We were lucky to catch up with Wasim Muklashy recently and have shared our conversation below.

Wasim, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Ever since leaving corporate America, the natural world has always played an incredibly pivotal role in every decision I make.

It helped me re-center and re-focus my life after finally exiting an industry that was doing nothing but sucking my soul dry.

It has, in every single way, shaped the very direction of my life since.

After leaving marketing, advertising and broadcast news video career, I was a bit lost. I knew I didn’t want to do what I was doing, but I didn’t know where my life was headed next.

So I moved into the mountains above L.A. into Topanga Canyon, and picked up a still camera, my first love.

I began making photos of the hikes I would go on, which led me to working with the California State Parks and the National Park Service, which eventually led me to a photography sponsorship with Samsung, which, in turn, helped launch a full-time career in photography.

As I became more engulfed in the natural world, I was being flown up to the Pacific Northwest for some work in that field, and, eventually, after realizing the vast difference in my state of mind every time I returned, I decided to make the jump and move to Portland, Oregon full time.

Immediately I knew I wanted to get involved in mission-driven work and was asked to join the board of a non-profit that helps introduce kids in Title 1 schools to nature. Seeing these kids faces the first time they see a waterfall or a snail or an osprey was so incredibly amazing. This was some of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done, and it helped introduce me to more organizations that were doing aligned work.

Nature helped me through some of my most difficult times and I knew I wanted to pay that forward by introducing others to the benefits of our natural world.

When COVID hit, I lost just about all of my work. Most of my bread & butter clients were travel firms and outdoor organizations and events, and, well, there were no events and there was no travel, and non-profits were having a hard time operating under many of the restrictions we were under.

However, one of my last clients before the pandemic was a non-profit called Quechua Benefit that worked in the highlands of Peru. They sent me there to capture photographs and virtual reality footage of some of the projects they were working on, including orphanages, medical facilities, schools and such, as well as some of the alpaca farms in the altiplano as well as a vicuna chaccu, a biannual ceremony culminating in a roundup for shearing of the wild cousin of the alpaca, which possesses the finest fibers in the world.

On this trip, I became good friends with the tour guide, who happened to be an alpaca breeder and judge in Oregon, and when the pandemic hit, I had to move out of where I was as I was sharing an HVAC with an elderly couple and ended up moving onto her farm in Central Oregon. This was at a time when we though the pandemic would only be a few weeks.

Well, I ended up being there for a year, and, well, I have yet to leave Central Oregon.

That time ended up being a super crash course in alpacas, and holy moly did I learn a lot.

What I thought were just goofy adorable creatures, ended up teaching me much more about myself and humankind, than I could have ever imagined.

A city boy…living on an alpaca farm…

The education led me on a path to learn about natural fibers, the sustainability factor of the alpaca as a livestock and fiber producer, the history and culture of the Quechua peoples of Peru. I learned about fast fashion and how the very clothes I was wearing were contributing to microplastics in every aspect of our environment. I learned about how the farmers were making very little money for the work they were doing and that the manufacturers were making fortunes. I learned about the co-ops that were helping to change this. I learned about the humanitarian projects that were succeeding in helping the impoverished communities that were gifting us with these amazing animals and incredible fibers. I learned about its hypo-allergenic properties, it’s thermo-regulating properties, and it’s incredibly softness. I bottle fed a baby alpaca. I gave a presentation at an alpaca conference about how to take photographs for breeding stock and alpaca sales. I helped raise money and resources for the non-profit.

Essentially, once alpacas are part of your life, well, there’s no way you can imagine a life without them.

Since those days, I have purchased an alpaca shop and launched a brand of alpaca outdoor adventure socks called Alpaca by Design.

I co-founded an agrotourism company called Alpaca Experiences in which we do Alpaca Yoga and The Original Alpaca Picnic Experience. Yes, picnics, with alpacas on a working alpaca farm, where guests get to lunch with the alpacas, see the fiber we harvest from the alpacas, and the product that gets made from those fibers.

We have returned to Peru to meet with and start working with local artisans and co-ops to help level them up.

We have started a program to give back a percentage of our profits to projects in those communities.

Our whole mission is to close the loop behind what people are wearing and where it comes from. Rather than just buy a product, to be connected to the source of that product…the earth.

Now they get to meet and picnic with the alpacas, they get to see the fiber shorn from those alpacas, they get to see the yarns from those fibers, they get to see the garments that are made from that yarn, and we get to teach them about the Quechua people and the history of alpacas all the way back to Inca Sun God days.

The mission is simply to do our part in reconnecting humans to the natural world.

The more we take care of her, the more she’ll take care of us.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Ok, so this is a weird one. I mean, you couldn’t have told me even 5 years ago that my world would be dominated by alpacas. I barely even know what an alpaca was! But it’s just a lesson in two things:

1. Photography will open doors to universes you never knew existed, and

2. You have to be willing to let go of who and what you think you are in order to become aware of the opportunities that can lead to who you can become.

