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They may not have understood their market, either. Most people who go out of their way to get good whole leaf tea enjoy the process, the tea ware, etc. It’s lik

They may not have understood their market, either. Most people who go out of their way to get good whole leaf tea enjoy the process, the tea ware, etc. It’s like people who enjoy guns and accessories for guns? This is trying to sell them a gun at 10x markup, without any details on the quality of the shooting, and promising they’ll never have to buy any accessories for it. It’s priced for very high income tea enthusiasts, with features that strike against everything a normal tea enthusiast enjoys. For $100 and cheap packets this would fly, targeting people who currently don’t care about that (tea bag users.) But then, the margins would be shit and you’re trying to compete against an already simple and cheap tech. What demographic were they hallucinating?

goldenkey 9y ago
Their demographic is tea drinkers who are ignored by the coffee industry. We have all these coffee makers that have k-cups, but nothing for tea. And tea bags are 2nd rate, they float above the water depending on the tea, and never brew right. It is for sure directed at a more premium market, people who care about quality. But I wouldn't say that market is vanishing - they got their price a bit wrong. The prices they are selling at now will result in a conplete sell out. The classic teaforia infuser works on any tea..not just the sips containers. Id like to see them come back in style - I dont think this is the end for a great glass on glass tea machine. They did not sacrifice on purity or taste, much respect to Teforia.
- arkades 9y ago
  ... tea bags are the k-cups for tea. Shitty and fast and convenient. You didn’t actually say anything new - you just sound like you work for Teforia.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Good teabags aren't even that bad. After all they're still basically tea seeped in hot water. You can also buy plenty of inexpensive infusers which aren't necessarily a lot better than teabags but the cost is a bit lower. And you can have basically open inserts you can put in cups. So plenty of ways to make tea quickly and easily with quality that is, for the most part, indistinguishable from tea pots.
- doesnt_know 9y ago
  It's just called "getting a decent tea bag" and works pretty well. The flip side is of course brewing with real quality leaves, but it's more expensive and is more effort. They both have their places, unlike this machine.
  - goldenkey 9y ago
    To make good tea you have to control temperature, pressure, steeping time, and water volume. The teforia microbrewer does what a teabag won't, let alone an inefficient kettle. I purchased 2 Teforia's at the discounted rate. The machine has its place.
    - arkades 9y ago
      You know, if I weren’t a tea enthusiast myself, all that smoke you’re blowing might obfuscate something. Here’s how I manage to control all those variables without a thousand dollar tea keurig: 1) one time, just once, I measure the volume of my tea cup. This is good for, you know, the life of the cup. 2) I throw an infuser on a scale, and throw teaspoons of tea in until I’ve hit the the right grams/100 ml. I now know how many tap of loose leaf are right for that cup. 3) I enjoy black tea, so boiling is fine. If it’s a day I’m feeling like a green or an oolong, I’ll dump a food thermometer probe into my kettle - it’ll beep at my desired temp. 4) I pour the water in the cup, stick in the infuser, and throw 5 minutes on the timer that comes with every iPhone. Just so we are clear, the everyday cup of tea looks like this: throw 2 tsp leaves into infuser, boil water, rinse leaves, stick infuser in cup, let sit five minutes. Oddly, with all the magic of “a timer on my phone,” my daily cup is controlled for temp, pressure (I’m not changing altitudes here), steep time, and water volume. And All it cost was an 8$ infuser. But, sure, buy up all the 1000$ kettles you can grab.
      - fleitz 9y ago
        I have a machine that does all this it was $200 Canadian, which I assume means it’s $160 US. It was still kinda over priced.
- kazinator 9y ago
  This is simple: there is no form of tea which requires espresso tech, or at least no mainstream, popular form.
  - monort 9y ago
    Yes, tea doesn't require tech, but espresso-machines are not only tech, but a convenience to press a button and get a cup. I drink coffee because of that, not because I enjoy it more than tea. Unfortunately, tea market seems to be too small to pay for such a convenience. There are some capsule-machines like Nespresso that can brew tea, but they make too small portions.
    - arkades 9y ago
      More popular in households in Asia than western europe/US is a machine that holds your water at tea temp (it looks almost like a water tank.) You can look up Zojirushi on amazon to get some examples. So you hit a button, water drops into your cup at the correct temperature, and all you have to do is drop in your tea bag / infuser of choice. Considering tea needs to steep, it's about as close as tea is going to come to espresso.
      - monort 9y ago
        Yes, I know, they call it for some reason "cooler" :) The first problem is you should stay near them while they are pouring the water, and it takes time, especially if I'm making a tea for two. The second is that making hot water is not the most time-expensive for me, it's mixing teas and additives and putting them into a tea bag. Unfortunately, pre-bagged teas are usually low quality.
