speaker: I hope you enjoy this high energy and distinctly organic dialogue with Paul F. Morfides himself.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. I don't want to talk to you anymore. Come on. Give me just 20 minutes, just 20 minutes. You stay here for a week or some days you will love it. And then you see everything. Then you understand. Okay. Go ahead. Let's do it.
Speaker: Well, it appears to me that Kokomat, you found it back in 89, right? And yet it appears to be arguably even more relevant now as a business than it perhaps ever has been before. You know, with all these, the trends seem to be going in your favor, in your direction. I just wondered if you could just describe how things have, how you've seen that process evolve over the last 30 years. Maybe you were more niche market, a small market back then, but it's just become bigger and bigger. We talk about two different notions.
Speaker: For me, it has never been a business. I'm not a businessman, you know. For me, it is pleasure. I'm always in love with something, you know. I might be in love with you because you do this, you do that. I'm in love with the product, you know. I'm in love with, let's say, the materials. And I want to expose this material to humanity. Let's say seaweed. I never think about
Speaker: business. You know what I mean? In such a way that is in your head, although I started economics bullshit, I don't, I don't consider economy, you know, as a, as a science. But for me, I, I'm behind my, uh, my drive. You know what I mean? I'm behind my, my love. So when I started, if you are asking me, did you think that Kokoma would be successful?
Speaker: I always think that what we do, what I do, what we do is successful, but not in money terms. You know what I mean? In pleasure, in pleasure. And you know, it's crazy. I'm 63, but when I do pushups, you know how many pushups I do? How many you did? As many as I want. I get down and I come up two hours and three minutes later.
Speaker: That was my last one, 1 ,025. Is it something that you consider as performance? No. It is something different, different levels. The same with business. I do business because I met people. I met this guy who has got 75 people here. And I fell in love with him because he works like hell. He has no money because he doesn't know the way to make money because
Speaker: he works here, you know, he produces clothes for very big companies and he makes nothing at the end, you know? So I'm here, I met him three weeks ago and then I said, we are going to make different stuff, you know, for you, not only to have work but to create your brand, you know what I mean? And now we started with this because this girl I know, I said, come, we do this, what do you call them? Serviettes, I don't know. Sanitary pads.
Speaker: Yeah. So you're doing eco -friendly. Eco -friendly because they are washable, blah, blah, reusable. So the same is with all my business. I mean, I started hotels because I invited somebody like you a long time ago to see that we make the best mattresses in the world. And I didn't have any place to stay. So I made the loft and after the loft, I went to a hotel. I said, I make free of charge, you know, do three rooms for you.
Speaker: And then I invited friends. And then I said, why did I make a hotel? And then we made a hotel and blah, blah, blah. You understand? So I don't have a rumbo. There is no rumbo in my head. There's nothing. You understand the word rumbo? Yeah, I see the passion behind the project. It's just fascinating. Go where people love me, where a notion, where a situation loves me. And I go there and I'm happy. And then results are coming.
Speaker: You mentioned the idea of it being the best mattress in the world, and you also mentioned seaweed as being one of the materials, just for perhaps someone who doesn't know exactly what goes into one of your mattresses. How are you sourcing these materials? Is it about science?
Speaker: Yes, the seaweed nobody uses, okay, in mattresses. But I used it and we got there. I had to, a long time ago, I have to teach people how to gather the best seaweed, okay, and how and where rocks are and all this stuff. And this is the iodine. I'm in love with this. Sorry, wait, wait, wait. What am I, sorry, you don't see me? Oh man. This time, you see me now? You have to flip your camera around, I think. No? Oh, now I got you.
Speaker: You see, sorry about that. The whole time I was talking, so this is beautiful, man. Don't believe it. It's so nice. It's beautiful. Yeah. And it is exactly done for this purpose. I can't believe it. And it's everything. As a matter of fact, we must have both faces, I think. And this and this. I think so. But I'm not sure if it's going to be, let me pour some water in that. Yeah, put some water in. Take water here. Take some glass.
Speaker: So the thing is I go by people, I go by materials like seaweed, I eat the seaweed. When I used to be in shops 20 years back, a customer would come in and I used to say, this material is whatever we put in our mattresses, you can eat, it's eatable because seaweed, you can make sushi, you know what I mean? So it's so pure, so clean. And then it was successful. The same with the silk with cotton with linen,
Speaker: all this nature -made fiber, no man -made fiber, you understand me? What nature gives you, you know, just take it. Now we are thinking about liquids, you know, to put liquid here, because it's coming, this blood, and this we are going to make it work water repellent. It might be waterproof too, using nanotechnology is easy.
