When Joëlle Sambuc Bloise, Aldo Bloise and their son arrived at a tea farm in Saga, Japan, last year to visit one of the tea-producing families they work with, they were shocked and overwhelmed by their hosts’ kindness. The family had planted a fruit tree and named it in honor of the Bloises’ son – a gesture symbolizing their intent to continue a partnership with the Bloises for generations to come.
The Bloises are two of the founding team members of IKKYU Tea, a company that curates and exports high-grade green teas grown in Kyūshū, Japan.
The team at IKKYU aims to promote and uplift its partner producers, who are mainly family-owned farms producing small, premium yields.
An emphasis on social impact has allowed IKKYU to access unique teas, rare experiences and deeply meaningful connections, such as between the Bloises and the farmers who planted a tree in their son’s honor.
Intentional Relationships
In 2009, the Bloises made the decision to leave behind what they knew in Switzerland and start new jobs in Tokyo. But they were uprooted again after the Tōhoku earthquake of 2011, prompting them to move to Kyūshū, where local tea and coffee culture helped them cope with the time of loss.
As they got to know the community there, they learned about the local tea producers’ struggle to reach potential customers outside of Japan, and their next venture became clear: The Bloises could use their intercultural and professional skills to connect tea producers in Kyūshū with tea enthusiasts around the world.
Joëlle and Aldo spent two more years networking with government offices and tea associations to build trust and learn about tea production. Because personal relationships are key in Japanese business culture, the Bloises knew they needed to be patient and strategize long-term. That’s often a challenge for foreigners, who might think they can get a new business up and running in Japan in a matter of months, Aldo said.
Over time, community members came to appreciate IKKYU’s commitment to learning local ways of business and communication, and the business grew organically.
“We wanted to focus on this concept of being near the producers,” Aldo said. “We could discover all these incredible teas through these connections.”
But business advantages were not the Bloises’ only motivation for developing personal relationships with the tea producers. Part of IKKYU’s identity is the desire to preserve the producers’ legacies and empower them to sustain their craft.
For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic initially shocked the tea industry, the Bloises weren’t so worried about how their own bottom line would be affected. As a resilient company driven by online sales, they had some logistical changes to figure out, but no major setbacks. They were more concerned with helping the small tea farms stay afloat, since Kyūshū’s local market events where the tea producers usually sold their tea were all canceled. So to help the farmers compensate for that lost income, IKKYU increased its operational capacity to allow for even more online sales, which directed more revenue back to the farmers.
Distinguished Products and Services
Almost all of IKKYU’s teas are produced in boutique quantities – sometimes only about 100kg per farm, per year. Many of the farms are operated by families who take so much pride in the quality of their products, they are careful to harvest only the best leaves, even if it means a smaller yield. To stretch their limited inventory to last the year, the producers keep their leaves in cold storage and then process only a portion each month for IKKYU to sell.
“When you taste products like ours, so fresh, so specific, in small quantities, sometimes there’s kind of a shock,” Joëlle said. For customers who typically purchase their green tea from supermarkets in the West, this kind of tea is an entirely new experience.
Reflecting a trend across the industry, Joëlle said many of IKKYU’s customers have shown enthusiasm for these new teas, which have been hard to find or sometimes completely inaccessible in the West until recently. IKKYU’s gyokuro, kabusecha, tamaryokucha, and others offer nuanced tastes and subtleties that low-quality green teas lack. Some of the producers have developed custom blends specifically for IKKYU, which can add even more depth to a new customer’s experience.
The team at IKKYU also is eager to help their customers appreciate the origin of their teas and make the most of their tea experiences. Their website provides extensive information to educate and inspire, such as brewing instructions specific to each product, suggested recipes and pairings, visual charts to indicate the flavor profiles of each tea, and personal bios for each tea producer they partner with.
Many of IKKYU’s teas are available in bulk quantities for coffee and tea shops that stock them in Europe and the United States. They have also developed custom tea gift sets for other types of B2B customers.
Among individual customers, some of IKKYU’s most popular products right now are their many organic teas, as well as matcha, which has seen a boom of recent interest in the West.
To learn more about IKKYU Tea, visit IKKYU-tea.com.
Cat Kerr has supported local cafes in Orlando, Fla., as a public relations manager and barista since 2018. She is a full-time communications professional with a background in news writing and a student of Japanese language and culture.
Plan to Attend or Participate in the
World Tea Conference + Expo, March 27-29, 2023
To learn about other key developments, trends, issues, hot topics and products within the global tea community, plan to attend the World Tea Conference + Expo, March 27-29, 2023, co-located with Bar & Restaurant Expo. Visit WorldTeaExpo.com.
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