desireco42 9y ago
Seriously :) Tea drinkers and gun owners equated in the same sentence :)!
- fleitz 9y ago
  You need to meet my wife haha. She does throwing knives too
- coolspot 9y ago
  Standard capacity teapots are danger to public safety.
hobofan 9y ago
I feel like that's very easy to say in hindsight. There is a large market of people that doesn't have a problem with overpaying a lot for very basic products with intangible value-add, and it seems to be hard to know if your product just stays within the bounds of their gullibility or crosses it. Few days ago I saw a Kickstarter for a water purifier with subscription cartridges[0], and my first thought was: "Oh boy, that's going to be another Juicero". Honestly tough it's very hard to predict, and it could go either way and be a Nespresso/Keurig and not a Juicero/Teforia. [0]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mitte-water/mitte-create-your-own-mineral-water-just-like-natu https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mitte-water/mitte-creat...
- arkades 9y ago
  Sorry, I was a touch unclear in my original post. The problem isn't that the product has little or no value-add, it's that for the population of tea enthusiasts, it has actually negative value. The tea enthusiast community is as much about tea accessories - infusers, cups, mugs, kettles, pots, sharing pitchers, tea pets, gongfu tray, etc. - as it is about the tea itself. For the sort of folks who are happy to drop dollars on tea goods, a machine built around excluding 90% of the fun actively goes against the grain. In addition, for $1000 you can buy several of the really, really nice tea pots that make most tea enthusiasts drool. Please, don't take my word for it. Check out any popular tea blog. Or the agenda for any industry conference. The way I see it, tea drinkers are likely to fall into a matrix of degree of tea enthusiasm, degree of tea accessory enthusiasm, and price insensitivity - let's call it a 3x3x3. 0 indicates some small degree of enjoyment or price insensitivity. Most tea drinkers by numbers are going to be found in Tea[0]Accessory[0]Price[0] - folks who drop a lipton bag in their daily cup. They aren't likely to shift from their 1-cent tastes-like-tuchus tea to a $1000 machine with several-dollars-per-serving tea. If they cared that much they'd either not drink lipton, or if they were that price insensitive they'd at least buy better tea bags. The second largest group is Tea[1]Accessories[0]Price[0]. These folks shell out for nicer tea bags, with tea comprised of tiny remnants of leaves rather than out-and-out fannings. They like tea; they think of themselves as tea drinkers. They may have a favored tea pot. They may know what whole leaf tea is and buy it on occasion. Their tea still only costs about 20 cents per cup (something like Vahdam) down to 6 cents a cup (PG Tips, the tea that every English hospital sends you home with after giving birth. And... it's surprisingly pleasant.) There is, again, a pretty steep difference between "I throw a better tea bag into my coffee cup for 6 cents rather than a shit bag for 1 cent" and "I will shell out a thousand bucks for a machine that will let me pay starbucks prices for a cup of tea." So, addressable market is pretty tiny. Let's jump over to Price[2]. It exists. For tea enthusiasts most will be found in something like Tea[2]Accessories[2]Price[1]. Tea, it should be noted, is a cheap pass time. Even very fine tea is not generally expensive. Even very fine tea pots will not generally break $200. For these folks, there is pleasure in discovering new tea, buying new teaware, pairing teaware to tea (e.g., the right heat-conserving properties of pot to the leaf), and so on. Commoditizing their tea actively deprives them of pleasure. Removing tea-making accessories from the process deprives them of pleasure. It's like trying to sell k-cups to that guy who makes a big deal about this new single-farm roast from Nicaragua that he found for his pour-over, that he likes to make on his artisanal aeropress rig he backed on kickstarter. And where do they fall on price? I'm pretty price-insensitive on tea; I regularly buy the good stuff. On the higher end (let's not talk about seriously aged pu'erh), for instance, I got this spring's Ai Jiao Rock Oolong Tea of Wu Yi Shan, which ran 9 bucks USD for 50g. That's good for about 18 8-ounce cups - or lets be fair, about two weeks of my big morning cup (though that nice oolong is hardly a daily drinker). That puts me at 64 cents per cup. My daily drinker is an earl grey supreme w/ silver tips from Harney & Sons, which runs 25 cents for my big morning cup. So which market segment are they looking for? To care about tea, but not enough to care about commoditized tea servings. To not care about accessories. And to not care about a hundred-fold price increase up front and a ten-to-hundred-fold increase per cup. So... tea[1]accessories[0]price[2+]? I can't say it doesn't exist, but as addressable markets go, there's no reason to believe it's anything but vanishingly tiny. Which, really, anyone in the tea enthusiast community could have shared with them right up front. That's not to say there aren't things that are in-demand in the tea community. They're just not the sort of things VCs would throw money at.
kazinator 9y ago
> $100 and cheap packets this would fly Only if strapped to winged pigs, I'm afraid.

