SpecialTeas - Featured Defunct Tea Company

Back in June I featured an inactive tea blog, Tea Nerd. Today I follow suit by featuring a defunct tea company, SpecialTeas. SpecialTeas was still in business when I founded RateTea, but I did not have the opportunity to actually try any of their teas until after the company closed.

Most of what I know about this company is from reading the reviews and commentary of others. Here is a screenshot of the company's website in April of 2008, a typical example of what it looked like:

What did I like about SpecialTeas?

• A clear focus on single-origin pure teas - Although SpecialTeas had quite a selection of blends and herbal teas as well, the company had a strong emphasis on single-origin pure teas. The website classified tea both by type and region, drawing attention to the influence of region on tea.
• Large and diverse selection - SpecialTeas had a very large selection, not only carrying many different types of tea but many specific teas of certain types, such as a rather large selection of Chinese green teas and Indian black teas.
• Good prices - The prices of the few teas from this company that I tried were quite reasonable, and I heard good things about the company's prices from people who had sampled more of the company's teas. All but a few of the ratings of this company's teas on RateTea give this company 5/5 or 4/5 on value.

If you want to read what is probably going to be my last ever review of this company, I recently posted a review of SpecialTeas 546 Mountain Peak Mao Feng Organic, a green tea from Zhejiang province which was quite pleasing.

Why did SpecialTeas close?

SpecialTeas was bought out by Teavana, and then closed. The buyout may have happened as early as 2005, even though SpecialTeas remained open for years after that; there's some strongly suggestive evidence for this buyout highlighted on RateTea's page on SpecialTeas. In 2005, the company was bought by a company that shared a business address and two key corporate officers with Teavana. The company has now officially announced that SpecialTeas has been merged into Teavana. The domain name specialteas.com now redirects to a page on Teavana's website announcing this merger, and offering free shipping to former customers of SpecialTeas. You can use this as a clever trick if you wish to obtain free shipping when buying from Teavana's website.

I personally think that much was lost when Teavana closed SpecialTeas. The two companies had quite different selection and pricing. SpecialTeas in particular had a much broader selection of single origin pure teas, and their prices also tended to be lower. I also never heard any complaints about pushy sales practices associated with SpecialTeas, which has unfortunately been a persistent complaint about Teavana, although to be fair, SpecialTeas did not have physical store locations of its own so it is hard to compare the two companies on this level.

Dragonwater Tea closes:

As another loss, there used to be a company named Dragonwater tea, which was supplied by SpecialTeas, and which closed when SpecialTeas was closed. I learned about this company through a 2009 thread on TeaChat about Teavana and SpecialTeas, in which people were speculating about the relationship between these two companies before any information had been made public officially. I found it interesting to learn about this company, because it showed how value can be lost in society when a company buys out its supplier and closes it.

The economics and ethics of the buyout:

Acquisition of a competitor is a prime example of an anti-competitive practice, generally agreed on by economists as having a negative effect on the economy because it reduces competition and thus reduces market efficiency. As such, these sorts of buyouts and closings raise ethical concerns for me. They are usually legal (with the exception of certain buyouts, restricted under US anti-trust law), but I am not convinced that they are the most ethical decision. I recognize that people have different values and beliefs about business and economics, but personally, I believe anti-competitive business behavior to be something that is often unethical.

Beyond ethical concerns about indirect economic effects, in the tea industry there is an additional, more direct ethical and human rights concern related to anti-competitive behavior. If a company buys out and closes a competitor that sells the same tea for a lower price, leaving the tea only available on the market at the higher price, the result of people buying the tea at the higher price is that a smaller portion of the money being spent on tea reaches the original producer. This causes wealth to concentrate in the already wealthy country, keeping the poorer producing country poor.

This is also a matter that concerns me.

What do you think?

Did you ever try SpecialTeas? What do you think of their buyout and closing by Teavana? Do you think Teavana provides a comparable experience to SpecialTeas, or has something of value been lost by the closing of this company? Do you think that this buyout constitutes anti-competitive behavior, or just part of normal, healthy business activity? Have you ever thought about how this sort of buyout could hinder fair wages for tea producers by causing wealth to concentrate in already-wealthier Western countries?

Black Dragon Tea Bar: Featured Tea Blog

It has been some time since I featured a tea blog. Today's featured blog is Black Dragon Tea Bar, a Seattle-based blog run by Brett Boynton, who, together with Virginia Wright, or Cinnabar, of Gongfu Girl, runs the small tea company Phoenix Tea.

The name of this blog is a clear reference to Oolong tea, Chinese 烏龍茶 or 乌龙茶, Pinyin wūlóng chá, which is literally translated as "Black Dragon Tea". The blog does have a lot of material on oolongs, but it is much broader.

What do I like about this blog?

