Hi! My name is Toby and whether you're a first time customer wanting to know more about Tea Life or a long time customer, thank you for taking the time to read about this journey.
It will be a very simplified version and difficult to communicate properly the highs and lows, the challenges and milestones - but I will do my best.
In 2015, Tea Life was founded in an apartment in Hurstville, Sydney with all orders and stock held at that location. These were the days of hand written pre paid postage bags, a $300 printer printing tea labels applied by hand and tea being weighed and placed into each bag by hand, per order.
A very hands on and slow beginning that I think is necessary for an owner to truly understand their own business at a base level.
Around 2017, with orders slowly increasing, I felt safe enough to move into a shared warehouse in Kingsgrove where I started to think about better systems for order fulfillment and tea storage. The increased space was amazing and thought I had all of the space I would ever need, but this soon filled up and began looking for my own warehouse around 2019. I also have some staff now!
In 2019, I found an affordable warehouse to rent in Marrickville and also purchased a packing machine to help take some burden off staff. This machine turned out to be not that great at packing tea and was the start of a long and expensive battle in trying to find the right one through trial and error. It did the job for the most part but was far from easy.
Soon after, Covid hit - and online sales went through the roof, being one of the luckier business at the time perhaps due to the nature of the product, Tea Life flourished during this time and after a long period of saving was finally able to...
Purchase a warehouse in St Marys, NSW in 2022. From here I was finally able to invest properly in Tea Life, such as air conditioning, roller shutters, forklift, scissorlift, and finally (although I'll probably regret saying this) as much space as I need.
From very humble beginnings hand packing tea in my apartment, to becoming one of the top tea companies in Australia and with more plans for the future, thank you for being a part of this journey!
Timeline
2015
Hurstville Origins
I should have taken more images at this time, but I never thought I would need them or be writing a history tree going this far back. So.. here is an image of the outside of the apartment instead.
I would walk daily with a large bag to drop to the post office in Westfield, these days all pickups are done by the courier which is much better!
2017
Kingsgrove Warehouse
The move, while scary, was a necessary one. Yet again, I have no images so here's another one from the outside via google maps. I'll have images soon, I promise.
Around this time, a proper business structure started to emerge and while still a bit messy, we still got orders out in time.
2021
Ultimo Cafe
I didn't have much room above to mention it, but I opened a cafe in Ultimo for a year or so. The design, vibe, and feedback was amazing but sadly the rent was a bit high, the space was too large, and was difficult to maintain a stable workflow between this and the online business so closed down after a year.
I learned a lot from this so may try again later if I feel it's safe! (stay tuned)