Create Your Business Entity
Most businesses need to register with their state to become a legal entity. Depending on where you live, you may be able to register online, or you might have to submit paper documents by mail or in person. Youll also need to apply for an Employer Identification Number with the IRS, which youll need to file taxes.
Lastly, you might have to apply for specific permits in your city or state. Get in touch with your local government to find out what you need to do to start your online tea business.
The Health Benefits Of Drinking Tea
Tea is a healthy drink option. When you enter the tea business, you get to offer consumers something soothing and beneficial to their health another reason to celebrate your entrepreneurial journey. The benefits of drinking tea include:
- Health benefits: According to one study, there are hundreds of scientific publications documenting teas ability to help prevent cancer. Many of these studies show that the natural antioxidants in tea may lower the risk of various forms of cancer, such as skin, lung, and breast cancer. Tea is also associated with increased cardiovascular health and has been shown to reduce the risk of stroke and heart disease.
- Calorie-free: A plain cup of tea has less than five calories. So, as long as the drinker avoids adding milk and sugar, they can enjoy a flavorful beverage while sticking to their weight loss plan.
- Caffeine-free options: Generally, herbal teas contain no caffeine. Individuals who are sensitive to caffeine or who want something relaxing to drink at night can benefit from sipping herbal tea.
Cons Of Starting A Tea Business
Motivation of employees
If you plan to have a sales/content team on board, finding creative ways to motivate them can be a challenge. It’s important that you’re able to offer great incentives and a good work environment for your employees.
Longer Sales Process
A tea business can be a big time and money investment for your customer, so it’s important you plan and predict a longer conversion funnel and stay in communication with potential customers.
Low margins
The gross margins for your tea business are typically around 60%, which can make it more challenging to incur new expenses and maintain profitability.
High employee turnover
In the tea business, employee turnover is often high, which can be quite costly and time consuming for your business. It’s important to try and avoid this as much as possible by offering competitive pay, benefits, and a positive work environment.
Taxes
As a tea business, you typically pay self-employment taxes which can be quite high. It’s important to understand what you will be paying in taxes each year so you can determine if the work you’re taking on is worth it.
High overhead expenses
With starting a tea business, there are overhead expenses that come with selling a physical product. You will want to make sure you strategically budget for these overhead costs. We discuss this more in the startup costs section below.
You may need to charge sales tax
Churn
Time commitment
Difficult to build trust with your customer
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Purchasing Inventory For Your Tea Business
When first starting out, it’s important to start small with your overhead to get a gauge for what people want.
Just remember – if you order a line of items that don’t sell, it’s nearly impossible to recoup the money lost.
Buying the right inventory takes research and planning in order to get it right.
Pro-tip: It’s easy to become biased based on your own fashion preferences on what types of shoes/apparel to purchase. This is where a lot of fashion businesses go wrong. It’s important to base purchase decisions on current buyer behavior, trends in the market, and specific to your niche.
Erin Hooley, founder of Bailey’s Blossoms tells us how poor inventory projections led her to lose over $2M
Simple Homemade Herbal Tea Recipes
One of the best things about herbal tea is not only the flavor and benefits. Its the opportunity to grow many herbs by yourself and make your own blends. Although Camellia sinensis, a plant used for making real tea, can nowadays be grown at home too, its still very difficult to make your own black or green tea at home. This is where herbal teas win.
The ease of growing them at home gives you an opportunity to try many different flavors and enjoy them at any time. But apart frombeing delicious and refreshing, herbal teas may offer numerous health benefits from boosting the immune system to making you fall asleep more easily.
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Promoting The Health Benefits Of Drinking Tea
Tea is well-known to be a healthy beverage. The great thing about selling your tea is knowing that you are offering something that will benefit your customers.
As an online tea seller, you will want to push, push, and push the benefits of your tea in addition to its taste.
Every communication should deliver to your customers yet another reason to buy your tea.
Benefits Of Selling Tea Online From Home
We have covered a lot of ground in this article so far. If you are still on the fence about selling tea online with your own website, lets review some of the benefits.