• Breadth and diversity of topics - There are surprisingly many tea blogs written by people with a lot of deep knowledge and experience with tea and Chinese tea culture. What makes this particular blog stand out is its breadth, focusing at times on the tea itself, on the process of drinking it, but on other times covering tea production, or even tangential topics like tea seed oil (not the same as tea tree oil; this one is actually made from the tea plant).
• First-hand accounts from regions of tea productions - Brett Travels to regions of tea production, particularly, Taiwan. Not only are the direct travel accounts interesting on their own, but the fact that Brett travels makes me more likely to trust his knowledge of tea production and the teas themselves, especially from the regions in which he has traveled.
• Brett is clearly an experimenter - I noticed this pretty quickly when I started reading this blog, and it is one of the aspects of the blog that keeps me seriously engaged with it. A couple recent examples of Brett's experimenting include a side-by-side cupping of broken-leaf Wenshan Baozhong, and a roasting experiment involving 2006 rou gui oolong. I love both the desire to experiment with elements of tea production or aging like roasting, and the practice of side-by-side comparisons, which allow for more objective gathering of information than comparing teas to memory.
• Brett is a gardener and writes about it - Not only does Brett garden, he grows the tea plant in Seattle, and he also shares interesting tidbits from his other gardening adventures on his blog. And like me, he gets excited when vegetables overwinter in his garden! I especially recommend reading Brett's accounts of growing the tea plant, such as this may 2009 report explaining something about production and the more recent July 2012 report of an attempt at making oolong. Yet another thing I love about this blog!

Urban herbs:

One last thing I want to draw attention to about this blog is the Urban Herbs series, which relates both to Brett's broad interest in plants and gardening, and experience of tea and herbal infusions. Brett has set out to locate various herbs growing wild in the urban environment, and steep them as herbal teas.

I find this fascinating, both because I also share a desire to steep and drink infusions of various herbs other than the tea plant, and experience them with a richness similar to that of tea itself, and also because I love experiencing wild-harvested food and herbs, as I find it helps one to learn more about and become more connected to the local ecosystems.

Here is the entirety of the series, so far:

• 1. Wild Chamomile or Pineappleweed
• 2. Fennel Seed
• 3. Lemon Balm
• 4. Blackberry Leaf
• 5. Sage
• 6. Plantain (The leafy plant, not the banana-like fruit)

There's a lot to love about this blog, so I recommend checking it out, whether you're interested in oolong, tea production in Taiwan, tea culture in the US, growing tea in your own back yard, harvesting wild herbs in an urban environment, or (like me), all of the above!

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?

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?

More Is Not Better: How To Balance Freshness and Turnover for Small Tea Companies

This page highlights a business mistake that I see dozens of small tea businesses, mainly small tea shops and tea houses, making. This is carrying too many teas. But beyond just recommending small companies to carry fewer teas, I also want to provide deeper advice about how to effectively manage your stock of teas when you have a small turnover. This advice comes both from my experience as a tea shopper, my experience working with tea businesses through RateTea, and my past experience working in retail establishments -- many of these issues are the same for any business that sells perishable goods.

I will be the first to admit that I love a good selection. My favorite tea company, Upton Tea Imports, has a huge selection (currently over 480 teas), but selection is always less important than other factors, including quality and price.



Above is a picture I took this past October, in Cups and Chairs Tea Shop in Philadelphia, which I reviewed in that earlier post. This photo shows 61 teas, in glass jars. The actual tea that is used for brewing or for sale is stored in airtight, opaque tins, but these small samples are exposed to light in this bright storefront, leading them to degrade in color and aroma.

Given the relatively low traffic in this store, I can't help but wonder how much turnover in the teas this company has. I strongly suspect that this store may be incurring losses associated with carrying more teas than can be justified by its level of traffic, as I explain below.

You need a high turnover to justify a large catalog:

The main problem with a large catalog is freshness. Tea does not stay fresh indefinitely. A higher turnover can justify a larger catalog, because more of your company's teas will sell out, and you can keep them fresh by frequent restocking with fresh batches.

Offering a huge selection of teas for sale might initially excite people, but, once those initial batches of tea go stale, you will either be faced with a large loss from products you did not sell, or a dying business as you fail to impress people with your stale tea. Tea that is not fresh is not going to keep people coming back to your store, and it's not going to attract die-hard tea enthusiasts who are likely to do some free work for you, promoting your business. In order to retain customers, you need high-quality tea.

Balancing selection and freshness when you have low turnover:

If you run a small tea company and are struggling with low turnover, there are several things you can do to achieve an optimal balance between selection and freshness of your teas:

• Put more care in choosing which teas to sell, so that you can get the most mileage out of a smaller selection. I offer detailed advice on this topic in my recent post about choosing which teas to sell.
• Throw out stale tea rather than selling it. While this results in a short-term loss, it avoids the negative results of selling stale tea, which can turn customers away and result in permanent or long-term losses.
• Use sales and deep discounts to sell tea before it goes stale - If you find yourself stuck with a batch of something that is not selling, put a deep discount on it so that it sells out, and try to empty it out of your stock before it goes stale. This allows you to recover some of the loss, without disappointing a customer with stale tea. Discounting can sometimes also draw in new customers hunting for a bargain.
• Highlight teas that are not selling before you need to discount them - If it looks like you are going to end up with a batch of tea that you might be tempted to discount, try highlighting it in your store or catalogue. There was probably a reason you chose to carry it in the first place, so it is likely that if you draw attention to it so that your customers buy it, someone will enjoy it.
• Order smaller quantities of each tea, so that you can order more frequently even if your turnover is low. This also minimizes any losses from throwing out or discounting stale tea. Although smaller quantities tend to cost more, you will tend to save money if you manage to keep your orders close to the amount you actually sell. If your wholesaler doesn't sell in quantities small enough to work for your constraints, find a source that does; the smallest shops, and tea rooms, can even consider buying some tea from a company that focuses on retail, as these tend to offer smaller quantities. Keep in mind, you can sell teas from a variety of different sources.
• Rotate and vary selections rather than keeping your whole catalog in stock at all times. This allows you to provide greater variety to your customers, without incurring the greater costs of keeping more teas in stock. You will notice that even many companies with a large selection, like Upton, frequently vary their offerings.
• Be okay with selling out of less popular teas - If you are effective at managing your catalog, you can effectively avoid almost all waste. Throwing out tea, selling stale tea, or offering a deep discount, are all generally worse outcomes than temporarily selling out of a product. If a product is popular, you can keep it both fresh and continuously stocked. But if the product is not popular, people will be much less likely to miss it while you restock. Estimate the amount of tea that people are buying and then under-stock the more esoteric teas to avoid waste. Focus on keeping your popular teas stocked, and always having enough of a selection to keep your catalog interesting, and you'll be fine. In some cases, under-stocking teas could even impress customers because they may be more likely to perceive a tea as rare or difficult to obtain. And tea connoisseurs will understand and appreciate that you don't over-order because you value freshness and and want to keep your waste to a minimum.

