Eric Brand

I have to say, I love working at Blue Poppy. We have a team of incredibly intelligent and benevolent people working together in a beautiful office overlooking the mountains, and the company feels like a family. Like many practitioners, I came to Chinese medicine because I truly enjoy helping people and making a difference, and no company embodies this holistic spirit quite like Blue Poppy. Even as a new TCM student, I knew that Blue Poppy was working to better the profession and the planet, but now that I work at Blue Poppy I have an even greater appreciation of the depth of this contribution.

Funding Research

The other day I wrote a brief blog about an authentication research project that we are working on. This project was made possible by a generous donation from Blue Poppy to the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia. Blue Poppy has no competing interest in the study (i.e., we don’t sell raw herbs); rather, we are funding the project purely because we know it will have a positive impact on the profession. Ultimately, educating practitioners about herbal safety will protect our scope of practice and allow us all to engage in progressively more advanced traditional and scientific arenas.

Follow up:

Blue Poppy’s support for the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia extends far beyond the current study. Bob has long given AHP permission to use our published material in their excellent scientific monographs, and last summer Blue Poppy allowed me to dedicate time to collect authenticated samples in Asia for AHP (authenticated samples are used in scientific research and serve as reference standards for the dietary supplement industry).

At Blue Poppy, I work as an herbal medicine and sourcing specialist. My job requires that I study extensively with experts in Asia, and I’ve received an incredible amount of encouragement when it comes to developing research projects and pursuing the specialized knowledge that my job description depends on. It looks like we’ll be able to bring a lot more fantastic herbal medicine knowledge into the English literature by translating the work of my teachers abroad, and we are gradually setting up a small but extensive herbal medicine “teaching museum” in our office so that local practitioners can benefit from seeing an extensive range of genuine items and adulterants. This collection will be modeled on similar teaching museums in Asia, and it will be one of the first such teaching collections in the USA.

Blue Poppy now owns a major stake in our manufacturing facility in China. We’ve been expanding the research and laboratory facilities, and our partners in China are engaged in herbal medicine research with the pharmacology department of the local Chinese university. We are gearing up for more and more academic exchange, and having our own lab opens up a variety of new possibilities. For example, one hobby research interest of mine is to work with my former horticulture professor at the University of Colorado- we can use the greenhouses to grow some Chinese herbs in many different simulated climates here in Colorado. I’ll bring the live plants over to the office to join the teaching collection and eventually I’ll bring samples to Asia so that we can do chemical testing to assess their constituents.

Academic Development

Blue Poppy has always been dedicated to the academic growth and professional standards in Chinese medicine. Many of our publications have had a major impact on the professional development of Chinese medicine, and we are continuing to put out new material that fills in the gaps in the English language literature. For example, Bob Flaws’ extensive writings on famous doctors such as Li Dong-Yuan and Zhu Dan-Xi have introduced many Western practitioners to the fascinating work of a variety of pre-modern experts, and Honora’s awesome books and classes have helped hundreds of new graduates to pioneer successful careers with Chinese medicine. Blue Poppy’s titles in integrative medicine are often the best resources around in their given specialty, and some of our recent books on topics like moxibustion have revolutionized the material available in the English language. Books are not a big source of revenue for Blue Poppy, but they play an important role in developing the field of Chinese medicine, which ultimately has a tremendous impact on practitioners and their patients.

At Blue Poppy, our major business strategy lies in raising the academic bar in the field of Chinese medicine. We know that discerning and educated practitioners naturally gravitate towards our products, so we are first and foremost an information provider.

Blue Poppy donates a tremendous amount of resources to practitioner education. For example:

We are branching into Youtube videos and webinars. These technologies bring top-notch academic material to anyone in the world, for free. We’ve already begun with the webinars and Youtube videos, and this work will expand significantly over the coming year. I’m planning to shoot Youtube video lectures on materia medica and other fun topics, and I also want to translate some video interviews and classes from experts in Asia so that their knowledge can be made available here in the West. We’ve already got some awesome videos by Honora, Bob, and Malia, and we have big plans for this “new media revolution.” In fact, I’m writing this blog from the Hong Kong airport, where I am en route to the herbal factory and wholesale markets with video camera in hand…

TCM info online: Regular visitors to our blog no doubt know about the awesome resources we have here on our website. The TCM info online section of our website has hundreds (if not thousands) of summaries of journal articles that Bob Flaws has translated over the years. There are countless essays and articles on our website that are available as free downloads, along with hundreds of blog articles that can be easily searched by browsing the “archives.” We’ll be uploading more and more material all the time, and I think that it is probably safe to say that Blue Poppy’s website is the #1 source of high-quality, free Chinese medical information on the web.

Advanced training: For years now, Bob and Honora have traveled the country giving lectures at various TCM schools. These lectures have impacted thousands of practitioners in the USA and abroad. At present, Honora and I travel extensively to schools across the country, and we often provide free lectures for students in addition to teaching a range of CEU classes. If you are involved in student council and you want to arrange for top notch lectures on Chinese medicine, contact us and we will work something out to visit your school. Additionally, I am planning to start bringing small, carefully-selected groups of students to Asia to study with leading experts in a variety of disciplines. We hope to keep a few slots reserved for students that will receive partial scholarships from Blue Poppy, making our study abroad project one of the only training programs to offer scholarship opportunities to exceptional students.

Donations to Worthy Causes

Bob and Honora are among the most generous and conscious people that I’ve ever encountered. In the brief time that I’ve worked at Blue Poppy, I’ve seen Blue Poppy donate to a stunning variety of causes. Within the first few weeks of being back in Boulder, Honora had me volunteering massages for fund raising gigs and I’ve seen more donation drives and shows of support that I ever thought a company was capable of.

Blue Poppy often has days where we donate a significant portion of our profits to a variety of worthy causes. If you look at our home page today, our most recent drive generated $725 to support Acupuncturists Without Borders on their trip to Haiti. In the brief time that I’ve been around, I’ve seen contributions go out to any manner of groups, from the Mindful Medicine Worldwide project in Nepal to support for TCM clinics in Indonesia and beyond. People who are facebook friends with Bob and Honora will no doubt notice all manners of links to donate to a stunning variety of causes, and Honora is constantly auctioning off her beautiful paintings to support all manners of worthy projects.

Protecting the Planet

If you look inside the cover of most Blue Poppy books, you’ll often find a note on how many trees were saved with the print run. We use recycled paper and the most ecological printing methods available. The Blue Poppy office is also incredibly eco-conscious; we have a zero-waste, wind-powered facility and every decision is made with a careful calculation of its environmental impact.

At our manufacturing facility in China, our partners are constantly expanding their GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) farms and are pioneering projects such as certified organic mushroom cultivation. Our factory is family-run, and supports the livelihood of dozens of parents, cousins, sisters, specialists, and local workers. We use the most extensive third-party testing in the industry (combined with our in-house testing) to verify that our herbs are free of pesticide residues, heavy metals, and other contaminants that harm the earth’s delicate ecosystem. This means that your patients have the safest medicine available, and you can be assured that every dollar spent at Blue Poppy directly improves the welfare of the planet as well as the people in the local communities that make everything we do possible.

Blue Poppy’s dedication to the field is truly commendable. I cannot express how honored I am to be a part of Blue Poppy. I honestly believe that Blue Poppy will be a symbol for the new generation of Chinese medicine, a rallying point that embodies excellence in education, ecology, and the holistic principles that inspire us all.

For now, I need to hop the plane. I’m really excited to visit the factory to see the next round of raw materials and finished products!