3. Price
The question about the price was like the starting shot to initiate Teekampagne. How come that tea in Germany was sold at around ten times the price that it cost in India to buy tea? This question was intriguing Prof. Faltin. After a bit of research he soon found out about the reasons - and decided to do it differently. Today as back then it is quite common for tea shop owners to buy their tea at wholesale traders and middlemen, to pack the tea into small boxes, tins and packages, to display the whole array in a fancy shop and to promote sales by intensive marketing. What potential to save on costs!
By purchasing directly from the source Faltin was able to cut out the middlemen's margin; putting the tea into 1-kilogram-packages saved costs of packaging material and stickers as well as expenses for the packing process itself; focusing only on one type of tea - but one of the very best: Darjeeling First Flush - that was how Teekampagne was started. The tea was sold and shipped directly to the end consumer: Keeping costs for storage low and making the rent of a brick and mortar shop superfluous.
All this cost saving enabled Faltin to offer Teekampagne tea at half the price that you would otherwise have to pay if the tea was traded in the conventional way. The news of this concept spread like wildfire among the tea community and Teekampagne's fan base of regular tea buyers grew quickly. Faltin's decision to not invest in expensive brand building and advertising proved to be the best marketing!
The principles that held true back in 1985 are still valid today. With every new campaign we still pursue our aim to offer fair traded high quality organic tea as low-priced as economically possible. We take some pride in annually disclosing how we calculate our price, giving the example of an one-kilogram-pack of Darjeeling First Flush. However, this is not to serve our own vanity, but because it is our strong belief that a better economy will only persist if consumers will not be asked to pay disproportionately more for sustainable products.
You can find the example of our current price calculation
here.