My media background began in broadcast news and marketing/advertising video production. It was financially rewarding work, but incredibly soul-less and mentally draining. I eventually left that to pursue a career in photography. I spent almost a decade building that career, and by many measures it was quite successful. I was making my living primarily from photography, and doors were being opened into worlds I never would have otherwise had access to. This accelerated once Samsung picked me up and began sponsoring me as a photographer, mostly for my travel and nature photography work (www.byWasim.com). This helped launch my career further in travel photography and virtual reality production in its earliest days. I began to get hired more and more by travel marketing firms and event firms and nature organizations, enough to be able to make the move full-time to the Pacific Northwest. A chance shoot on a farm outside of Portland led me to meet my first ever alpacas. I spent the next 3 months through Winter begging the owners to let me return in Spring when the grass was green to capture VR footage with the alpacas. This led to a great friendship with the owners, who were also the founders of Quechua Benefit, a non-profit that works in the highlands of Peru to help empower economically disadvantaged communities there, who happen to be the main farmers of alpacas in the world.

When they asked me to go to Peru on their annual tour of the highlands to photograph and capture the projects they were working on in VR such as schools, medical facilities, water projects, as well as the annual vicuña chaccu, a roundup of the wild distant cousin of the alpaca for shearing, I was beyond thrilled.

And on this trip, I met Amanda VandenBosch, who was our tour guide on the trip, and happened to be a high end alpaca breeder and judge based in Oregon.

This was one of my last gigs before COVID hit and I lost all of my work for 2020.

This was also the time we thought COVID would only last a few weeks (or at least I did…).

This was also a time I was living in the same building as an elderly couple.

At a time I was traveling a lot.

So I thought it safest to move out for, again, what I thought would be a couple of weeks until we got a handle on the thing.

I moved in with a new interest at the time, and, well, needless to say, moving in together during a pandemic was, eh, NOT the best idea.

That blew up spectacularly, leaving me to hop from vacant casita to campground to friend’s empty yurt to another as, well, no one really wanted a vagabond living on their couch in the middle of the plague.

A few months of that went by and when we began to realize it was going to be longer than a few months, I wasn’t ready to move back to a big crowded city, so when Amanda offered the room in her barn in Central Oregon, just outside Bend, I jumped on it.

I thought I’d be there a few weeks, but that turned into a few months, which turned into almost a year.

And after I finally accepted and realized that I was not going to be doing a lot of the photography jobs I was originally lined up for for the forseeable future, I kept myself busy photographing her alpacas, photographing the Central Oregon region, building websites for alpaca farms and breeding programs, and becoming more and more entrenched in the alpaca world.

We’d have our lunch out in the pasture with the gentle goofy floofs and brainstorm on ideas, and she got me involved in creating content for some of the companies that supply the alpaca market, such as the feed companies and apparel companies.

Once COVID restrictions began to lift, I didn’t want to stop having those lunches with the alpacas, as they were incredibly healing and meditative and it was literally impossible to leave that field in a bad mood, I figured this was something that EVERYONE needed coming out of that pandemic period.

So we started PacaPicnics – The Original Alpaca Picnic Experience (PacaPicnics.com). We’d set up visitors with a catered picnic lunch at a picnic table in a pasture with the alpacas and took bookings through Airbnb Experiences, and that BLEW UP.

We figured they’d be kinda popular, but they were booking out weeks in advance through the whole of summer tourist season.

We’re now in our 4th year.

Then an opportunity arose to purchase Alpaca by Design, the alpaca shop in the small quaint adorable town of Sisters, Oregon, just down the road from Bend in the foothills of the Oregon Cascades.

What? Buy a clothing store?

But sure, why not.

So we did.

And that was 3 years ago. Since then, we’ve been able to begin to close the loop on product, and the source of that product for people. So we give them an education on alpacas at the picnic, show them the fleece shorn from the animals, show them the yarn produced from that fleece from the animals they just picnic’d with, then in the shop, they get to see all the product made from alpaca fiber – one of the finest, most sustainable, softest, hypoallergenic, moisture wicking natural fibers in existence.

And then we went back to Peru to meet with some artisans and vendors.

And we started manufacturing our own alpaca line of products under our store brand name, Alpaca by Design (AlpacaByDesignShop.com)

Yes, photography is still part of my world, working for local land trusts and tourism bureaus and real estate, but the other half has become entirely alpaca.

If you told me 5 years ago I’d be an alpaca-preneur, I’d have tried to have you committed.

But here I am.

And here it is.

And here we go…

Feel the Floof!

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

Oh my gosh I must have jumped the gun. I put the entire story in the last question. It actually answers many of the above questions.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I think this entire story has been about quite the pandemic pivot!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ByWasim.com
• Instagram: www.Instagram.com/byWasim
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wasimmuklashy/
• Other: www.AlpacaByDesignShop.com www.PacaPicnics.com www.Instagram.com/alpacabydesign www.Instgram.com/pacapicnics

Image Credits
All mine.