Tea District's Blog

Many people often ask ” How did you get started”

teadistrict — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:32:00 +0000

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.’”

All you need to know about RED TEA – ROOIBOS

teadistrict — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:25:32 +0000

Rooibos (Red) Tea

Red Tea, also known as Rooibos (ROY-BOSS) is an herbal tea originating in the Cedarberg mountains of South Africa. It is exclusively grown in the Cedarberg Mountain region due to the specific climatic and geological conditions of the region.

Essence

The flavor, cut length and color all contribute to the grade that it is given. The fermented type of rooibos leaves a sweet, fruity taste, where as the unfermented variety has a very mild, more “green” taste. Regardless of the process type, rooibos is naturally caffeine-free and is rich in antioxidants.

Health

Similar to the health benefits of green tea, researchers have also found that fermented rooibos tea suppressed and reduced cancerous formations and transformations of cells. Benefits of teas red and green alike are probably from the antioxidants naturally grown in teas based on studies.

Please visit http://www.teadistrict.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=62 for more information.

Atlanta Gift Show – a Success!

teadistrict — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:28:31 +0000

It’s day 7 of the Atlanta Gift Show. And what a great show that it has been. It’s so nice to see all of our current customers as well as put a face with a name for those that we’ve only spoken to on the phone.

We launched our NEW Organic Pyramid Sachet line at the Atlanta Show this week. While we’ve beenselling them for over 4 months now, they are officially in stock, so they created quite a buzz! Plus, we exhibited in our NEW showroom of Americas Mart in Building 2 West Wing – 8th Floor of the Gourmet Kitchen Gallery. Below are some pictures of our NEW Space as we made some changes since my last BLOG.

The HIT TEAS and TOP SELLERS of the week at the Show were our Chai Tea (of course- its the best you can find!), our Lemon Herbal Tea (which we made as an iced tea – yummalicious!), and our Pomegranate White Tea!

For those that aren’t aware, our Chai Tea is a Black tea with cardamom, chicory, cloves, black pepper, cinnamon and ginger. It’s my personal favorite and our top seller. It has a deep black tea flavor with all kinds of notes of spices. No sugar or sweeteners added either! Its one of my loves in life! (Click on the pictures below for more information)

Chai Tea - All Natural - 36 Round Tea Bags

Our Lemon Herbal Tea is a wonderful all natural tea that is excellent as an iced tea of hot tea. There’s light hints of hibiscus, lemon grass, and other natural lemon flavors that give it smooth and zesty taste!

Lemon Herbal Tea - All Natural - 36 Round Tea Bags

Pomegranate is an extremely popular fruit due to its benefits. Our Organic Pomegranate White tea is loaded with Pomegranate fruit – which means its loaded with antioxidants.

Organic Pomegranate White Tea - 15 Biodegradable Pyramid Sachets

We look forward to working with all of our new customers and continued success with our current customers. It was a pleasure to see everyone at the show. We’ll be back in Atlanta September 12 – 14th – Building 2WW, Floor 8, 8127A. Come for a spot of Tea District Tea and place your last minute holiday orders with us too!

Until next time… enjoy pictures of our showroom

Best – Lindsey Valentini

Images of Tea District Displays

New Atlanta Showroom – Americas Mart

teadistrict — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:34:07 +0000

For the past 3 years Tea District has been exhibiting at the Atlanta International Gift Show at Americas Mart in both January and July within there temporary gourmet section. These are wholesale shows, open to business owners only looking to purchase products to resell in there stores. We’ve always had great experience and exposure there and have always planned to come back.

In January, Americas Mart opened a brad new building 2 West Wing, offering permanent spaces for companies, like Tea District, to be able to permanently set up and lease space to sell there goods. In February we decided to check out the area to see if it would be a good fit for our growing company. It was impressive! There is a cooking demonstration area, very friendly atmosphere, and is very well layed out. So guess what – we signed up!

Over the past weekend, myself and my mom – who totally rocks by the way – flew to Atlanta to set up our space.

Day 1 we woke up at 4 Am, flew to Atlanta, went to IKEA to pick up the 1,200 lbs of wood displays. Loaded them into the car, fortunately at the loading dock at the mart, the guys unloaded our car and brought all of it up to our showroom for us. My mom started building all of the back bookcases while I painted. After the 2nd coat of paint and over half of the displays built, we called it quits at about 6 pm.

