Tea Bag Buddy, and on Selling Tea Infusers in a Supermarket

Lately I've been on a supermarket kick, exploring the selection of tea and teaware for sale in various supermarkets. Here is a picture I took in a Stop and Shop supermarket in North Adams, MA:

This product, highlighted in a special hanging display clipped in front of the shelves in the aisle with the tea, is Primula's Tea Bag Buddy. In this post, I am not going to comment at all on this product itself, as it is one that I have little interest in as a loose tea enthusiast. Rather, I'm going to propose an alternative of a product that could be sold in a similar location in supermarkets.

Selling tea infusers and loose-leaf tea in a supermarket?

I find the product placement of the tea bag buddy in the aisle with the tea to be interesting, as it shows that people are already selling tea accessories alongside the tea itself. This is important because it highlights a method that could be used to enable supermarkets to sell loose-leaf tea to an audience of tea bag drinkers, not accustomed to drinking loose tea.

Instead of the tea bag buddy or a similar product, the store could sell tea infusers, in the same location, clipped to a prominent hanging display. If I were running a store, I would choose to carry Finum Permanent Tea Filters. I would price them at cost, with the idea that the item was included only for convenience, not profit, and the product would encourage shoppers to purchase loose-leaf tea.

Then, I would carry a modest selection of loose-leaf tea. I would draw attention to the price-per-cup and number of cups in the loose tea, because people unaccustomed to preparing tea from loose leaf tend not to have a good sense of these things. It would make the product more accessible and appealing. Here is a marketing idea:

I chose Twinings as an example of a tea to show, because I have found Twinings to be the loose tea most frequently available in supermarkets in the U.S., and in many cases, the only loose-leaf tea avaliable.

Of course, Twinings or other tea companies could probably come up with much more attractive-looking specials. Even if the tea companies selling loose tea do not change anything about their packaging to draw attention to the number of cups of tea in the container, or the cost-per-cup, the supermarket or store selling the tea can do this themselves, perhaps in a special display, label, or sign. Most supermarkets already place a price-per-count on the price tag for various products. The label shown here is for Bigelow tea bags, and shows a unit price per 100 count:

Such labels would immediately show the clear lower price per cup of loose-leaf tea. With the extremely generous serving of 2.5 grams per cup (much more than most tea bags), Twinings loose-leaf tea, which usually sells for around $4 for the container shown above, would be much cheaper than all but the most bargain-priced teas. And there are numerous brands selling lower-priced loose-leaf tea as well.

What do you think?

Do you think that a display highlighting a small selection of loose-leaf tea, with a few low-priced, high-quality tea infusers clipped to hang prominently in the aisle in front of them, would get people's attention and draw some new people in to switch to loose-leaf tea? Do you think this sort of setup could be financially viable, or even possibly lucrative, for a supermarket?

Lipton Tea Supermarket Display

I'm continuously interested in tea in American supermarkets, mainly because supermarkets are a place of the mainstream, and what is going on in mainstream supermarkets says a lot about the reach of tea culture in the U.S.

Pictured here is a supermarket display from the Supreme Shop n Bag store, part of Thriftway Shop n Bag stores, located on Walnut St. in Philadelphia, between 43rd and 44th streets:

This is a large, attention-getting display, out in the middle of the aisle. It's hard to miss. Yet I find it disappointed me; the display got my attention, but in the end, was rather boring.

Missed business opportunity? Why not highlight more products?

This display takes up a lot of space, yet it only includes a single product. Judging by how full the display is, the display does not seem to be doing a great job of encouraging people to buy tea.

Lipton tea, although it is known for its basic black tea, has diversified a lot lately, and now offers herbal blends, flavored teas, and higher-quality tea offered in pyramid sachets. You can visit the Lipton tea page on RateTea if you want to check what products Lipton carries, or read some reviews; I've personally reviewed 10 different offerings from Lipton. The company also sells loose-leaf tea. This display doesn't highlight any of these products!

I don't know if Lipton chose everything about this display, or if it was more up to the supermarket, but, regardless of who made the decision, I think Lipton is missing an opportunity to highlight the diversity of its products.

What do you think?

Do you think Lipton is missing an opportunity here? Or do you think people really just want a discount on their basic black tea? Or is Lipton tea off your radar entirely?

New Social Networking Icon Library For RateTea

I'm pleased to announce a new page on RateTea highlighting a comprehensive selection of RateTea Social Networking Icons, in different resolutions and three different color schemes. The page also has guidelines for making your own icon out of the RateTea logo.

Check the right sidebar of my blog to see how they can be used by an individual to link to your profile, alongside your accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Steepster, Google Plus, and other sites:

The use by tea companies is similar; tea companies can link them directly to the page for their tea brand. Tea companies can benefit from these icons by encouraging existing customers to rate and review your teas, reaching a broader audience than with reviews published only on the company website.

If your company already has existing reviews, linking can benefit you because shoppers unfamiliar with your company will be more likely to trust reviews published on an independent, third-party source than reviews on your own site.

What do you think? Any requests for new styles or dimensions?

The current array of icons there is limited to three colors, but we have a large array of other colors and styles that we have not published. Do you think there would be any other colors, styles, or dimensions that you would like to see? If you want something that we do not have displayed, Sylvia or I can probably design one for you in a brief period of time.

Price and Deals When Buying Tea Online

I recently received a box of samples from the newly launched Paisley Tea Co, which is an effort of Two Leaves Tea (Formerly Two Leaves and a Bud).

This post is not about the company's teas; I have more to say about them later; if you're itching to read more, you can peek at my lengthy review of their English Breakfast on RateTea. This post, however, is about a phenomenon that I've seen occur with a variety of companies that sell online. This post is directed both at tea shoppers and tea companies, and I hope there will be some useful tidbits in the post for both audiences.

Pictured here is a clipping from a screenshot of the page for Paisley Tea Co's Organic English Breakfast, on the official online store of Two Leaves Tea:

The price, for a box of 24 tea bags, is $5.95. Now, take a peek at this screenshot, taken from Amazon.com:

Now the price is $3.82. But the product is out of stock. I discovered this page, supposedly selling this tea, after reading a post on The Everyday Tea Blog, titled Paisley Tea Co, Organic Double Earl Grey. This price is discounted over 35% off the price listed on the company's official site. A little more searching turns up the following listings:

These are sold by Amazon.com's Add-on program, and some of them are in stock. This program lists items that would be cost-prohibitive to ship on their own, and they are intended to be purchased when someone makes a larger ($25 or more) purchase from Amazon, and they ship for free in these large purchases.

Sometimes you can find deals online:

If you are looking to buy a product online, you can sometimes find it cheaper than the list price on the company's main website. You may also sometimes find coupon codes if you search for them. This can be good news if you are a tea drinker looking to buy tea online. Three suggestions I'd have if you want to look for deals on a product you've already decided to buy would be:

• Check Amazon.com, eBay, and other major online marketplaces.
• Try searching Google shopping.
• Do a basic search for coupon codes for the company you are buying from.

Is this sort of setup beneficial for the company selling the tea? Often, yes, as I explain below. I do want to point out, however, that these "off-the-main-website" deals usually are limited to larger, more mainstream tea companies.

