Simply Darjeeling!

Our parent company, Teekampagne, and its founder, Guenter Faltin, were among the three companies honored at the ceremony for the Deutscher Gruenderpreis 2009, the most important award for outstanding entrepreneurs in Germany. Winners received their awards in Berlin, at a ceremony attended by Commerce Secretary Guttenberg and many other prominent figures from business and politics. Both “stern” magazine and German public TV channel ZDF have been carrying reports on the nominees and prize winners.

Faltin, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Free University of Berlin, started Teekampagne 25 years ago, to demonstrate that his ideas could succeed in the marketplace. Teekampagne sells only one kind of tea, Darjeeling, in large packages and by mail order, at tremendous savings to the consumer. Its tea is 100% Darjeeling, guaranteed by the official Seal of Purity from the Tea Board of India; it is subject to an extraordinary quality assurance protocol (among other things, it is tested for hundreds of herbicides and pesticides, with the results printed on each package, and it is traceable to its origins). Teekampagne also funds a reforestation project in Darjeeling, carried out locally by the World Wide Fund for Nature. A model company not only for its entrepreneurial idea but also for its ecological leadership, Teekampagne has a loyal following in Europe, where it sells about 400 tons of tea a year.

Faltin has been a business angel for a variety of successful startups as well as a widely read author and consultant on entrepreneurship. His latest book, Kopf schlaegt Kapital (“Brain Beats Capital”) is among the best-selling business books in Germany this year.