Speaker: but nanotechnology goes away if you wash it four or five times. We see how we can do that. OK. So that's why. Please, please take a plane and come here to others. I promise you a beautiful time. Come on. You will be with us, OK? I'm coming, I'm coming. As soon as travel restrictions allow me to get on a plane. Why travel restrictions? You can fly. You say, yeah, you are coming for business, for Coke a month.
Speaker: There's the reason and you come and you stay with us. This 14 days, uh, guarantee the quarantine. Yeah. The quarantine bullshit. Forget about that. As soon as you are in Greece, don't forget about anything. Okay. You've been with us. Okay. All right. That sounds great. I like that. I like that. Then you come and you see life because explaining and you see every day we go everywhere by bite and you will enjoy that and you will love it.
Speaker: You talk about the natural fibers and the idea of it being nature giving you all the answers that you need. But other examples of the materials, you also use coconut fiber, obviously, the horse hair, I saw. Coconut fiber is the sort of catalicato for humidity. You put it in and then it's a regulator of humidity of our body at night.
Speaker: even if you sleep and you are not active, you know, you lose, uh, um, you are sweating and this is can be up to one and a half kilo, depends on your size and the kilos, how heavy you are. All these goes to, goes to, uh, coca -fibre, uh, horse here, but I don't want horse here because it's an animal product. I don't want animals to anyway. Um, and then, uh,
Speaker: This material does this. So we have 17, 18 environmental raw materials that every material has got something different, the properties of the materials. They give us what we need, a combination, you know? You know, all this stuff, like now we are making shoes. Can I have this, please? Making shoes. Look at it. My shoe now is 100 % natural. You see? This is my shoes. OK. So what are the materials there? What do you have? Coconut. Coconut.
Speaker: Obviously, natural rubber, cotton, 100 % linen. This is a new product. My daughter makes that. So that's why come fly to Athens, you will see the whole, you know, way of thinking. Because you've got, you've gone carbon neutral or almost carbon neutral in your factory as well, right? Yes. How did you, what was the process there? Obviously that's not an easy,
Speaker: It's a challenge, right? To go up to sort of 96 % recycling. When you come, you see that we squeeze oranges by a bike. We squeeze oranges. We have a drilling machine by cycling, creating energy by cycling, you know? We, let's say, have the orange then not put in a glass to drink or plastic. Forget about plastic.
Speaker: But we put a biscuit in a form of a glass, then we eat the biscuit. So, so many easy things, you know, that makes you aware. That's why, I mean, we can talk for hours, for days, but when you come, you see everything. You see everything, how we create all this stuff. And then you see that the bike, we have the bike and the bicycle. You can put it on, you can put it on the sea. Eh?
Speaker: wait I show you something recently we made it's not perfect it's the first thing that happened okay so you basically built a wooden kind of catamaran canoe structure and put the bike on top and I wanted to go the Amazon on the way down but then closed and I didn't
Speaker: But I will do it one day. OK, it might take you quite a while, but it looks like it's very stable and it's beautiful made out of natural wood. The same wood is your bike, right? Yeah, the same bike. Yeah, you can do all this stuff. And another one you've got, you put the bike on basically on some skis and you went skiing down the mountain on your wooden bike.
Speaker: Yes, yes, I think that, you know, recently that was quickly done. But anyway, many, many other things, squeezing oranges, using for drilling machines, creating energy, you know. And just tell me about the social side as well, because obviously we've touched on materials, you've touched on the idea of being a sustainable business. There are so many disabled people working with us, you know, and
Speaker: it is nice to have people that they are behind you physically and they cannot move or mentally they are not that strong so what makes you a happy person helping other people you know and we do that from the beginning and i'm very happy that that's a pluralistic way of approaching the society you know not only
Speaker: And that makes me very happy and very strong. I love that. I'm helping. Now I'm going to Everest, to climb Everest with a bike on my back. And what is my energy? What is my power? All these people that they love me. And they say, come on. Paul is a nice guy. He's helping. He's one of us.
Speaker: That's the people, the planet, and the profit idea, right? The three P's. You've spoken about that before. I did not. People, planet, profit. That's good. That's good. I didn't know about that. You do that naturally, right? You combine those three. Yes, we got thinking. We got thinking. I haven't thought of that, but thank you for telling me. It's so easy. Okay. BPP. Yeah, the BPs. And just before we started recording, you described how you've moved into hotels, right?
