The Russian trip continues.

No more lists. I promise.

We arrived in Samara at 9.30 on a sunny but cold Tuesday morning. Went straight to the supermarkets and shops that are currently selling Olinda. We’ve been making a decent headway into the Samara region and its partly in thanks to Olga, our super efficient manager.

We had breakfast at a fastfood restaurant which served yet another multi origin horrid teabag. I’m not going to name brands, but it’s one of the most popular in the world, and I was shocked that they have come to this. It was a strengthless, tasteless, pointless tea.

The main point of discussion over the shop visits was which supermarket chains was about which one would declare bankruptcy next. We visited one swanky hypermarket where all the tea on the shelves was close to expiry. Nobody was supplying them goods.

And that’s the reality of doing business in Russia at the moment.

Like much of the world, Russian companies expanded by borrowing more and more based on a future of limitless growth. The banks suddenly stopped lending and many companies were kaput. We have to be super careful now about who we give our products to and that’s not a bad thing by itself either.

Over the last 3 years Russian chain shops have become super demanding in terms of money and conditions for displaying products. The tables have turned. And How. It feels good to be the one doing the demanding for a change. Some chains are so desperate for goods that they welcomed us in with open arms. Will the boot stomp as hard when its on the other foot? It’s going to be pretty hard to resist, but I’ll try.

This maybe a good time for smaller brands like us who focus on quality of the tea rather than purely on marketing budgets, as important as they are…

For the tourists – Samara is one of the Soviet cities involved in the space program. It’s a little grim, but they have the winter wonderland of the Volga. The river is supposed to be even more stunning in the summer. Everyone we met invited us of course, to do some fishing, which looks like fun, but is a bit pointless because I’m a vege.

From Samara, we drove about a 100km to Tolyatti for more meetings. On the way back, we stopped in a restaurant in a nice little wooded area for dinner. Apart from the fishing, it’s actually a bit of a tragedy to be vegetarian in Russia, spescially if you love trying new stuff like me. Most of the food, I ate there ends up being salads and potato fries and of course the pickled vegetables that end up served with the ubiquitous vodka.

Not that I’m complaining, but the Caucasian people could have had a few more vegetables than fried aubergines in their traditional diet. We did try this amazing traditional herbal tea.

At least the Vodka is vegetarian…

The train was pretty comfortable, we were in a 4 seater cabin, with bunks on top. Moscow looked a little bleak as the train left but frankly this is nothing compared to the weather I usually see when I visit in Feb. During the last trip it was mostly minus 21 degrees celcius without wind chill.

We settle in and and most of the talk revolves around how we together with our distributor are going to face “the crisis” (that’s how most Russians refer to the current situation). One of the questions we have to ask is how effective Olinda’s “bring happiness home” message will be in the current situation.

There is a lot of talk of the Russians switching to “economy” brands as some tighten their Prada belts (most people really like dressing up here). I hope this is not going to happen, not because we are overpriced, but because the economy segment of the supermarket shelf has some truly appalling teas. These are all locally packed multi origin teas which are frankly an insult to the Russian love for good tea.

I hope I’m not making anyone’s eyes glaze over, so I’ll end this by saying that part of the reason these teas survive is because of the huge duty placed on imported packaged tea in Russia thanks to strong ”lobbying” by a few Russian tea companies.

We order some tea and the service as usual is an extreme. When the quality of the service is good, it’s very good, when it’s bad…

We are served cups of hot water with sugar cubes and some locally packed teabags with Kenyan tea. I’m usually a bit sniffy about these teas and it’s very easy to be. The guy with the lowest bid wins the contract. But this time, I was pleasantly surprised, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t hopeless either. The cup had a decent colour and was full bodied. I guess what I appreciate about Kenyan teas is something that Sri Lankan teas may lack at times and that is a solid, almost “soup like” quality. You sometimes feel like it fills you up more somehow. Ceylon tea qualities tend to be more flavor and aroma based.