Why do such discounts exist?

Teas can be available at a discount for a variety of reasons. Some of them include:

• If a company is hoping to sell a major portion of their products through Amazon, eBay, or any other marketplace website which has its own reputation system, sellers sometimes initially sell products at a discounted price in order to establish a track record. They forgo additional profits as an investment to establish their reputation. This practice is most common with smaller companies.
• If a company is launching a new line of teas, or a new tea brand, like Paisley tea in this example, they may offer a discount to help jump start their new products.
• Sometimes packaged teas end up in the hands of a company (or individual) that cannot easily sell them or put them to use, and wants to get rid of them, and they then mark the price down below the company's list price, as a way of recovering some of their loss. Discount stores can also buy random shipments of tea for discounted prices, and sell them at a modest profit, still below list price.

A word of caution on bargains being displayed but not available:

I just want to highlight one potential problem that can arise from a setup like the one here, especially if it persists in the long-run.

I think that it can be potentially problematic, and can hurt companies, when there is a lower-priced item available on a third party website, but the item is out of stock. This is especially true if the price is presented as a normal price, rather than being advertised as a special discount (sometimes this can be harmful even if it is in stock). If a person searches around and somehow finds the bargain-priced item labelled as normal (like the Amazon example above), they may get excited and think: "Wow, at that price, I want to buy this product." But then they go to buy it and it is out of stock. But then they see the same product for sale on the company's official site, or in a supermarket, or another store, for the normal price, and it seems overpriced, in comparison to the discount price. They'll be likely to think: "Wow, this store is price gouging." or "This tea is overpriced." and not buy it.

Policing prices:

Pictured here is a rather old police car, a Ford Mustang to be precise; the concept of price policing really has nothing to do with the actual police, and tends to be enforced through contracts between wholesalers and distributors, rather than criminal law. This picture is included strictly for amusement.

Some companies actively police their pricing, enforcing minimum retail prices, because they worry that if their products are too widely available for low prices, they will lose money because people will become less interested in buying the products at a higher price. For example, there is a shoe store that I like very much, called The Natural Shoe Store, on 40th street in Philadelphia. The staff of this store have told me that one company threatened to stop selling them shoes because they had priced them too low, even though they were still selling the shoes at a comfortable profit over the wholesale price.

I don't like the idea of price policing like I described here. I think it goes against the idea of the free market economy, and even if it benefits one business, I think it tends to harm the economy as a whole. But I do think that it is good for businesses to think critically about who is going to see what prices where, and what conclusions they will draw from them. Offering discounts and deals can be a great way to jump-start a new line of teas, or a new brand of tea like Paisley here. In some cases, though, it may be better not to discount.

Rather than policing prices, I think a better approach is to be cautious about where, when, and how much you discount your products.

What do you think?

Do you ever shop around for deals on tea online, that is, deals that go beyond the price listed on the company's main website? How about when buying other sorts of products? For companies: when do you think the best time is to discount? And what do you think of the idea of price policing. Tea companies: would you ever do it? And tea drinkers, do you think it's acceptable for a company to do, or does it undermine the ideals of a market economy?

Frontier Co-op - A Leader In Sustainability

Today's post is the second post inspired by my visit to Mariposa Food Co-op in West Philadelphia. In the first post, I wrote about the tea bag selection in the co-op. This post focuses the company that provides the loose-leaf teas and bulk herbs in the same store: Frontier Co-op:

This station doubles as a showcase or display for the herbs and tea, and a self-serve station where people can fill their own bags of herbs. Although the jars are glass jars, which are not ideal because they allow for some break-down of the herbs with light, the display was located in a dark back corner of the store, minimizing the negative effects of the light.

Pictured here are the implements for filling bags, which include scoops and funnels:

Self-serve setups like this are relatively common in natural food stores and co-ops across the country. There is a lot that I like about these sort of self-serve displays. In particular:

• These displays can offer a large selection of herbs and/or tea while taking up minimal space. The space taken up by the display is smaller than that taken up by many supermarkets' packaged tea bag selections.
• The small size of the jars allows for high turnover of the jars' contents, ensuring freshness.
• The self-service station keeps costs down, enabling customers to purchase tea and herbs for a reasonable price, while the store can still make a comfortable profit, without needing to expend employee time for measuring and serving herbs.
• Allowing people to measure out their own herbs and tea enables people to buy the exact quantity they want. This is convenient both for very small sizes (such as for sampling loose-leaf tea, or buying infrequently-used spices) or very large sizes (such as for someone like me, who goes through ground coriander faster than most households use salt or sugar). Most supermarkets offer only fixed sizes of herbs and spices, which are often either too small or too large for people's needs.

What I like about Frontier Co-Op:

First, before I go into depth about what I like about Co-op, I want to point out that the company not only sells loose-leaf tea and bulk herbs in stores, but also through their website:

Some of the things I like most about Frontier Co-op:

• Frontier is organized as a cooperative, wholly owned by its wholesale customers, many of which are in turn cooperatives, like Mariposa co-op, owned by individual people. The co-op model has a number of compelling advantages over other models of ownership; the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) has a website that explains this model of business ownership in depth.
• Through its displays in retail stores, Frontier makes a wide selection of herbs available that are not widely available in stores in the U.S., and it also sells loose-leaf orthodox teas of decent quality, which, unfortunately do not tend to be widely available in the U.S. either.
• Frontier Co-op is strongly committed to sustainability, and is a definitive leader in this area, going above and beyond even what many of the more environmentally- and ethically-conscious tea companies are doing. There is so much that this organization is doing to promote sustainability that it is not possible to cover it all here; if you want to read more, I'd invite you to read the sustainability section on Frontier's site. Frontier publishes an annual sustainability report, and has a tangible pathway towards achieving certain goals, with measurable milestones. They also have a great deal more transparency than is the norm in the tea industry. Perhaps some other tea companies can get some good ideas and inspiration in here!
• The quality of the bulk herbs is top-notch, and the teas are not bad. Although Frontier unfortunately does not sell what I would consider to be true artisan tea (single-harvest, single-estate teas), they sell a number of single-region orthodox teas of reasonable quality. And their prices are much lower than the prices on similar teas. The low prices, including on products that are both organic and fair trade certified, sold from a company that has gone above and beyond in the area of sustainability, provide proof that tea companies can deliver sustainably-sourced products at low cost. I have tried a few of Frontier's teas, and while they did not wow me as being otherworldly, they were solidly good. You can find reviews of the few teas I've sampled on RateTea's page on Frontier.

I hope that individuals reading this post can have the opportunity to try out Frontier Co-op's herbs, spices, and teas, if they have not already done so. And I hope that people working within the tea industry can look into the various things Frontier is doing to promote sustainability, and can get some good ideas and inspiration. I am hopeful that relatively soon, many of the practices that Frontier is spearheading will become the norm.

What do you think?

Have you tried the teas from Frontier Co-op? How about their herbs and spices? And what do you think about what they are doing to promote sustainability? What do you think of the co-operative model in general? And, for those who work within the tea industry, do you have any plans to implement any of the practices that Frontier has been engaging in in terms of sustainable sourcing, operations, or transparency?