Speaker: I mean, that idea of taking, you started with products and now you're also in a service and hospitality business. How was that process? How did you move across? Was it that it was with all it is that I invited somebody. I didn't know where to let him sleep. And then the idea came because I invited him, you know, with his wife. And I was a little bit upset because I couldn't let them sleep on a nice environment. And then they slept in a loft. And then I said, why don't I make my own
Speaker: What else? And it happens, you know? You make it sound easy, but it's not really. I don't do, you see, I don't do demographics or business plan in order to start something. I listen to my, because we have logic here and we have, what do you call them? Feelings at the other side, you know? So I go the other side. Logic is following feelings, you know?
Speaker: The wonderful part is that you seem to be always like, you know, just on the right, riding the wave of what the culture wants and what society is looking for. I like the waves, you know, I don't say now is a turbulence. I go on the edge, you know, sometimes in life, I don't know if I'm in reality. I've never used any drugs in my life, never cold, cocoa coke. I've never drink alcohol or cigarettes, nothing, nothing, nothing. And this is my drug. You know what I mean?
Speaker: I'm so clean to be addicted. You understand me? So and this is what drives me and brings me everywhere. And what's what's next for the business, for the coconut, for the cocoa mat business? And what do you have? This girl now she's making this. Okay. But are you doing that under cocoa mat? Do you do that under cocoa mat or do you just
Speaker: At the side we make now the warm hotels where people, they throw, you know, all these vegetables and they create fertilizers. We call them warm hotels. Okay. And then now we make the hypes for bees with glass so that kids, they can see that stuff, you know, so they take them home with the glass. So they see how they work the bees together, always bringing people
Speaker: close to nature, you know? That's what it's all about. That's the key message. I love that. Tell me, when are you coming to Athens? The rest is when? OK. I'll look for flights, and I'll send you the dates. There you go. Easy. You can fly as soon as you want. You fly, you know, to Switzerland, I don't know, to Germany. Direct flights, I don't think that they are. But, you know, we'll find a way. Stay with us. You will have a lot of fun. You learn a lot of things. You see the shoes, the new business.
Speaker: And everything natural, you know, and now we are making clothes, but 100 % natural. They start, they start. We haven't started yet, but there are so many people that, young people, that they want to do something. And the craziest idea now is that we have our own, wait a minute. This is from the rest of our production.
Speaker: So offcuts, material offcuts and making bags. And there is one word in Greek that very, very few people know that they describe the, the, uh, slate or the turtle or me. My home is this. I don't have anything else. So I want to put in a bag like this, a pair of shoes. Look, look, look what I wore.
Speaker: This is me. Now it's winter in Greece, but everybody has gone long, long, uh, yeah. Okay. Never wear long. No, I don't need to know. I don't want that. So I want to put in this bag, minimal, minimal, very minimalistic, a pair of shorts. Yeah. And if it's very cold with some buttons here, some buttons, I put the buttons to make it long. Okay. And another teacher that is close with this cold.
Speaker: And this is your home to teach people that they don't need so much. We don't need anything. We need very little. This is now the idea. We do that in a month's time. So if somebody wants to buy this house, come on, buy your house. And we have very many, one pair of shoes, one this, one that, and you have it all. Don't worry about your goods and where to take them, what to do. You know what I mean? This is my new approach to minimalistic
Speaker: like actually yes but make more colors but this is enough enough she is now creating this is this what's next what's next what's that are you i want to make something to put it inside yes so a bag for the okay yeah did you learn how to stitch
Speaker: You make more and then at the end you become, practice makes masters, okay? Amazing. I teach young people, I teach young people to be good with their hands, you know? It's great, it's great. It's like, back to the basics, you know, going back to what we knew many years ago, but we've forgotten so much of it. And your name is Matt, like Coco Matt, you know? Like Coco Matt.
Speaker: I'm a couple, you are much. Hey, it's a match made in heaven. I like it. Hey, we must start a shop in London. It happens. It happens that all this year, one guy came and was almost ready to sign to start the shop. And I said, you promised me to quit smoking. And then he couldn't. He said, Paul, yes, but I said, man, to make money is too good, but you smoke.
Speaker: I don't enjoy that. And at the end, things happened. We didn't do that. We didn't. Yes, we did. So you called off the deal. You stopped the deal because you're smoking. Not me. But I mean, I said, come on, man. When you finish smoking, you quit, you come. You see, because people must be healthy. If you are not healthy, if somebody bothers you inside, you cannot do things. You know, how old are you? I am 39. 39, man. I am 63. Big difference, yeah?
Speaker: But here I am 18. I can see it's very clear. It's a good thing. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you. And please just get the ticket. The rest leave it on me.
