

Show HN: Like Candy Japan, but for Japanese Tea – Tomotcha.com - Xixi

I&#x27;ve been sending green tea from Japan to a friend in France for a while, so we decided to give a shot at monetizing this very simple idea. The business model is quite evidently derived from Candy Japan (candyjapan.com).<p>For now the concept is really really simple: I just pick the best teas I can find, and ship them. Last month it was a Kabusecha from the Kyoto prefecture; next weekend I&#x27;ll be travelling to Kagoshima to find a great tea for next month shipment.<p>Ultimately we&#x27;d like to offer a bit more choice: amount, organic-only, etc. Feedback and inputs are very much appreciated!
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Xixi
Tomotcha url in a clickable fashion:
[https://tomotcha.com](https://tomotcha.com)

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calbear81
I really like this idea and surprised that your friend in France couldn't find
Japanese tea there. Would you consider sending tea from other also very highly
esteemed tea growing regions (Taiwan)?

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Xixi
You can definitely find Japanese tea in France (at least in Paris). But it's
usually quite expensive and without much variety: mostly Sencha like you would
find in any Japanese supermarket, at 4 times the price.

I love Taiwanese tea, but so far I'd rather stay focused on Japanese tea since
it is very convenient for me to search for (I live in Osaka). I hope to
eventually be able to expand to other Asian countries!

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owly
Love this idea. Going to seriously consider subscribing.

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Xixi
:)

Let me know if there is a roadblock, or anything I could do to help you make
the leap!

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owly
Well, I drink coffee 50% of the time. Maybe an introductory $15/month mini
subscription? If the tea is as good as it looks, maybe I could switch over to
75% tea. I happen to be drinking some great genmaicha right now. :) totemo
oishii desu! Or maybe a referral program. Like discount for getting new
subscribers?

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Xixi
genmaicha ha oishii deshou!

$15/month for ~50 grams of tea per month (the normal subscription is ~100g per
month), let's call it the HN subscription. Works for me!

You can subscribe using the normal form, just drop us an email with your
name/address so that I can identify you and switch you to the HN subscription
rather than the normal one.

This offer is of course valid for everyone reading this thread!

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owly
How many subscribers do you have so far? I think I'm going to just go for it
and try for a month. :)

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Xixi
Excluding friends and family, we had one paying customer (in Germany) for the
last shipment.

Given that we had exactly 36 visitors from this comment a month ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8850776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8850776)),
I would say the conversion rate so far is rather good. Of course a "conversion
rate" is rather hard to calculate with any kind of accuracy with such a small
sample size.

