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Steve Josephs - Managing Director
Jackson Kanampiu - Advisor & Coffee Consultant
Read also: About Us - Statement of Purpose
Steve Josephs - Managing Director
 Steve spent the first twenty years of his career as a marketing executive for high-tech corporations and non-profit associations. Shortly after leaving his corporate career, he started Intellidon Enterprises, a marketing consultancy practice and Intellidon Origin Direct, a green coffee importer of superior quality specialty coffees, located in Denver, Colorado.
While applying his marketing experience to the family coffee roasting business, The Great American Coffee Company and Visionary Gourmet Coffee, several needs in the coffee industry began to surface. The most pressing issue was to find a way to increase efficiencies in international trade for green coffee beans that would help origin growers establish more direct trade sales channels with destination buyers and, at the same time, help coffee roasters purchase fresh coffee direct from origin producers.
 It became obvious that improving supply and demand could expand the market for Specialty coffee farmers, as well as provide better access to fresh green coffee beans from current harvests by hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller domestic coffee roasters located in coffee consuming countries.
Technology Solution
The solution required the technology of the Internet to connect the market in a new way through an online global exchange. Through the integration of effective marketing strategies, facilitation of transactions and relationships with origin sellers, a new internet coffee auction and e-commerce trading platform was developed.
As an online exchange, SpecialtyCoffeeAuctions.com is designed to connect origin growers with domestic roasters and facilitate transactions. Origin growers and their representatives are enabled to take back control and set the market prices for coffee lots of all sizes. Consuming country roasters can either bid on coffee lots in a competitive auction or choose a 'BuyNow' (spot) price and make arrangements directly with producers or their representatives.
This internet coffee auction and e-commerce marketplace solution provides increased exposure and demand for origin coffees, improves availability for domestic coffee roasters, thereby facilitating commerce to help provide better economic sustainability for Specialty coffee farmers around the globe.
Overseas Connections
As a young man, Steve spent a number of years traveling off and on throughout Central and South America's coffee growing regions. During several trips to Guatemala he experienced first hand both human and natural disasters that plague coffee growing countries including a civil war, volcanoes raining down hot ash inches thick, as well as the most devastating earthquake in the country's history, which took the lives of over 20,000 people.
The year following the earthquake, Steve returned to Guatemala and signed on at the Instituto Naturista clinic located in a mountain village near the famous coffee growing region of Antigua (now a Peace Corps training facility), working to help improve the health and economic sustainability of local villagers and farmers throughout that part of the country.
Steve's recent business trips to over half a dozen origin countries in Central America and Africa have provided up-to-date first-hand knowledge of the local farmers' view of coffee as a business and way of life. During these visits he uncovered many real-life experiences from the grower's perspective which helped to form a more sustainable business model for Specialty Coffee Auctions that supports the need and desire of both origin growers and roasters to establish more consistent direct trade channels.
Jackson Kanampiu - Advisor & Coffee Consultant
 Born and raised in Kenya, Jackson has more than twenty-five years of experience in the coffee industry. He relocated to the United States several years ago to work as a coffee taster and food science manager.
In Kenya, Jackson worked as a professional coffee taster with Kenya Planters Co-operative Union Ltd. (KPCU), and as a consultant and quality controller with C.J. Valentine Coffee Brokers, a division of Kenya Coffee Auctions Ltd. He later worked as Chief Taster and Quality Controller of Socfinaf Ltd, a Belgium coffee producing corporation and miller based near Nairobi, Kenya, responsible for maintaining the company's reputation as one of the world's highest quality coffee producers.
 Jackson was also among the pioneers and an active judge in the High Quality Coffee competitions held by the East Africa Fine Coffees Association (EAFCA). He also holds certification as a 'Coffee Expert' by the Coffee Board of Kenya in conjunction with the Mild Coffee Trade Association of Eastern Africa.
He is also a member of the SCAA Roasters Guild and in 2006 served as a judge in the Specialty Coffee Association of America's Roasters Guild Cupping Competition.
With his vast expertise and credentials in all aspects of coffee production, Jackson brings to Specialty Coffee Auctions a base of specialized knowledge in the coffee industry rarely found in a single individual.
 During his most recent trip to coffee regions in Ethiopia and Zambia, Jackson was able to contribute his expertise in plant husbandry and effective milling operation techniques to several coffee growers that, over time, will result in improved yields and a higher quality crop for those farmers.
Having grown up in Kenya and working directly with coffee growers, Jackson knows first hand the plight and the opportunities of indigenous coffee farmers in that part of the world. Bringing this knowledge to SpecialtyCoffeeAuctions.com helps to keep the focus on both helping domestic coffee roasters source high-quality Specialty coffees and helping coffee farmers expose their unique coffees to the global marketplace.
Read also: About Us - Statement of Purpose
Specialty Coffee Auctions is an internet coffee auction and ecommerce
marketplace for sales of green coffee beans from origin producers shipped
direct to Specialty coffee roasters and wholesale coffee buyers.
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