I’m always asked, “What made you decide to start a tea company” or “Why tea”. Below is an article written by Frank Jossi a writer for the St. Paul Finance and Commerce Newspaper. He saw our tea at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado – and was intrigued! Enjoy the article below or click here: http://www.legal-ledger.com/item.cfm?recID=12289
Metro East – Lindsey Valentini: Mistress of tea
By Frank Jossi, Special to Capitol Report
September 24, 2009
Lindsey Valentini was never much of a tea drinker until just a few years ago when she stumbled upon the idea of starting a tea company after a few sour jobs in corporate America.
Valentini, 28, operates the Tea District out of her home in Inver Grove Heights. Since starting the business in 2005 with her own capital and beating the pavement at gift shop trade shows around the country, the young entrepreneur today has projected gross sales for calendar year 2009 of more than $350,000, a strong increase from the $8,000 she earned in 2006.
The success has not come easily. “It’s been a lot of work, and it’s often been emotionally draining and exhausting,” Valentini reports. “I was traveling nonstop for 450 days going to shows, some of which last eight days. I would be standing there from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. sampling tea to visitors to my booth. In 2007, I sampled 40,000 cups of tea; in 2008 I doubled that number.”
In 2007, in fact, she attended 15 trade shows; in 2008, the number grew to 30. She’s managed to get the attractively packaged cans of tea into dozens of gift shops and grocery stores around the country.
Locally, Tea District’s classy cans of Chai, Peach Blossom Green Tea and many other varieties can be found at such gift shops and grocers as Lunds & Byerly’s, Bachman’s, Como Zoo, Minnesota Historical Society and St. Patrick’s Guild.
Early on a one-woman show, Valentini designed the colorful tea cans and came up with many of the mixed tea recipes herself after much experimentation. She designed the marketing materials, logos and graphics and those choices are reflected on her website, teadistrict.com.
Valentini may be in the right market at the right time: Tea is becoming the next coffee and tea shops have mushroomed, especially in the east metro, where the TeaSource in Highland Park provides more than 250 teas in bulk and two of the Tea Garden’s five stores are located. High tea is served at the St. Paul Hotel and at Hattie’s Victorian Times in Woodbury.
And while the Twin Cities may not be London or San Francisco (the nation’s leading tea center), it does have a budding tea culture.
The growth of tea drinking suggests that it will “surpass the sales of coffee by 2010,” Valentini says. Sales for tea will surpass $10 billion in 2010, according to the Specialty Tea “Hot” Report, which also says that tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, outside of water.
Part of that may be due to the antioxidant quality of many teas, a point the media has covered in great detail.
So how did a once non-tea aficionado who enjoyed coffee and soda wind up running a tea company?
After graduating from the University of St. Thomas with degrees in entrepreneurship, finance and computer science, Valentini found a series of corporate jobs in sales and IT that lasted only six or eight months before dissolving.
Born into a family of entrepreneurs centered in New Hampton, Iowa, about 70 miles south of Rochester, Valentini didn’t have to look far for inspiration to start her own business: Her father, Dennis Hansen, runs his own auto parts manufacturing company with Leslie, his wife. One of Valentini’s sisters operates Jordy, a stationary and calendar company serving gift shops; another sister owns a pharmacy in Lincoln, Neb., with her husband. And Valentini’s brother owns a mineral makeup company.
At first she looked into creating her own line of shampoos, makeup and teeth whitening products before considering tea. Tea had many advantages, including multiple distributors, a chance for creativity in the blends and startup costs that would not be excessive. She attended World Tea Expo in Las Vegas in 2006 and then waited for customers to flock to her then-new website.
“After it was up and running sales were going horribly,” Valentini recalls. “I thought people would find Tea District and buy from us, but that was not true—not at all.”
She began dialing into search engine optimization tools and linking to other sites. Meanwhile, Valentini figured her best course of action would be to push the product into the market through having it sold at gift shops, boutiques and grocers. To that end, she began attending conventions and conferences in order to sell to gift shop buyers.
“My dad taught me that he would talk to every person who came by his booth at trade shows, so I took the same tack by standing in front of my booth and talking to every person I could, offering them a sample of tea,” Valentini says.
While learning the art of trade sales she delved into the craft of tea blending, first finding an Indonesian “packer” to handle that process before turning it over to a company in Philadelphia. From there it gets shipped to an Iowa warehouse for distribution to Tea District clients.
“It’s an eco-friendly benefit to having our packing done in the United States,” she says. “I’m trying to make the whole product eco-friendly—the cans are made of recycled materials, the bags are bio-degradable.”
One of the more enjoyable parts of Valentini’s job is creating new flavors with often fruity ingredients, such as her top sellers: Chai (her own version), Organic Pomegranate White Tea and Raspberry Herbal Tea. She’s had a lot of fun blending Pineapple Sweet White Tea, Fruit and Spice Rooibos, Pineapple Sweet White Tea and Organic Ginger Peach Apricot Black Tea.
“I created the teas I did because I love drinking them,” she says. “There not as common as Earl Grey but I love the fruit flavors.”
Bill Waddington, owner of the TeaSource and perhaps the dean of tea culture in the Twin Cities, says blending teas is “not easy” and takes a lot of trial and error to get right. He applauds Valentini’s effort to distinguish herself by doing her own blends and specializing a bit in fruit teas, which have a good following.
Valentini continues to sponsor booths at trade shows and her website lists some 15 she either has attended or will attend this year. Without outside sources of capital, it may be a few years before she reaches the heights of the Republic of Tea, the California company most associated with fruity teas in artistic cans. “We’re self-funded so we’re growing slowly.”
Gross sales for last year was $235,000, double 2007’s total of $102,000, Valentini. This year looks like it will reach $350,000 and next year’s potential sales look as strong as ever.
Still, it’s an extremely competitive market. “Tea drinking is growing quite a bit but it’s been saturated by small startup companies,” Waddington says. “If you type ‘tea, retail’ into Google you’ll get thousands of hits.”
He believes many of the startups exist to try to piggyback on tea’s growing popularity but are likely without strong business plans or aggressive marketing of the kind he sees in the roll out of the Tea District. “There are a lot of these small companies that don’t have their act together but she definitely has her act together,” he says. “It’s a tough market but she seems to know what she has to do to make it.”
As Valentini moves forward she points to the important support she gets from her husband, Nick Valentini, who serves as confidant, cheerleader, counselor and best buddy.
“He grew up with me in this business, which started even when we were dating,” Valentini says. “He’s the best support person I could ever have. Whenever I get emotional and worried and he’ll say ‘tomorrow will be a better day’ or ‘don’t worry, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.’”
