Starter Kit. Idea 201 of 500. Cluster 10
Single-estate teas sold direct to consumers abroad by subscription, with the estate's story
The mechanism, from the book
The Colombo auction sells tea by the lot to a buyer who blends it under his own name. Every step after the auction is where the money is, and every step can be done here by somebody who is not a plantation company.
The first step
Ask the manager of one upcountry estate whether you can buy 20 small packs of a single picking at the factory-gate price. Photograph the estate, write 150 words on its story, and offer a 3-month subscription to 20 friends and colleagues abroad at a price that covers postage and a margin. The proof is how many pay for the second month without being asked.
- Who pays first
- A tea drinker abroad who already pays for speciality coffee by origin and would pay the same way for a named estate delivered monthly.
- What leaves today
- The estate's tea leaves as a lot at the Colombo auction and is blended under a foreign name, so the story and the retail margin are both sold abroad.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tea Board. Ask what a seller of single-estate tea abroad must register or get approved.
- Sri Lanka Export Development Board. Ask which countries' buyers already want single-estate tea by subscription.
Check before you spend
Whether your packs need export approval and permission for the Ceylon logo, and what food labelling the buyer's country requires.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a monthly tea subscription abroad charge now?
- How many subscribers stay past the first few months?
- What does posting one pack abroad cost, door to door?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"And the part that matters most: the ability to reorder"
The first sale is small; the reorder from abroad, month after month, is the business.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.