goldenkey 9y ago

Their demographic is tea drinkers who are ignored by the coffee industry. We have all these coffee makers that have k-cups, but nothing for tea. And tea bags are 2nd rate, they float above the water depending on the tea, and never brew right. It is for sure directed at a more premium market, people who care about quality. But I wouldn't say that market is vanishing - they got their price a bit wrong. The prices they are selling at now will result in a conplete sell out. The classic teaforia infuser works on any tea..not just the sips containers. Id like to see them come back in style - I dont think this is the end for a great glass on glass tea machine. They did not sacrifice on purity or taste, much respect to Teforia.

arkades 9y ago
... tea bags are the k-cups for tea. Shitty and fast and convenient. You didn’t actually say anything new - you just sound like you work for Teforia.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Good teabags aren't even that bad. After all they're still basically tea seeped in hot water. You can also buy plenty of inexpensive infusers which aren't necessarily a lot better than teabags but the cost is a bit lower. And you can have basically open inserts you can put in cups. So plenty of ways to make tea quickly and easily with quality that is, for the most part, indistinguishable from tea pots.
doesnt_know 9y ago
It's just called "getting a decent tea bag" and works pretty well. The flip side is of course brewing with real quality leaves, but it's more expensive and is more effort. They both have their places, unlike this machine.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  To make good tea you have to control temperature, pressure, steeping time, and water volume. The teforia microbrewer does what a teabag won't, let alone an inefficient kettle. I purchased 2 Teforia's at the discounted rate. The machine has its place.
  - arkades 9y ago
    You know, if I weren’t a tea enthusiast myself, all that smoke you’re blowing might obfuscate something. Here’s how I manage to control all those variables without a thousand dollar tea keurig: 1) one time, just once, I measure the volume of my tea cup. This is good for, you know, the life of the cup. 2) I throw an infuser on a scale, and throw teaspoons of tea in until I’ve hit the the right grams/100 ml. I now know how many tap of loose leaf are right for that cup. 3) I enjoy black tea, so boiling is fine. If it’s a day I’m feeling like a green or an oolong, I’ll dump a food thermometer probe into my kettle - it’ll beep at my desired temp. 4) I pour the water in the cup, stick in the infuser, and throw 5 minutes on the timer that comes with every iPhone. Just so we are clear, the everyday cup of tea looks like this: throw 2 tsp leaves into infuser, boil water, rinse leaves, stick infuser in cup, let sit five minutes. Oddly, with all the magic of “a timer on my phone,” my daily cup is controlled for temp, pressure (I’m not changing altitudes here), steep time, and water volume. And All it cost was an 8$ infuser. But, sure, buy up all the 1000$ kettles you can grab.
    - fleitz 9y ago
      I have a machine that does all this it was $200 Canadian, which I assume means it’s $160 US. It was still kinda over priced.
kazinator 9y ago
This is simple: there is no form of tea which requires espresso tech, or at least no mainstream, popular form.
- monort 9y ago
  Yes, tea doesn't require tech, but espresso-machines are not only tech, but a convenience to press a button and get a cup. I drink coffee because of that, not because I enjoy it more than tea. Unfortunately, tea market seems to be too small to pay for such a convenience. There are some capsule-machines like Nespresso that can brew tea, but they make too small portions.
  - arkades 9y ago
    More popular in households in Asia than western europe/US is a machine that holds your water at tea temp (it looks almost like a water tank.) You can look up Zojirushi on amazon to get some examples. So you hit a button, water drops into your cup at the correct temperature, and all you have to do is drop in your tea bag / infuser of choice. Considering tea needs to steep, it's about as close as tea is going to come to espresso.
    - monort 9y ago
      Yes, I know, they call it for some reason "cooler" :) The first problem is you should stay near them while they are pouring the water, and it takes time, especially if I'm making a tea for two. The second is that making hot water is not the most time-expensive for me, it's mixing teas and additives and putting them into a tea bag. Unfortunately, pre-bagged teas are usually low quality.

desireco42 9y ago

Seriously :) Tea drinkers and gun owners equated in the same sentence :)!

fleitz 9y ago
You need to meet my wife haha. She does throwing knives too
coolspot 9y ago
Standard capacity teapots are danger to public safety.

