Our indie tea house is launching a line of PLA compostable tea pyramids, as well as giving our classic 600+ loose leaf teas a fresh packaging makeover! Preorder teas, dice, tea dragon plushies, and more here!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Plushie & Teabag Update!
9 days ago
– Fri, May 10, 2024 at 10:22:02 AM
Happy Friday, Thirsty Nerds!
Lots has happened in the past two weeks behind the scenes here, and it's all great stuff!
1. Matcha T. Dragon plushie design finalized!
Her wings, her teacup, her smile, her snoot! She's perfect!
We've nailed down the final details with our manufacturer, and the photos look great. Physical prototype is en route to us now, and should be in hand mid-next week! If it's as wonderful in person as it is in photos, we'll get the order in as soon as BackerKit surveys lock and we're able to get an accurate head count! YAY!
2. Packaging design is done, and even more recyclable than we expected!
That's right: most US regions can recycle the individual envelopes!
We're submitting the packaging orders early next week, ready to roll on teabag boxes and loose leaf pouches, and have been able to keep ALL materials recyclable with codes 1 & 2: the most broadly accepted, fine-to-mix materials. That's AMAZING. We chose embossing over gloss to add flair on the boxes, so we'll still get stunning texture without increasing environmental impact.
Let's talk individual teabag envelopes! Above is a flatlay demo of our Earl Gay teabag envelopes. We heard you regarding foil-lined pouches: they aren't recyclable anywhere, and (this one was news to me!) can occasionally trigger seizures in epileptic tea lovers. Yike! I've chatted with our manufacturer, and they feel confident that a pure PE envelope will offer marginally greater air permeability than the foil-lined option. This means the teabags may go stale slightly more quickly, but not dramatically. With pure PE envelope, you may see a slightly shorter shelf life, but they will be recyclable in most regions and will adhere to our accessibility mission.
We're going to give them a try! I'll personally test each type of bagged tea at least once per week and keep a freshness log so we can dial in that optimal freshness range and make our shelf life recommendations accordingly. A "use by" date coder comes with the bagging machine, so we'll be able to program in those freshness dates on each bag and adjust as needed.
If this experiment teaches us that the foil lining really makes a huge difference, we'll revisit our materials on the next order. I'm optimistic that we'll see success here, as our production model involves freshly blending and packing in small batches to offer optimal freshness. I don't see that changing with bagged teas, and have no intention of holding boxes of bagged teas for 1+ years anyway. We have our QA plan in place and will make sure you get the best and the information to enjoy it!
3. BackerKit Progress!
Twenty days remain until BackerKit locks and any additional payments are processed! That also means your friends & families have twenty days to get in on the preorder store and join the fun! Think of it as a second chance for the folks who missed the Kickstarter. Once surveys are locked in, we can place our orders for all add-ons and get those dice, stickers, travel mugs, plushies, and pins rolling in!
Only 194 of y'all have NOT submitted your surveys, which is great at this point in the game! Our support rep at BK has still been unable to locate the source of the shipping overcharge bug, but my system of clearing those overcharges manually is working just fine. I can clear them in under a minute now, so PLEASE don't be shy about pinging me! I know it's a little extra hassle, but we genuinely give a crap about ethics in our funding sources and really don't want to overcharge anyone.
That's it for today, Teahearts! I'll keep plugging away at making the most of this wonderful beautiful glow-up opportunity, and am here to support you anytime!
(Well. Almost anytime. Tomorrow I'm taking my mama to a tea farm in Oregon to get hands-on with picking and processing green tea!)
Con mucho amor, Friday
BackerKit Survey Update!
22 days ago
– Sat, Apr 27, 2024 at 09:44:20 PM
Hello, Teahearts!
