From a company to a private person
I have been doing a lot of thinking, calculations and research or actually more accurately this sort of process happens on it’s own in my creative projects. The result is that I’m moving my tea activities from my company to myself as a private person. I can do this while everything being 100% legal (taxes, health regulations etc.). If my turnover will increase dramatically I need to figure out something else but for now this works. This also has more benefits than purely monetary.
The upcoming changes
Prices will decrease
The tea activities within my company were causing a lot of extra bookkeeping fees which will save me a lot of money now. As a result I can and will decrease the tea prices. I will also put some guidelines for the pricing so I don’t need to think about in in every case.
In most cases I will use these guidelines:
-profit is 25% for teas that I have to buy bigger amounts from the supplier and I need to store at home. In these cases I also have to invest some money to the tea before selling it.
-profit 15% for teas which I can order smaller amounts and I don’t have to store it at home.
-In both cases the profit is limited to minimum 10€ and maximum 25€ per bigger amount (200g+).
-For 15g samples I use a formula: price per 15g (my buying price) + 65 % with minimum 5€ total price per 15g sample and maximum 5€ profit per sample.
Previously my profits were 10-35 higher %.
VAT removal
After the change I’m not obliged to add VAT on my sales and I choose not to. But I need to pay it on the top of the price of the teas which I will import from outside EU normally. Or if I get the tea from within the EU that VAT will be added there by the seller.
Shipping & packing fees
From now on the shipping fees will be as I have to pay them. Previously in some cases I was paying a big portion of them myself.
Sharing the sources and origins of the teas
I’ve been holding back on the sources (sellers) of my teas and their origins. Recently this has felt a bit strange so I want to be more transparent. In the long run I want to be more as a “product reviewer” than a “tea seller” fulfilling orders. This also allows my tea findings to spread to a broader audience which is nice.
It will also save me a lot of work since there will be no rewrapping.
So basically you can find the same tea which I’m selling from e.g. yunnansourcing.com and order the same tea from there with a slightly cheaper price. This is totally fine with me.
some personal philosophical pondering…
The biggest reason for the change was that Liquid Metta tea sales were not producing enough turnover and profit. I think this is a result from only one thing. I couldn’t produce enough value for the customers. I think that if I would have produced enough value I would have had more customers, turnover and profit. I don’t think there is anything wrong in my tea selling but it just wasn’t good enough to “become a thing with a big impact”.
All of this is fine with me and I’m not sad about it. Liquid Metta is one of my creative projects which feels very natural and allows me to grow even though it’s challenging. After I presented some of these changes to my friend he asked me if I still want to do something “for profit” with tea. I replied that it feels much more natural to do it that not to do it.
You might think why am I doing this project at all when I get such small profits. Well… first of all it’s more natural to do it than not. My main goal is to provide great value to tea people. If I will succeed in that the money will come somehow (if I and it wants to).
I’m constantly trying to find “my thing”. I don’t want to compete with other online tea shops because my strengths are not there. Or compete with anyone at all. I rather find my own special little corner where is no competition.