Reflections on a busy, Guayusa-powered, May!
Hey all - we hope you are all well!
We are long overdue to post an update here, and if we ever had a lot to talk about, it is now... so, the question is - where to start?
We changed our name
Well, the big update is that after much thought we decided it was time, before we develop the business further, to make a change to the name of the company.
Back in September 2015, Guayusa Tea Shop Ltd, was incorporated. This name worked well for us at the time and we still have an affection for it.
But as we’ve grown, we felt more and more it didn’t align too well with our future aspirations. It had a friendly feel, but wasn't quite right.
When thinking about a new name, we wanted to make sure it allowed us to clearly transmit ‘what we do’ and allow us to develop a wider range of products beneath it.
We also wanted to retain a friendly feel, but give it a little more authority, somehow.
So, after a couple of weeks of exploration and rumination, on the 1 May 2018, we officially changed the business name to ‘The Guayusa Company Ltd.’
We will trade as an abbreviated version of this - ‘The Guayusa Co’ - which we feels captures things perfectly - and we love the way we can fold it into a tidy domain name as per theguayusa.co - it's also perfect for all our new social media handles.
The existing ‘Guayusa T’, traditional 'tea to brew', products that you know and love don't need to change so much - and these will be the first of many new products we'll develop under the ‘The Guayusa Co’ banner.
Over the coming weeks we'll phase out mention of the old company name and website on our boxes and tweak the packaging designs and colours - we're changing those a bit, too!
One of our immediate next tasks is to work up a new brand mark for The Guayusa Co with our fabulously talented creative lead, Hailey.
What seems like a simple change on the surface (changing the name) concealed a huge amount of work where we had to update basically everything that had the old name on it - including the website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, banks, PayPal, email accounts, email platforms, advertising platforms, analytics platforms and many, many more!
Believe us, changing the name of a business on platforms like Amazon and PayPal can open up a world of documentation scans and re-uploads!
Not something we want to do again in a hurry.
We attended a traditional Guayusa tea ceremony
On the 4th of May, leading shaman Itzhak Beery performed a Guayusa Tea Ceremony in Barnes, West London.
We were thrilled to have been able to attend the event and provide the Guayusa that the attendees drunk with such reverence and respect. Guayusa, after all, is a most sacred plant.
It was a really magical evening where everyone drank guayusa together, meditated and shared their stories.
We have all new super fresh Guayusa in stock!
Just a week or so ago we took stock of some amazing new Guayusa - the best Guayusa we have ever been able to lay our hands on, in fact. We are in love with it and we are sure you will be too!
If you want to get your hands on this new Guayusa right now, then its going into our 300g packs with every new order. The last (and still incrediblly high quality) - batch of Guayusa is almost gone now and is still available in our tea bags and 75g/150g loose leaf packs.
Soon everything will be this new Guayusa :) We are so stoked!
We have Guayusa chocolate bars!
Yes, you read that right - we have been in touch with the master chocolate makers, Pacari, and are delighted to have been able to purchase some of their delicious Guayusa infused organic chocolate bars.
This is the finest Guayusa, blended with the finest chocolate. Pacari were kind enough to give us a whole bunch of sample 'mini bars' and we'll be sending one out with each order for free (while mini bar stocks last) as you need to try this chocolate!
Winning more than 200 international chocolate awards, Pacari are an organisation we are thrilled to connect with.
If you'd like to purchase the large bar now, they are waiting for you right here.
We had our first Guayusa market
We had been meaning for a while to take guayusa beyond the digital space in the UK for a while. After a huge amount of work alongside the name change, we spun up all the assets to carry out what will be the first of many regular markets where we'll be taking the wonder leaf out and about to spread the word about its amazingness.
Here's a picture of us at our stall where we sold iced teas, hot teas and our packs of teas - we couldn't have been more proud - and thank you to everyone who came and engaged with us - it was such a buzz and great to meet you!
We have more markets booked for June, July, August, September and December - all in Beckenham, South London - connect with us on our social media accounts for more updates on the exact dates and times. Hope to see you there - we make a mean lemon and ginger iced Guayusa tea!