in the gifting aisle and the education problem that comes with selling a category most people have never tasted. Inside Retail: Why was travel retail the right next channel for Saicho at this point in the brand’s growth? Charlie Winkworth-Smith: Saicho has grown through discovery, largely on the tables of the world’s best restaurants and bars. Travel retail is the obvious next step because it takes that same moment of discovery and puts it in front of a global audience, at a point in the journey when people are open to something they have not seen before and are actively looking for something to take home. It also lets us tell the whole story in one place, from the origin of the tea to the way it should be served. IR: You have called the HKIA launch a homecoming. How important is Hong Kong to Saicho’s identity and to the commercial strategy today? Natalie Chiu: Saicho is British and Hong Kong in equal measure, so Hong Kong has been part of the brand’s identity from the start. It was never a market we expanded into. Commercially, it is one of our strongest and most demanding, with a hospitality scene that sets the pace for the region and a gifting culture that rewards craft. Arriving at HKIA, where so much of Asia passes through, felt like the right way to come home.  IR: Wine and spirits have traditionally dominated premium gifting in travel retail. What do you think is missing from that category that Saicho can address? NC: Wine and spirits have earned their place in travel retail, and some of the finest gifting in the world sits in that hall, so for us this was never about what they lack. What we can add is a different kind of origin story. Every Saicho is a single origin tea, cold brewed and sparkling, with a harvest, a terroir and a maker behind it, and the flavours are unfamiliar enough that giving a bottle still feels like an introduction to something. Saicho sits alongside the established categories on the table, not in place of them. IR: What was the thinking behind collaborating with Jonathan Jay Lee specifically for the Hong Kong launch? NC: Art has always been at the heart of Saicho. Yuliya Kalinichenko has shaped our visual world since the early days and continues to do so as our Artist in Residence, and we had long wanted to see how another artist might reinterpret that world in their own style.  Jonathan’s vibrant, cinematic work could not be more different from Yuliya’s delicate chinoiserie, and that contrast was the point. Our Jasmine now carries red-crowned cranes flying across a glowing blue Hong Kong skyline, rendered in his tech-noir, comic-influenced style. Each expression is still instantly recognisable as Saicho and completely new at the same time, and every design takes its cue from the rhythm, beauty and spirit of Hong Kong. For a Hong Kong launch, that mattered. IR: Where are you seeing the strongest demand for premium sparkling tea today, and are there markets where consumer response has surprised you? CW: The UK and Hong Kong remain our anchor markets, and demand is strongest wherever there is a serious fine dining and cocktail culture, so continental Europe and the Middle East have both grown quickly.  What has surprised us is how willing people are to try something they have never come across before. We expected more hesitation, and instead we see guests order Saicho out of curiosity and then come back to it because they like the way it tastes. A lot of that comes down to the education sommeliers and bartenders give at the table, explaining where the tea is from and what it will do alongside the food. Once a wine list treats Saicho as a pairing in its own right, the market tends to follow. IR: Following Hong Kong, which Asian markets are highest on your priority list and why? CW: Singapore and Thailand across Southeast Asia, Mainland China, Japan and South Korea in East Asia, and Australasia on the same list. Part of what makes HKIA the right first step is that it works as a regional flagship, so travellers from all of those markets pass through the terminal and the pop-up builds awareness across the whole region at once. Japan matters for the depth of its tea culture and for where we source. Singapore has a restaurant scene we already know suits the product. Mainland China and South Korea both have gifting cultures that reward provenance and are changing quickly. IR: What are the biggest challenges you expect as Saicho moves from being a distinctive premium brand into a more widely recognised international category? CW: The main one is education. Sparkling tea is still new to a lot of people, so much of the work is helping them understand what it is and where it belongs before they have tasted it. Beyond that, growth has to be deliberate. We would rather Saicho arrive in a market properly than quickly, and holding that standard as more doors open is what we pay the most attention to. IR: Looking a few years ahead, what would you like Saicho to be known for that it isn’t known for today? CW: Celebration, redefined, has always been the ambition rather than the tagline, and a few years from now I would like the proof of it to be a category rather than a brand. Sparkling tea ordered by name, poured at the moments that matter, with Saicho recognised as the reason it earned a place there. What people reach for when something is worth marking has been settled for a long time, and there is more room in that moment than most people assume.