hobofan 9y ago

I feel like that's very easy to say in hindsight. There is a large market of people that doesn't have a problem with overpaying a lot for very basic products with intangible value-add, and it seems to be hard to know if your product just stays within the bounds of their gullibility or crosses it. Few days ago I saw a Kickstarter for a water purifier with subscription cartridges[0], and my first thought was: "Oh boy, that's going to be another Juicero". Honestly tough it's very hard to predict, and it could go either way and be a Nespresso/Keurig and not a Juicero/Teforia. [0]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mitte-water/mitte-create-your-own-mineral-water-just-like-natu https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mitte-water/mitte-creat...

arkades 9y ago
Sorry, I was a touch unclear in my original post. The problem isn't that the product has little or no value-add, it's that for the population of tea enthusiasts, it has actually negative value. The tea enthusiast community is as much about tea accessories - infusers, cups, mugs, kettles, pots, sharing pitchers, tea pets, gongfu tray, etc. - as it is about the tea itself. For the sort of folks who are happy to drop dollars on tea goods, a machine built around excluding 90% of the fun actively goes against the grain. In addition, for $1000 you can buy several of the really, really nice tea pots that make most tea enthusiasts drool. Please, don't take my word for it. Check out any popular tea blog. Or the agenda for any industry conference. The way I see it, tea drinkers are likely to fall into a matrix of degree of tea enthusiasm, degree of tea accessory enthusiasm, and price insensitivity - let's call it a 3x3x3. 0 indicates some small degree of enjoyment or price insensitivity. Most tea drinkers by numbers are going to be found in Tea[0]Accessory[0]Price[0] - folks who drop a lipton bag in their daily cup. They aren't likely to shift from their 1-cent tastes-like-tuchus tea to a $1000 machine with several-dollars-per-serving tea. If they cared that much they'd either not drink lipton, or if they were that price insensitive they'd at least buy better tea bags. The second largest group is Tea[1]Accessories[0]Price[0]. These folks shell out for nicer tea bags, with tea comprised of tiny remnants of leaves rather than out-and-out fannings. They like tea; they think of themselves as tea drinkers. They may have a favored tea pot. They may know what whole leaf tea is and buy it on occasion. Their tea still only costs about 20 cents per cup (something like Vahdam) down to 6 cents a cup (PG Tips, the tea that every English hospital sends you home with after giving birth. And... it's surprisingly pleasant.) There is, again, a pretty steep difference between "I throw a better tea bag into my coffee cup for 6 cents rather than a shit bag for 1 cent" and "I will shell out a thousand bucks for a machine that will let me pay starbucks prices for a cup of tea." So, addressable market is pretty tiny. Let's jump over to Price[2]. It exists. For tea enthusiasts most will be found in something like Tea[2]Accessories[2]Price[1]. Tea, it should be noted, is a cheap pass time. Even very fine tea is not generally expensive. Even very fine tea pots will not generally break $200. For these folks, there is pleasure in discovering new tea, buying new teaware, pairing teaware to tea (e.g., the right heat-conserving properties of pot to the leaf), and so on. Commoditizing their tea actively deprives them of pleasure. Removing tea-making accessories from the process deprives them of pleasure. It's like trying to sell k-cups to that guy who makes a big deal about this new single-farm roast from Nicaragua that he found for his pour-over, that he likes to make on his artisanal aeropress rig he backed on kickstarter. And where do they fall on price? I'm pretty price-insensitive on tea; I regularly buy the good stuff. On the higher end (let's not talk about seriously aged pu'erh), for instance, I got this spring's Ai Jiao Rock Oolong Tea of Wu Yi Shan, which ran 9 bucks USD for 50g. That's good for about 18 8-ounce cups - or lets be fair, about two weeks of my big morning cup (though that nice oolong is hardly a daily drinker). That puts me at 64 cents per cup. My daily drinker is an earl grey supreme w/ silver tips from Harney & Sons, which runs 25 cents for my big morning cup. So which market segment are they looking for? To care about tea, but not enough to care about commoditized tea servings. To not care about accessories. And to not care about a hundred-fold price increase up front and a ten-to-hundred-fold increase per cup. So... tea[1]accessories[0]price[2+]? I can't say it doesn't exist, but as addressable markets go, there's no reason to believe it's anything but vanishingly tiny. Which, really, anyone in the tea enthusiast community could have shared with them right up front. That's not to say there aren't things that are in-demand in the tea community. They're just not the sort of things VCs would throw money at.

kazinator 9y ago

> $100 and cheap packets this would fly Only if strapped to winged pigs, I'm afraid.