Emerging Business 2018

Our major achievement is being acknowledged in the Sunday Times Newspaper and winning innovation awards. It was former PM David Cameron, who had the pleasure of tasting our tea and challenged us to sell it to China. We are on a risky and complex startup journey but we are loving it.

In the same year, we received validation from Sir Richard Branson, who knows 'travel' on-the-go, and said that it was "a good idea". This gave us the confidence to set up a branch office in Shanghai. Not a typical national launch: we took a different path, more complex and riskier. We also met HRH Prince William and shared our tea infusion sticks, and our business strategy with him.

In 2017, we helped other established UK brands enter the China Market too! The brands that are working with us are the well-known, and fast growing, MOMA Porridge oats and Great Taste Awards winner Brown Bag Crisps. This has been achieved by a painstaking two years work and cost, setting up the infrastructure, office and warehouse, high performance team, marketing. Most importantly, we worked to learn the business cultural nuances and build solid and sustainable relationships across distributors, partners, retailers and platforms across China and Asia.

We are not finished; now that we have developed a sustainable Asia and China business, we can concentrate on the rest of EMEA to ensure new opportunities emerge for Sticksology.