Kusmi Tea
| Kusmi Tea | |
|---|---|
| legal form | |
| founding | 1867 |
| Seat | Paris |
| management | Sylvain Orebi |
| Branch | Food |
| Website | www.kusmitea.com |
Kusmi Tea is a traditional tea company headquartered in Paris , which was founded in St. Petersburg , Russia in 1867 by Pawel Mikhailovich Kuzmichov (Павел Михайлович Кузьмичёв, 1840–1908). The company is particularly known for its exclusive tea blends and classic tea variations in the artfully designed cans.
history
In 1867 Pavel Michailovitch Kousmichoff, the eldest son of a peasant family, founded the PM Kousmichoff tea house in St. Petersburg, which became one of the leading tea houses in Russia and a supplier to the court of the tsars. By 1901, Kousmichoff owned eleven tea shops and his company was one of the three largest tea houses in Russia. In 1907 his son Viatcheslav opened the English subsidiary PM Kousmichoff & Sons and in 1908 took over the management of the company after the death of his father and his return to Russia. In 1917 Kousmichoff fled to Paris before the October Revolution . Viatcheslav opened the Kusmi-Thé house there.
The company grew between the two world wars and Viatcheslav founded numerous branches, including in Istanbul , New York and Berlin . Since there was a large Russian community in Berlin at the time, he set up his company's headquarters there.
Viatcheslav died in 1946. His son Constantin, an artist and tea lover, succeeded him. However, Constantin did not have the same interest in the company as his predecessors, so he sold the family business cheaply in 1972 on the verge of bankruptcy. Like Constantin, the new owners had a sense of the art and flavors of tea, but business was not for them either. The success of Kusmi Tea remained only moderate in the following years.
In 2003 the traditional family business was bought by the Orebi brothers. They promoted the international presence of the Kusmi Tea brand, which is still successful today and available worldwide. In 2007, Kusmi Tea opened its new tea boutique in the St. Germain des Prés district of Paris. Designed by the architect Guillaume Cochin, the entire range of teas and numerous accessories are presented in the modern boutique. In December 2009, a boutique opened in the heart of Paris between the Place Vendôme and the Opéra in an Art Deco shop from 1920. A Kusmi shop has existed in the Alsterhaus Hamburg since 2009. The company also set up a German-language online shop. Three more boutiques followed in 2015 in Bochum, Essen and Oberhausen.
Stiftung Warentest finds high levels of harmful substances in chamomile tea
In January 2017, the company withdrew its chamomile tea from the market after the Stiftung Warentest found a high content of pyrrolizidine alkaloids and notified the official food control authorities.
