Bringing my Dad into the digital economy

Was inspired to write this after attending the Shopify Make Your Own Luck event.

I spend every December and January in Chino Hills, California, doing my day job remotely and picking mandarins with my Dad. He grows Kishu Mandarins, a small, sweet, seedless, and easy-to-peel variety native to Japan. We planted the saplings together 15 years ago, and now he tends to over 100 trees, yielding over 20,000 pounds of fruit.

When I first moved home for Kishu Season, he was selling for $1/pound to a distributor, who would flip them for $5 at the farmers market. It was bad enough to see my Dad doing back-breaking manual labor for $4/hr, but what I couldn’t stomach was him being erased from the amazing fruit he’d worked so hard to grow. It’s an all too common story amongst farmers, who bring nourishment and joy to so many, only to remain nameless, faceless, and thankless.

I started driving into LA and dropping off hundreds of pounds of kishu mandarins for chefs. They loved the fruits, shared them with their friends, and the word began to spread. People began making ice creams, sorbets, old fashioned, pies, cakes, and all sorts of other things. Here’s the LA times article.

Fast forward two seasons and we’re now completely direct-to-consumer. People go to themandarinman.com, order their kishus, and get a box of freshly picked fruits sent from our grove to their door. We also have a local pickup in Chino Hills on Saturday morning. We are amazed by how many people sit through hours of LA traffic just to come to buy 20 to 40 pounds of kishus.

I wanted to pass on some learnings after this Kishu Season with my Dad.

1. Give people a product they love

There’s a genuine love for these kishu mandarins that is hard to explain. When someone buys a box, they tend to share it with their friends and family. It’s extra special when we get emails and DM’s from folks in cold weather climates, thanking us for blessing them with California sunshine in the dead of winter. These kishus are our way of putting out happiness and goodwill, and we love sharing them with the communitree.

2. Overcome insecurities (yours and your parents’)

For many Asian kids, the search for parental affirmation is a never-ending treadmill of checking the boxes. You think that if you can become a [insert professional career] then they’ll finally pat you on the back and tell you they’re proud. But eventually, you realize that they’re just as lost as you, and all that tiger parenting was born out of their survivor mentality. In trying to make it in America, they let go of the things that truly make them happy, or perhaps never discovered them at all. Navigating your personal journey requires understanding this, and helping them when and if you are able.

3. Technology doesn’t have to be hard

For years my Dad refused to embrace technology. He never unboxed his iPhone, typed with two fingers, and dismissed tech as something for young people. Now he’s checking his Shopify CRM, emailing customers, fulfilling orders, and running all the operations of his digital storefront. Just the other day, he gifted me a free stock from Robinhood. I think that deep down, he always wanted to participate, but just needed a gentle nudge and a chance to learn.

On the Kishu Mandarin front, we are sold out for the season. If you’d like to get some, feel free to leave your email and we’ll let you know when the season starts again in December.

Special thanks to the Shopify AAPI ERG and Merchant Success team for making it cool to be an Asian American entrepreneur. And to Shopify for providing the infrastructure upon which we’ve built the communitree.