November 13, 2008
November 04, 2008
ONO Tea
ONO TEA
Tea Radio (TM) had the opportunity of interview a sister and brother owned tea company called ONO Tea.
Phuong Le and Viet Le were kind enough to share with our Tea Radio (TM) listeners how they got started in the tea business. Plus information about some of the products that they offer.
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Click on the link below for the audio interview. Will play automatically. No downloading required. Left click on the link, link will play automatically with your computer's program.
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For more information on ONO Tea please click on the link below.
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Below is the transcript of the interview with ONO Tea.
Dawnya: This is Dawnya with Tea Radio and today I am privileged to be at Ono Tea. I am meeting with Phuong Lee and Viet Le the creative founders of this company. You know we are actually sitting at the World Tea Expo in their booth right now and it is a beautiful booth. I just wanted to talk about the design. It’s stunning and we are going to talk more about that, but our listeners may be wondering, how are you different? Phuong tell me your story? Tell us how you guys got started and what the vision is?
Phuong Le: I lived on Maui for close to two years. I used to be a huge coffee drinker and I told my mom, mom I need to get off coffee you know. She said, well start drinking lose leaf teas. So she sent me some premium loosely teas from Asia and I started with my culinary background.
I graduated from culinary school. With my culinary background, I knew to throw some dried mango, dry papaya and I made these awesome blends. I moved back to Michigan to start a company with my brother. We named it Ono meaning delicious. His idea was doing something different that sets us apart from everyone else is lifestyle teas.
We have teas that cater to every single lifestyle, whether it is for kids, real men who drink tea. We have a collection called Real Men Drink Tea, Everyday Woman. We have one called Super Mom and Everyday Woman. Its helps moms relax and replenish at the end of the day, the Super Mom.
And also we decided brand our company with all these lifestyle images so it makes it easier for the consumer to pick what tea they would like to drink. Sometimes it gets so confusing especially with younger generation. What tea should I drink? I do not know what tea to drink. This makes it less intimidating so they go and they see lifestyle images, whether they are an athlete. We have even a tea for golfers.
Dawnya: Okay. Now let’s go back though because I want to find out I mean not everybody gets a package of tea from their mom and decides to blend and create a company you know just like that. So have you always been an entrepreneurial, you are an entrepreneurial family?
Phuong Le: Yes we are. My parents came over from Asia with nothing at all like nothing in their pockets. My dad had a tailor shop. Within in six month we moved, not knowing the language. With the help from a very nice American man helped some with opening up his own business.
My brother has his own website company also and mom same thing. She went to the business with my dad. My sister is a cosmetologist so she is her own you know. She has her own business pretty much also. Yes, we are definitely an entrepreneurial family.
My dad he is in his 50s and he just started three companies over in Vietnam. Within one year or so no matter what age it will never be out of us. We are entrepreneurial definitely.
Dawnya: So you are serial entrepreneurs so you do many multiples. Now you have already got a website company, when your sister comes to you and says hey lets start a tea company what were your thoughts?
Viet Le: Well first I was really apprehensive because although you know we grew up drinking tea and my mom taught us that she was great in everything else. Just apprehensive that it was a dominantly feminine market, but after doing a lot of research I felt that you know I could educate the male audience a lot better and demographic a lot better. So that is why I was like I need to jump on board to really try to you know make this happen and may get go forward.
Dawnya: Well now we are on an online radio broadcast so obviously our listeners are not seeing you unlike I am seeing you. So we are young and hip and happening and you guys are both really willing to embrace that, that lifestyle tea. How did you come up with the concept of lifestyles?
Viet Le: We came up with the concept of lifestyles by observing our competition first. We wanted to you know try a different concept that would set ourselves apart. We wanted to really to allow the user or the consumer to identify with our product and the easiest way to do that is to make a concept that they can really understand. So making it easy for them will allow them to easier select our teas.
Dawnya: I think that is really good. Go ahead.
Phuong Le: We also looked at all our friends and we thought okay well we have girlfriend, who is a creative person. She is a makeup artist, well what tea would fit her so we created the creative genius collection for her.