I'd probably still discourage a small tea shop, tea room, or tea bar from selling as many as 61 varieties of tea, unless they had an exceptionally high turnover. The Ten Ren store in Chinatown in New York can get away with this. A small tea shop in a small town, or even a small tea shop in a peripheral part of a medium-sized city, probably cannot. But, if you are clever, you can find ways to achieve both selection and freshness. The same goes for small online companies: if you have little sales volume, don't carry hundreds of teas, because you won't be able to keep them both fresh and in stock.

If you want some inspiration, in the form of examples of companies stocking fewer teas, I'll point to Little Red Cup, Chan Teas, and Min River Tea Farm. These three companies have taken a more minimalist approach to their catalogue, probably in large part due to the constraints discussed in this post. Even having never tried any of their teas, I'd be more likely to guess that their teas are higher in quality than other similarly small companies with huge catalogs.

What do you think?

What are your experiences with tea shops and online tea companies? Are you often turned off by companies that display a huge selection but below-average quality or freshness? What do you think the optimal amount of selection is for a small brick-and-mortar store? And if you run a tea business, whether one with a storefront, or a strictly online or mail-order store, how do you deal with these issues? Do you find the advice offered here to be useful and the reasoning valid?

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?

Rishi Tea - Featured Tea Company

Today's feature is about Rishi Tea. Rishi Tea has been one of my favorite tea companies for a long time, since before I started RateTea.

In case you haven't visited it recently, Rishi redesigned their website. I like this website a lot more than the old one, which I liked a lot, although there's a small caveat about this new site which I describe below.



What I like about Rishi Tea:

• Huge selection of organic and fair trade offerings - Rishi is a clear leader in the area of sustainability, and in particular, Fair Trade certified loose-leaf tea. Although there are several newer companies that also focus on loose-leaf fair trade teas, including Arbor Teas and Shanti Tea, both of which I have had positive experiences with, Rishi was around long before these other companies. One thing I like about Rishi is that they go above and beyond; rather than focusing exclusively on fair trade certification, they also sell a number of traditionally produced Chinese teas that are produced by small growers but are neither organic nor fair trade certified. Rishi is also involved in the development of new varieties of tea, working with farmers pioneering new production methods, and those carrying traditional methods into new regions.
• Teas with a bold flavor - As I recently mentioned in my post about the aesthetics of different tea companies, I find that, to me, Rishi has its own signature qualities, reflected in the flavors and aromas of their teas. And I find that Rishi tends to select teas that have bolder flavors and are more likely to be edgy, stronger, and, in my opinion, more interesting. Rishi's aesthetic seems quite different from that of any other company, and different from both the aesthetic of mainstream British tea culture and Chinese and Japanese tea culture.
• Unusual teas - Although Rishi does sell quite a few standard types of tea, what excites me more is how their catalogue is chock full of what I would consider "unusual offerings", including both types of tea not widely available in Western countries, and styles of tea produced in regions in which they are not typically produced, like black tea from Taiwan, or Keemun produced in Hubei province. Rishi seems to be a prime example of a company that follows the sort of advice I gave in my recent post about choosing which teas to sell.
• Teas sold by individual ounce - I like that Rishi sells teas in the size as small as an ounce (about 28 grams). This is larger than most companies' sample sizes, but small enough that you are unlikely to spend a lot of money to end up with a lot of tea you don't like. The larger sample size of one ounce gives enough leaf to experiment several time with gong fu style brewing, and enables you to try a tea over time and acquire a taste for it, which I find may be important with Rishi because some of their teas tend towards the more bitter side and have many aspects of aroma which may be unfamiliar at first, but very pleasing as one develops a taste for them.

Rishi's teas are markedly pricier than most of the other companies that I like to buy from, like Upton Tea Imports. But I find that the premium is worth paying for, not only because of their focus on sustainability, but because of the quality of the tea itself. And even though many of their teas do have slightly higher pricing, they still have a broad range of pricing, and many inexpensive offerings as well.

A quibble about the new website:

One little quibble, in case anyone from Rishi is reading, and a piece of advice to other web designers. It seems highly unnatural to me to see the "Sign up for our e-newsletter" box in the upper-right corner. Convention on the web is for search boxes to appear in the upper right of a webpage. Rishi's search box is pushed lower down on the page. I find myself repeatedly returning to Rishi's site and typing search terms into the newsletter subscription box. The presence of this box is annoying, to say the least.



