The First Two Months of Comins Tea House

It has been a busy first few months for us here at Comins Tea House.  Before we move into what promises to be an exciting 2012 we thought we would have a quick recap on where we have been and what we have been up to.  More news to follow on the plans for 2012!

 

19/20 November 2011 - The Tea & Coffee Festival - Southbank, London

We had only just started trading when the opportunity arose to attend the Tea and Coffee Festival on the Southbank in London, organised by the lovely Yael Rose.  It was our first opportunity to meet customers and share the story of how our tea house came to be.  The previous blog post tells the full tale of this great event.

7 December 2011 - Being Deborah Meadens’ second “12 tweets of Christmas” for #buybritishhelpjobs

If you are a twitter user you may be aware of Deborah Meaden's campaign before Christmas to get people to buy their gifts from British companies. Labelled as ‘#buybritishhelpjobs’ it highlighted the need to support our homegrown businesses as part of the effort to get the economy going again. Deborah’s proposal was that she would choose twelve great British businesses over twelve nights running up to Christmas and tweet their web address to her many followers.

To us our beautiful British made teaware really does represent the best of British so we thought we would let Deborah know. Low and behold, and much to our surprise, we were chosen as her second tweet of Christmas (see below). Hurray! We are very pleased to be included in a list of so many amazing companies.

17 December 2011 - Featured in the Saturday Telegraph Magazine

We were very excited to have a feature in the Daily Telegraph magazine on the 17th December 2011. This picture along with a short  piece of text appeared on page 73. We bought lots of copies and will post the full feature on our new press page soon!  Thanks to all of you who recognised us and got in touch - we hope all our new customers have enjoyed Comins Tea over Christmas! 

18 December 2011 - Hildreth Street Market (Balham in London)

Our venture into market trading started, as customers, with a visit to the great Venn Street Market in Clapham, London. Impressed, we enquired whether we could attend as stall holders but unfortunately all the stalls there were taken. There was, however, the possibility of attending the sister market at Hildreth Street in Balham.

So, on the last (very cold) sunday before Christmas we set up our stall and hoped for the best. The market is very new and it was great to meet locals who were discovering the market for the first time. It was wonderful to share stories of our trips to the tea fields with our customers, many of whom have also shared a passion for India and other far flung lands!  We will be back in the new year to continue supplying great tea to the lovely people of Balham so come and see us!  We are just organising dates so visit the website, Twitter or Facebook regularly for updates.

Blogging... about Comins Tea House

We are always very pleased to hear what people think of our company and products, positive or negative. Blogs form an important part of this and we are pleased that we have been mentioned in a few great ones so far. It is also through these blogs and others that we have learnt a great deal about the many fantastic creative people out there. The first was from Pretty Pretentious, who blogs about all things London and illustrates them with brilliant photos. She happened across us whilst out and about having an adventure on the Southbank - Pretty Pretentious Blog We also met the inspirational ‘Botanical Baker’ at the Tea and Coffee Festival. Having recently been one of the 12 contestants on BBC 2’s ‘Great British Bake-off’ Urvashi Roe is passionate about all things food. Her lovely blog about the festival mentioned Comins Tea House, although we’re still not sure who the ‘lovely man’ is! - Botanical Baker Blog Another fine blog post was written by our web designers Wired Canvas about the receipt of one of our packages - Wired Canvas Blog We have been contacted by a few more bloggers who want to write about us, so fingers crossed there will be more articles out there soon.