15th March 2012

DORCHESTER: Gilded Teapot wins small business award

Dorchester based specialist loose leaf tea and coffee merchant The Gilded Teapot was this week selected as one of the winners of Theo Paphitis’ Small Business Sunday competition.

Every Sunday Theo Paphitis, of Dragon’s Den and Ryman’s fame, holds a competition for small business owners on Twitter, entitled Small Business Sunday in which he selects six small businesses to gain the chance of a re-tweet to his 200,000 followers.

Thousands of small businesses from all over the country send a single tweet about their business using the tag #SBS between the hours of 5pm-7.30pm on a Sunday evening.

The star of Dragon’s Den then chooses his six favourites to share with his followers.

Jo Davies, owner of The Gilded Teapot said of the win: “I was alerted to the competition through a friend and so I decided to give it a go. I was stunned when we were selected as there are so many amazing businesses entering.

“So far we’ve gained more than 200 new twitter followers and have had hundreds of mentions.

“Website traffic has also been phenomenal – we’ve had four times as many visitors as usual to the website – the most we’ve ever seen in a single day.”

The event has become so popular that stationary retailer Ryman’s is hosting the very first Small Business Sunday event for all the SBS winners on Friday, March 30 at Edgbaston Stadium to which The Gilded Teapot owners will now be invited.

The event will be hosted by Mr Paphitis himself and will be a chance for small businesses all over the country to share knowledge and information.

The Gilded Teapot, based in Tudor Arcade Dorchester, has been in operation for a little over a year and is owned by local tea connoisseur Jo Davies, 26.

It sources and blends more than 100 of the world's finest and most rare loose leaf teas for Dorchester’s teapots.

Jo started the business as a response to what she felt was an absence of speciality tea shops.

On a trip back to her home town of Dorchester, she discovered that there was a huge fondness amongst the residents for an old tea merchants shop called Parsons that had been in the town from the 1920s right up until the 1980s and decided to make this the home of the Gilded Teapot.

Jo and her team are working hard to make 2012 a really exciting year for The Gilded Teapot.

They will be launching a traveling tea and coffee house to take to festivals and events as well as building their online shop, to get their products out to the rest of the country.

PICTURE: OWNER of the Gilded Teapot, Jo Davis, discusses tea with former Mayor of Dorchester Leslie Phillips and President of the Chamber of Commerce Denise Addison at their opening in 2010

DORCHESTER: Gilded Teapot wins small business award

DORCHESTER: Gilded Teapot wins small business award

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