The screenshot above shows that, on my browser, the search box is awkwardly pushed down below the header, overlapping other interactive features on the site, like the sorting of teas. This is a small complaint, and hopefully the bumping down of this box out of the header is a simple bug that can be quickly fixed; overall, I love the new website, and I especially like Rishi's teas and the company's philosophy and approach.

Have you tried Rishi?

Do you also like the aesthetic of Rishi's teas? And do you like their approach of encouraging the production of teas of a particular style, in new regions? Do you like the distribution of teas in their catalogue? Do you like their new website?

Grasping The Aesthetic Of A Tea Company

In the course of sampling teas and reviewing them, I often go through a process with a new or unfamiliar tea company, in which I move from having no familiarity with the company, to trying one, two, three, and then more teas. Eventually, I form an impression of the company. Besides reflecting on the business, customer service, pricing, and presentational aspects of the company, I also form an impression of what I'd like to call the aesthetic of the tea company's teas. This aesthetic represents what I think of how the company's teas tend to differ from other company's teas, or how they tend to deviate from average or "typical" examples of each type of tea.

The aesthetic of a tea company is a bit of a nebulous concept, like this Lagoon Nebula pictured below, but, like this nebula, it is still a real concept that can, in some cases, be described in words:



Aesthetic can take the form of teas being sweeter or more bitter than typical, or of teas performing better under western-style brewing or gong-fu-style brewing, of the leaf of teas having certain characteristics of color, shape, or form, or of certain aromas being more or less represented than typical.

When comparing similar teas, aesthetic is sometimes subtle. For the most part, if you try a bunch of the same type of tea (like dragon well green tea, or Keemun black tea) from different companies, you'll be trying similar teas. But you will also probably notice certain trends even in these cases, if you pay enough attention. And, when looking at a company's whole catalogue, you will notice much larger trends in terms of which teas they choose to stock.

Some examples of a company's aesthetic that I've noticed:

• Rare Tea Republic struck me as carrying a lot of smoother-than-average teas that had a moderately vegetal flavor, more vegetal than typical, especially for their black teas, but not overwhelmingly vegetal.
• Adagio Teas has seemed to me to carry teas which tend towards a sweeter flavor, with lighter aromas, although they certainly have some exceptions as well.
• TeaVivre's teas struck me as more aromatic than most Chinese teas for sale in the west. Each tea of a familiar style that I tried, conformed closely to the "typical" examples, with traditionally more bitter teas tasting more bitter and traditionally smoother teas tasting smoother.
• Rishi Tea seems to often have bold, edgy teas, with atypical aromas and strong flavors, often a little out of my comfort zone, but always making my tea-drinking experience enjoyable.
• Life in Teacup seems to have a decidedly non-western focus, with more teas that initially taste quite different to a western palate. The company also carries a lot of teas that are less well-known in the West. This company's teas are more likely to strike me as a bit strange, but I've found, they are also more likely to excite me, and I'm more likely to find teas I consider to be truly exceptional from Life in Teacup than from most other companies.
• Simpson and Vail, whose teas I've been sampling recently, seem to have dry leaf that is less aromatic than typical, but I find that their teas are much more pleasant to drink than I'd expect from the aroma of the dry leaf.

Some companies, like Upton, are so diverse that it's hard for me to describe an aesthetic of the company as a whole. And in most cases, I haven't formed enough of an impression to describe a company's aesthetic.

Forming an impression of aesthetic:

In order for me to form what I would consider to be a very solid impression of the company, I like to do the following things:

• Sample some teas that represent the company's strengths - I think that a company's strengths and areas of focus say more about the company than random teas. Even in cases where a company specializes in a type of tea I am less familiar with, I want to really delve into the specialized offerings. When a company offers me samples, I like to accept at least a few samples that the company wants me to try, and that I may initially be less enthusiastic about. Sometimes, like with Rishi Tea's Vanilla Mint Pu-erh, which I would have never chosen to sample on my own, I am pleasantly surprised.
• Sample some of the company's most unique offerings - A recent example of this would be sampling Shanti Tea's Los Andes tea from Guatemala (my review).
• Sample some teas of styles which I am very familiar with - If I try only unfamiliar teas, I don't have a great sense of how the company's teas compare with others, both in terms of quality, and character.

The aesthetic begins to take form:

Once I've begun to sample a sizeable portion of teas from a particular brand or company, I begin to form an impression in my head about what that company's aesthetic is. Every tea company that I have sampled teas from has had its own unique stamp, signature, or characteristic aesthetic, but in some cases, it has been more overt, whereas in other cases, it has been subtle. This aesthetic reflects the decisions of the company's staff in which teas they choose to stock and sell. It also reflects the company's audience, and it may also reflect the companies practices of packing and storing teas, as these influence the tea's flavor as well. For example, I suspect that TeaVivre's loose-leaf tea is so aromatic because it is packed and sealed closer to the source of production and not re-opened after being shipped to the US, in contrast to some companies which import tea and then re-package it.

What do you think?

Do you think that the "aesthetic of a tea company" is a useful concept? Have you formed any impressions about the aesthetics of any tea companies yourself, whether or not you call them by this name? If you've formed an impression of the tea companies I mention here, does your impression fit with mine, or do you have a different view of any of these companies?

