ito-en

Started in 1964 by Masanori Honjō - the innovation that Ito-En provided was that tea was previously sold in specialty tea stores in bulk. Ito-en sold these “tea packs” so it could be purchased by anyone

Honjō was a car salesman at Nissan until 1960s, then left to start Itoen with his brother, Hachiro

creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building /faust, more here: /july, web: july.rocks

Some other cool stuff:
- they were the first to bring oolong tea from China to Japan
- they were the first to bottle tea in plastic bottles in the 1990s
- vacuum sealing tea, one of the first companies to do it

OBJECTS

Packaging gets overlooked. I’m def a merchandiser in one of these 1000 lives among other jobs. /object worthy

the green bottled one is my fav, although mom said "it tastes weird"

A few years ago I was way out in the countryside, super stoked to get tea from a tea shop. To my horror they opened up a bunch of wooden bins with stale looking tea inside. Now I just order a year’s supply of vacuum sealed shincha online when it comes in stock in the spring.