Tea Trade: A Tea Blogging Platform, Online Tea Marketplace, And Forums

Today's post features a website that I have been a big fan of for some time, Tea Trade. Tea Trade, founded by Jackie and Peter Davenport (who also are behind Leafbox Tea), is an extensive online community centering around tea, which offers a very different array of tools from any other online tea community.

I think Tea Trade is of particular interest to individuals, tea bloggers, and people who run very small tea businesses, although people involved in larger tea businesses could also benefit from being aware of and perhaps participating in the community there as well.

The domain name, Teatra.de, is a classic example of a domain hack, using the top-level domain for Germany, .de, to spell out the name.

What does Tea Trade offer?

Tea Trade has several different features, which are all quite well integrated. The simplest to participate in are the forums, which are moderately active, and I find consistently have intelligent and interesting conversation. The site also offers blog hosting, making it the only blogging platform which is custom-tailored to the needs of tea bloggers. And of course, there is the marketplace, the centerpiece of the site, a place that allows individuals to set up mini tea stores.

What do I like about the site?

I find Tea Trade easy to use and navigate, and clean and professional looking. The site is extensive, owing towards the rich contributions made by the members of the site, and I feel that the community and discussion on the site tends towards the more thoughtful and deeper side among online communities. I suspect that this has something to do with the site's emphasis on blogging, which attracts people who are interested in reading, writing, and critical thinking.

The marketplace also offers a unique option for people interested in selling tea, or tea-related merchandise on a small scale. In my post Create The Conditions For Your Business To Thrive: Che Guevara Offers Business Advice, I talk about how people can create businesses out of thin air, avoiding the need for extensive start-up costs, and growing a business organically. Tea Trade offers unique and powerful tools for people looking to start or grow very small businesses, and it also allows people who may not be interested in starting a full-fledged business to dabble with buying or selling tea on a small scale.

Suggestions for improving Tea Trade:

My one major lament about Tea Trade is the site's slow speed and lack of responsiveness. Pages on the site load considerably slower than I am used to (or comfortable with). My experience timing page loads on the site is that the page load times tend to average around 3-6 seconds for the page to display, with many pages taking 4 or so more seconds to load additional content. As I explained in my post on website speed and responsiveness, I think that this is slow enough that it is a point of concern, the "weakest link" in what Tea Trade has to offer.

I would really like to see Tea Trade address the issue of speed. I think improving the speed (ideally to under 1 second page load times, although averaging around 2 seconds across the board would be a really great improvement over the current speed) would be a major improvement to me, and would lead me to want to participate much more in the community there, possibly even hosting a blog there.

Another issue which is worth mentioning is downtime. Nearly all websites experience some downtime; last month, RateTea was down for a few hours, and a few years ago, it was down for around 12 hours. I even encounter major sites like Blogger and Wordpress giving errors or going down from time to time. But I think Tea Trade has experienced enough downtime that I'd recommend for Jackie and Peter to make it a priority to address this issue as well.

In terms of the site itself, I think it is wonderful, and a great resource.

What do you think?

Are you familiar with Tea Trade? Have you bought or sold products through their marketplace? Have any of you had experience with their tea blog hosting? How do you feel about the site's speed and responsiveness? Have you ever experienced the site being down when trying to access it? Do you have anything else to say about the site?

British Oppression: Top 5 Google Searches

When Americans think of tea, many of us think of the British. Nowadays, Americans are more likely to picture the British as pleasant, tea-drinking people, less so in the role of heinous oppressors, imperialists and colonialists. The attitude has shifted quite a ways from the days of the American revolutionary war, in which the United States achieved independence from Great Britain. In contrast to the pre-revolutionary colonies, where the British were seen largely as extracting wealth from the colonies without giving back proportionate value or influence (taxation without representation), the British have more recently been seen as equals and allies.

The history of oppression, imperialism, and colonialism by the British, however, is more recent in some other countries.

Look at the following Google search, which shows Google's top five auto-complete suggestions when typing in British Oppression In:

These suggestions reflect the terms that are most likely typed into the search box.

I find it interesting that the top two results are both major tea-producing countries. This is no coincidence. The British were responsible for introducing large-scale tea production to both India and Kenya. Kenya only achieved independence from Britain in 1963, and India in 1947. It is also no coincidence that the third country, Ireland, is a major tea-drinking country, as the British introduced tea to the Irish.

The legacy of British Colonialism in the tea industry:

The large-scale production of tea in India primarily served British interests, specifically, that of the East India Company. In most cases, freedom from oppression does not come in one step, but rather, is a continuous process. Recall how when slavery was abolished in the U.S., the system of sharecropping and Jim Crow laws still left southern blacks in a position of little power and autonomy relative to whites. Unfortunately, there are economic analogues to this process, not only in the tea industry, but in the economic relationship in general between wealthy Western countries and the countries which had been colonized by them.

It is easy to forget that our society has come a long way, even in relatively recent years. This photo was taken in 1940.

One topic that I have been increasingly thinking and writing about lately is the way, in the tea industry, profits tend to be greatest in the wealthy Western countries, and the share of the final price of a product that reaches the original producers (in countries like Kenya and India) is very small relative to the share that is taken by blenders, packers, and tea marketers in wealthy countries. A report that explores this in more depth is Sustainability Issues in the Tea Sector. This is one reason I both support the goals behind fair trade tea, and think it is important to criticize the fair trade movement to ensure that it is actually achieving what it sets out to do.

Let us be mindful of these issues:

I would like to call people to be aware of these issues, both when buying tea and when selling tea. Thankfully, we are past the days of overt forms of discrimination like Jim Crow laws or colonialism and imperialism, but subtle forms of exploitation persist. The global economic system extracts wealth from poorer regions and keeps the wealth concentrated in already wealthy regions, and, what is perhaps most heinous, it does so in such a way that is largely hidden from the view of not only the typical tea drinker, but many businesses and industry insiders as well.

I think awareness of these issues, and a push for greater transparency in the tea industry, and the economic system in general, is a good first step to take. In the end, I would like us to imagine and bring into being a way of living and doing business which is based on the idea that all people are valuable, and which rewards people equally for equal work, and does not give the people in any one country a disproportionate amount of power or influence in the global economic system.

Honesty and Dishonesty in American Business

Min River Tea recently left a comment on my recent blog post More Is Not Better: How To Balance Freshness and Turnover for Small Tea Companies, highlighting something that I had overlooked in that post. This is the fact that companies with a business model like Min River Tea keep their catalogue small in large part because they want to be able to actually visit the farms producing their teas, both for quality and ethical reasons.

The comment also raises the question of whether or not it is ethical to make claims about tea being "direct from the farm" or practicing "ethical sourcing" without having ever visited the areas in which a tea is produced.

The above photo, by vera46, shows tea pickers in Minamiyamashiro, Kyoto. Photo licensed under CC BY 2.0 license. Like many people who work within the tea industry in the U.S. and other Western countries, I have never visited a region in which tea is produced.

No consensus on what constitutes "ethical" sourcing:

Ethics can be a tricky subject, because different people have different fundamental beliefs or assumptions both about the basis of their moral systems, and about how the world works. An example is the issue of abortion, where people reach vastly different conclusions on the basis of certain beliefs or assumptions, including whether or not they believe human life begins at conception.

