[Case Study] - From passion to profit: How Renegade Tea Estate builds a business.

Hey guys,

You might have heard about PageFly as an e-commerce solution to increase your Shopify store conversion rate. But how does PageFly actually support real merchants with their challenges in sales?

That’s what I usually hear from merchants when I get a chance to talk directly with them through our support platform. In this blog post, we’ll talk about a fantastic tea product, understand the tea business better and examine how the young and passionate team behind Renegade Tea Estate built their business with Shopify and PageFly.

If you’re new to this blog post series, I’d like to mention our previous issue with Elena from Modern Market. You can read more of her story about How a Photographer Turned Her Passion into a Profitable Shopify Store.

Wondering what business idea you should try for yourself? Use this tool to find out now.

Table of Contents

• Starting with Renegade Tea Estate product
• Let’s meet Kristiina from Renegade Tea Estate
• How did you find PageFly across the app store with over 2,500+ apps?
• How has PageFly helped you to showcase the value of your products/services to your customers?
• What specific problem has PageFly helped you fix?
• What were your pain points before using PageFly as your solution?
• Were there any other advantages you discovered when using PageFly over time?
• What top 3 features do you love with PageFly solution?
• What would you say if we told you our product would soon be unavailable?

Introduction

I personally drink both tea and coffee. But later on, I switched to only tea products, especially Oolong and green tea. Probably partly because I was traveling in Taiwan last year. So to understand the value of tea, I started with some research and my attention was arrested by Renegade Tea Blog.

Their site layout is quite simple and I can intuitively navigate to find the information I’m looking for. Since I was new in the world of tea, I started my research with a blog post about Tea for dummies 101. It gave me great insight and opened my eyes to the world of one of the most ancient and medicinal drinks.

Starting with Renegade Tea Estate product

Tea leaves are carefully organized into convenient packages to preserve the natural taste of the tea. You can notice that the package has a zipper which is convenient for opening and closing the box during use.

Now, you might be wondering what the Product page looks like. In their case, the products are presented in an interesting way. The product page Tea Showroom starts with a short intro paragraph and is finalized with two product types called Pre-order Renegade Spring Splash 2019 and Pre-order Renegade Collection 2019. Depending on your preference you can add to cart right away on the page or go to the product details.

For now, let’s learn from Kristiina Mehik firsthand about her success story with Renegade Tea Estate.

--- Beginning of the interview ---

Let’s meet Kristiina from Renegade Tea Estate

I’m Kristiina Mehik, one of the partners at Renegade Tea Estate. I’m also responsible for introducing our teas to the world :)

We are a group of friends from Estonia and Lithuania who quit their successful careers as leaders and specialists in the Baltics to save the abandoned tea plantations in Georgia and to help to put Georgian tea back on the world map. We established Renegade Tea Estate to offer high-quality, chemical free tea with the most personal and authentic experience in the world. We started in 2018 and this summer will be our first full season as tea farmers :)

Our teas are aimed for >the everyday tea lovers, who are looking for easy-to-drink, clean and healthy

products from a trusted provider. >As today’s tea industry is ruled by big corporations and middlemen aiming for profits only, it is very difficult for the consumer to find even a handful of farmers who sell their own tea.

Most of the times when we buy tea from the closest supermarket, we don’t really know where it is coming from, who are the people behind it and how it has been grown and produced. >This is something that we want to do differently - we want our customers to know and trust us. We want them to be with us on this journey together, from plucking the first leaves to receiving the ready-made teas.

We hope that Renegade Tea Estate will feel to people as the closest thing to their very own tea farm.

As we are not an average reseller just aiming to sell tea as a commodity, our needs for the website are also different and need quite a lot of flexibility in design to tell the story of Georgian tea and Renegade Tea Estate. On the other hand, as we are just a starting company we do quite a lot of things ourselves and our marketing budget is very modest, so hiring a company to build our webpage for several thousand euros is just not an option for us.

Before Renegade Tea Estate I was leading the commerce department of a mid-sized transport company for more than five years, I did have my own vision how a good webpage should look like and I wanted to be able to administer the page myself also in the future, but since my knowledge of CSS is very limited, PageFly was just the perfect fit for us.