Day 2, Headed off to Target at 8:30 then back to the mart loading dock by 10:00 am… where we started to build some more. I kept saying we’ll be done in about 2 hours, but I think I said that about 4 times! At 9:00 pm we were officially done. No Breakfast, Lunch at IKEA at 2:00 – 1 hot dog and 1 ice cream cone each, dinner at 9:30 pm, bed at 11:00 pm

Day 3, Decided to take a Stand By flight that left at 6:35 am. Woke up at 4:00 am, at the airport by 5:00 home by 8:00 am!

All and all…

1 gallon of paint – 2 coats

13 pieces of wood display pieces to build

14 cabinet doors to mount perfectly

1 table and 2 chairs to put together

2 tea district display units

240 cans of tea to unpack

1 big pain in the a** decal to stick to the wall (8 feet by 2 feet)

4 magnetic strips for loose teas to mount to the wall

and only

1 trip to Sherwin Williams

2 trips to IKEA

2 trips to target

1 trip to Lowes

Looking forward to seeing you at our new showroom if you are a wholesale buyer! Come visit us at Americas Mart – Atlanta – Building 2 West Wing, Floor 8 – 8127A kiddie corner from the cooking demonstration area. Next Mart: July 7 – 15, 2009. For more information on the mart, please visit www.americasmart.com

If you would like our wholesale catalog before you come visit us, please call our office at 866.532.5268, email sales@teadistrict.com, or check us out on the web at http://www.teadistrict.com/.

Enjoy –

Lindsey Valentini – Tea District Owner

The pictures are a little dark as the hall lights weren’t on, but still looks great!

Our NEW Tea District Mascot

teadistrict — Fri, 08 May 2009 22:59:45 +0000

What a cutie!

I thought I’d share some images of our new mascot. At just 9 weeks, she’s 5.5 lbs, quite energetic, a cuddler, and still needs her sleep! Her name is Lola, she’s a puggle – pug / beagle mix, and is very sweet. She’s been sleeping on my desk in the middle of the day on her little bed, right between my two computers, while I work away creating new tea blends and marketing the existing brand. I hope some of you will be able to meet her some day!

All About Black Tea

teadistrict — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:34:06 +0000

Black Tea

Black tea is a “true” tea made from leaves more heavily oxidized than the white, green, and oolong varieties. It is generally stronger in flavor and contains more caffeine than more lightly oxidized teas. Black tea tends to preserve its flavor for several years unlike green tea and therefore blends and mixes well with various plants in order to obtain a variety of flavors.

Processing

After the harvest, the leaves are withered by blowing air on them followed by 1 of 2 processes. The CTC (Crush, Tear, Curl) or orthodox method is used for lower quality leaves that end up in tea bags and are processed by machines. This method is efficient and effective for producing a better quality product from medium and lower quality leaves. Orthodox processing is done either by machines or by hand. Hand processing is used for high quality teas. While the methods employed in orthodox processing differ by tea type, this style of processing results in the high quality loose tea sought after by many connoisseurs. Next, the leaves are oxidized under controlled temperature and humidity. This process is also called fermentation, though no fermentation takes place. The level of oxidation determines the quality of the tea. Since oxidation begins at the rolling stage itself, the time between these stages is also a crucial factor in the quality of the tea. The leaves are then dried to arrest the oxidation process, and then finally, the leaves are sorted into grades according to their sizes (whole leaf, brokens, fannings and dust), usually with the use of sieves. The tea could be further sub-graded according to other criteria. After sorting, tea is ready for packaging.

This is some of the best English Breakfast black tea you'll find on the planet!

Another Tea District Shipment is on its way with NEW Teas!

teadistrict — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:53:06 +0000

Another Tea District shipment is on its way! Our tea cans for the new Organic line of whole leaf tea in pyramid sachets are on there way to the USA where they’ll by filled with the delicious Organic Loose Teas in Pyramid Sachets! You can check out all of these on our website by visiting here: http://www.teadistrict.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&category_id=20&keyword=&manufacturer_id=0&Itemid=117&orderby=product_name&limitstart=0

Here’s what’s on the shipment:

Organic Ginger, Peach, Apricot Black Tea
Organic Fruit & Spice Rooibos
Organic Wildberry Green Tea
Organic Moroccan Mint Green Tea
Organic Orange Blossom Green Tea
Organic Pineapple Sweet White Tea
Organic Pomegranate White Tea

All of these are currently available on our website as a whole leaf loose tea as well in either 1 lb, 2 oz, or sample size options! Here’s a picture of one of the shipping containers that will depart port tomorrow! It’s so exciting!

