and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society. 



595 



CEYLON TEA IN AMERICA, 



REPORT FOR 1907. 



By Mr Walter Courtney, Commissioner foe 

 Oeylon. 



The work for 1907, while embodying in many 

 ways continuation of that inaugurated in 190(3, 

 has nevertheless been different on account of 

 one or two new features. 



The first five months of the year were taken 

 up with the work of bringing new firms to make 

 a specialty of Puke Ckylon Tea, and at the 

 bottom of this report I append a list of the 

 names of those firms, together with those pre- 

 viously secured, and an estimated number of 

 the retail grocers which the heads of the several 

 firms assure me have taken up the sale of the 

 Tea through them. The plan which we worked 

 was as follows : — 



After having induced a firm to put up a Pure 

 Ceylon Tea packet of their own and being 

 satisfied that the tea contained in it was of 

 the very best quality, and one that 

 carefully blended made it possible to easily 

 match it again in the open market when re- 

 quired, I lent them one or more men as 

 was necessary, to go round with their 

 salesmen to as many as possible of the retail 

 stores with whom they dealt, instructing them 

 and giving them all possible assistance in order 

 that they might have every opportunity of per- 

 suading the retailer of the benefit of taking such 

 Tea, and the value that would accrue to him by 

 stocking an article which was daily growing in 

 public favour and which it behoved him to keep 

 a supply of. It was necessary to do this mis- 

 sionary work; for it was naturally unfair to get a 

 man to put out a new packet of his own and not 

 give him all possible assistance in placing it 

 before his trade and getting the necessary repeat 

 orders which would enable him to get the profit 

 he looked for. This of course required a great 

 deal of work, as it is one thing to get a retailer to 

 stock a new brand of Tea, and another thing to 

 get him to send in repeat orders. In some cases 

 where the Tea was a decided novelty and the 

 retailers complained that their customers did 

 not ask for it, we hit upon the plan of making 

 a house-to-house canvass, engaging say twenty 

 young women under one or more overseers, who 

 went to each house in a certain district 

 and tried to take orders for this Tea on the local 

 grocer. If they met with a rebuff, they then 

 asked permission to make a cup of Tea in order 

 that they might ■ demonstrate its superior 

 quality to that being used in the house. 

 This they were easily able to do, as each 

 one carried a small bag with a teapot and 

 some Tea and where they were allowed 

 to make the Tea they had no difficulty in 

 persuading the lady of the house to order it 

 from her regular grocer. This resulted. _ of 

 course, in the grocers in that district receiving 

 several orders, and they were able to get rid of 

 the Tea which they had bought from the whole- 

 saler and send in repeat orders for a further 

 supply. At every house so visited, they left a 

 copy of the little booklet (enclosed) which I 



wrote and had printed, giving a few facts on 

 (Jeylou Tea and some half-dozen pictures of the 

 industry, in order that they might have some- 

 thing to remind them of the visit. In this 

 connection I send you a sample street map, 

 showing you in how systematic a way this work 

 was carried out, each young woman having to 

 write a daily report in her book of the 

 number of houses visited, the number of 

 people who had given orders, total number of 

 booklets distributed and the number of houses 

 where she was allowed to make tea. 



Before leaving for my trip to England on the 

 15th of June, I was able to arrange for 



A LARGE DEMONSTRATION TO BE HELD IN 

 wanamakek's STORE IN PHIL SDELPHIA. 

 As Wanamaker had never allowed a demons- 

 tration of any sort there before, this was a great 

 concession and one that we made the most of. 

 It was carried on for a period of about six 

 weeks duriig the summer, and the result of it 

 was that the Tea which wa3 demonstiated is 

 now being sold in between sixteeu or seventeen 

 hundred stores throughout that city and dis- 

 trict. Let me here give a brief outline of what 

 was done, taken from a newspaper report: — 



"A concession of some twelve hundred square 

 feet on the main floor was obtained, which in- 

 cluded the use of an immense show window 

 permitting the free view of the exhibit from 

 the street, and the exhibit thus installed was 

 called the Ceylon Tea Totam. The demon- 

 strators were costumed as nearly as possible like 

 Tamil girls, and their quaint garb attracted 

 much attention and questioning, in the satis- 

 fying of which Ceylon Tea was kept very 

 much to the fore. The Tea was served 

 by East Indians in Tamil costume, on 

 lacquered Moradabad trays 3 and the Tea was 

 made in new tilting teapots. This teapot, the 

 happy invention of an English earl, has to be 

 turned over on its back with its spout in the 

 air while the tea is brewing, and as soon as the 

 pot is turned right side up, the leaves are auto- 

 matically drawn up out of the infusion, thus 

 reudering, provided the water has been properly 

 boiled, a good cup of tea a certainty. The china 

 used was pure white, which showed offtherioh 

 colour of the Tea to advantage. Probably the 

 best and most effective advertising during 

 this time, however, was done by the Wanamaker 

 store itself in its regular full-page advertise- 

 ments appearing in all the Philadelphia 

 papers each morning. In several cases pictures 

 were used to illustrate the Tea Totam or some 

 feature of the demonstration." 



The reason we used the word Totam was be- 

 cause a great deal of importance is attached to 

 a name in this country, and the mere fact of 

 using one which nobody had heard before nor 

 knew the meaning of, at once attracted general 

 attention, and caused numerous people to come 

 and see for themselves what on earth a Totam 

 could be. — Advantage was also taken of the 



BOSTON PURE FOOD SHOW 



which is annually held in an enor- 

 mous building known as the Mechanics' 

 Building, and which attracts a groat amount 

 of interest and has been found to bo tho best 



75 



