SummerRain

For a while now we've been looking for a place to share fun info and facts about Matcha, behind the scenes of SummerRain, share memes and just express the personality of the brand we're building. So we spent the last week on the coast of Baltic sea in the northern part of Germany, brainstorming, designing, writing and building what we now call 'the Magazine'. Thanks to Webflow, a bit of custom code and a 60s Spotify Playlist we managed to ship a fully custom blog in under 3 days 🥳 Excited to see where it goes from here!
👉https://www.getsummerrain.de/magazine

Finally, after a year of side hustling, SummerRain is live 🚀
What we're proud of:
🌟 Truly Ceremonial grade Matcha - harvested and blended in Japan, by an award-winning tea Master (yes, they have tea blending competitions in Japan, and it's a big deal)
🌱 Product Lineup: Welcome pack for new customers - includes a water-proof specially designed Matcha jar, as well made in Japan. Refill pack - refills that fit inside a mailbox.
📦 Recyclable packaging, sourced locally for shorter delivery times and lower environmental impact. Zero items sourced from China.
💻 No-code setup. To provide a fully custom and unique experience, we decided to skip the convenient Shopify solution. Instead, we use Webflow to design the store, Sendinblue to send emails, Airtable for data storage, and Make (formally Integromat) for automations.
Now, time to grow...

If you're incorporating in Germany, especially for the first time, make sure to learn as much as possible about the overall process and every piece of the contract before you go to the notary. Also, be ready for something to go wrong. 😅 A tiny mistake in the contract (and maybe a notary that was not too responsive or interested in helping us) put us back at least 3 months and doubled our notary fees. Well, at least now we know 😬

We became interested in Matcha in 2020, but quickly noticed how bad the quality was on average, and how hard it was to find truly ceremonial grade matcha in the sea of same-looking mostly dropshipped products. We decided to give it a shot and build a premium DTC brand, starting with Matcha that is authentic, truly ceremonial grade, and delivered to a customer with an exceptional experience. Intentionally, we decided to take a long path and go against the lean approach, but instead focus on the details and build a brand with a character - making it a playground for our ideas. For a part-time project, that means lots of upfront work and delayed launch dates. Time will tell if it was actually worth it...😅