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Tavalon co-founder John-Paul Lee (Diana Hubert/The Epoch Times)
At just 26, CEO and co-founder of tea company Tavalon, John-Paul Lee quit his job and sold everything to start a now successful business in the hopes of making tea accessible to an American audience.
That was five years ago. Now Tavalon is found in over 400 restaurants, department stores, and cafes with operations in the USA and South Korea. The company also has nine shop-in-shop locations and sells its products at Cipriani’s and Bloomingdales to name a few.
“The average American perceives tea to be very Asian, European, a grandmother’s beverage, and something you drink when you’re sick … pinkie up in the air. I wanted to change all that. I wanted to say here’s a new way of looking at tea. It can be fun, young, sexy, and accessible,” said John-Paul.
After working in the corporate world for four years as a consultant, Lee says he wanted to leave the rat race to start his own business. “At that point I could have been scraping gum off the streets of New York as long as it was my own business so I was ready to do whatever it took,” he said.
While in London on business, Lee was sitting in a Covent Garden café drinking coffee when he looked up and realized everyone was drinking tea.
Lee started racking his brain, trying to think of how he could make tea—the second most widely consumed beverage in the world—popular on the U.S. domestic market.
After traveling across Europe and Asia and visiting over 300 tea houses, tea farms, and plantations, Lee came to the realization that for him, it comes down to branding, perception, and marketing. Excited and full of ideas, Lee came back to the United States and along with his business partner, an attorney at the time, quit his job and sold everything in pursuit of reintroducing tea from a fresh perspective to the United States.
Welcome to Tavalon Tea. (Courtesy of Tavalon Tea)
“We were 26 at the time and we treated it as a very expensive business goal. If we fail, we will learn more than what we will ever learn in any business school, but if we succeed then we’re doing what we love, which is our passion, the rest is history.”
Lee and his partner were presented with a challenge—getting Americans to think of tea in a new way, and doing it all on a shoestring budget. Lee admits he had to be very creative and think outside the box.
“If you don’t drink any tea it’s a very uphill battle to convince you: here’s a hot tea, here’s an ice tea, and it’s been done for centuries.” The company had to come up with a fresh way of introducing tea to the public.
“But if I find out that you enjoy a cocktail once in a while,” he continued, “I’m going to incorporate alcohol with my tea and now we have a whole line of tea cocktails. We have green tea martinis, chai martinis, green tea infused mojitos, etc. It’s really about incorporating fun with tea, and incorporating it into our social environment,” says Lee.
This inspired a new line of products from tea infused gummy bears to tea chocolate almonds.
