Meet Joe D’Armenia, the man who went to China on a whim in 1997 and has now built up a £1m empire exporting organic green tea into Europe.
“I’d been retired for four years and was sick of spending my days battling against the weeds in my garden. I was looking for a new challenge,” he says.
Prompted by reading a book on the health properties of green tea, D’Armenia embarked on a journey to China to find the best leaves.
“A large proportion of the tea coming into the UK was sourced from tea traders in Germany, so I knew there was a gap in the market,” he explains. “I’d only ever been to Beijing – this was an altogether different ball game.”
His first stop was a business fair in South China’s Guangdong province, where he found six organic tea producers. “The fair was a good starting point but I knew I would have to meet each of the farmers on the list, as well as the local communities. It was a process of elimination. You can’t do business in China at arm’s length.”
He struck a deal with the fifth tea grower on the list – Mr Yu Guangzhong from the Yellow Mountains. “I explained that I wanted to produce everything – right down to the packaging – locally. And that’s what clinched it,” says D’Armenia.
D’Armenia’s company, Herbal Health, now exports about 300 tonnes of tea a year from China, supplying major tea traders in Germany and independent health food shops across western Europe.
“We’ve so far kept away from the big four retailers in the UK,” he says. “We turned one of them down four years ago: we prefer to operate under our own terms.”
It’s a Fairtrade operation, which means that for every kilo of loose-leaf tea that’s sold, one euro is handed back to the Xitou Organic Farmers’ Association in China and then filtered down into community projects.
The company has also established its own factory in the region: “All of the employees are locals and only two or three of them speak English.
“It is cheaper to employ people in China – it’s probably about a third of what it costs in the UK – but the closer you get to western wages, the closer you’ll get to hiring top talent. I have brought in a couple of top grads from Chinese universities.”
His advice to other entrepreneurs looking to crack China?
“Everything works on relationships. The locals are very conservative – which is a strange thing to say. They are cautious and will only do business with you if they trust you.
“They need to see you and hear you to measure your commitment, which is why I go to China every six weeks. They’ll spot a phoney a mile away.”