Featured Tea Company: Two Leaves and a Bud

Today's featured tea company is Two Leaves and a Bud. The company also recently launched a new brand, Paisley Tea Co., focusing on more British-style teas.

Pictured is a screenshot from their website:



Two Leaves and a Bud is a tea company that focuses on high-quality tea in pyramid sachets. Their name is a reference to the standard plucking of two leaves and one bud, used for many standard grades of tea. Their teas are available in upscale supermarkets and also are served in a number of coffee shops.

My experience with this company and its teas:

I became familiar with this brand, and sampled most of their teas, when I lived in Delaware and would work on my laptop from Saxby's Coffee. Much of RateTea was programmed and designed from that coffee shop. You can find my reviews of these teas along with reviews by other people (this brand is one of the most often-reviewed brands on RateTea) on RateTea's page for Two Leaves and a Bud. I have yet to try any of the newer Paisley Tea Co. teas.

Personally, I cannot see myself ever buying this company's boxes of tea sachets. Buying them online, a box of 15 sachets is just under $8, which makes for over 50 cents a tea bag. Their bulk tea, on the other hand, is much more reasonably priced: $17 for a half pound, which, using a generous 2.5 grams of leaf per cup, works out to be under 20 cents a cup. I like to use this brand as an example of how when buying tea bags, you are paying for packaging. The bulk pricing offered by this company is, in my opinion, quite reasonable.

In spite of the fact that I am unlikely to buy this company's sachets, their main product, there is a ton that I like about this company, and I frequently enjoy their teas when they are served in a coffee shop.

What I like about Two Leaves and a Bud:

• The company offers loose-leaf tea - This point is not a given. Many companies who make the bulk of their sales in tea bags or sachets do not sell any loose tea. I don't know the exact portion of this company's sales that come through loose tea, but I suspect it is small, as I see their boxes of sachets for sale (and served in coffee shops) widely, and have only ever seen their loose tea displayed on their own website. But I would applaud this company for still offering loose leaf tea, even if it is not their big seller.
• Their tea is quite good - Among the mainstream brands of tea that I've sampled, the quality of the teas sold by this company is consistently high. I don't like all of their teas, but I like most of them, and many I even prefer to a number of loose-leaf teas I've sampled. The teas also have been rated favorably on RateTea by other reviewers. The company sells a number of pure teas, and I find does not skimp on the quality of the base teas used in their flavored teas and blends as well. The sachets contain generous quantities of relatively intact tea leaf, and intact herbs and spices, producing sachets that all can be successfully used with multiple infusions.
• Their selections are well-balanced - While I might be tempted to change a few of their offerings, Two Leaves and a Bud is actually one of the companies that inspired my recent post about choosing which teas to sell. This company carries a First Flush Darjeeling that, while it varies from year to year, is consistently on the greener side. This tea is a sharp contrast with the other black tea they sell, a strong, malty Assam. They carry a white peony, and a Tamaryokucha (unusual for a Western-focused company). Among flavored teas there is an Earl Grey and a Masala Chai, and they have some herbal blends, including straight chamomile, and a Rooibos-lemongrass blend, called African Sunset, which I like very much.
• A focus on sustainability - A majority of this company's teas are organic certified, but it doesn't stop there. In August of 2011, the company announced moving to biodegradable packaging. While I'd like to see more testing on whether this packaging (using the Reverte™ Oxo-Biodegradable system for biodegradation) actually biodegrades gracefully (my research suggests that it may not), I do think that this is a major step in the right direction, and places this company far ahead of other mainstream companies, like Lipton and many others, which are still using straight Nylon tea bags for their Pyramid Sachets, and have not expressed a commitment to move towards biodegradable packaging.

What do you think?

Have you tried any of this company's teas? How about the newly launched Paisley Tea Co. teas? What are your thoughts on the biodegradibilty of their packaging? Or their choices of teas to carry?

Tea In A Puerto Rican Supermarket

The topic of tea selections in supermarkets is something that I'm very interested in. I've written about tea in supermarkets three times before, in the following posts:

• Tea at Wegmans Supermarket - January, 2011.
• Trader Joe's Tea - And Commentary On The Chain As A Whole - January, 2012.
• Tea Selections of Supermarkets - October, 2010.

In this post, I write about my observations about the teas for sale in a supermarket that I visited in Puerto Rico. I also write about what I think may be missed business opportunities related to the products I saw (and did not see) on the shelf.

The tea selection in a Puerto Rican Supermarket, Pueblo, near Ponce:

There were not as many supermarkets in Puerto Rico as I'm used to in the U.S. But once I actually saw the inside of a Puerto Rican supermarket, it was pretty similar to the U.S. But the tea selection was very small:

In a typical supermarket in the U.S., one about the same size as this one, Pueblo (which means "people"), the tea section usually does not fit in a single photograph. I'm used to having to take two or more photos to capture all the teas for sale. The selection in this supermarket not only fits in one photo, it does not even reach to the bottom of the shelf.

The only two mainstream brands I saw represented were Lipton and Celestial Seasonings. There were two hispanic-oriented brands: Carmencita, and Tadin Herb & Tea Co.

