In 1995 our founder, Michael Odqvist, came across an age-old secret - MayaSticks. He was fascinated by the sheer brilliance of this resinous kindling. Not only was it a quick, easy and reliable way to get a fire going, the sticks were also completely natural, produced from waste - the stumps left from felled pine trees - by locals in Guatemala. By starting fair trade production on a larger scale, Michael helped 400 of these descendents of Maya Indians make more money so that they were able to start sending their children to school.

A year later the fire-starters were launched in Sweden. Unfortunately, the timing wasn't right, nobody really understood the product, and we didn't have enough money to market it. It was a complete flop. Extremely frustrating, since we just loved our MayaSticks and truly believed that more people would do so too if they only discovered them...