In economic matters, things become even muddier, as not only do people have different fundamental values surrounding money, business, and ownership of property, but people also have vastly different ideas about cause-and-effect, and about which sorts of outcomes in society are "good" or "bad". Some people may care primarily about increasing GDP or business activity, others may care more about reducing pollution or carbon emissions, others may care more about reducing human suffering and promoting human rights. This disagreement exists among academic economists, political figures, business leaders, and everyday people.

Disagreement on ethical issues is not necessarily bad, but casual labels of "ethical sourcing" are usually problematic:

I do not necessarily think that it is problematic that there is no consensus about what constitutes "ethical" sourcing. Quite to the contrary, I think that vigorous debate about ethics is healthy and perhaps even essential to address social and economic problems related to the tea industry (or any ethical problems in the world, for that matter). But what I think is more problematic or harmful is that people throw around words like "ethical" or phrases like "ethical sourcing" without explaining what they mean.

Whether one is dealing with the Ethical Tea Partnership, or fair trade certification for tea, there is still little transparency about where most tea comes from. When I buy fair trade tea, I know that there is a whole organization behind the fair trade logo. But I still do not know the exact portion of the price that I am paying that is reaching the individual producer. I do not know what percentage of revenue the company selling the tea to me is taking as profit, and what percentage is spent on business expenses. I do not know what portion of the price goes towards packing and shipping costs, or what portion is spent on marketing. And, in spite of all the bureaucracy and energy expended on the certification process, I still do not know where exactly the tea came from.

True transparency, whether in naturally-occurring minerals, or businesses in American society, is quite rare. Just as a majority of quartz crystals are not as transparent as this one pictured above, a majority of businesses and organizations are quite opaque about key points of ethical relevance.

To me, transparency is a key part of ethics. Without transparency, one lacks even the basic facts of the situation, and without the basic facts, even if one has clear morals, one cannot reach truthful conclusions about the moral or ethical status of a given action or practice. This belief comes in part comes from my religious beliefs, which have been increasingly taking form as I've been working with Why This Way and hashing out my views on different issues in a group of people who share certain foundational values.

Deeper problems with honesty and transparency, not limited to the tea industry:

I think the problem that Min River Tea was getting at in the original comment runs deeper than just the tea industry. Most of consumer culture in America is dominated by claims of dubious honesty, that is, products which are marketed in an overtly dishonest spirit. Often these claims take the form of brief phrases or labels, a lot like the claim of being "ethically sourced".

One of the most glaring, recent examples of this is what I like to call the "0 grams trans fat" loophole. This loophole is the result of a policy or law that specifies that, in food labelling, amounts of trans fat less than 0.5 grams can be rounded down to 0. Another, broader problem is when products are marketed under the guise of being "healthy" when they are loaded with unhealthy ingredients. Two common examples are when "low fat" products are loaded with sugar, or when "whole grain" products are made primarily with refined flour, and contain only insignificant amounts of whole grain.

The above label shows 3 grams of trans fat. If the quantity were less than 1/6th as much, or if the serving size were smaller, it could legally be rounded down to 0 even though the product still contained trans fat.

These practices may satisfy the letter of the laws in the U.S., but I think a majority of Americans would agree that they are thoroughly dishonest in spirit.

I think that part of the problem is that the culture in the U.S. has been one that emphasizes a literalistic, legal-definition-based approach to product advertising. I think this is in large part because we have relied on legal regulation, rather than informed choice and moral integrity, to shape our marketplace.

Taking responsibility to solve these problems:

I believe that the only way to fully and sustainably address the issues of dishonesty in marketing is to take personal responsibility, that is, for all the choices we can make in our daily lives that can impact these issues.

Americans have been tolerating these sorts of practices for years. These products would not be on the shelf if people did not buy them. And marketing teams would not even consider making claims that were dishonest in spirit if they knew that the marketplace would swiftly and severely punish them with product boycotts in the case that they made dishonest claims. Moreover, marketers would not make these claims if they were strongly committed to integrity in marketing, and if their business decisions were driven by their own personal moral values.

It's for this reason that I don't tolerate these sorts of labelling practices. I don't buy these products, but it doesn't stop there. I often write letters to companies urging them to be more forthcoming in their labelling--in the case of trans fats, to remove all trans fats from their products, and in the case of "whole grain" products, to actually make products out of primarily (or exclusively) whole grain flours. But I also appeal to the individual moral conscience of the people who work within these industries. I do believe that most people want to be honest people. People are more likely to get sucked into dishonesty when they are simply not thinking about how much they value honesty. If everyone woke up every morning thinking about how much they valued honesty and integrity, and embraced this as an essential part of their identity, they would likely make different decisions in business settings.

Another way I try to address these issues is to talk and write about them with other people who might buy these products. I talk frequently not only to my friends, but to acquaintances, and to people who I see buying these products, and explain to them about things like the "0 grams trans fat" loophole, and I urge them to avoid products labelled as "low fat" but high in sugar, and to read labels on products labelled as "whole grain" to see that they actually are made primarily from whole grain flour rather than just including it as a minor ingredient.

Putting yourself on the line:

Sometimes I even go out on the line a little. It can be hard to point out concerns like the ones I discussed here, in casual social settings. One example of this is when someone brings a box of cookies to a party, a box that displays marketing that I find dishonest in spirit. It can seem a bit abrasive to comment on things like this, but I do believe it can be done respectfully. Sometimes all you need to say is: "Hey, I would really prefer if you did not buy this product, because I think their marketing is dishonest." and I explain a little bit about why. You can conclude by reassuring the person that it is okay that they brought it and telling them to not feel bad about it, worry about it, or think too much about it.

Some people may not care or may not want to hear it, but if they don't, or if they are offended, that is their issue, not mine or yours. And I do think that a large number of people actually do like to learn about these sorts of issues, and will act on the basis of them. They just never stopped to think about it.

What do you think?

What do you think about the comment that Min River Tea made? What do you think about the lack of transparency in the tea industry? How about the phenomenon of marketing claims that are dishonest in spirit? And of my recommendations of how to address these claims through choice and discussion, without resorting to legal battles?

Tea Being Hip and the Dark Side of Trends

This post is inspired by a recent post on the English Tea Store's blog, written by William I. Lengeman III of Tea Guy speaks, titled How Tea Became Hip. I originally posted a rather detailed comment on that post, but I decided that the material in the comment was important enough to me to warrant a detailed post of its own.

In this post I want to write about the concept or phenomenon of something being "hip", "cool", "trendy", "in", or "the latest thing". And I will make a distinction between what I see as a healthy way of recognizing (and acting on) trends, and an unhealthy way of viewing or chasing them. This is what I describe as the "dark side of trends".

Pictured here is an image representation of a human hip bone; picture by Stephen Woods, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The relationship between the body part and the slang expression is not clear. Wikpedia's article on Hip (slang) has some good discussion on this matter, if you are interested.

Trends are natural, and it is good to be aware of them:

Because this post risks coming across otherwise, I want to begin by acknowledging that trends are a natural part of human society, and that it is good to be aware of them and to work with them in positive ways. It is especially important to be aware of trends if you run a business.

