Stork Heather, Bellabuggy is going to tell us about her family’s business-Garden Party Teas. She is also offering us a discount! Thanks, Heather!

Garden Party Teas is a family owned and operated business. Barbara Roberts is our President and web geek, entirely self-taught. Dennis Roberts is a jack of all trades and bookkeeper extraordinaire (not his official title, obviously). And Heather Roberts-Nault (BellaBuggy) is the Vice-President and partner who is not pulling her fair share of the weight! As a stay-at-hom mom to three young daughters it’s hard to find enough time to devote to the business, but that situation is gradually improving and hopefully one day I’ll be able to take it all on and allow my parents to truly retire.

My mother and I loved to shop and decided to take our love of yard sales and put it to work for us. We began searching for antique and vintage tea related items and created our own little tea shoppe. We daydreamed about owning a ‘real’ tea room, but having owned a restaurant before we knew we didn’t *really* want to do that again! A small retail space allowed us to combine our love of shopping and our dream of an elegant tearoom without the long, hard hours of labor. Although we enjoyed it, we found that the amount of time required to maintain the business was more than we were prepared to handle. My oldest daughter was a newborn at that time, and my Mom was still working full-time. When mom’s circumstances changed and she decided to ‘retire’ (more on that later), we decided to rethink our goals. 

Seeking a broad audience for our unique selection of tea accoutrements, our company closed the doors to our retail shop in favor of our expanding Internet presence.

Our web store was opened in 2004 and has grown steadily every year. What began as a fun outlet has become a big job!

There used to be a commercial where a small company opened their website and gathered around the computer to watch the orders come in. At first they were excited to see one, and then they panicked when the orders started pouring in! Many days we feel like that commercial, struggling to keep up with the volume of sales we are getting, but especially in this economy we feel very blessed to have such a problem. And we look forward to many more successful years to come!

We would also love to offer a discount to my fellow Storks! Just visit www.gardenpartyteas.com and enter code STORK-10 at checkout.

Thanks!

Heather

Thank you, Heather!  

Filed under: Saturday Spotlight by Rebecca
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