Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/48160
BSO BdS\Re continued from page 21 MOVING UP IN A DOWN ECONOMY Like the rest of the business community, specialty tea com- panies have had to find ways to progress or at least hang on as joblessness and consumer spending have remained stubbornly static. That may explain why the two trends previously discussed here were both results of outside factors touching tea—the Japan disaster and the FDA—rather than being movements born out of innovation made by tea companies themselves. "We've seen kind of a holding pattern," says Mike Spillane, owner of importer and distributor G.S. Haly Company. "People are just happy with the business they do and are trying to consoli- date and regroup a bit." In that vein, a number of companies have tried to lightly bump up the bottom line through strategies such as new package design and expanding into slightly different tea markets. In short, small, conservative moves are looking a lot more attractive than big-splash expenditures. eyes of customers. "In the last year I saw a lot of other companies doing the same thing," he says. "Everybody wants to be relevant to the consumer, and newness is really big." Spillane says he has been struck by the fact that some nation- ally known brands long defined more by their size than their quality have made pushes to stress their whole-leaf offerings. At the same time, Spillane notes, some traditionally high-end-only companies have started offering relatively lower-quality teas as interest in $20 tins waned. "Companies are saying, 'How do I generate some sales without remaking myself in hard economic times?'" he says. "It's all about finding a new image without hav- ing to spend a lot of money." Ring says that Choice has made several changes to the way it packages product in an effort to stay fresh and unique in the FRESH CUP MAGAZINE ! DAVID PLAYFORD