Tea District Container with Organic Tea Cans

Green Tea Health Benefits and Weight Loss Answers

teadistrict — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:27:04 +0000

Peope often ask…

What is Green Tea? What are the Health Benefits of drinking green tea, and Does Green Tea help with weight loss. Below you’ll find some of the answers!

Green Tea

Green tea is “true” tea that has undergone minimal oxidation during processing. Green tea got its popularity from China and Japan since the beginning of its history 5,000 years ago, and recently has become more popular in the United States due to the health benefits and factors that have been raised in studies.

Green Tea Field

Health Benefits

Many studies have investigated a link between the consumption of green tea and a lower incidence of a range of cancers in populations. The wealth of plasma antioxidants that green tea provides contributes to the connection it has as a cancer-fighting product. Beyond the antioxidants that have been revealed, Catechin, the active ingredient in green tea has also been found to outperform Vitamin C and Vitamin E.

Green Tea & Weight Loss

In addition to the health benefits that green tea studies have shown to provide, recent studies also claim that contents in green tea also provides help in weight loss.

While some studies support possible preventative or curative properties of tea, other studies have found none. One should consult a doctor before using high concentrations of tea for disease prevention, as this can cause serious health problems.

Are you looking to take advantage of these health benefits? Click on the images below to learn more about these great tasting teas with all of the added benefits you just read about:

Pick your tea by clicking on the images!

Golfing

teadistrict — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:54:00 +0000

This morning I woke up and had a very lovely cup of our Tea District Chai Tea. It is one of my favorites to have in the morning. It is loaded with robust black tea and spices and is very rare that I don’t have less than 3 cups at a time! I’ve been drinking all kinds of different teas lately for testing purposes so it was nice to go back to the roots and have one of my old time favorites.

Over Easter weekend I was able to get out and play 9 holes of golf with my hubby and my parents. It was my first round since last September and boy was it ugly! It definitely reminded me that I needed to get over to the range. So, today over lunch, guess where I’ll be!?!?!?

My husband and I joined a golf course this year – Southview Country Club. We actually live right off of the tee box of # 14 and across the fence from the putting green and driving range, so there is really no excuse for me not to be able to practice anymore. Here’s a view of #14:

I’ll be having left over Easter dinner today, so it will be pretty quick! And then after swinging the club for 10 to 15 minutes or so, I can’t wait to get back to work with a large cup of our NEW Organic Fruit and Spice Rooibos blend. If you haven’t tried this one, you’ll have get some for yourself. It’s slightly sweet, with hints of spice and fruits, and is loaded with antioxidants! We currently sell it on our website as a loose tea and will also be available shortly in a pyramid bag. Here’s a link directly to the Organic Fruit and Spice page as well as an image below: http://www.teadistrict.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=59&category_id=26&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=117.

Have a great day!

Lindsey Valentini
Owner – Tea District
http://www.teadistrict.com

Organic Fruit & Spice Rooibos

[caption id="attachment_16" align="alignnone" width="1024" caption="View of #14 at Southview Country Club"][/caption]

Joe the Intern

teadistrict — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:45:16 +0000

It’s high time that I did a new blog. Yes, I’m two months behind and hopefully this will be the jumpstart of at least one a week and maybe more if I’m really good. Today I thought I’d tell you about a new addition to the Tea District team.

In February, Joe, our new intern started. He’ll be helping out with sales calls, customer service, marketing and website stuff! He’s a junior at a local college in town and is very eager to learn the ropes of the real world! I’d like to welcome him aboard!

Since January, Tea District has some other new additions besides Joe. We have a new wholesale catalog. Here’s a sneak peak of the cover! Its pretty cool. It includes all of the information our All Natural Teas, NEW Organic loose teas in pyramid sachets, Organic loose teas in bulk, Flowering teas, as well as our displays that we sell filled with tea!

We have some really cool flowering teas too. The pictures aren’t quite up on the site yet, but will be soon.

Happy Easter! I love Cadbury eggs and can’t wait to eat them this weekend!

- Lindsey