For example, if you run a small tea shop, and some specific type of tea or herb suddenly explodes in popularity, it would be wise to stock the tea or herb in question, if it fits naturally within your offerings. If it does not fit naturally and you wish not to stock it, it would be benificial to have something in mind, such as a truthful and convincing sales pitch, that would help connect customers seeking that tea or herb with the products you sell.

Another example, which I hope to expound fully in a later post, is that Teavana is very popular, and is one of the most common entry points into loose-leaf tea for Americans. Teavana is a bit of a trend. It can thus be beneficial for people running a loose tea business to be familiar with Teavana's most popular products, and to have something compelling to say (and teas to recommend) to people who express that they like certain of the teas sold by Teavana.

The dark side of trends:

Just like in Star Wars, where there is a good and bad side of the force, I think there is a good and bad side to trends, or to the concept of something being "hip". So that you can get into the mood for understanding this dark side of trends, I would encourage you to meditate on this picture of Darth Vader. Darth Vader is one of the classic "bad guys", but, like all people, he is not wholly evil, and he exhibits good qualities when he saves Luke Skywalker's life at the end of the Star Wars Trilogy.

The above picture is included courtesy of Andres Rueda, Licensed under CC BY-2.0.

How does the concept of trends go wrong? How can the idea of something being "in" or "cool" or "the latest thing" be harmful in society?

• Unhealthy ideas can become trendy - A good example of this is the negative ideas of body image, which can contribute to eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. Yes, this is an issue that comes up in the tea industry; see my earlier post on tea and gender roles, in which I go into this issue in more depth.
• Trends can be manipulated by money and power interests - Trends can be shaped (or even started) by money and power, such as when a corporation pumps money into a marketing campaign to create demand for a new product, or when an individual or business uses their social connections (a form of social power) to induce influential or high-profile individuals to support their trend.
  
  Because of the profit motive, these manipulations usually lead to trends that enrich the wealthy and powerful interests behind them, rather than trends that are actually most beneficial to society or beneficial to the people following them. This phenomenon is common in the fashion industry, where companies work hard to fuel trends of certain clothing being "in" and then "out", in order to encourage people to continuously spend more money on clothing, when it would be more beneficial to these people and to society to embrace practical clothing and timeless fashions.
  
  In the tea industry, these sorts of power interests and profit motives are less pronounced, but they do create an incentive for companies to create trends for the teas that generate the most profit for them, and these teas are not necessarily the highest quality teas, since the highest-quality pure teas often result in a greater share of profits reaching the producer, with less room for mark-up by retailers. I explore this issue in more depth on my recent guest post Fair Trade and the Tea Industry on the Journey for Fair Trade blog.
• The concept of "trendiness" can become associated with an unhealthy way of thinking and acting - I explain this below, because I think it is the most sinister element of the culture of trends.

Trendiness and healthy thinking:

One belief that I embrace as a fundamental belief, is the idea that all people are valuable--innately valuable, not valuable because of their wealth, appearance, or even because of their intellect or character. One way that I think trends can become unhealthy are when they are used to negatively judge or dismiss other people (or groups of people, or businesses or organizations) as being somehow less worthwhile, because they are seen as less "trendy". Some examples of this are:

• That dress is SO 90's (when said in a negative tone)
• I can't believe he's still thinking like that (said with disgust)
• This business doesn't sell X, they clearly don't know what they're doing.

These statements have in common that they express some sort of negative judgement on a person, business, or group, like disdain, disgust, disapproval, because of a failure to follow a certain trend. I find that this is overstepping a boundary for me, crossing the line from disapproval or dislike of the activity or action (which is okay by me) to complete dismissal of the person or group (which I do not think is healthy).

Think you don't do these things yourself? I'd be cautious about jumping to the conclusion that you don't. There's one particular example that I've struggled with recently, and that is racism.

This photo of the KKK was taken by a photographer only identified as "Image Editor"; the photo is Licensed under CC BY-2.0.

Racism, at least in its more overt forms, like those symbolized by the KKK (Ku Klux Klan), is "out". It is "uncool". A majority of people in the US not only dislike it, but, in its more extreme forms, find it disgusting, disturbing. The trend in American society is away from overtly racist statements. But when someone makes a remark that you perceive as racist, it is easy to jump on them, in your mind, or even out loud. But there is a difference between calling out a person on their remark, or believing that the remark is genuinely racist and disrespectful, and dismissing the person as a human being. This distinction took me quite some time to grasp; I do not think I had fully grasped it even at the age of 28. I find it hard to communicate this distinction, but here is my best attempt to sum it up:

• The unhealthy approach is to think or say something like: you're a really rotten or worthless human being for thinking or saying that.
• The healthy approach is to communicate something like: you're so much better than a rotten remark like that.

If you struggle with embracing the second way of thinking, remember Darth Vader; if Luke had killed him, he would have himself been killed. Luke, indeed, had tried to kill him repeatedly, and had solidly expressed the first way of thinking (disgust, hate) again and again. Yet Darth Vader still came through and saved Luke's life. If Darth Vader, one of the most famous bad-guys of all time, can come around, think of what a typical KKK member is capable of.

Hopefully, most of us are past (or were never into) the idea of judging another person by how "trendy" their clothing is, but I suspect that many of us still wrestle with the tougher issue of judging or dismissing people on the basis of things they do which we genuinely dislike or are genuinely disgusted by.

What do I do with this?

Because of the potential ugly side to the cultural construct of "trendiness", "coolness", or "hipness", I try to avoid promoting things as being "trendy" or "in", and I invite others to do the same. If you wish to promote something, whether it be a specific tea or type of tea, or a specific concept or idea, or even a certain fashion, I think that the most compelling way to do so is to share your own personal reason for liking it. The same goes for when you dislike something. Share your reasoning or just your feelings or intuition. But I would recommend to avoid making statements about something being "in" or "out", or any equivalent statements, because I think that this way of thinking can easily go in an unhealthy direction.

What do you think?

How do you feel about trends and trendiness? Do you think the advice I give tea companies in this post is sound? Do you believe that there is a relationship between a certain view of trendiness and the unhealthy ways of thinking that I described above? Does the racism example resonate with you? Can you think of other examples of these sorts of things in your life?

Truthfulness: Tea Companies: Be Cautious With Claims of Uniqueness

I recently read a post on SororiTea Sisters, a review of Assam Mothola White (White Assam) from Grey’s Teas. This post shared a commercial description of this tea, from the seller, which claims that "No other white teas are known to be produced in Assam." For those of you who don't know them, Grey's Teas is a tea company, based in the UK, which has quite a few interesting offerings in their catalog, such as an oolong produced in Assam, and white teas from Assam, Darjeeling, and other regions. I have never tried any of their teas though, but the company has definitely gotten my attention.

But their claim about no other white teas being produced in Assam raised a red flag for me. I'm not crazy about the passive voice ("...are known...") as it doesn't identify who is doing the "knowing" (or lack thereof). But I also had a gut feeling that this statement was untrue, when I read it. I have a good intuition for which types of teas, produced in which regions, are available, because of my work on RateTea. I did a quick check, using the powerful tools in RateTea that allow anyone (yes, you can do this too!) to search and filter for teas of a specific type or style, from a specific region. RateTea's listings of White Teas produced in Assam, India turned up 7 results:



Checking this list, I found Upton's offering (since retired from their catalogue) is indeed the same tea sold by Grey's Teas, from Methola or Mothola estate, as is the Assam white tea sold by Canton Tea Co and Stash Tea. But the other teas are different. Many are from Satrupa Tea Estate, and there are several distinct types or grades of tea available from this estate in Assam, all available through the Assam Tea Company, and some through other retailers.

