16 June 2010

Teapigs - Clever Marketing By Tetley Tea

• Blog,
• foodie,
• foodie news,
• Mars,
• organic food blog,
• Seeds of Change,
• Tata,
• tea,
• Tea Pigs,
• Teapigs,
• Tetley

I had always wondered how Teapigs came from nowhere and were able to create a fabulous range of tea using really expensive Fuso tea bagging kit etc etc.

Well, I was looking at their accounts as I am always nosey and like to see how well people are doing and low and behold, Teapigs Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tetley Tea and so Tata Tea (India's biggest tea company) and not the little wholesome start-up that I thought they were.  So that's how they can rack up losses of £200,000 a year.  So that's what they mean when they say they met at a "a really big tea company", which apparently was in their marketing department, so I have discovered later.  Very clever marketing gimmick then and hats off to Tetleys, you had me fooled!  But Steenbergs won't ever be able to compete with their marketing budget even if our gunpowder tea tastes way nicer.

It reminds me of Seeds of Change that cleverly hardly tells you that they are part of Mars, Inc, but imply in their marketing that they grew out of being a small hippy seeds business in Santa Fe, whereas they are really part of one of the world's largest food groups.  They do currently have on their web site that the trademarks are owned by Mars, but they used to hide better.