In case anyone’s interested, the cost of the teabag was 7 Rubles. That’s about $0.20

This is perhaps the most unusual headline I’ve seen in some time, almost comparable to these. After all the positive news we’ve had about how on tea’s effect on the big C, the wording of the headline definitely gave me a jump. Not that I’m making fun of of what is a very serious topic, but I think what the writer meant to say was that “Drinking Very Hot Beverages Is Linked With Cancer”. Actually the more I think about it, the more the headline bugs me. I don’t usually think of myself as a ranter, but that’s really appallingly (bleep) journalism. Wonder if it’s possible to sue on behalf of tea drinkers worldwide?

We left Moscow for Samara on the evening of Monday the 16th. Because of a lack of ready internet access, I’ve had to put these posts up with a 10 day delay. The plan was to travel to Samara, visit 3 of our distributors there, then travel by car to Tollyati, back to Samara and then take the overnight train to Saratov, spend two days there with our distributor and then on possibly to Chelyabinsk if we have time.

I know I haven’t really said all the things you’re supposed to say in a corporate blog. Start off about how great our company is and how great our brand is etc… That’s partly on purpose, I don’t this to be gabfest on us, we’ve got a lot to say and we do have our own unique qualities, but hopefully all of that will come out in my posts through what we do and not just from what I say.

Top 4 things I want to achieve on this trip.

1) Get a clearer picture of what Olinda as a brand means to our regional consumers at the moment. Like I said before, Russia’s been hit pretty badly and the whole marketplace is in turmoil.

2) See if there any structural changes to the distribution system (hmm… I’ll have to remember to not use phrases like that again – that should have said: see if the distributors are working as they did before) and see how we can help our regional distributors to face the crisis better and to help them better serve the people who buy Olinda.

3) Get to know Sara and Yuroslav better. I haven’t had a chance to spend this much time with them and even though our two companies have worked together serving cups of Olinda to Russians for over 16 years, we rarely get to really get to spend time beyond a couple of hours at after meeting dinners.

4) And finally see more of this huuuuuuuuuge country as opposed to just Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The usually excellent wordpress dashboard isn’t allowing me to upload pictures at the moment. Will put them asahp.

Landed in Russia on Sunday. It’s a bit of an overdue trip. My last trip was a while ago and I’m looking forward to seeing our manager Sara and the directors of our distributing company.
There’s always a bit of a language barrier but Sara has been living in Russia for over a decade and has been working with us all that time.

Top 3 reasons I love Russia

1) They really love good tea – next to the Japanese, I would say that the Russians are the most passionate about the teas they buy.
2) When you get to know them, and they open up, the Russians are among the most fun people in the world. (and they’re not the ugliest people in the world either.)
3) I know I’m from a tropical island, but I like cold weather.

The weather’s not bad, it’s minus 3 degrees celcius and there’s only a bit of snow. Onto Sara’s flat close to central Moscow. The talk in the car is about the world crisis and I get to some extent a competition about whose country has it worse.

More about Sri Lanka’s problems in another post, but no doubt that
Russia’s been hit pretty bad. Again. The fall in commodity prices along with a devalued rouble have given the Russians a real whack to the head, and it feels like they’re still coming out of a daze. Lot of horror stories of supermarket chains going bankrupt and banks withdrawing all credit overnight.

Lot of tough decisions to be made about the next coming months.

Anyway its good to see our guys and I’m looking forward to a good trip.

I know it’s a bit strange to start a Sri Lankan tea blog from Russia, but I hope the first few posts will be a taste of things to come. I’m Subra, I’m a third generation tea taster.

I work for my family company Eswaran Brothers.

Top 5 reasons why I love my job

1) I get to taste great teas!
2) Generally people who work in the tea business tend to be nicer. I know it sounds corny but it’s true. Specially when you compare it to something like the Apparel industry.
3) I have to travel often to (arguably) most beautiful parts of Sri Lanka – the tea plantations.
4) I get to visit a lot of countries. It’s not as much fun as people think, and a lot of times it’s shuttling between hotels and offices, but I’m happy with what I get to see and you also meet lots of interesting people (see #2 above).

5) There’s a lot of creativity in the packaging – you get to work with designers from all over the world.

I hope this blog will be diary of the great teas I get to taste and the variety of tea cultures I run into as well as maybe a few personal ramblings.