Flexible Schedule Whether you have a full-time job and other things going on in your life, you can run your online tea business on your schedule. Some weeks you will have more time than others.
24/7 Shopping Your online tea store is open all day every day. This makes the possibility of making money when you are sleeping or working your regular 9-to-5. Theres no feeling quite like waking up in the morning to discover that youve made money while dreaming!
Low-cost Barrier Starting an online tea store has a relatively nominal cost. This means you can build out your business at your pace and budget. However, the low-cost barrier to entry means that many other possible players can jump into the game.
What is the best feeling about starting your online tea business?
Starting your own online business creates plenty of emotions. However, I would say that getting your first sale beats them all. It is truly an amazing feeling when you start your online tea business, and you get your first sale from an anonymous customer.
What should I look out for when I sell tea online?
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The Brick & Mortar Business Model
When deciding whether or not to start a tea business, it’s important to first decide what type of business model you want !
Here are a few things to keep in mind when considering a Brick & Mortar store:
If you do plan to open a physical store, it’s important that you find a spot in a high-traffic area. This is a great way to gain exposure for your business and also get new customers.
It’s also important to consider the higher costs associated with operating a physical store and the long days/hours associated with running a store.
The main benefit, however, is that customers love being able to see products in person. It’s important to recognize that although some people enjoy shopping online, there will always be the shopper persona that likes to touch, feel, and see the product they’re buying.
Pros Of Starting A Tea Business
Flexibility
You can put as much time into the business as you’d like. If you like the work and have some initial experience, you can start small and manage all aspects of the business on your own.
Meaningful business connections
You never know who you will meet as a tea business. This could be the start of an incredible business opportunity!
High customer retention rates
Once a customer invests in your product, they’ve invested their time and energy to utilize your product/service which is highly valuable to them. Typically, your product or service becomes indispensable to your customer.
Easy to encourage “impulse buy”
In the tea business, you have a much higher chance of encouraging your customers to buy on impulse – you can easily alter the price, placement, packaging, and promotional value to influence the decision of your buyer.
Unlimited income potential
With starting a tea business there is no cap as to how much income you can make. The stronger your business skills and the more energy/time you put into your career, the more you’ll make.
Amazing perks and discounts
Working in the tea business comes with its perks! As a seller for these products/services, you typically also get to enjoy industry perks and discounts.
Predictable income stream
Your businesses income stream tends to be predictable based on the number of customers you have signed up. This makes financial planning and outlooks much more seamless!
Higher likelihood of getting referrals
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The Basics Of Blending
Every blend uses one ingredient as a base. This is usually a pure real teas or dried herbs that connect all flavors together. Fresh flavors of mint, spearmint, lemongrass and tangy and sour lemon, hibiscus and strawberries are great for summer teas, while spices make perfect warming winter teas. Black and rooibos teas blend well with sweet ingredients, and green tea with sour, fruity and fresh ingredients.
S To Starting Your Own Tea Company
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What Skills Do I Need To Succeed In Starting A Tea Business
As a tea business, there are several essential skills and characteristics that are important to identify prior to starting your business.
Lets look at these skills in more detail so you can identify what you need to succeed in your day-to-day business operations:
Business Savvy Skills
When starting a tea business, there are a few fundamental business skills you will want to learn in order to be successful:
- Leadership and training skills: A great team starts with YOU. Make sure you have all company policies and training procedures in place prior to hiring your team
- Over the course of your career, you will need decisions that could impact your business significantly. It’s important you are able to think clearly and rationally about these decisions.
- Ability to understand the financials: You don’t need to be an accountant, but it is important that you are able to clearly understand and define metrics such as expenses, revenue, profit, margins, COGS, etc.
- Strategic Thinking: Setting clear goals and benchmarks, identifying opportunities, risks. Ability to effectively communicate these insights to your team.
These are a few of many business savvy skills you should have when starting a tea business.
For a full list, check out this article here.
Customer Service Skills
Friendly communication with customers and the ability to address service issues is a critical part of the job.
Here are some customer service skills you may want to consider prior to starting a tea business:
Start With The Family Herbalist Program
The Family Herbalist Program covers 90 of the most important and safest herbs, and how and when to work with them. Youll also learn more than 50 ways to make them into medicines, products, treats, and more.
