Interview of Supporter Stores The Japanese Tea Hub

Xenia Blanco runs The Japanese Tea Hub, a micro e-commerce that offers single origin organic teas from small tea plantations in Japan. As a certified Japanese Tea Sommelier based in Spain, she is passionate about providing high-quality products to her customers.

Fascinated by the enhanced aesthetics of Japanese products, Xenia had dreamed of learning Japanese and visiting Japan since childhood. As a teenager, she started drinking teas of all sorts on a daily basis, but it wasn't until her adult life that she discovered Japanese teas. She also loved cooking Japanese and other Asian food.

In 2008, Xenia travelled to Japan for the first time and tried matcha at an informal Tea Ceremony, which changed her life forever. As a gastronomist and a certified Tea Sommelier, she enjoys consuming high-quality products and aims to offer the chance to do the same to her customers.

In 2017, Xenia travelled to Japan again, and during her trip, she visited a small tea company in Wazuka that offered tea tours. This was the first time she visited the tea fields, and she fell in love with the idea of making tea her way of living.

The following year, she returned to Wazuka to take part in the Japanese Tea Master Course, a highly specialized two-week intensive program in English, focused exclusively on Japanese teas. It was a hands-on experience where the participants learned by doing, surrounded by tea fields and all things with tea. Even the daily meals were made with some tea in them.

During that program, the chance to apply for a Tea Study Tour partially subsidized by the Japan Tea Export Council arose. She was chosen to take part in the program and went back to Japan to undergo another two weeks of Japanese Tea training as well as networking.

Xenia had already decided to enter the tea field as a business and started building her company towards the end of 2019, after relocating to Sweden. She opened her first shop in March 2020 and had several events lined up, such as a monthly design market and the Japanese Tea Festival in Gothenburg.

She even helped organize a virtual tea festival named Nomad Tea Festival Europe, collaborating with someone she had never met in person. Multiple people from the tea industry participated, some of them were Japanese selling Japanese teas and products. The event was a success.

However, the pandemic hit, events got cancelled, and she decided to put the project on hold to relocate back to Spain after having lived abroad for 11 years. In 2023, she finally reopened the business and started offering once again single origin organic teas mainly from small tea plantations run by Japanese families.

The business was relaunched a few months ago under the same name, but with a slightly different format: an Asian-themed concept shop. The Japanese Tea Hub now offers not only Japanese teas, but also other products such as utensils, ceramics, textiles, stationery, beauty products, gourmet ingredients as well as snacks.

The Japanese Tea Hub also takes part in different events promoting Japanese Teas through tea and food workshops. Customers love hearing the story behind each tea variety, who made it, where is coming from, what varietal was used to make a given tea or how it was processed.

The Japanese teas offered at The Japanese Tea Hub are of high quality. Some of their best sellers are matcha from Shizuoka, which comes in cans and also in sticks; houjicha from Kirishima; wakoucha from Yakushima Island, and Shincha Kamairicha from Miyazaki.

This short time has been enough to prove the need for this kind of business in Spain – and Europe. Customers are delighted not only with the high-quality products from Japan, but also with the boutique-style customer care inspired in the Japanese philosophy. Thanks to the events, workshops and social media posts, they get to know better how to make the most of matcha, houjicha as well as other Japanese teas and ingredients.

Xenia's recent business trip to Japan and South Korea inspired her to bring back new products to her shop as well as fresh ideas.

She is a fast learner and enjoys organizing events and workshops. She believes that providing a good user experience is crucial to the success of any business. As a result, she is currently taking a UX Design course to apply what she learns to her business.

Moreover, Xenia is participating in a Business Development program to validate an HORECA idea she has had for a while. If successful, it could increase the visibility of Japanese teas in Spain and perhaps in Europe. She has several ideas in the pipeline for The Japanese Tea Hub and a list of improvements that will be implemented one step at a time.

Xenia would like to start introducing more Japanese ingredients to her customers and help them to enjoy them comfortably at home by sharing easy recipes on The Japanese Tea Hub Instagram account.