Meet Kenny Azama of The Wander Club in Mid-City

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kenny Azama.

Kenny, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I love to travel and part of the fun has always been to collect souvenirs from each place I visited. From shot glasses to beautiful paintings, to African warrior masks – I collected them all.

But as time went on and I traveled more and collected more, I began to realize that I was just accumulating things…

– Things that were inconvenient to carry during my trip.
– Things that were oftentimes expensive.
– Things that would just take up space back home.

And one day, after taking a hard look at all of my worldly collectibles just sitting in a box in my closet, I decided that there had to be a better way for myself and others to commemorate our adventures.

So I started The Wander Club with one goal in mind: To create a simple way for you to keep all of your travels in one place while also giving back to the world.

That’s how the company came to be and now our small but mighty team works out of our Mid City, Los Angeles office to craft beautifully engraved tokens for each place someone has traveled to. And for every order placed, we donate a meal to an orphan abroad with the help of our non-profit partner, Rice Bowls.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
We’ve definitely had our ups and downs but fortunately, it’s been mostly ups! We’re doing what we love and we’re giving back so, at the end of the day, we view all struggles as blessings and learning lessons.

One example of this dates back to before we launched. I really wanted to work with a leather tannery in Ethiopia for our raw materials. So I spent lots of money and many months struggling through the cultural and language barriers only to receive tons of square footage of unusable leather. The leather took over my entire bedroom and I literally had to sleep with it on my bed. At this point, I didn’t know if entrepreneurship was for me and I was almost ready to throw in the towel…

But I pushed through and in the process realized that I do have the grit/hustle and that this is something that I needed to do. From that whole experience, I learned that I needed to be more patient and methodical about working with our vendors and now we proudly and exclusively source our ethical products from the US.

The Wander Club – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
The Wander Club is a charitable shop for those who love to travel.

We’ve created a unique way for people to commemorate the places they’ve been and are really proud of the fact that since day one we’ve been able to donate a meal for every engraved token purchased. Within just four months, we’ve donated over 40,000 meals to orphans abroad. That kind of support from our community has been unreal and we’re grateful for every single order that comes in. It’s so much more than just a customer transaction – each order creates positive change that will ripple for generations to come by supporting these children.

Our reach goal for the end of 2019 was to donate 100,000 meals but it’s looking like we may need to dream even bigger!

Another thing that sets us apart is our commitment to using only the most ethical and high-quality materials. We exclusively use 100% full-grain vegetable-tanned leather from the oldest and best tannery in the USA, Wickett & Craig.

Most of the leather in the world today is produced using extremely harsh chemicals and it is wreaking havoc on our planet. The vegetable-tanned leather that we use for our products relies solely on plant extracts to develop its strength and beauty, which reduces the negative impact on the environment by ~95%.

While the process of vegetable tanning leather is extremely labor-intensive and more expensive for us, we wouldn’t have it any other way because we strongly believe in raising the demand for more sustainable materials.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
To me, success starts with self-awareness. You could be doing things that are “successful” on paper (e.g., make lots of money, get into Harvard, become a doctor, etc.) but if it’s not in alignment with who you are and what you want to do, then it’s not going to feel so great. Being able to do what you love every day while helping others along the way, is how I define success. That’s how The Wander Club came to be and that started with getting to know myself better and deciding how I wanted to show up with this life I’ve been gifted.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thewanderclub.co
• Email: hi@thewanderclub.co
• Instagram: thewanderclub.co
• Facebook: facebook.com/thewanderclub.co

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