Greetings from Winterwoods Tea Company!
SouleMama: Welcome to sponsorship on SouleMama! Please tell us about the beginnings of your business, and how you've come to be where you are now?
Tirza: Winterwoods Tea Company was founded in 2013 around a woodstove in our cozy, country home in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. As a former publicist and business consultant, I was looking for a way to work with my hands in a creative, inspired way that also allowed me to use my business background and involve my five children in my work. Passionate about herbs and natural health and a love for tea inspired my decision to start a tea company that focuses on using local, organic ingredients to create beautiful loose leaf tea blends that are free from pesticides and artificial flavors.
We began selling our tea blends at farmers markets and art shows and people fell in love with our farm-to-tea-cup blends. We quickly realized that the market for organic loose leaf tea is huge and as one of the only tea companies creating organic tea blends with locally sourced or wild foraged ingredients, our business exploded. In August of this year we ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund the building of our own commercial kitchen so that we can keep up with demand and allow our business to grow. We were selected a Kickstarter Top Picks in the food category and featured on the Kickstarter home page which gave us amazing exposure and allowed us to reach more than 200% of our funding goal. We raised more than $30,000 during that 45 day campaign, which will allow us to upgrade our tea processing and packaging equipment as well as build a commercial kitchen which our contractor just started on this week! We believe in paying back the love to our community and plan to make this kitchen available for other women owned small businesses in our area who are starting food-based companies.
During the past month we’ve been picked up by two major natural foods distributors who will help get our tea out to natural foods stores across the country and we added more than a dozen new wholesale accounts. We just wrapped up the Chinese Lantern Festival in Spokane for which we provided all the tea and have several other big events coming up. Additionally, we are super exited to be working with Taproot as a part of the pop-up shop.
In 2016 we plan to obtain our USDA organic certification, launch a brand new website and take our company on the road to more events including a couple major retail trade shows. I love working with my two oldest daughters, ages 14 and 10 and my husband, Shane, gets involved as much as he can. We also just hired our first employee! Our family is blessed to be able to do meaningful work together and connect with a community of likeminded people through this business. Winterwoods Tea Company is truly a labor of love and a family passion.
In addition, Winterwoods Tea Company would like to offer Soulemama readers 10% off your order until 12.31.15! Enter the code SOULEMAMA at checkout.
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That tea looks and sounds amazing! I would love love love to curl up with a book and a cup of their tea. THANK YOU!
Posted by: Jessica
