Peace Out Verdant Teas!

I’m so excited to see the new website! :D

YAYYYY!!! SOO EXCITED!

I am soooo excited too! We are almost, almost done with all of the technical hand offs, so it won’t be long now.

But in the meantime – check out these awesome bags Wei Wei has been working on! She loves great calligraphy (and is a great calligrapher herself!) so she really wanted to make custom bags just for this weekend to celebrate the relaunch.

She even carved custom seals, too!! 100% awesome, that gal is – we’re so lucky to have her on our side.

https://www.facebook.com/verdanttea/photos/a.366937686656509.106750.120756301274650/1209781959038740/?type=1&theater

Being able to see the flavor profile just by mousing over the item is quite nice :)

Now to use my imagination and try to project the difference between Old Tree Shui Xian and Special Grade Shui Jin Gui to figure out which to buy… or do I just flip a coin?

Hooray!!! Can’t wait till tea of the month opens on August 16th! Sooo subscribing to that.

The website looks nice. Its a shame prices have increased somewhat significantly, as well as the removal of samples for order. Tbh I wouldn’t have placed anywhere remotely close to as many orders from Verdant were this always the case =(

Well done, I like the facelift to the website. The ability to find teas by flavor profile is pretty neat. Hope to see more items in the teaware section soon.

Zack S., not sure which teas you’re referring to but I checked the prices of teas I’ve ordered recently and they are virtually the same as before.

Website looks really great, and the mobile site seems to work really well :D The only problem I had was that some of the pages (or example, the Teaware page and the overall Oolong page) seem to cause my browser to crash :( I don’t know if it’s just my super-old, slightly slow iPhone, but maybe it’s something to investigate?

As for the prices Zack, some seem to have gone down massively – like the new sheng puerh, for example, down to $40 for a full cake :O

EDIT: Also Lily, I was just wondering: Master Han used to feature heavily in your pages/listings under the Coop, but he isn’t mentioned anymore! Are you still planning to source ‘his’ teas? :-) I’ll miss his lovely shou puerh if not!!

Hi folks! My apologies for the late reply; it’s been a bit of a whirlwind this first week :)

@LiquidProut – I love that feature! When Geoffrey first came up with the effect on our development site, I think I probably spent the next hour just mousing over every. single. tea. in. the. collection. So much fun, and so rewarding!!

As for which of the two – phew, you can’t go wrong. I am floored every time I get to sip on those teas. It just depends on how you feel about – well, incense and aromatic woods. If you’re a big fan, go for the Old Tree Shui Xian – I love it. But then again, that special grade Shui Jin Gui of Li Xiangxi’s – I can hardly get my head around describing that beauty: whenever I sit down to take serious notes, I end up just scrawling “MMmmMmMmmm…!!!!!” all over the pages and doodling crazy pictures. Whichever you decide to try, I am really happy to know that these are not about to sell out forever – that’s one huge benefit of shipping right from the source: it’s much easier and faster to reorder whatever we need and keep everything in stock throughout the season.

@Maskotea : I can’t wait to open the club up again! Qing Qing just sent us some great photos of a brand NEW tea she and her parents want to feature next month. I love it! Every time I think I’ve tried everything in the He Family’s collection, they turn around and start working on a completely new style of tea for me to fall in love with.

@Zack – thank you so much for sharing!! I apologise for the lack of samples right now. This is mainly a logistical issue: we haven’t been able to source the right size / shape bags that will work for fluffy teas as well as more compact ones (like Tieguanyin). It’s definitely a priority to roll out in the next weeks and months, along with working back in the choice of free samples at checkout, and new sample packs to show off each of our partners’ collections.

As for prices, I know a few folks in this conversation have joined in. Personally, I can attest that we tried as much as we could to keep our prices consistent with the much lower prices we were able to introduce last November, and come down in price wherever possible. However, I do know that the biggest expansions in our collection have been in the realm of the more expensive, more labor intensive “reserve” teas.

Jin Jun Mei is the one tea we did raise the price on, and that was due to my mistake early on this Spring, pricing it too low: when we were reviewing all of our prices before launch, we realized that we’d been charging much too little (oops!!).