So, this claim of uniqueness is an overstatement; Assam does indeed produce other white teas. I would urge Grey's Teas to update their description to reflect this!

Tea companies: be careful with claims (including uniqueness claims):

I urge companies to be cautious about making claims about your teas which depend on information that you may not have. Uniqueness is one example of this--uniqueness makes a claim not only about the tea you are describing, but about all other teas in an area or of a certain type. When making a claim of uniqueness, unless you have exhaustively travelled to a whole area and checked every estate, I don't think it's safe to make a claim about uniqueness. And keep in mind that producers and sellers may make false claims about their products' uniqueness in order to sell them, so be cautious about passing on a claim of uniqueness that a seller made to you. Instead, say: "We are not aware of any other white teas produced in Assam..."

This statement is more truthful because it speaks from your own personal experience rather than making a global statement. A global statement may or may not be true; a statement of your own personal knowledge is true.

Some ideas for rewording the description from Grey's Teas include:

• "Very few white teas are produced in Assam."
• "This is only one of a few white teas produced in Assam."

It is perfectly possible that Grey's tea wrote their description a long time ago, and that, when it was written, the statement was actually true. It is also possible that the company did not know of any other Assam white teas. In these cases, they could have written:

• "As of [whatever date], this was the only white tea produced in Assam."
• "This tea is to our knowledge the only white tea produced in Assam."
• "When we began carrying it, this was the only white tea we knew of produced in Assam."

These claims are more truthful, and their truth does not change when new information becomes available. This is because they speak from personal experience and/or include dates or historical info rather than making a claim of universal truth. These sorts of descriptions protect a company in the long-run, because they do not require diligently checking the description in the case that something changes and the description is no longer true.

False advertising can become legally problematic:

False claims of the uniqueness of a product are a form of false advertising that can range from a legal gray area to solidly illegal.

I seriously doubt that anyone would want to start a legal battle over something as trivial as the claim mentioned above, but as a general rule, making any false statement about your company's products can open you up to legal exposure, such as lawsuits from customers, competitors, or activist groups, or action from governmental agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. It also can look bad and discourage potential customers from buying your products, especially when you make a statement that a potential buyer knows to be untrue.

To impress potential customers with your knowledge, you want to speak from your experience and limit your marketing to material you know to be 100% truthful. No one knows everything, but it often conveys wisdom when a person communicates that they're aware of exactly where their knowledge ends.

What do you think?

As a tea shopper, how do you react when you encounter a claim that seems to be an overreach? How about if you work within a tea company? How do you react when a competing business makes a claim that somehow infringes on one of the products you sell? Do you consider how things might change in the future when you write descriptions of your products? Do you think that I am being nitpicky here, focusing on a tiny point, or do you think this is getting at an important issue of truthfulness in advertising?

And do you agree that in general, speaking from your direct experience and avoiding uncertain generalizations produces more truthful statements, and statements that retain their truthfulness better as time passes?

Taiping Hou Kui Green Tea, and on Branding, Traceability, and Quality

I recently enjoyed tea with Evan of PluckTea. We brewed up some Taiping Hou Kui, and I took this photograph of the spent leaves, after we brewed several very flavorful infusions from them:



I loved the way the leaves of this tea looked after they had been brewed, and I could not resist photographing them. Evan broke most of the leaves in half before steeping, so they would fit in a small gaiwan; the huge leaves here are thus about half the length that the leaves originally were.

Taiping Hou Kui is a peculiar variety of green tea with exceptionally long leaves, pressed very flat. The leaves pictured here were 2-3 inches in length before being broken. Because they are so flat, it can be hard to intuitively measure out how many of them to brew. I've been struggling with this, as Evan gave me a bit of this tea to take home and enjoy on my own.

More unbranded tea:

I think this was the best batch of this type of green tea that I have tried yet. Unfortunately, Evan had no information on the tea's origins. A friend of his brought the tea back from China, and it did not list any brand or information about its source or how to buy more of it.

I've found that this is often the case with tea bought in China and Taiwan. The whole concept of branding and tracing products is to a large degree Western in origins, and although many Chinese companies and tea producers have embraced this practice (especially since it serves their interests when people like their products and want to buy more), many do not.

A relationship between quality, branding, and traceability?

The whole process of making your products traceable and adding a brand name to them is costly, and does not fit into the way the tea industry often works, with many layers of resellers. A small producer who has no role in the retail end of the tea industry usually must rely on whoever is buying the tea from them to ensure traceability, so they have little agency in encouraging traceability, even though they are the party who stands to benefit most from it.

Branding is a marketing effort and takes considerably time, energy, and financial resources, and traceability of products (with batch numbers, harvest dates, and other info on their origins) requires considerable resources for recordkeeping, as well as demanding a certain organizational know-how and structure which must be present at multiple levels in commerce. I think one can look at branding as a certain simple form of traceability or identifying of products, a first step along the continuum towards more detailed traceability.

One thing I've reflected on in the past is that traceability and brand name recognition has the greatest potential for paying off when the product is high quality. If the product is junk, all the effort will be for nothing, as people will either forget the brand name or form a negative association with it and avoid it in the future.

China, unfortunately, often has a reputation in the U.S. for low quality products. It doesn't surprise me that both branding and traceability of products are less common in China.

What does surprise me is the top-notch quality of some batches of unbranded tea that I try. I've especially noticed this in teas from Taiwan, but I've also encountered it in tea from China. Whenever a tea is top quality, yet offers no identification of its origins (or how to buy more) on its packaging, I see this as a lost business opportunity. Somewhere, some producer put in their work to grow and process some amazing tea. Hopefully, the process of auctions and tastings and competitions will reward them for their hard work, but, I think there is another level, the level of people like me trying their tea and having no clue how to get any more of it, on which there is a lost opportunity.

What do you think?

Have you thought about these issues? And have you tried Taiping hou kui?

Featured Tea Blog: Tea Guy Speaks by William I. Lengeman III

Recently I've been featuring a bunch of tea blogs. This week's post features a completely different tea blog, which I also greatly appreciate, and for completely different reasons from any of the other blogs I have featured recently. This blog is Tea Guy Speaks, run by William I Lengeman III:



What I like about this blog:

Tea Guy Speaks publishes a lot of press releases from within the tea industry, and is a good place to keep up on what is happening among the larger, more mainstream specialty tea companies, but the blog also highlights smaller and less well-known companies as well. The blog frequently shares videos, mostly promotional videos related to tea, and many funny videos. It also showcases various sorts of tea businesses, and occasionally, a tea review or two. But, while I appreciate all these aspects of the blog, there is an additional section that is not particularly blog-like, which is the #1 thing I like about this blog.