How did you find PageFly across the app store with over 2,500+ apps?

I was looking for a solution to how I could build an e-shop myself without coding. As I had a certain design for our eshop what I wanted to fulfill, then I found that the Shopify themes weren’t flexible enough. So, I started to look for apps that could be helpful. I tested a couple of more, but PageFly was the most flexible one, where I could really do everything I wanted without much knowledge of CSS.

How has PageFly helped you to showcase the value of your products/services to your customers?

Since I tested a lot of apps and e-commerce solutions, then with most of them I got to a point where I wasn’t able to build our page as I wanted, but needed to change the design or do some coding to get the design right. With PageFly I was able to showcase our brand’s story the way I wanted.

Side note

The brand started with a strong story and Renegade Tea Estate was able to tell it through building great visual content. The first paragraph is positioned with ease for reading and discovery of the brand. The hi-quality images bring a true genuine feeling of trust in the brand.

One of the key things I have found that directly increases trust in the brand is the process of making the tea. Since I’m a tea and coffee lover, I’m very interested in how the production process happens. It’s no surprise to me that the team invested the time to share the process of making their product. Through their HOW WE MAKE TEA page you can understand the process clearly.

Has PageFly helped you increase traffic to your store?

PageFly hasn’t directly helped to increase traffic, but it has definitely improved the user experience on our page which results in more repetitive customers and more sales.

What specific problem has PageFly helped you fix?

PageFly helped me to implement the design that I wanted to, without making any compromises.

Side Note

The first and the most important page for any e-commerce store is the homepage. With the homepage, Renegade Tea Estate Team did a great job in building an informative content section consisting of images and text. This image and content section from the team creates trust for buyers.

Before PageFly, were you using default Shopify themes? If so, how do you feel about their functionality?

As I transferred our page from another e-commerce platform, I don’t have vast experience with Shopify themes, but I was testing them before starting with PageFly. For us, the themes were not flexible enough as I didn’t want to build a page with just some kind of style, but I had a very specific design which I wanted to implement.

What were your pain points before using PageFly as your solution?

I couldn’t build the design I wanted without coding myself.

Side Note

With PageFly you can easily build e-commerce pages for your Shopify store with the simple drag and drop mechanism. The app has essential elements to build everything from simple to complex pages. In the video below you can see how PageFly works when building the Shopify landing page. Instead of writing the code with HTML / CSS markup language, you drag and drop elements from the control panel and drop it onto the dashboard.

Were there any other advantages you discovered when using PageFly over time?

I really appreciate the support of PageFly - even if there was something I couldn’t do with the design, then the support team figured it out on their own and even helped to code some parts to make the page look like I wanted to.

Side Note

PageFly customer service covers all time zone and 24/7 including weekends. There might be some delay with response time during weekends, but rest assured the team responds with solutions to solve all answers. You can read more about how the PageFly Team take support duties seriously via this article https://pagefly.io/blogs/shopify/all-you-need-to-know-about-pagefly-support

What top 3 features do you love with PageFly solution?

The drag and drop functionality is number one for me and with the new upgrade, it’s even better now.

Also, it’s good that you can edit the SEO parameters within the current landing page you are building.

It’s also great that you can use the PageFly and Shopify elements both when building the page, so you won’t be short of possibilities when choosing elements for your page.

Would you recommend PageFly to a colleague or friend?

I would recommend PageFly to everyone who wants to build their page themselves and manage and improve it over time.

What would you say if we told you our product would soon be unavailable? What would this mean to you?

That would be devastating as PageFly really helped me to build the page I wanted to. If I would need to go back to Shopify Themes for example, then I would need to compromise a lot on the design or hire an expert to code the page for me.

--- The end of the interview ---

Well, this was honestly a really interesting and inspiring story about Renegade Tea Estate. As of today, PageFly is being used by over 14,000 Shopify merchants and the total number is growing fast. Whether you’re building a simple About us page or product information rich page, PageFly can help you to achieve your business goals.

We’re continually looking for inspiring stories from those using the PageFly app. If you’re using our solution and wish to share your success with our audience, feel free to reach us at happytohelp@pagefly.io