Neither Lipton nor Celestial Seasonings had Spanish-language packaging:

I found it particularly interesting that the packaging presented here by both Lipton and Celestial Seasonings was English-language only. This seems to me to be a business mistake. Most of the other products for sale in this supermarket, and all the signs in the supermarket, were Spanish-language only.

The store where the above photo was taken was located just outside of Ponce, on the south coast. Ponce is a good distance from San Juan, and, compared to San Juan and surrounding areas, is much less of a tourist destination for non-Puerto Rican Americans. (I say this because this area does seem a popular destination for people of Puerto Rican descent born in the states.) Whereas in San Juan, most people spoke English, many fluently, in Ponce, many people I encountered spoke no English at all, and the English skills of the people I ran into were noticeably poorer. Spanish was clearly the dominant language in this area.

If I were running a tea company here, I would offer bilingual packaging for sale everywhere in Puerto Rico. In the absence of bilingual packaging, I would offer Spanish-language-only packaging.

Puerto Rican brands not represented:

The two tea brands mentioned above, Carmencita, and Tadin, are both oriented towards a hispanic market, but neither are based in Puerto Rico. Carmencita is a Spanish company, based in Novelda, Spain. Tadin is a U.S. company, based in California, and oriented towards the US Hispanic market. I do not know about the cultural origins of Tadin, but I will say, I have frequently seen their herbs for sale in Mexican stores, so I suspect that it has a generic Hispanic orientation and may even be more oriented towards Mexicans. It's easy for non-hispanic Americans to think of "Hispanic culture" as monolithic, but my experience has been that there is surprisingly little overlap between the culinary traditions of Puerto Rico and Mexico. Puerto Rican cuisine seems to have as least as much in common with the food in Jamaica, an area not considered Hispanic. I know less about Puerto Ricans' taste in herbal teas, but I'd imagine these traditions could be equally different from each other as the food traditions are.

I do know of one brand of herbal teas with Puerto Rican heritage, Badia. Badia, a spice and herb company, is now based in Florida, but was founded in Puerto Rico when Jose Badia fled from Cuba after the revolution (you can read more about the Cuban revolution in my recent post if you missed it). Badia has some interesting offerings among herbal teas, including linden leaves, star anise, loose-leaf Eucalyptus, and Cat's claw (used in the traditional medicine of Peru).

My intuition is that Badia would be more successful in Puerto Rican supermarkets than any of the four brands sold here. Their offerings may fit more to Puerto Rican tastes, and, if some of their staff had roots in Puerto Rico, they'd be more likely to be able to develop an intuition for which products would work best there. And I also think many Puerto Ricans would gladly support a company with local origins, especially if Badia were to somehow draw attention to this fact.

A purely local Puerto Rican herbal tea company?

I also don't see why a purely-local company couldn't come into the picture here. Puerto Rico has a diverse climate and has the capacity to produce a wide variety of herbs locally. I think it would be great to see a locally-owned brand of locally-grown, locally-blended herbal teas in Puerto Rican supermarkets. And I think such a brand could be very successful. Puerto Ricans drink their locally-brewed beer, Medalla light, with great pride and enthusiasm. And I look at the English-only packaging of Lipton and Celestial Seasonings and I think...wow, these big companies are just spinning their wheels. There's a missed business opportunity here!

Upton Tea Imports - Featured Tea Company

Today's featured tea company is Upton Tea Imports. I've mentioned Upton time and time again on this blog, and I think it's time I write a detailed post about this company. Upton Tea Imports is not only my favorite tea company, but is a major source of inspiration behind my becoming more seriously interested in high-quality loose-leaf tea, and creating RateTea. You'll notice that Upton's listing on RateTea was the first, and that it is also the company that I have personally reviewed the most teas from. This is because I was drinking Upton's teas from well before I created RateTea.

Pictured above is Upton Tea Imports's Website.

What I like about Upton Tea Imports:

Since this is my favorite company, this list will naturally be a little longer:

• A clear focus on single-origin teas - Although Upton does carry a few blends and flavored teas, these occur at the back of the print catalogue, and are also not emphasized on the website. Upton's focus is clearly on single-origin teas. The catalog covers a wide range of different countries, although showing a strong focus on India and China.
• Unusual offerings - There are many teas and a few herbs that I've tried from Upton that I've rarely or never seen for sale anywhere else. Among teas, this list includes a Thailand long-leaf green tea, and an orthodox black tea from Tanzania. For herbs, this list includes green honeybush, lemon myrtle, pure vana (wild) tulsi, and Yerba Mate Buds processed like tea. One thing I especially like about Upton's herbal offerings is that they tend to focus on tea-like herbs, including rooibos, mate, honeybush, and other pure herbs that are likely to satisfy pure tea enthusiasts.
• Very good prices - Upton has a wide range of prices, but I find that their prices are consistently lower than most other companies. I've purchased more bargain buys and teas that I would consider to offer exceptional value from Upton than from any other company. The company truly shines, in my opinion, in the number of offerings that cost well under $10 for about 1/4 pound (sometimes under $5), yet compete on par with teas selling for well over twice this amount.
  
