What is the most common organic tea in the market?

What sort of questions should I include in my market research before opening a tea house?

• I want to open a tea house, but I need to show the bank I've done my research. The problem is I have absolutely no idea where to begin. I suppose it would be good to have a survey of some sort. Any help would be highly appreciated!

• Answer:

  If you're not sure what to include in your market research, I'd say you're not ready to apply for a bank loan! There are different ways to start a business, and not all of them require significant funding at the start. I actually wrote a post about this, oriented specifically towards tea businesses, very recently: http://cazort.blogspot.com/2012/04/create-conditions-for-your-business-to.html It's a bit of a strange blog post but you may find it helpful. I give the example of a bakery that started up by operating out of the kitchen of a coffee shop. There are often creative ways to start businesses that give the business some momentum before requiring a big investment (like a physical location). --- But, back to your original question, in general, for very coarse market research, you need to answer questions like: (1) who would your customers be? how many of them are there out there? how many customers could you reasonably expect to come to your business? How do similar businesses perform? What is the demand in your area? And how are you going to reach these customers? (2) for the bank, you usually need to do a lot more than just market research, you need to have some detailed figures about how much money you're going to make, what your costs are going to be, etc. Try to be very cautious with your estimates. In business, unexpected things happen. Things are going to go terribly wrong. There may be positive surprises too, but some things are always going to fall short of your expectations. Taking out a loan is risky. You want to make sure you have all your ducks in a row BEFORE applying for a loan. If you have very conservative estimates and it looks like it's all going to solidly work, then great, go for it. But if the finances don't look right, don't apply for the loan. Find another way to get things going (like the examples I give in my blog post). Good luck!