Ausperitea

PENDING ORDERS!

We will be placing orders within the next few weeks for the following teas and herbals, if any of them are interesting to you, let me know how much of which you would like so we can better plan our order!

White teas: almond pear white chai, cran-raspberry blend, pomegranate blend

Green teas: Dragon Well Chinese, Strawberry Rhubarb, Key Lime, Mango/Papaya, Mojito Breeze (mint/lime)

Black teas: Apricot, Masala Chai, Kentucky Bourbon, Southern Pecan, Blueberry Pomegranate, Darjeeling/Nepalese/Yunnan Gold blend, Darjeeling/Nepal/Assam blend, Market Spice, Bukhial Assam

Rooibos tisanes: Roasted Almond chai, Pomegranate

Honeybush tisanes: Peach Apricot, Lavender/chamomile, Precious Breath (eucalyptus/licorice/mint blend).

Fruit tisanes: Blueberry

Lapacho tisanes: Orange almond.

Herbal tisanes: Coconut Chamomile, Sunset in Seattle (strawberry/vanilla chamomile), Winter's Breath (minty chamomile)

Xin Nian Kuai Le!

For the duration of the Chinese New Year, all Chinese and Taiwanese products are 10% off. Or if you really feel like going for broke, put together five or more Chinese teas or teawares in one order and we'll take 20% off. These discounts apply to our pending products as well, so now's a great time to stock up!

There's a party tomorrow, and you're invited!

December 1, 2008, was the first official day that Ausperitea existed on the books. Of course, the journey to that day had started long before... in 1996, when two days into moving to China a friend of mine made Kung Fu tea for me, changing my life forever... from 1998 to 2002, when one of my favorite ways to spend a day off was to get some friends to go to JiuFen or MaoKong and watch the day go by over tea and conversation... in 2006, when I helped my students perform a tea ceremony for Chinese New Year, which spawned many revisits and our first interest in seeing where a business would take us... definitely in 2008, when I first discovered Da Hong Pao at the Chinese Tea Shop in Vancouver, and realized I had no real choice but to go forward with my passion project. All those moments gave me the knowledge, passion, and conviction to take a chance with fate.

The rest, as they say, is history, and it's a history I talk about often, but I'll save it for now, we'll share that moment again some day over a nice cup of tea. It's commonly held that a good number of businesses don't see the other side of a year (30% to 50% depending on the study), a higher percentage if they're in hospitality, as we are. Nearly half don't make it beyond five. In my time, I've seen countless restaurants, retail stores, farmer's market entrepreneurs come and go, some that you could tell right away didn't have a long-term future, some that truly shocked me, they had existed for so long that I had started to take for granted that they would always be there. Reaching ten business years is not a feat I take lightly, and though we've faced more than our fair share of adversity, making it a decade in a highly specialized product line tells me I have been doing something right.

So here's to you, Ausperitea. Tomorrow I'll be bringing some home baked goods, and some specialty drinks. Come by and celebrate the birthday of my brainchild. I'll likely be putting on some fond favorites, so the tea will be flowing and it's going to be tasty! In addition to that, and as an extra incentive now that our Black Friday sale has turned into our company anniversary sale, any purchases over $10 will be entered into a drawing for a $10 gift certificate. We'll start with one gift certificate, and every ten entries into the drawing that we get, we'll add another... for every FIFTY entries, in addition to the $10 gifts, we'll add an additional $20 gift certificate. Our anniversary sale ends next Friday, we'll add a few more entries to the drawing that weekend during our CommuniTea Pride Day celebration, and then we'll choose our winners, early enough to make use of those prizes before Christmas!

To those who have helped me along the way, my utmost gratitude. To the students that let me buy them pizza and a movie so I could borrow their tastebuds and opinions as we selected our first products, to the customers that fell in love with our product and our mission and have been with us over the years, to those new customers that just discovered us and are planning to make us their first and last stop for all things tea, we wouldn't, couldn't, be here without you. Your support isn't dollars and cents, it's gas in my car to get there, it's the ability to make an order when I need it most, it's the roof over my head, the food in my stomach, the relief I sometimes get from the day's trials. Occasionally it's the movie tickets that let Angelika and I have a memorable Daddy-Daughter date. Mostly, it's validation, that I have a skill and passion that others have a demand for, that I can work on little rest on the weekends, so I can spend my full attention being a father to the greatest kid in the world during the weekdays. It's hope, that sometimes, the little guy gets to win. Here's to ten great years, and the hope that the next ten will be even better!