Good-ish news on the BackerKit front! While support hasn't been able to explain why some folks and not others are being charged for shipping erroneously, I *am* able to manually neutralize those overages with a "complimentary credit" applied on my end. They're still investigating and hopefully we'll figure out how to remove this error altogether, but in the meantime I need you to send in support tickets or emails if you're encountering difficulties so I can whack-a-mole them as they crop up (and be sure not to miss anyone)!
Again: no BackerKit charges will be processed until I manually press a button at the end of May, and you'll have 48 hours of buffer between the push of that button and your orders being locked in. Plenty of time to get all surveys completed and error tickets resolved!
xoxo, Friday
BackerKit is Live, and Designs Look Great!
24 days ago
– Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 12:54:14 PM
Hello, beauteas!
Thanks so much for your patience, I'm so happy to say we have finished putting together our BackerKit surveys, had them approved, and the first test batch have been sent out! If you haven't received your backer survey yet, you will within the next 24 hours!
First look at all box tops for bagged tea packaging!
All recyclable, all gorgeous, all ours soon!
We're obsessed with this absolute STUNNER.
Plushie Preview!
We have a first look at our Matcha T. Dragon plushie! She's very nearly perfect, though we have requested to have her teacup appear full of green tea rather than the empty cup they have mocked up here. We've also requested her snoot be more defined to match our logo design. So soft and squeezable, though, and her gold-tipped tea leaf wings are the absolute best.
Everything is moving forward!
We've had word that all our beautiful new packaging and our three giant teabag robots should arrive before August, which means we're so far well on track for backer fulfillment on schedule!
We're having a great time and super happy with how everything is moving forward. I'll be in touch as more updates are available!
xoxo, Friday
Nearly 2 Weeks Later, LOTS Happening!
about 1 month ago
– Tue, Apr 16, 2024 at 10:30:39 AM
Heya, Thirsty Nerds! Some very exciting things happening over here as we see this project move forward with a quickness!
The highlights
We've placed our machine order! Three mondo huge bois arriving at the warehouse in 2-3 months!
Final packaging design details are coming together, so we'll be ordering all the packaging in the universe shortly. Our manufacturing liaison thinks we may have new packaging in hand by June, so there's a good possibility we're running earlier rather than later on that timeline!
I got the sample enamel pins in hand and omg they're PERFECTION (photo at end of post)
Matcha plushie sample is still being processed, but should ship within a week or two. I'll obvi come squee at you here as soon as I have the sample dragon in hand!
Turns out that sending out a BackerKit survey is expensive, so we're waiting for the KS funds to deposit before we send that survey out to y'all. Gotta make sure payroll and rent are covered first!
BackerKit surveys will have add-on options, so if you haven't yet treated yourself to bonus goodies, you still have a chance!
BackerKit also allows us to create a "preorder shop," so friends who missed out on the KS campaign can still join in the fun and place a preorder to ship out along with all KS backer rewards. Basically a second chance at backing the project! When that goes live, please do share with all and sundry. More friends = more tea joy for all!
Ok, now a picture of those SUPER cute enamel pins:
They're perfection.
Have a great week, teahearts! Catch you soon!
xoxo, Friday
Today's the day, and we NEVER thought it would get this far!
about 1 month ago
– Fri, Apr 05, 2024 at 11:38:27 AM
Wowee, six figures and we haven't even hit the final few hours!
True story: the night before launching, I whispered a wild, unreachable, pie-in-the-sky goal to myself and didn't tell anyone else until yesterday: that we would break 100k on this project.
Join me tonight for a communitea celebration on our Twitch channel from 8-12 PST! We're counting down the last four hours with video games, tea, chat, and squeeing over the final clock ticks!
Drop us a follow and join the fun!
Truly, teahearts. TRULY I cannot express how awed and honored I am to see our humble $31k goal reach well over 300% this month. We'll be able to make all our small biz glow-up dreams come true AND take a dent out of our lingering 2022 debt!
Speaking of glow-ups...
Carl sent over the digital mockup of our Earl Gay boxes, and they are every big as absurd, whimsical, and magical as we requested!
