Proud team alert! PLŪKT Māra is featured in the book “The Compass always points North” published by The Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Latvia. There she shares human-interest story of finding PLŪKT and on how to keep clear, brave vision while building sustainable business. Because of persistent teamwork and amazing partnerships, PLŪKT teas are now enjoyed in 18 countries around the world.
Nordregio, a Nordic research center for regional development and planning, has featured PLŪKT as an example for explaining and illustrating the way a sustainable business based on natural resources should be conceived.
“The PLŪKT tea, named after the Latvian for pluck and collected in the meadows of Prauliena near the town of Madona, is sold across different corners of the world. The strategic decision to position the tea as Nordic has opened its makers the door to every continent. “We consider ourselves to be a part of Northern Europe,” says PLŪKT founder Māra Lieplapa. The we refers to Māra and her mother and company colleague Līga. They both find values such as asceticism, naturalness and a considerate attitude towards the environment very important. The two tea masters are busy conquering the global market, and one of their goals is breaking into the Nordics, a region traditionally known for its coffee culture.
From South Africa to Japan to Australia to America, tea connoisseurs hold the PLŪKT Nordic series of teas in high esteem. It turns out that the actual tea comes from Prauliena, near the town of Madona, where a young and enterprising graduate of the BA School of Business and Finance has worked determinedly to create an exportoriented business distributing the goodness found in Latvia’s meadows across the globe. Elegantly packaged, each of their tea varieties is accompanied by a story introducing the world to the unique character of the herbal teas that Latvians know so well.
At the age of 21, Māra, a third-year student at the university, started thinking about having her own business. After an internship and some time on the job market, she realized she wanted to have something that was completely hers. Māra was inspired by an experience-exchange trip to China where she first saw tea fields and learned more about tea culture. It was then that she decided to make use of her business and marketing know how, combining this with her mother’s knowledge and a degree in environmental science.
They made a strategic decision to represent themselves as a Nordic brand. “We thought that the most sweeping way of introducing ourselves to others would be by reference to our location,” says Māra. “We consider ourselves to be a part of the Nordics, and Nordic is a very charming word, accompanied as it is by values such as a sense for the ascetic and the natural, and this is highly esteemed in America and Asia as well.”
Thank you @zane_ozolina and @norden_lv . The book has been nominated for award “Zelta ābele 2021” and is published in English and Latvian.