How Awards Helped One Tunisian Producer Thrive in the Lucrative U.S. Market

Summary

Naouel Bouabid, owner of Massiva in Tunisia, won two awards at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, improv­ing her com­pa­ny’s cred­i­bil­ity and brand vis­i­bil­ity. Bouabid’s suc­cess is attrib­uted to hard work, authen­tic­ity, and a focus on high-qual­ity, healthy prod­ucts, despite chal­lenges in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket with obsta­cles like pests and drought affect­ing pro­duc­tion.

Winning the indus­try’s most cov­eted qual­ity awards pro­vides a range of ben­e­fits for pro­duc­ers, from val­i­dat­ing cul­ti­va­tion and pro­duc­tion tech­niques to improv­ing brand vis­i­bil­ity in a crowded mar­ket­place.

For Naouel Bouabid, the owner of the Tunisian pro­ducer Massiva, win­ning two awards at the 2023 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for the sec­ond year run­ning was no excep­tion.

Bouabid and her team earned a Gold Award for their organic medium-inten­sity Chemlali and Silver Award for their organic medium-inten­sity Chetoui, both bot­tled under the Damya brand.

She told Olive Oil Times that these awards had improved her com­pa­ny’s cred­i­bil­ity with con­sumers, retail­ers and dis­trib­u­tors. ​“It also rewards the ded­i­ca­tion of our hard­work­ing team for pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity prod­ucts,” she said.

When Bouabid moved to the United States six years ago, it dawned on her how much she missed fresh extra vir­gin olive oil from her fam­i­ly’s olive groves in Tunisia. She said her fam­ily has multi­gen­er­a­tional exper­tise in olive oil pro­duc­tion and the indus­try.

This long­ing prompted her to start Massiva, to bring Tunisian extra vir­gin olive oil to the U.S. and share it with her local com­mu­nity in the San Francisco Bay area.

“In 2020, I pre­sented the first Damya extra vir­gin olive oil to my neigh­bor­hood stores,” Bouabid said. ​“They instantly loved it and started sell­ing it right away.”

“Kudos to Zanotto’s, Piazza’s, Bianchini’s and Draeger’s for tak­ing a risk on an unknown pro­ducer,” she added. ​“Retailers and con­sumers liked our authen­tic prod­ucts.”

Bouabid explained that each pro­ducer has unique goals and objec­tives, which makes it essen­tial to under­stand their def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess.

“There is no time for esti­mat­ing or guess­ing,” she said. ​“In the early years of oper­a­tion, intense com­mu­ni­ca­tion is needed to ensure that every­one thinks with the same mind­set, knows the goals and objec­tives and can iden­tify the fun­da­men­tal obsta­cles and weak­nesses to be over­come.”

She said her team in Tunisia had to learn to under­stand the U.S. mar­ket require­ments and chal­lenges.

“I have a solid, expe­ri­enced pro­duc­tion team in Tunisia,” Bouabid said. ​“We pur­sue a com­mon result and have a com­mon goal: high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, healthy farms and happy peo­ple.”

“I have a great sales and mar­ket­ing team in the U.S.,” she added. ​“Our team, across coun­tries, is pro­gress­ing well because each indi­vid­ual under­stands his role and impact on the suc­cess of Massiva.”

“The team whole­heart­edly believes in the high-qual­ity prod­uct we are pro­vid­ing and in our capac­ity to grow to become a leader in olive oil,” Bouabid con­tin­ued. ​“Each team­mate shares our com­mon per­spec­tive, which improves the result every year.”

With the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, Bouabid would have done a few things dif­fer­ently, includ­ing start­ing Massiva when she arrived in the U.S. and hir­ing more work­ers and seek­ing help from local experts sooner.

“The American mar­ket and food indus­try is spe­cific and dif­fer­ent from Europe or other places I used to work,” Bouabid said. ​“Working with experts in the U.S. mar­ket in the sales and mar­ket­ing field is help­ing Massiva to progress faster and in the right direc­tion.”

Bouabid attrib­uted Massiva’s suc­cess to the com­pa­ny’s val­ues: work­ing hard, being authen­tic and trans­par­ent and cre­at­ing a high-qual­ity and healthy prod­uct.

She also listed car­ing about con­sumers, their farms, the com­pa­ny’s farm­ers and the envi­ron­ment as keys to Massiva’s suc­cess.

Even though quite a few retail­ers were quick to stock Bouabid’s prod­ucts from the start, there have been obsta­cles along the way.

“It wasn’t easy,” she said. ​“There were many chal­lenges, at all stages, to pro­duce and mar­ket high-qual­ity olive oil.”

Bouabid pointed out that the olive oil mar­ket is highly com­pet­i­tive, with plenty of choices in every store. She added that con­sumers are not well-edu­cated on dis­cern­ing the qual­ity of olive oils and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing olive oil brands and prod­ucts.

“Organic and bio­dy­namic foods are often more expen­sive than con­ven­tional foods,” she said, ​“and some cus­tomers aren’t will­ing to pay a higher price for bet­ter qual­ity.”

Regarding pro­duc­tion, Bouabid said the com­pany has had to con­tend with drought and other har­vest chal­lenges.

“One of the biggest chal­lenges our organic farm­ers face is pests and dis­ease,” she said. ​“Because organic farm­ers do not use syn­thetic pes­ti­cides or her­bi­cides, they are much more vul­ner­a­ble to dam­age from insects, fungi and other pests.”

She pointed out that bio­dy­namic agri­cul­ture has addi­tional chal­lenges, such as low yield com­pared to con­ven­tional indus­trial farm­ing.

“Biodynamic farm­ing is still not very wide­spread and requires more sup­port from the food indus­try,” she said. ​“Fortunately, retail­ers and con­sumers are dri­ving increased demand for bio­dy­nam­i­cally grown foods.”

But despite all of this, Bouabid said she has plenty of great rea­sons to be an extra vir­gin olive oil dis­trib­u­tor.

“Tunisia, my native coun­try, is an olive oil coun­try,” she con­cluded. ​“It’s the num­ber one pro­ducer of organic olive oil in the world, and it deserves more global credit for the incred­i­ble qual­ity that we pro­duce.”