It takes time to learn what high quality tea is, so it takes time to establish. The willingness to wait the time it takes to learn about high quality tea and find or develop the clientele that appreciate high quality tea is part of the formula for building a strong tea brand. The willingness to wait. What do we do when we are waiting? Waiting isn’t the right word. Instead of waiting I mean, working your ass off for little or no money. How long can you afford to do that? Because it takes some of that. How much depends on many things, some of them are out of our control. But the number one defining factor is, how long can you do it? I remember the days when I’d just moved back from Taiwan. The year was 2006 I would scrape the change out of my change drawer and head across Friendly Street market for chips and tofu pate or ground buffalo meat and greens. I was awash between cultures after living in Taiwan for a total of six years. I am getting off the subject.

Think about what tea is. It’s classified as an adaptogen. An adaptogen is a natural substance considered to help the body to adapt to stress and to exert a normalizing effect upon bodily processes. So basically tea is magical. That is why there are volumes of ancient texts devoted to poetry on tea. What inspires poetry? Beauty, love… and tea. And one common theme throughout… the first sip… the second sip… and so on, how each sip fulfills a specific human need. The higher the quality the tea, the more it seems to do this, people notice it. It fulfills a basic need and people love it.