"Tea Resources" lists:

The blog also has a few very comprehensive resources which I have mentioned before, but would like to draw attention to. My favorite of these is the tea blog list, an exhaustive list of tea blogs which is one of the best references out there if you want as complete a listing of blogs focused primarily on tea as you will find. Another smaller list is the list of Tea chats, Lists, and Forums, and there is also a list of Tea Review Sites, which includes websites, both interactive and not, that have tea reviews from multiple reviewers.

There are other lists too, a total of eight (the business spotlights are linked to but are in a blog format, not a pure list). These lists are too much for me to really cover in depth...they can all be found in the blog's sidebar, labelled "Tea Resources":



Whether or not you subscribe to it, Tea Guy Speaks is yet another blog that I think is worth knowing about if you are involved in any capacity in the tea industry. If you run a blog, website, tea of the month club, tea room or tea house directory, or other relevant business or website, check the lists to see if your organization is already listed. It probably already is, but if not, Tea Guy Speaks is very responsive about adding new items and keeping these lists up-to-date. And lastly, you can also get in touch with Teaguyspeaks on twitter; he's quite active there, shares and retweets a lot of material, and is a good person to tweet with if you want to get involved in the tea conversation.

Tea Companies: Choosing Which Teas To Sell

This post is oriented towards tea companies, small and large, and is about how to choose which teas to sell. I offer three points of advice:

• When you have a small catalogue, avoid teas too similar to each other.
• Carry a few products that make you stand out.
• Focus first on quality and relevance to your audience.

When you have a small catalogue, avoid teas too similar to each other:

One mistake that I see a lot of companies make is selling teas that are too similar to each other. This sort of thing can happen both with companies with a huge catalogue and those with a very small catalogue. For an example of a company with a small catalogue that has some very similar teas, take Novus Tea. Novus is a high-end brand owned by Bigelow tea, which sells packaged whole-leaf tea in pyramid sachets.

Novus only has 14 offerings, yet there are a couple of their teas and herbal teas that I personally find to be very similar to each other. For a few examples, both their Persian Pomegranate Herbal Tea and Wild Encounter Herb Tea are fruity herbal blends with a red color and sour flavor. Another example is that they sell four distinct pure black teas: a Darjeeling, a South Indian Black Tea, and both a caffeinated and decaf version of a Ceylon tea. I personally think they would do well to reduce one or two of these duplicates, and instead add something not covered, like a Rooibos, an oolong, or an herbal tea with a radically different flavor, like tulsi / holy basil.

As usual, I'm picking on Novus because I like them. I've been consistently impressed by their teas; the only teas of theirs that I am not a fan of are ones that are in a style that I tend to not like...such as the sour herbal blends. It may not make sense for Novus to adjust their catalogue now. If the teas are selling well, they probably already have their loyal fans, and it might do more damage to retire them even if the newer configuration were more optimal. But I find this principle can be very helpful when considering teas to carry in the first place.

Carry a few products that make you stand out:

Although it can be risky from a business perspective to make your entire catalogue consist of "unusual" offerings, carrying a few teas that are hard to find, and are not well-represented in the market in your country, can make you stand out. These offerings can draw in new customers who have never purchased tea from your brand before, because they will be looking for a specific type of tea. They can also keep customers loyal to you, if someone finds they like a particular kind of tea and you are the only company or only one of a few that sells it.

A few examples of this are:

• Upton Tea Imports stands out by offering pure teas from unusual regions, regions whose single-origin teas are not typically available in the west. They also carry a few herbs that are hard to find, like Lemon Myrtle. And they are one of the few companies to sell tea flowers, along with Rishi Tea and the Taste of Tea.
• Rishi Tea stands out as being the only source of fair trade certified teas of certain varieties. Want Fair Trade Yellow tea? Rishi is, to my knowledge, the only source. They are one of a few companies offering fair trade Keemun (see Little Red Cup) and fair trade Dian Hong / Yunnan black tea (also see Arbor Teas, Octavia Tea, and Cha Cha tea, although Rishi still has the most offerings).
• Numi Tea and Republic of Tea are, to my knowledge, the only companies to sell green rooibos in tea bags; both are organic certified.
• Carrying an esoteric offering, like an oolong produced in Japan, Indonesia, or Kenya, or a white tea produced in Taiwan, Tanzania, Bangladesh, or any tea produced in the United States, will instantly set you apart. Keep in mind though, don't carry these just to carry them, make sure you're selling a top-notch tea.

Focus first on quality and relevance to your audience:

You may feel compelled to add a particular tea because it seems interesting, or seems to fill a gap in your catalogue, but remember, these factors are small relative to quality and relevance to your audience. Quality goes without saying: it is never worth compromising your quality standards just because a tea looks or sounds interesting.

Appealing to your audience can be more involved. For example, certain oolong teas from Nepal or Darjeeling may seem interesting and may even be top-notch if prepared properly, but if a particular tea is picky about brewing, and if your customers are primarily used to easy-to-brew Chinese or Taiwanese oolongs, you may disappoint your customers with such a tea. Another such tip would be, if your customers are used to darker, bolder-flavored teas, I'd recommend avoiding silver needle, and instead stocking a more robust white tea like bai mu dan or shou mei, or, if you do want to sell silver needle, locate a particularly robust example of it (Teas Etc's Tanzanian Silver Needle impressed me in this regard).

Tea Companies Are Like People: Neither All Good Nor Evil

Recently, I've been involved in starting a novel religious group called Why This Way. One of the topics that we have discussed at length in the group is the idea of viewing people as whole people, rather than characterizing them in one-sided ways. In Why This Way, we have taken great care to agree on how we want to communicate with each other, and one of the key rules of communication we have agreed upon is that we do not want to attach subjective negative labels to people or groups of people.

In this post I want to explore the same concept as applied to tea companies. Tea companies are groups of people, made up of employees and owners. In the context of tea companies, some examples of subjective negative labels might be:

• Such-and-such company is an evil corporation.
• XYZ tea company is totally incompetent.
• That company is one giant scam.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, some of this may sound familiar, from my earlier post Constructive Criticism vs. Diatribes & Rants. If you've been reading my blog for even longer, you might find that I myself have not always been consistent about following this rule. This is in large part because it has only been recently in my life that I have come to learn the value of being conscious of these sorts of statements while communicating. So, before you say: "You are a hypocrite!" (A subjective negative label.) I want to come clean and admit that, if you look at my whole record of behavior and communication, yes, you will find certain hypocritical actions. But I am committed to following this sort of rule...it does not mean I will always do so perfectly, just that it is something I value.

In our group, we discussed many reasons for creating this rule. A lot of it, however, comes down to the fact that these sorts of statements are not truthful. Beyond this, however, we agreed that these sorts of statements tend not to be empowering, in that they are not good for effecting change in the world, and they also tend to have polarizing effects on people, often making people become defensive and making it less likely for them to listen. I want to delve into the question of the truthfulness of these statements.

