`Tea Master' Blends Alchemy And Marketing -- Tazo Aims To Entice Connoisseurs

PORTLAND - The founder of one of the world's most seemingly laid-back tea companies sounds as though he's had a cup too many, percolating rapid-fire thoughts into his car phone about microbrews and looseleaf, concentrates and frozen tea-on-a-stick.

"The concept I'd thought about was this sort of timeless, ancient, new, forward-looking, backward-looking type of feel," explained Steven Smith, the 47-year-old president and "tea master" behind Tazo, a Portland-based beverage company that will sell a projected 30 million bags of tea this year.

"It's many, many cultures coming together. The very traditional side, smashed together with the eclectic, risky element of tea, which is the alchemistic side. What I wanted to portray was something right out of my lab, very Merlin-esque, that embodied the feelings of Marco Polo, alchemy, science and archaeology."

No short order. But that was the creative formula behind Tazo, a small company that has come far in three short years in creating a high-concept line of premium microbrewed teas and herbal infusions (read "herbal teas") in the java-crazed Northwest.

Then again, this is a different kind of tea company.

Study the ingredients on Tazo's hip, hieroglyphic packages. Tucked among the blackberry leaves and rose petals, the saffron and lemon verbena, you'll find each box contains "the mumbled chantings of a certified tea shaman."

Here is a company that labels its specialty tea blends names

such as "Awake" (an invigorating breakfast tea), "Zen" (an enlightening blend of exotic green teas and herbs), "Calm" (soothing chamomile and herbs) and "Refresh" (Northwest mints and fragrant botanicals).

It's a fine, funny line the company walks. It halfway embraces the soothing tones of New Age mysticism while poking a little irreverent fun - "9 out of 10 shamans prefer Tazo," a sign in its lobby declares.

But don't get the wrong idea. There's really more Madison Avenue than maharishi going on here.

And no one is coy about it. From the beginning, the intent was to create a premium tea - the same league as upper-end microbrew beer, coffees or ice cream - where price was really no object. The company wanted the best-tasting tea that money could buy, to appeal to a market ranging from "BMWs to Birkenstocks."

With capital and a heavy-hitting design team - including ad agency Wieden & Kennedy and Sandstrom Design - the concept took shape. The resulting funky, updated-ancient packaging look has been a big hit, winning the 1996 London International Advertising Award for "Best Package Design Tea." Tazo also snagged awards for "Best Product Line" from the Specialty Coffee Association in 1995 and 1996.

Although the company declines to release sales figures, a trade journal projected annual sales last year at more than $4 million.

Its teas have infiltrated corporate cafeterias from Nike and Eddie Bauer to IBM and Microsoft. They've found their way to upscale hotels to ski resorts to Harvard University. Last week, Smith was in New York, helping install a Tazo tea bar in the Jacob Javits Convention Center.

"We tripled our sales our second year," said Chief Executive Officer Tal Johnson, who joined the company in 1995 to manage the business end of operations. "This year, we'll double again."