The land of taste: the story of Eastern Leaves

“In Yunnan we were both foreigners. I come from a little town in the Oltrepò Pavese area of Italy, and my wife Vivian is originally from a region of northeast China, on the Russian border. But it’s in the borderland between Myanmar and Laos, home to 25 of the 56 ethnicities officially recognized by the People’s Republic, that our entrepreneurial adventure took root.”

Eastern Leaves is the story of discovering, living together and sharing. Discovering the land: 30 hectares of forest in the Yunnan Region, 15% of which is covered by tea trees. This is the land that Vivian Zhang and Lorenzo Barbieri bought in 2014 because they were “enchanted by the place we found ourselves in.” Living together, and thanks to a long process of integration, building connections over time with local farmers, ties that are still strong today. And sharing, in this “enchanted land,” the entrepreneurial of becoming tea producers: Vivian, with her qualification as tea master earned at the Chinese Tea Academy, and Lorenzo, with a degree in Economy and Management for Art and Culture from Bocconi.

As Vivian remembers it, “Initially, we may have been a bit reckless. We didn’t consider our competitors; we just focused on ourselves and what we wanted to do: stay true to the land where our tea grows and to the people who live here.”

But it wasn’t until 2016 that Vivian, with the encouragement of her husband Lorenzo, decided to enroll in the Master at SDA Bocconi in Management in Food & Beverage (MFB). “A tremendously important choice both for me, since I didn’t have an economic-managerial background, and for our business,” Vivian tells us. “We had an intellectual – almost humanistic – approach to tea, far from the perception of our customers, meaning a far from concrete market approach,” remembers Lorenzo. “So, we needed to frame our product within a business process. The Master at SDA Bocconi allowed us to ‘return to the land,’ not our land in Yunnan, but the more concrete land of business, and map out a clear direction for our activity.”

Today 35% of B2C tea sales take place in physical stores – the showroom and the tea house opened in 2019 in Milan. The remaining 65% of sales are online. Eastern Leaves also has a sizeable foreign market, as highlighted by the total volume of B2C sales, 30% of which is mainly in the US, France, Belgium and Holland.

To develop the brand’s potential even further, in 2019 Vivian and Lorenzo decided to open the Eastern Tea Academy, a master program culminating in the title of ‘tea ambassador,’ officially recognized by the Chinese government. The first course, which took place online and in the classroom, was offered in Italian, English and French and counted a large number of participants from all over the world. Some of the topics of study included: aspects of Chinese culture and history, the history of tea, and Chinese language.

The role of the Academy is fundamental not only for increasing sales and enhancing the image of the company, but also in terms of economic growth. As Lorenzo tells us, “Over the next few years we expect the Academy to directly contribute to our turnover by anywhere from 15% to 20%.” The development paths are two: on one hand, expanding participation in advanced courses dedicated to professionals and enthusiasts, and on the other offering shorter, single-topic training programs scheduled throughout the year in various locations.

Lorenzo and Vivian have demonstrated an impressive ability to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020 they organized trips to Nannuo Mountain, at the very heart of the Eastern Leaves property in Yunnan, to show tea lovers from all over the world the land where their tea grows. The lockdown in the Spring put a halt to all travel, but did not stop the growth of the business. Product presentations, like training and tea tasting, moved online, attracting a boom in customers. As Lorenzo tells us, “During the quarantine, we saw exponential growth in sales and participation in our events. More and more people, and even many 14- to 25-year-olds, wanted to learn about our products, and especially the history that goes into a cup of tea. We used to be limited by the size of our store, but now we can attract people all over the world.”

And Eastern Leaves projects won’t stop here. The two founders are looking for investments to shore up their B2B segment: the idea is to develop their own brand for shop-in-shops across Europe.

The land of taste: the story of Eastern Leaves