A lifelong interest in Japan led Fiona Uyema to study and work in the country, where she developed a love affair with its cuisine. It was after returning home to Ireland that she translated her passion into a business idea and Fused was born, she tells Ben Haugh

Most people would be happy to return home from a stint abroad with fond memories, happy photos and a collection of nostalgic trinkets.

Fiona Uyema, however, came back to Ireland after three years in Japan with a life partner and a love of Asian cooking that would serve as the bedrock of her future business.

She launched Fused by Fiona Uyema in 2017 after noticing a gap in the Irish market.

“Our mission statement is to raise the standards of Asian ingredients on supermarket shelves. That’s how we differentiate ourselves,” she tells Business Plus from the Merits Innovation Thinkspace in Naas, Co Kildare, where her business is based.

Uyema’s belief that there would be a demand for her products proved correct.

They are now on sale in most major retailers including Lidl, Tesco, Dunnes Stores and SuperValu.

The entrepreneur, who grew up on a sheep farm in Lorrha, Co Tipperary, says she had a “peculiar interest” in Asian culture from a young age.

This led to her studying Business Studies International with Japanese at Dublin City University, which included a year in Japan.

Uyema worked as an intern at three companies and was like a “sponge”, soaking up the language, culture and customs.

She returned to Ireland, graduated and immediately travelled back to Japan to teach English.

She lived in Nishiyama in Niigata, a very rural part of the country. The view from her apartment window was rice fields.

“It was very rare to see another foreigner, there was very little English spoken,” she says.

To avoid becoming isolated, Uyema threw herself into “every club in town” and made connections.

“Calligraphy, dancing, hiking…but it was an aging population, so I ended up having a community of retired and older people who became my best friends, because everyone else had left to go to college or work in the bigger towns or cities,” she says.

Meeting these older people was a blessing in disguise, as they began to share their recipes with her.

“I ended up buying cookbooks in Japanese, so I was learning Japanese but also learning how to cook the food,” she says.

“Plus, I could immediately see the effects of the Japanese diet on my health and wellbeing. I felt more energized, slimmer, not by design. It just happened naturally.”

Uyema says she always liked cooking, but never dreamed it could be a career option.

“It probably only really dawned on me when I got back to Ireland, how much I loved it,” she says.

This epiphany came while she was working as a tax consultant for a Japanese company with an Irish office.

“I was the contact between the Irish and the Tokyo office, looking after our Japanese clients,” she says.

“But I realised that maybe tax wasn’t for me. Also, I was really enjoying cooking Japanese food at home and getting a lot of interest from people.”

Uyema started a blog to share her recipes and regularly fielded requests for cooking classes.

She began hosting them in her house, but realised she needed a dedicated space.

“I moved to a professional kitchen and started opening up my classes to the public.”

She was then approached to turn her recipes into a cookbook, which led to TV work.

During her classes, she was regularly being asked the same question: “What Asian products do you recommend?”

She found the selection in Irish supermarkets lacking, and so the idea of Fused was born.

“There was a gap in the market for a premium brand, but also a brand that people could trust. I realised there was no brand awareness or loyalty in that category,” she says.

Uyema’s brand was created following a lot of brainstorming.

“I was thinking about our family. My husband is BrazilianJapanese. Our kids are BrazilianJapanese-Irish.

“I wanted to be true to my story and who I was. Because the Japanese are so perfect and precise about what they do, I didn’t want to try and be that.

“So Fused was like a fusion of our family [and] our experiences.”

Uyema’s first product, soy sauce, was created in the kitchen of her Naas home on evenings and weekends.

“From a cost perspective, we couldn’t go outside of that. So we did small batches. I always remember reading this Coca-Cola quote on the side of a bottle: ‘Coca-Cola sold 1,000 bottles in its fi rst year’ or something. And that gave me belief it would be okay.”

When the product began selling well, Fused moved to a state-funded building in Mountmellick, Co Laois, and rented a commercial kitchen.

The company has since expanded its range to include stir-fry sauces and staple ingredients like organic coconut milk, white miso paste and panko breadcrumbs.

“We outsource production now, because we manufacture our sauces in pouches. It’s quite a di­ cult thing to do compared to bottles, unless you’ve massive investment in machinery,” Uyema says.

“Even [so], I’m heavily involved [and] in the factory with the team. Picking every ingredient, testing it, tasting it. I probably have driven some of them mad, but it has to be. Otherwise we’re just another white-label product.”

Uyema says the cost of buying her own factory in Ireland was not viable and would require significant investment.

“I’ve been offered investment, but I never felt like I got the right offer. And I always felt like it wasn’t a make-or-break [decision].

“You need to fi nd the right partner so it doesn’t become a distraction either.”

Uyema has also somehow found the time to write more cookbooks.

Her latest, Fiona’s Christmas Kitchen: Asian Flavours for the Festive Season, was recently published.

As an Irishwoman showcasing Japanese ingredients, did she ever have to field questions about cultural appropriation?

“I got lots of pushback,” she says. “I remember somebody saying: ‘Why would somebody ever buy an Asian product from an Irish woman?’

“But when you really believe in something, and you are honestly driven by the passion of it, not the financial gain, you are kind of unstoppable.”

Did she get any pushback from Japanese people?

“No. Well, not to my face anyway,” she says with a laugh.

Fused has remained a family affair, despite its expansion. Just before the pandemic, Uyema convinced Gilmar, her husband of 19 years, to leave his steady job and join the firm full-time.

“I met my husband when I was a student. His dad had a Japanese passport. He went over to Japan to work there for a year.

“He was really interested in Japan, so he took a break from college, and then he met me.”

The couple met when they were 20 and continued a long-distance relationship before Gilmar decided to move to Ireland.

“About four years ago, I just said to him, ‘you’re coming into Fused’,” she says.

Gilmar required some convincing and was worried about how they would pay their mortgage.

“He was leaving a good job and I’d already left a good job, so we’re going from having two fairly good salaries to [me] bringing him down with me,” Uyema says.

The company’s latest accounts for the financial year 2023 show directors’ remuneration of €83,485.

The company had retained earnings of €95,266.

The couple have two children, 10 and 13, born in Ireland. They both have an interest in food and have visited Japan and Brazil.

“We cook mostly Asian food at home. A few years back, my younger son said, ‘I don’t like potatoes.’ I just looked at my husband and said, ‘I think we’ve taken this a tad too far.’”#

Photo: Fiona Uyema, Fused by Fiona Uyema. Pic Tom Honan