TUCSON, Ariz. - December 23, 2014
Kevin Rose, Tim Ferriss and Glenn McElhose joined Austin Hodge on a tour of China in 2009.Kevin Rose is known as a Silicon Valley guru, venture capitalist and partner in Google Ventures. In 2009 he traveled with Seven Cups founder Austin Hodge to the rainforests of Yunnan in southwest China to taste tea where it originated. Rose traveled in 2009 with fellow celebrity millennials Tim Ferriss, author of the best-selling “Four Hour Work Week,” and cinematographer Glenn McElhose. “The trip was difficult – but the tea was amazing,” Rose said at the time.
Now Rose wants to share that amazing tea with his followers. He has about 1.5 million followers on Twitter alone.
He picked Seven Cups tea as one item in his first holiday gift box on sale through Quarterly.co. Celebrity gift boxes are a hot item now in online retail. Seven Cups has been one of the leaders in the tea industry for more than a decade in Direct Trading.
“The holiday gift box has things that Kevin thinks are cool,” said Hodge. “We are happy he feels that way about our teas.” In pictures of box contents shared over social media, bags of the hand-made tea sit alongside wireless speakers, fitness trackers, and laptop accessories. The contents were kept secret until all the boxes were delivered, just in time for Christmas.
“These are all very expensive teas,” Hodge said. “The teas are rare and hard to come by even in China."
Rose is an internet entrepreneur who co-founded Revision3, Digg, Pownce and Milk. Rose is now a venture partner at Google Ventures. In 2007 MIT Technology Review named Rose one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. He’s been a guest of Jimmy Fallon three times.
Hodge and his wife Zhuping Hodge founded Seven Cups Fine Chinese Tea in 2002 and opened the teahouse in 2004. Zhuping is one of the first women to be certified to teach tea culture to tea professionals in China. She is a native of China. Seven Cups currently sources teas from around 50 producers in 10 different regions of China, homeland of the world’s first and finest teas, Hodge said. Seven Cups sells tea online to connoisseurs in more than 90 countries. Many of these teas have only been available to the Western world in the last 10 to 20 years.
From a press release.
