Retired Teas

There is limited stock on hand (dryadtea.com only) and once it's gone, it's gone!

Retired teas: Dryad, Exodus, Firiel Neo-Valkyrie, Kelpie, Jonin, Riana Thorindal, and Shadow Grove.

Online only teas: Maid in Bedlam, Paradise Lost, and Requiem.

Finally, at the start of the Fall Equinox all Court teas will be cycled in and out corresponding with their seasons. 

Back in the saddle?

Here at Dryad Tea we're trying to do "all of the things" and sometimes things fall between the cracks. Like this blog.
See, Dryad Tea is really about 1.5 people. You have Rubiee, who creates all the blends, responds to emails, photos all the product, uploads the product, packs the orders, works on all the extra projects... and more. She does everything Dryad, all the time.

Then you have TeaMonkey, he works on facebook posts if Rubiee doesn't beat him to it. He also helps where he can, but works a full time job. He helps with a lot of the order packing.

Delrein is another part-time helper that has a full time job. He helps packing orders and packing tea when he can. He's also seen most often working Dryad shows.

That is the base and core of Dryad. It's worked with very few hiccups so far. Lots of learning experiences too. We here are Dryad Tea HQ are also very lucky to have a secondary support system:

Dame Ursula takes care of all of our Tea Duelling (and is amazing at it) she can also be seen working at shows.

Leigh is a booth bunny, she rocks at her job. She's one of the main line booth workers with Del.

Puck helps with a lot of the tea packing. The Kickstarter? He helped with that too. He's also been known to help with orders, and pretty much anything Rubiee needs.

This is our support system, this is how the world of Dryad Tea works. Support systems are incredibly important to have. They make sure that you're encouraged, and they catch you if you fall. In Rubiee's case the support system is also there to make sure that she doesn't work herself sick. Operating hours? What are those? She seems to think she can respond to emails at any and all hours of the day and often her support system *gently* encourages her to take some time to herself. She's learning.
All of us are working on getting better at a lot of things as a core group, and it's amazing to have such great people to help!

So the question is; Who's your support system?

The State of Dryad 2013 - Announcements

Just a few "announcements" for all of Dryad Tea's amazing fans and customers:

The following teas are going online only as of January 1st 2014: Dryad, Exodus, Kelpie, Maid in Bedlam, Paradise Lost and Shadow Grove. (If you make special arrangements we can always bring them for your order at a show.)

Also, as of January 1st, 2014 we will be raising our prices. This is something that we have fought against doing for the past year and a half, but supply costs are increasing and in order to keep the business in business (to get you the teas you love!) we are going to have to increase our prices as well. 1oz of tea will go to $6 and samples will be $2.50.

We will also be offering pre-orders of all of our SJ Tucker-inspired teas. After all of the Kickstarter rewards go out we will be announcing pre-orders on our facebook and newsletter. Pre-orders will include either an ounce or a sample (depend on which level you pick) of each of the teas. If you do not get in on the pre-order we are releasing in two volleys, so you will have to wait until February for all 19 of the blends to go live.  

Thank you all for your support through 2013, we are super excited for an amazing 2014!!!

Love,

Dryad Tea.

Facebook and the Decline of Small Business

As I was eating breakfast this morning, and idly flipping through Facebook on my iPad, a disturbing article popped up from a couple of different pages that I follow.

THIS ARTICLE, posted by the UK based site "Business 2 Community" outlines that a recently leaked slide deck from the Facebook offices indicates that pages - such as non-profits, fan-pages, and even our beloved SMALL BUSINESS will slowly see our visibility in user feeds trimmed down, unless we start to shell out the cash to bump that up.

As of this writing, Dryad Tea is hovering at about 1,250 fans on Facebook.  I watch our posts, and see who we reach, and just how much people interact with our content.  Based on these numbers, we try to post more of what we see that people interact with the most.  But a disturbing trend has come up that our posts have been seen by fewer and fewer people.

If we say that the average Facebook user has 130 friends (based on THIS) and that each one of our fans comments on a single post made by us, that comment should appear in the feeds of their friends.  Meaning that a single post from Dryad Tea has an average possibility of reaching 162,500 people.

That is quite the impact, right?

Not so much.  Our posts, on average REACH about 200-300 people.  That is LESS THAN 1% of how many people that potentially COULD see our posts.  And considering that Facebook has over a BILLION active accounts - well, we are pretty well just a drop in the teacup.

As a small business, with none of us working at this full time, we really don't have the availability to pay for advertising.  To put it into perspective, Dryad Tea posts every single day of the week, on average about twice per day.  In the last year we have only paid for advertising a handful of times, right around the major shopping times, or as we were working on our Kickstarter campaigns.  The amount of traffic that we saw during those times was, overall, not all that more significant than our organic traffic - posts that we hadn't paid for.  But now, we are going to be pushed into paying for ANY traffic at all?  That is a low blow.  We just can't afford to do it.  

