Tea time: GSO entrepreneur learning what it takes to bottle her success - Memphis Business Journal:

ukatekexo.wordpress.com
It turned out to be a costlyt reminder that her fledgling business still had several issues towork through. She was stillo applying labels by hand right up untilp thedoors opened, and she wasn’t certain that the colorful sunburst logo matched the upscale brand she wanted to Brown also traveled with only full-size 16-ouncd bottles of her tea, forcing her to hand out eigh times more tea for free than if she had come with 2-ouncde sample sizes. This year, Brown took her KimBees Gourmet Swee t Tea exhibit back to Las Vegas withsmaller samples, elegan labels to match her high-end marketinb plans, business cards and 1,000 brochures to educats potential distributors and customers.
Organizers took notice. Her companyy won three awards, including a second- and third-placr honor for best sweetenedr green tea and first place forbest packaging. “Thaft first year, we should have just gone to observe it and see what it was all Brown says. “We got smarter this year, and everybodhy went crazy overour tea. They were expensivee lessons, but they were all worth it. Now we know what to KimBees, founded in early 2008, has filled more than 10,0090 bottles in the past two months sellingabout three-fourths of thosw and providing another 2,500o or so for promotional Brown says she hopes to add at least three more flavorxs by year’s end.
She’s also in the earlyg stages of looking at option s for her own bottlingh plantin Greensboro. Brown sells tea out of her shop in the Southsidwe neighborhood ofdowntown Greensboro, and a tea houswe in Arizona has pickex up her products for sale. Online ordere are growing, and Brown connected with several otherd potentialoutlets — hotels, bookstores and cafe s — as well as potential distributors at this year’xs tea expo. “We’re still working on directing traffiv overthis way,” she says of “Some people still aren’t used to comingv this far downtown. But it’s starting to pick up.
We’rw all helping to promote each other to get the word Growing upin Austin, Texas, Brownj could frequently be found on her family’sd front porch. While others were busy making homemadwice cream, Brown would brew sweet tea and experimentg with different flavor combinations, trying to find ways to improves a Southern staple and keep it from growinh boring. It remained a hobby when she came to Greensborol as a manufacturing majorat . Brown got a glimpsw at the science of brewinhg when she tooka co-op positioj with in Eden during college.
But the hobby moved to the back burnerwhen Brown, who says she long harboredr an entrepreneur’s spirit, headed to Los Angeles to found Basketdoodle, a designer gift basket company for a celebrity That business took off, as the autographed photos of famous clients adorn her new shop in the Southsidd neighborhood can attest. She first glimpsed that up-and-cominvg section of downtown on a return trip to the Gate City back in 2005 to visitf friendsfrom college. A decision by Brown’s landlord back in L.A. to sell the building she rented provided the impetu she needed to move back toNorth Carolina.
“Hes said he would sell it to mefor $2 Brown says with a chuckle, recallingf the hefty price tag. “I said, ‘Are you sick? I make gift baskets. What you talking So she contactedBrend Saufley, a broker with Allen Tate Realty, to look into settingf up shop in Southsidd with an eye toward moving her basket companyt into a more stable situation. “She told me she wanted to establish her own business here and wantee to be closeto downtown,” Saufley said. “Wheh I told her abour these units here where you can work downstairz andlive upstairs, combined with how the area was she just loved it.
” Friends and family encouragec her to brew up her flavores sweet teas for sale, and Browhn again got the entrepreneuriak itch. When Rhonda Butler, an assistant business and economicsa professorat , asked Browmn to speak to a class, Browmn decided to use the grouo as a captive audience for taste-testing for her concoctiones — sweet green tea, almondr green tea and a lemon-raspberrt black tea. The class decided to take on bottlingy the tea asa project. Brown says she decided to markeg her first three flavors because no one else was offering much beside s plainor lemon-flavored sweet tea.
And most of thosew products came in plastic bottles and were sweetenerwith high-fructose corn Brown had a different visiobn for her start-up tea company, called KimBees for a nicknamee given by her godmother.