The hallmarks of Eastern Shore Tea are their quality and packaging, and when we traveled to Baltimore, MD, that’s exactly what we came to find.
But first: a little about the owner.
Stanley Constantine, owner of Eastern Shore Tea Company and its parent company Baltimore Coffee & Tea, drinks 10 cups of tea every day.
He’s deliberate and engaged and speaks with a low-end sort of rumble that peaks half an octave higher when he reaches points of interest.
At the mention of his new labels, and the boon in sales since acquiring his new Kiaro! label printer, that octave jumps.
“It’s interesting,” Constantine says, “since we installed the Kiaro! our tea sales have increased an average of about 40%.”
Then he takes a shallow breath, prepping for the big reveal, “Actually, one of our largest grocery chain customers told me that Eastern Shore Tea sales have increased 40% since we installed the Kiaro! label printer.”
Eastern Shore Tea Company’s quality is unmatched, its process of making tea painstaking, and its customer service superior.
“We haven’t changed anything – except the label quality,” says Constantine, when talking about the enormous and sustained 40% jump in tea sales, “I’m pretty convinced that the Kiaro! is responsible.”
How the Kiaro! Label Printer Did it
“As I said before we’ve changed nothing else. We’ve changed none of our recipes, none of the other elements of our packaging, save for the increased quality of the Kiaro!,” says Constantine.
“It has improved our packaging ten-fold, and that’s really supported by the increase in sales that we’ve experienced.”
So the labels look good?
Linda Lang, manager of Eastern Shore Tea Company, and 11-year-employee thinks so.
“It’s just amazing how good the Kiaro! label printer can make the labels look,” she says, “the colors are rich and bright – it’s just completely changed the way the artwork on the labels looks.”
A Different Approach to Tea
“Eastern Shore teas differ from most national brands in a couple of different areas,” says Constantine. All of their teas are flavored naturally: they use real spices in their teas, not liquid flavorings, so in their teas, you’ll find real clove, real cinnamon, real ginger, real lemongrass.
Eastern Shore Tea starts with full leaf tea, and then to increase surface exposure they use a hammer-mill to cut the leaves down to tea-bag size.
The Kiaro! Label Printer Joins the Eastern Shore
“We brought a Kiaro! in, set it up, and we printed some logos and some of our graphics. I was astounded with the quality. With the Kiaro! printing at 1200dpi,” says Constantine, “we were blown away by the quality.”
“I was thrilled when I saw the Kiaro! labels for the first time,” says Linda Lang, “ it was pretty exciting. It even will reproduce photographs which are really amazing!”
Private Labeling with the Kiaro! Label Printer
Eastern Shore Tea has seen a large growth in customers requesting private label services, which they are uniquely set up to do because they’re totally vertically integrated.
“The Kiaro! has helped us with that goal,” explains Constantine, “because it’s so easy and effortless for us to create private labels for all of our customers.”
Eastern Shore Tea creates private label teas for major museums, grocers, and gourmet food stores around the country, but also for private functions and smaller parties.
“It’s effortless,” says Constantine, “one of our strong points is that our private label minimum is only 24 pieces. The reason it’s so low is that the Kiaro! is just effortless. We can easily print and go to production and it’s out the door the same day. It’s made our life a lot easier.”
Printing Tea Labels on Demand
Eastern Shore Tea went with the Kiaro! label printer because they needed to print labels on-demand, and as needed. “In the past, we would have to order 10,000 of every single label. Now,” says Constantine, “we print over 300 SKUs on the Kiaro!. The ability to print on demand has saved us an incredible amount of money because we’re stocking only blank labels and we print as we need.”
Linda Lang loves how the Kiaro! has eliminated their inventory of pre-printed labels, “The labels aren’t sitting on the shelf for long periods of time. It’s just so easy to go and print a few labels with the Kiaro!.” With the Kiaro! Eastern Shore Tea Company prints large or small runs, at 8inches per second, for immediate, on-demand label printing.
“As much as I like the Kiaro!, I like the people at QuickLabel Systems even more. Of all the vendors we deal with, and we deal with vendors all over the world, the people at QuickLabel comprise the best vendor that we have,” says Constantine.
See How They Do It!
We even traveled down to Baltimore and shot some video in the Eastern Shore Tea facility! We watched them print labels, cut tea, package their products, and even visited their beautiful store-front. Check it out!