  Another interesting point, related to prices, is that Upton carries a lot of "low-end" or "low-status" teas that I think are overlooked by other companies, but that offer exceptional value. Although these teas are cheap, price-wise, their quality demonstrates a careful selection process, whereby Upton is choosing inexpensive teas that compete in quality with much pricier offerings from other companies. Some examples include Upton's offering of 4 different Shou Mei (longevity eyebrows) white teas, an inexpensive grade of Chinese white tea that is rarely sold at all by companies in the US, and a very good selection of broken-leaf first flush Darjeeling teas, some of which have been top-notch, and many of which are extraordinarily inexpensive. I also find some of their inexpensive Chinese oolongs really shine, including their green Se Chung oolong, an osmanthus-scented version of the same tea, and some of their cheapest Tie Guan Yin offerings, like this medium-roast Tie Guan Yin. They even surprised me with a Chinese-produced gyokuro, which was not bad, not to mention both cheap and organic certified.
• Affordable, usually generous-sized samples of every tea in their catalog - Most of Upton's samples are $1 or a little over $1 for as much as 15 grams. As someone who loves trying new teas, this sends the message that Upton is oriented towards people like me. One small caveat about the samples, because Upton uses a fixed-size sample pack, the large-leaf teas come with a smaller weight of sample, which I don't like for the largest-leaf teas (often coming with as little as 6g of leaf). These teas, however, tend to be pricier so it usually works out that these are the teas I'd be happy buying a smaller sample of.
• Functional, no frills website - I've heard some people say that they're not crazy about Upton's website, but I really like it (it follows many of my recommended best practices for tea company websites). I like the site, not only because it conforms to all the conventions that I think make a site easy to use and navigate, but also because it does not have any obnoxious javascript automation, flash, and unnecessary visual features. It's a simple, functional, old-fashioned website, and the more busy and overly-interactive other websites get, the more I appreciate sites like this. There is a page for each tea, with pictures of the loose-leaf, with a grid for size comparison. I also like that the site is organized by region and by tea type. However, I will say, their website is not a substitute for their print catalogue...I especially like the way the catalogue is organized, by region. If I could offer any one suggestion for Upton to improve their website, it would be to also allow people to browse their print catalogue online, by paging through as if it were a book. Upton does link to a PDF of their full catalogue; I recommend reading it if you don't have a print catalog on hand.
• Honest, concise, yet informative descriptions of each tea - I like the length, style, and focus of the descriptions of each tea in Upton's catalogue more than the teas from most other companies. More so than with any other company, I've found that Upton's descriptions fit my own personal perception of the teas. When Upton says "citrus" or "mint" or "apricot", I'm pretty likely to detect these aromas when I brew the tea. I recognize that different people perceive taste and aroma differently, so Upton may not be a match for everyone, but I get the sense that the people behind the scenes at Upton have a similar sense of perception to me, and this also keeps me coming back because this match helps me to pick teas that I am likely to enjoy.
• Affordable shipping and great customer service - I've never had anything go wrong when ordering from Upton. Orders are packed and shipped promptly, and I never had a single mistake happen. The company also has responded very quickly to my email inquiries, and they are also equally responsive when engaging them in more casual conversation on social media, see Upton's twitter and Upton's Facebook. And shipping is very affordable, low enough that it's pretty clear Upton is eating a small loss on the shipping rate on some orders.

With such a big catalogue, there will inevitably be some "misses" if you sample a large number of their teas. I can't say I've liked everything to come out of Upton. But I've been really surprised at how few teas like this there have been, given how many I've sampled. I do think that Upton excels in some areas more than others; I would say that their largest strength is in inexpensive, pure, single-origin teas and pure, single-origin, tea-like herbs.

When I recommend people a single company to buy loose tea from, Upton is the one I point to. When I recommend a single company to look into when "getting into tea", Upton is the one I point to. And when I look at the company that I've ordered the most tea from, and keep coming back to, it's Upton.

What is your experience with Upton?

I know that many of you are also big fans of Upton...do you like them as much as I do?

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).

How To Link Your Tea Company Website to RateTea And Other Sites

This page, continuing my series of best practices for tea company websites, is about linking your tea company website to RateTea and similar sites, including Steepster, group review blogs like Teaviews and Tea Review Blog, or even individual tea blogs.

The above image shows a few examples of social networking icons, discussed below, which you can use to link to RateTea. A skilled graphic designer can also easily make a logo, like the square RateTea logo on the left, into an icon in the style of your website. You can feel free to do this, or Sylvia, RateTea's graphic designer, can make one for you. Sylvia designed most of the icons above.

Why link to RateTea and similar sites?

I see three direct benefits to linking to RateTea and other review sites:

• By encouraging your existing customers to rate and review your teas, you will gain greater visibility for your teas, and you will reach new customers. For smaller companies, reviews on RateTea are highly likely to reach an audience who may not even know of your company. For larger, more well-established companies, such reviews will help you maintain your brand visibility.
• By linking to existing reviews of your teas on RateTea, Steepster, group review blogs, or even on personal tea blogs, you are more likely to convince to potential customers that your reviews are authentic, because these sites are independent of your company. RateTea in particular demonstrates this because the site (1) requires an actual written review to post a numerical rating (2) does not allow companies to review their own teas (3) screens reviews to prevent spammy and fraudulent reviews (4) identifies on the review the number of teas reviewed by a given reviewer, including teas of a particular style, as explained on how many teas like this have you tried?.