In any case, I really appreciate hearing from you, Zack. We’re always working to phase ourselves out of the process as much as we can to connect you guys with our partners (while doing all the fulfillment things they just don’t have time for), and I know we will always be working to improve prices however we can. I hope we’ll be able to share tea again with you in the future, and until then, I hope you can enjoy the rest of your collection!

@LuckyMe – Thank you! I am really excited about sorting and searching by flavor, and I know we’re working towards making that more detailed, flexible and responsive in the future. I am also right there with you on tea ware :) Tieguanyin and beautiful tea wares made me fall in love with tea, and I am always excited to share beautiful things. Expanding the collection is a very high priority for us (along with making navigation easier and more organized), so you can expect to see growth there very soon.

@RedFennekin: Thank you! I am really excited about how much better the website works on mobile. There’s still a lot of room to grow, and I can’t wait to look back in another few months and see how much farther we’ve come.

Thank you also for letting me know about the issues you had on the Oolong and Teaware category pages! We will definitely take a look. Off hand, would you be able to tell me what iOS you’re using? That’ll help me pinpoint where the issue is coming from (whether it’s loading too much, or inefficient code, or something else entirely).

As for Master Han – yes! David mentioned before that we’ve been working with each of our partners to rebrand, yes? Master Han has been working on rebranding as well, and part of the push is to bring more focus to the Zhenyuan Dongsa Farmers’ Cooperative – and to Qianjiazhai itself – rather than one individual (like Master Han or Master Zhou: both are founding members of the cooperative, but both felt strongly that it was the place that was most important, rather than themselves.)

All of the teas from Qianjiazhai come from the cooperative. Master Han and Master Zhou both oversee production of all of the cakes and bricks (sheng and shou), so at the end of the day: it’s mainly just a name change! And yes, we will be bringing back Qianjiazhai shou pu’er as soon as we can :)

@Maskotea – just replying here to let you know: our Tea of the Month Club sign ups are now open again! I’m really excited about September’s teas :) We’re working on the final details with the He Family now, but I know they really want to include a brand new tea they have been working on this Spring. Should be really fantastic!

http://verdanttea.com/teas/tea-of-the-month-club/

so excited! woot woot!

Haha! :D I am really excited, too. But in case anyone has tried to sign up in the last few minutes – I opened the club a little early this AM, while Geoffrey is finalizing a few details on the back end (so no one gets charged incorrect shipping, etc!). It is temporarily closed, but I will reply here when it’s open again.

.. and – it’s back! Thank you, all

@ Lily Duckler: I just subscribed to the club! So excited to see which teas the He family picks out!

@ Maskotea: Thank you so much! Once they’ve made some final decisions for September’s box, I’ll be sure and update here. :)

Thank you so much for working out better shipping rates to Canada. Really appreciate it. Wishing you all the best as you go through this exciting transition. :)

Thank you, Dexter! I’m really excited about the improvements we’ve been able to make. Now that we’re not base in the US, it just doesn’t make sense for the US to be the only country outside of China to get a privileged shipping rate. It’s more expensive for us, but I really believe that it should be easy to get your tea directly from China.

I know what you mean! We loved doing the blends club, and sharing so many fun experiments with all of you. I would love to bring back blends later on in the next year or so; as David mentioned in our announcement, it all has to do with the ingredients that we can find to work with now that we are based in China. If anything like the blends club comes back (and blends in general in a new form), you guys will be the first to know :)

500 g is half a kilo :) Still a good amount of LB to have!

I think she means a pound. :)

That makes sense. And hello again Angrboda!

Hello! :)

Thank you! :P You’re both totally correct. Thank you for calling me out on my crossed wires.

500g = .5 kilograms, because: math! ;)
and .5 kilograms = 1.1 lbs

or if you prefer: 500g = 17.64 oz
and if you use about 5g of tea per session, that’s 100 sessions of tea!

All that said, 500g is definitely a great amount of Laoshan Black to have.
Though I know plenty of folks who prefer to have 1000g on hand at a time.

Finally! An excuse to buy some of your roasted tie guan yin. :D Cheers!