We have my brother, who is a professional. He works, you know has been in the suit and you know wearing that trendy blazer so we created the professional collection just for him. Teas that wake him up in the morning. Its gets him going. We have a tea for entrepreneurs also. So that is another reason why we started the life.
Dawnya: You have an entrepreneur tea?
Phuong Le: We have an entrepreneur tea. Yes.
Dawnya: I need that.
Phuong Le: Yes and the funny thing is that it is caffeine free. It’s an herbal. Has a ginkgo and ginseng in there. Which is well known to help with stimulating the mind. It is invigorating and so it is like the brain power tea.
Dawnya: Okay. So I am going to have a lot of new ideas. I as another serial entrepreneur need a few more companies to start so that’s great. Okay so the packaging, I want to describe the packaging because it is kind of a cross between a photo and a cartoon and a graphic image, this is you right. Very nice. You know and you know it is not Simpson oriented, but it still got that lifestyle fresh edge. Tell me how you came up with that?
Phuong Le: I have always been a big fan. It is called vector art and I have just been a create of my whole life and it is my style of art. So what we did was we wanted to kind of brand our, bring our family and everything. So on a lot of our packaging we have these cartoony type images of our family so wanted to really brand ourselves with the company. It’s great.
Dawnya: So when I look at your packaging I may see your family in a variety of forms and perhaps your friends as well.
Phuong Le: Absolutely. We are multicultural also and that is why we wanted to promote teas for everyone, for every single lifestyle. So you will see you know multicultural images on our tea packaging. Which is nice because we want to promote it to everyone. We want to promote healthy living to every single race, ethnicity, and lifestyle.
Dawnya: So now your teas are lose leaf? Are they easy to brew I mean we are talking about lifestyle, but now the first thing somebody is going to say is oh that is going to be difficult I just do not know that I have time for that what do you say to that?
Phuong Le: That is why we decided to create our own line of tea ware. All our glassware its Pyrex and it is borosilica glass. It is heat resistant you can put it in the microwave, on the stove. It has a filtering system that makes drinking premium loose leaf tea much much easier.
We have one called the artisan mug, which is great for an individual. We also crafted the handles to be bigger. Also, so that your not drinking tea from a little tiny tea cup you know. Which was perfect for our real mandarin tea collection because guys call hold a nice big cup of tea or women can hold a nice big cup of tea. It is very ergonomically you know excites local people.
Viet Le: We feel that we just need to make it easier for the consumer. So a lot of people don’t know how to brew tea. So we want to educate the consumer on it more by offering our tea ware in the simpler package.
Phuong Le: And with the glassware you get better flavor. It gives the tea, room to move around and to release the full flavor of the tea. What’s also nice is with our packaging on the back you will see it says save the tea. Which means do not throw out that first brew, when you use our tea ware just keep adding more hot water and you can use the same batch of leaves up to three times with our tea ware.
Dawnya: So basically it becomes very affordable as well as we are using high quality premium teas, but its still very affordable is that right?
Viet Le: Yes absolutely.
Dawnya: Okay well thank you so much for being with us. I want to encourage people to go to the link underneath this audio because it is great way to get connected with your company. You sell both retail and wholesale on line is that right?
Phuong Le: That’s correct.
Dawnya: So if you are a tea lover there is a place for you to go. If you are a tea business owner and you want to create, carry a line or perhaps your tea café and you want to carry a line and that is really hip and happening and really will relate to the young market and old market as well. It makes it very easy to know oh this tea is for me. Thank you so much for being with us we wish you really the best and I looked forward to trying all your new blends and met new friends and family on your label.
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To visit ONO Tea web site, click on the link below.
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To enjoy a cute commerical on tea and caterpillars, please click on the link below.
Tea Radio Staff
- Dawnya Sasse
Dawnya is the executive editorial director and hostess of the TeaRadio broadcasts. She is the founder of many tea related companies including TeaEvents.com - April Hayman
April is new to TeaRadio and currently handles editing and production. She is also a roaming reporter eager to preach the good news of tea! - Dorothy Long
Dorothy Long is the Program Director of Tea Radio. Dorothy has been with Tea Events and Tea Radio.com since 2005 and enjoys working one on one arranging content and interviews for interesting tea related programing.