Why RateTea in particular? A lot of companies already link to Steepster, alongside a number of different social networking presences (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, some even have Youtube channels). RateTea stands out in that it is integrated with informational articles about tea varieties and production, and that it provides live links directly to the product pages on your website, not only from the page for each tea, but from the page for each tea review as well. Reviews on RateTea can not only provide free links to your website, boosting your teas' visibility in search results, but can provide direct traffic to your site and help you make more sales.

Indirect benefits of linking to RateTea:

There are also some very powerful indirect benefits of linking to RateTea:

• Because RateTea is independent (i.e. not owned by your company), by linking to RateTea and other external review sites that you do not directly control, you will send a message of business confidence, that your teas are high-quality and that their quality speaks for themselves.
• The information on RateTea is of much higher accuracy than the typical informational sites about tea on the internet. By linking to RateTea, and to other high-quality sites, you will both help to promote truthful and accurate information in general and you will show your customers that you know how to discern high-quality information from low-quality. This last point may seem silly, but I have lost count of the number of times I have seen otherwise reputable tea companies link to low-quality, self-published articles on the supposed "health benefits of tea". Needless to say, this sort of thing does not convince me to make a purchase.
• RateTea is committed to sustainability, and goes to great lengths to highlight companies doing things to promote sustainability in the tea world. This includes highlighting fair trade and organic certified teas, as well as drawing attention on the main page for each brand to things that each company is doing to promote sustainability, which can include both the sourcing and production of their teas, as well as things like packaging, green certifications, and donations to sustainability-promoting projects.

And lastly, I want to point out:

• I'm easy to access if you want me to update the page on your brand in any way. My goal is to be a resource for tea companies, so I want to write an article that will highlight the best aspects of your company. If you don't like the blurb currently written about your company on RateTea, and you have either a correction, or additional information you'd like to add or you'd like us to highlight, you can get in touch with me. And keep in mind, you can also manage and edit the listings of your company's teas directly, without requiring a RateTea admin to make changes, so you can always keep your listings on the site 100% up-to-date.

Several options of how to link:

• Linking to RateTea's page for your brand, using social networking icons.
• Adding generic text links, linking to the page for your brand.
• Adding buttons or text links to your pages on individual teas, linking them to the corresponding pages on RateTea or other sites, which house reviews of that specific tea.
• Writing a blog post or newsletter in which you let your customers know about RateTea, and encourage them to rate your teas.

Each of these approaches have their relative benefits.

Social networking icons:

Social networking icons, like the ones pictured at the top of this post, can easily be added to every page of your website, in the site's header or footer. These icons can be formatted in the visual style of your website, and they are unobtrusive and look professional. These icons are probably the simplest and least time-intensive way to link to RateTea, Steepster, and any site that has a recognizable logo that can be easily made into one of these icons.

Text links:

It has been my experience from RateTea that companies that add text links tend to generate more reviews from their customers than companies adding social networking icons. I think this is likely because the text of the link can be used to encourage the customer to write a review. For example, you can say: rate this tea on RateTea or share a review of this tea on RateTea followed by a link to the page for that tea, or you can use a more generic rate our teas on RateTea which links to the page for your brand.

For best results, link each tea directly to the page for that specific tea on RateTea. If this seems too labor intensive, you can get in contact with me; I would be glad to provide you with a way to automate this process if you so desire, such as by importing a table of URL's into your database, corresponding to each of your teas. However, if this is too much work, you can also link to the page for your brand, and your customers can find teas to review by searching or browsing as other RateTea users would.

I can't say anything about the effectiveness of "Rate this tea on RateTea.com" buttons, or similar buttons including both images and text because we have yet to have any company use such buttons. My intuition, though, would that these images would probably be as effective as the text links, possibly more effective, and more effective than basic social networking icons.

Linking in a blog or newsletter:

Linking to RateTea in a blog or newsletter provides a very different way to generate reviews. This sort of attention tends to result in a burst of reviews, but is unlikely to provide any later reviews once the initial burst of views of the blog or newsletter has passed. However, even this sort of burst of reviews can still help you, because once a review has been written, it can be viewed many times over a long period of time. Look at the following graph:

The above graph shows a review of Typhoo tea that was written in August of 2010; it continues to receive fairly regular views over time.

This graph is typical, not atypical, of a review on the site. I also want to note that this graph underestimates the number of people viewing the review, because it does not include the views of the tea's page, which shows this review alongside two others. Because of how the site is structured, most reviews do not receive an initial burst of traffic, but they receive sustained traffic over time, as users find reviews through the search and browse functions of the site.

More ratings and reviews lead to more visibility for your teas:

Also, when your teas receive more ratings, they appear higher on "most often rated teas" lists, which appear on dozens of pages throughout the site. So, suppose you sell a dragon well green tea which receives a lot of favorable reviews. It is likely to appear not only under "most often rated dragon well tea" but, if it receives enough reviews, it may also display on the page for Zhejiang province (assuming, like most dragon well, it is produced there), and, if it makes it into the top tier, the pages for China and the master page for green tea. Even if it does not make it onto any of these lists, reviews boost your tea's visibility in search results, as teas with more reviews are returned first in search results.

So, even a short-term, one-time endeavor like writing about the site in a blog post or newsletter can result in sustained benefits for your tea company.

Let me know if you have any questions:

Let me know if you have any questions about how to link your company to pages on RateTea, such as needing any graphics beyond those displayed here, or questions about how to link things up. If you don't have my email, you can easily reach me through the contact form on RateTea.