It's a tea party giveaway

My friend Jodie thinks I should swap over from coffee drinking to tea drinking because it suits my image more.

I totally love this!

I love the idea of drinking tea. I love all the stuff; the tea pot, the tea cozy, the tea leaves, the strainer, and all the pretty tea cups. I love the whole ritual of boiling and pouring and turning and waiting and sipping. And I love the thought of women all over the world sharing cups of tea and friendship and love.

My friend Jodie is one of those people I knew of before I actually knew. I'd admired her gorgeous doe eyed paintings around Daylesford for years before we started saying hi in the street. I'd watched her beautiful tea business start up and develop before we'd spoken more than a sentence and then finally this year we ended up at the same cafe a few mornings a week and actually chatted.

I'm always, always fascinated by how creative women balance motherhood and creativity, how they keep the passion in their creative businesses, what drives them, where they find their inspiration and how they keep it all fun. 

And although our stories are as different as the fact that I drink coffee and she drinks tea, I can totally relate and understand and admire Jodie's gorgeous tea tales.

I think you'll love her and her story too.

Where did the idea for SHE-TEA come from?

Vanessa (my business partner) and I both have degrees in nursing, when we met we were both working for a medical device company selling into hospitals. We decided that after many years of sales and marketing in the medical field that we really wanted to spend our days working in a business we were deeply passionate about and that inspired us on a daily level. We also wanted to create a business that we could build up once we started our families, which was on the agenda in the near future. 

At this point we decided to both write a list of all of the things we were passionate about in our lives, that make us happy, and come back to compare the lists. When we met up again and showed each other our lists, there was a strong common theme with 5 key factors that were identical: family, female friendships, art, tea and humour. 

We built She-Tea backwards from this list with tea being the actual product, and art and humour being our differentiating factors from the rest of the market. The tea is aimed at women to represent the value of our female friendships, and our family is represented by the fact that we have been able to stay home with our children for the past 3.5 years.

Where did the name SHE-TEA come from?

We wanted to be all about women as women by far drink the most tea, and support each other through life over endless pots and conversations. We knew that ideally a product name should spell out exactly what it is as first glance and so Ness came straight our with SHE-TEA. It just stuck.

What is your favourite tea?

Despite having tried literally hundreds of teas and herbal blends (tisanes) in the past few years, I always come back to a simple black tea, our Daylesford Breakfast tea (mix between English and Irish). When we were in Sri Lanka last month, one of the factories we visited gave us a box of single estate Ceylon tea...that's one of my new favourites as it's very strong and so we are looking at bringing it into our new Slow Tea range. It's so strong and gutsy and delicious. Close second is green and jasmine (Daylesford Lazy Lunch).

What do you think is special about your tea?

Our vision has always been to nurture, support and inspire busy women, every day and we wanted to build our range around this vision.

Originally we sat down and thought about all of the reasons women might gather for a cup of tea together. We developed a range of teas to support women through life's challenges with beautiful and amusing canisters, along with the perfect tea blends for things like hormones, break-ups, motherhood, love, health kicks and hangovers. We felt that putting some humour into the experience, and adding some of my original artwork, while sourcing amazing tea blends would be the perfect way to create something really special that women could enjoy by themselves, or share with friends as gifts and in challenging times. 

Since the first Loose leaf range, our business have evolved a lot, and we've also added a Daylesford organic / fair trade range in biodegradable pyramid tea bags which has been really popular. We realise that not everyone has time to brew a pot of tea so the bags have been a welcome addition!

Every canister also has a different work of art on the front to make our customers feel that extra bit special.

Are there any other interesting SHE-TEA facts you care to share?

Yes, we decided to start our business in 2009. We had a plan that we would start She-Tea while we were both still working, then get pregnant 3 months apart to allow us to cover each other during the new baby stage, and then we'd build the business while raising our children. This is exactly what happened. My son, Jasper, was born 3 months before Ness's daughter Addison. At this point we decided that we were the masters of the universe... and we've gone on to grow the business over the past few years around our kids' needs. Ness had a second little girl 18 months ago and with the two of us working together we have been able to juggle our responsibilities according to our kids' needs. It's been challenging for sure, but well worth the effort!

We've also just came back from a child-free tea tour that took us to China, Hong Kong International Tea Fair and Sri Lanka. It was absolutely amazing and we have started writing about it in out blog Tea Travels.

Jodie has also kindly offered up two giveaway prizes for two lovely lucky Foxs Lane readers.

Prize A - A canister each of Motherhood, Sweet tooth and Zen tea.

Prize B - A canister each of Abundance, Daylesford breakfast tea and Happy hippie.

All you have to do is leave a comment to enter.
And the giveaway is open to anyone, anywhere. Yay!

In the meantime you can check out;

The SHE-TEA website here 

The SHE TEA blog here

The SHE TEA facebook here

The SHE TEA twitter here 

The SHE TEA online shop here 

Ok, you gotta be in it to win it so comment, comment, comment and we'll announce the winners on this post on Friday. (Please make sure I can contact you).

And happy tea drinking, or in my case coffee, sorry Jodie.

xxxx

The winner of Prize A is The Life of Clare.
The winner of Prize B is Amanda K.