The people that work for us, those crazy folks you see at shows trying to get you to buy our tea, do this for free.  Heck, even the boss doesn't bring home money from this.  The business pays for itself, but not much more.  Every so often we get Chinese food for lunch, but otherwise, we help so that we can EVENTUALLY start to do this full time.

And now Facebook wants to push us back down, because we don't line their pockets.  Our ability to REALLY connect with our fans, our customers, and the people who are true FRIENDS of our business - that ability is going to be limited, and all but cut off, because we just can't afford to push that visibility up.

With that in mind - We will still be using Facebook, of course, but we want you to REALLY have access to our company.  We want to interact with our fans and friends.

You can find us here, of course.

And if you head over to the DRYAD TEA WEBSITE you can access all of our shops over there too!

Thank you, to everyone for helping us with this dream.  As we continue to grow - and believe me, this year has been one of exponential growth for us - we will try to funnel some money into keeping our page visible on Facebook, but until we get a little bigger and start generating some more sales, it might seem quiet over there.

The best way that you can help us?  Tell your friends about Dryad Tea, give it as a gift, horde it like a dragon, share this post, share ANY post.  Most importantly, though - Believe in Small Businesses, because without that belief and support, we wouldn't have gotten this far.

~The Dryad Team

The Kickstarter Process

A lot of you have heard of Kickstarter. A great platform for what they call "crowd-funding". Basically, if you have an amazing idea and need funding to create thing epic thing... Kickstarter is for you.

Well I wanted to share the Kickstarter process that Dryad Tea goes through in order to create our tea-based Kickstarters. 

First, you dream up the plan. In Dryad Tea's case, it's a line of teas. I do a ton of research, try to figure out how many teas, what the inspiration is, how I can blend them, what my costs are going to be, what I can offer for rewards etc. I write all of this down.

Then I start working on what I want to say in the video. Videos take me forever, I'm not going to lie. Often times one of the Dryad Tea Pups will end up barking in the middle of the video, or I sneeze, or I space what I'm saying. I try to always have a bullet point note on the side of my laptop when I'm recording the video so I have that tiny reminder. 

After the video, there's the cover photo. I try to find something that is a good photo of my teas. If people see good photos they often look inside for more information.

After that it's a matter of writing up all the levels, all the rewards and making sure that everything actually makes sense. At this point I send it to family and close friends for them to look over. 

The most exciting part (at least until a Kickstarter is funded) in my mind is the moment you push that "go live" button. I feel a small rush every time I do it!

Hopefully this gives you a small view into how Dryad Tea does Kickstarter. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments below!

Custom Blends

In the past, when I was first starting out with Dryad Tea I would often take custom blend requests and over time the demand increased to the point that I just don't have the time to do them for "free" anymore. Besides, a lot of the time I'd create a blend and the person it was for never bought any (I'll admit, that was very discouraging).

So I created the Custom Blend part of the Dryad Tea Website! Yes, there is now a cost but you get 4oz of tea no matter what.

Here I wanted to talk about custom blends and the way that I generally do things. When someone fills out the survey with a custom blend often times I'll then send a followup email asking further questions just so I have an idea of what the customer is looking for.

Then the blending starts.

I take the base ingredients and work out a good tasting ratio. Sometimes this is the hardest part, and there are blends that I will take upwards of a week just to get the ratio perfect. I let the blend sit and mellow for a few days and do the final tasting. If I feel the blend is what the customer is looking for I send another email. If I feel it's off then I start over.

I take custom blends very very seriously, and it is my ultimate goal to make the custom blend requester, the customer happy. 

The importance of a great support system.

Hi. My name's Rubiee and I'm a complete loon.

Well, I would be a complete loon if it weren't for the amazing support system of people that I have in my life. Not only have I managed to find amazing friends that support me and keep my head above water when I decide to take on three projects at a time (*cough* seven *cough*) but they are also the people that I trust to help with Dryad Tea.

Some of you may have seen them at shows, or seen their postings on the Dryad Tea Facebook Page...
This is TeaMonkey and Dame Ursula Wiffenpott.

These two are the people that catch me the most when I stumble over the things that I didn't expect, they are the pair that give me inspiration or tell me to sit down and have a drink after a really long day selling tea. I could probably do all of this without them, but I might not be as happy as I usually am!
So here I am, telling you all how very important it is to have a support system in a small business. It keeps you grounded, helps you brainstorm (with more than one brain!) and overall keeps the insanity at bay. Everyone should have one.

The end.