People and tea companies are never wholly evil (nor wholly good):

The following picture shows the famous illustration of the devil, from the Codex Gigas, a famous medieval manuscript:

I find the devil to be an interesting concept. Whether viewed as a real entity, a spiritual abstraction, or a mythological entity, the devil is usually agreed to be wholly evil. People and tea companies, on the other hand, are never wholly evil (nor are they wholly good). Most people would agree that the first statement above about a company being an "evil corporation" is a subjective negative label, and a sort of exaggeration or distortion of truth. Corporations may do some harmful things, including things that are dishonest or even illegal, and they may act in ways that seem to show a prioritization of profit above the good of society, but it isn't terribly useful to characterize them as "evil", because even ones that ruthlessly pursue profits will usually carry out some positive functions in society, and even if the management is pursuing profit at all costs, there may be other employees within the corporation acting in more caring ways.

The second statement seems a little less strongly worded, but upon reflection, one realizes that it is also limited in its truthfulness. Competence (and incompetence) is relative, and the mere fact that a company is still in existence in some form or another shows a certain base level of competence. If a company (and all its employees) were truly "totally incompetent", it would not exist.

What about the third statement? I want to use this example because there are some companies out there that run scams, such as using false information to sell their products, or pocketing money and leaving creditors unpaid when a business folds. But is it necessarily useful or constructive to call a company something globally negative, like "one giant scam"?

An example: what exactly is a "scam" tea company?

In the course of my work on RateTea, I have come into contact with a broad range of tea companies. None of them is without flaws, but, no matter how bad any one of them gets, there is always a way it could be worse. There comes a point at which I make a decision (sometimes somewhat arbitrary) of whether or not to list the company on RateTea, but there is a whole range of tea companies out there. Let me give you an example of some companies that fall into the grey area:

• There are quite a few tea companies which sell high-quality tea, honestly labelled, at reasonable prices, and provide good customer service, but provide some false information, often about health or caffeine content, on their website, in order to promote their products.
• There are some tea companies which sell very low-quality tea, which, in my opinion, is not really worth buying (or drinking). As an example, I've received a few tea samples that I've thrown out without drinking. Thankfully, these sorts of examples are rare.
• There are some websites which look a little like tea company websites, but which consist exclusively of affiliate links to other websites--what looks superficially like a legitimate business is just a commission-based model. Thankfully, I've actually seen a pretty steep decline in these sorts of websites over the three years that I've been working on RateTea, which may be in part due to Google and other search engines getting smarter about preventing these sorts of people from drawing in web traffic.
• Some tea companies may sell decent-quality tea at a decent price, but use black hat (unethical) search engine optimization techniques to manipulate their visibility in search engines.
• I've encountered allegations of one company deliberately misrepresenting their products, and then going out of business, leaving a large amount of debt unpaid.
• There are a large number of companies that sell low-quality tea at high prices, promoted as a weight loss product. These companies range from packaged brands which actually can be found in some stores, to online companies consisting of a very simple website selling a single product. Some of these sites also do not sell directly, but just make money through affiliate links like the others mentioned above.

These sorts of situations are quite different from each other in their level of "scamminess", but they are also different from each other in how they are like scams.

I find it problematic to call a company a "scam" because this sort of statement does not communicate exactly what is going on. A global statement about a tea company being a complete scam communicates neither the severity nor type of scam being carried out. Also, from the perspective of the tea company, levying an accusation of being a "scam" seems like a hostile action intended only to harm the company, rather than a constructive criticism intended to encourage the company to improve its practices. If a company has some flaws, it can work to improve them, but if it is a "scam" the implication is that its whole business model is fraudulent and that it is beyond hope. And companies, even ones running the most harmful, overt scams, are still run by people, and like companies, people always have some redeeming good qualities.

I also find it problematic because people often use this sort of word in situations where it is not warranted. For example, I have seen people throw around these sorts of accusations in response to a bad customer service experience like a botched order that a company did not correct or handle to the customer's satisfaction.

If you want your message to be heard:

Making strong statements like calling a company evil, or calling a company a scam, in my opinion, is not the best way to get your message across. Although this sort of statement may attract attention, it is unlikely to encourage the company to improve its ethics or practices. And in the cases where a company really has done something egregiously terrible, I think it is best to communicate exactly what the company did, and let the action in question speak for itself.

Please hold me to these standards:

I have one last request for readers of this blog. If you see me making these sorts of statements about any tea company, any person, or any other group of people, please call me out on it. Like I said above, if you've read my blog for a long time you will realize that sometimes I have made these sorts of statements in the past. My work with Why This Way has inspired me to hold myself to a higher standard of communication, but it is hard to accomplish these sorts of changes alone, so I'd appreciate it if you can bug me if you see me slipping into any of these sorts of negative generalizations about people or groups of people. Thank you!

What do you think?

Do you agree with my general advice here? Have you ever thought about these sorts of issues? Are you willing to give me a hard time and call me out if you see me making these sorts of statements?

Updates to Article on Caffeine in Tea, And One Company's Studies on Caffeine and Antioxidants

On my recent post Scientific Research I'd Like To See Done on Tea's Caffeine, Vitamin C, etc., I had some useful comments which pointed me to some published studies which I did not know about. Eetu Mäkelä shared a ton of useful studies, a few of which I knew of but many of which I did not. I've begun to incorporate some of the new information into RateTea, but as much of it is not public access and I no longer am within a university environment, it will be a slow process. But already, I've made a few substantive changes to the article on the caffeine content of tea, shown here:

One interesting source:

There is one particular source that I've added that I think might be interesting for people who are really interested in this topic, a study by Camellia Sinensis Tea House on the caffeine content of their teas, which you can find published on their page on Tea and Health. I want to thank Guillaume TR for sharing this study with me. This study reinforces the same general trend that already was established by the article and the other sources, that it is not possible to generalize about caffeine content as a function of broad types of tea (black, green, white, oolong, etc.)

This table, a screenshot of the study, shows a few key points that I like about this study: it shows that the amount of leaf was standardized, and it clearly shows the conditions each tea were brewed in, and it studies the teas using recommended brewing temperatures and infusion times, thus comparing the teas as they would be likely to be consumed, rather than using the same brewing time and temperature for teas that most tea drinkers are going to brew in different ways.

I found this study interesting to read over, looking at the particular values, but I also found the fact that this study was even carried out at all to be rather interesting. Camellia Sinensis Tea House is not the biggest company, and yet they had the resources and drive to carry out this study on a fairly large selection of their teas. I find this encouraging, as it suggests to me that similar studies would be realistic for a large number of tea companies.

A study on antioxidants:

The same company also did a study of antioxidant content. Personally, I'm a little less interested in this study, mainly for the reason that the more I learn about antioxidants, the more I realize that, when it comes to antioxidants, more is not better. RateTea's page on the antioxidants in tea explains more, and the section "Potential Health Effects" on Wikipedia's Antioxidants page goes into more depth about this. One thing is clear though from the results of the antioxidant study: there's no trend of one type of tea (green, black, etc.), or of steamed (Japanese) vs. pan-fired (Chinese) teas, or even of higher vs. lower priced or graded teas being higher or lower in antioxidants. Matcha, however, does stand out for the simple reason that you are consuming the whole leaf when drinking it.

What do you think?

Do you think you can trust the values established by a study like the one provided here? Do you think it would be beneficial in any way (to the business, or to tea culture in general) for tea companies to carry out studies of the caffeine content of the specific teas in their catalogues? Do you think the antioxidant studies are worthwhile, or are you skeptical of them, like me?