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This is a question that I immediately pondered after visiting the Dragonwater Tea Company website and realizing that it was down. After some searching online I came across Dragonwater’s Facebook Page with a recent posting by the admin that they were closing their doors after 8 years in business.

So I thought, why would such a popular and well established online tea vendor such as Dragonwater Tea close their doors? Was this a by-product of softening economic conditions? Perhaps consumers have less disposable income for luxury goods such as ‘loose leaf tea’ (in my opinion the term luxury is a myth since good quality loose leaf tea equates to only pennies a cup in many instances). A poor cash position? An inability to compete in an ever growing and competitive online market ? Why do I even care?

Well I can answer that last one. Dragonwater Tea was a great and generally well respected online vendor of quality loose leaf teas. They were a mom and pop tea shop that was built from the ground up, and well, was very inspiring to me. After a co-worker bought some of their tea and shared it with me I sprung onto their site and was amazed by the depth of variety and simplicity of the site. And giving away free samples? What a GREAT idea…it was like digging out two toys at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box. Woo! But above all Dragonwater Tea helped give me the push to start taking my tea drinking to a whole new level with the launch of Herbal Infusions back in 2006.

We may never know why Gary Grouse closed the doors to Dragonwater Tea, but from my observations (and this is only my opinion) it looks like it could have been related to cash flow issues as many customers were asking when they would be stocking certain blends months in advance. From my experience working in corporate finance the number one killer of any business is its cash flow position. You could be in an emerging and highly profitable  industry running the perfect business model but if you don’t have adequate cash flow then your ability to change, adapt, and ultimately compete in your segment is limited (if not lethal).

Dragonwater Tea made headlines a few years back with the GreenTeaGirlie Youtube fiasco that they were caught up in. At the time I found it sort of comical. Now that they are gone they leave a whole lotta tea drinkers in need of a quality cup of tea. And that got me thinking about offering loyal Dragonwater Tea customers a deal on the tea that I offer here. Although I may not have the same blends that Gary Gause and Dragonwater Tea carried I do take immense pride in hand blending many of our teas and creating relationships with all of our customers.

Here is the deal:

Upon checkout use the promo code ‘dragonwater‘ for 20% your entire purchase.

This is a limited time promo.

There are a few teas like Hibiscus tea that I was hooked on from Dragonwater Tea and will be carrying it in the next little while [UPDATE: We now carry Hibiscus tea here!]. What was your favourite Dragonwater Tea blend? Let me know and I’ll see if I can blend it up!