Once youve completed the Family Herbalist program, youll have the tools that will form the backbone of your business!
There are some tricks to making a really great herbal formula, and the Foundations of Formulation course will show you all of them! Once youve finished this course, youll create effective formulas that really work.
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How To Make Tea To Sell
If you use a provider similar to Tea Sante, youll be required to pay an average of $10 per 3-ounce stand-up pouch and $5 for a 4-ounce tin. To ensure you earn a profit, youll need to charge at least $13.50 per 3-ounce pouch to your customers. To build a sustainable business, its recommended that you also sell tea accessories such as tea pots, infusers, and other related products with higher margins. You can also offer the accessories as an upsell to your tea or vice versa.
You can get started investing in your tea business for as little as $100. Tea wholesalers such as the Metropolitan Tea Company allow you to buy tea in bulk in quantities as low as 250g – starting at $9 per bag. You can also request samples from them if youd like to try the tea out yourself beforehand. They have everything from straight teas to robust blends featuring herbal tea infusions. You can private-label these ingredients yourself and even make your own unique blends.
Most tea wholesalers are a one-stop shop for ingredients, packaging, tins and accessories. Youll be able to purchase blank packaging from them and print your own labels using an online service like Sticker Mule or print at home using some Avery labels.
What Are Some Insider Tips For Jump Starting A Medicinal Herbs Business
Do enough research to learn about the current demand for medicinal herbs in your local area or the area where you plan to sell. Ensure that you actually have a viable market before investing in purchasing or growing herbs. Once you have a good sense of who your customers will be, start off small. Avoid a financial disaster by building your business slowly.
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How To Find A Supplier For Your Tea Business
Here are the steps to consider when finding a supplier/manufacturer:
Know your design
One very critical step to finding the right supplier is having an initial idea of what your design/product will look like.
Sketching is one of the most simple ways to get started in the design phase.
What’s great about sketching is that you can practically do this anytime, anywhere – even on the back of a napkin.
To get started, all you need to do is pick up a pen and paper and start drawing – or if you are working on a virtual/software product this can be a diagram that outlines the user interface or experience.
You’ll want to identify the type of supplier you are looking for.
Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself prior to searching for a supplier
- Are you looking for a manufacturer to produce your product idea?
- Do you want to find a supplier that can simply purchase existing products for you?
- Do you want a drop-shipper to supply and fulfill orders?
- Do you want a domestic supplier or an overseas supplier? Read more about the pros and cons of each here
Where to start your search
Once you have an understanding of what type of manufacturer/supplier will be best to bring your idea to life, there are several areas you can start your search:
Domestic Suppliers
Manufacturing Your Product In House
It’s also very common to manufacture your tea on your own – either from your home or in a commercial space.
Down the road, you can always choose to outsource your tea.
Herbal Tea Garden Tips
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How To Create A Slogan For Your Tea Business:
Slogans are a critical piece of your marketing and advertising strategy.
The role of your slogan is to help your customer understand the benefits of your product/service – so it’s important to find a catchy and effective slogan name.
Often times, your slogan can even be more important than the name of your brand.
Here are 6 tips for creating a catchy slogan for your tea business:
1. Keep it short, simple and avoid difficult words
A great rule of thumb is that your slogan should be under 10 words. This will make it easy for your customer to understand and remember.
2. Tell what you do and focus on what makes you different
There are a few different ways you can incorporate what makes your business special in your slogan:
- Explain the target customer you are catering your services towards
- What problem do you solve?
- How do you make other people, clients, or your employer look good?
- Do you make people more successful? How?
3. Be consistent
Chances are, if you’re coming up with a slogan, you may already have your business name, logo, mission, branding etc.
It’s important to create a slogan that is consistent with all of the above.
4. Ensure the longevity of your slogan
Times are changing quickly, and so are businesses.
When coming up with your slogan, you may want to consider creating something that is timeless and won’t just fade with new trends.
5. Consider your audience
When finding a catchy slogan name, you’ll want to make sure that this resonates across your entire audience.