January the 11th, 2022 - Move aside Croatian craft beer! The very first Croatian craft tea has come to life through a long family tradition that has been turned into a business. Odores Silentii offers something entirely new to the Croatian market.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marta Duic writes, Odores Silentii is a domestic brand of teas and accessories for serving it, behind which lies a warm family business story. According to Magdalena Sekulic, the first ideas and products were created as hobbies and owing to the personal enjoyment of natural home-made plants and teas back during 2018.

Today, Odores Silentii has gradually developed from a hobby into a family business producing the first Croatian craft tea, and all of their family members are involved in the work. For them, 2021 they say, was a turning point and a year full of development in which they defined clear guidelines for their brand and the way in which they do business. Behind them lies a year of investment, both in terms of material equipment for processing and personalisation, and also when it comes to product development.

Healthy habits...

“Instructed in how to do it all by our grandparents, we collected plants or grew them in our garden, dried them out and enjoyed consuming them. For centuries now, people have collected plants and consumed them through various types of tea drinks, and what grows best in their climate tends to suit them best. The cultivation of medicinal herbs based on the economies of scale and high efficiency has brought tea consumption to an instant level (prepare, consume, move on) and thus dominates the market. Our strategy, however, is different and our products aren't comparable with such a model of tea consumption. We've personally experienced the fact that tea consumption is a healthy habit not only from the aspect of fluid consumption,'' said Magdalena Sekulic, who is behind the Odores Silentii brand making the first Croatian craft tea.

She explained that back at the end of 2020, they teamed up with the family company Bioplanta from Kriz, which grows organic medicinal plants on more than ten hectares of land.

“Odores Silentii deals with hand-picked teas from production in the Bioplant fields. After harvesting and drying out, the teas are hand-picked to separate the ones which are top quality. The amount of manual labour represents the largest share of resources in the entire production chain. This is best illustrated by the example that a kilogram of Odores Silentii tea from lemon balm, chamomile or mint requires two to four hours of manual screening.

All other parts of the production process rely on totally manual work (the processing of sets by grinding and coating), packaging, and at the end - personalisation. From all the above, we believe that Odores Silentii is the first Croatian craft tea offered on the market,'' Sekulic pointed out.

New models

They offer Croatian craft tea packaged in both cans and bags, tea blends with dried organic fruit, personalised gift packages (engraving), wooden chests, gift boxes with teas and accessories and sets for serving, and they're also working on a new collection of special products that combine candles with tea.

"We hope that 2022 will be a new milestone for our business, especially in the development of our sales channels. Our production quantities and the way we personalise our products aren't applicable to traditional retail chains. We have several ideas about alternative ways of accessing the market primarily through social media and creating quality content relying on direct sales and sales models based on so-called ''try and buy'' principles,'' concluded Magdalena Sekulic.

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