Ho Wan Chun, the designer of HOUTH, got invited to join the 7 days residence program “DESIGN CAMP in NARA Japan”, Wan Chun team up with Urara, an Osaka designer, and to work together with a Yoshino local tea brand KAHEE HONPO.
Both designers homestay at the tea company for 3 days to work and live together with owners, in order to understand every process and details how they manage the brand and discover the problems they are facing now. Then the design team have 3 days to discuss and come out the design solution, and present to owners and local residents.
KAHEE HONPO is a tea brand based in Yoshino Nara, Japan over 100 years which specialize at traditional sun drying bancha. The process of making bancha is to pick old leaves and steam drying first, then put all the leaves natural dry under the sun. They have to flip the leaves manually couple times a day, till the leaves become really dried and packed into bags. This is how they make bancha, exactly the same way as 100 years ago.
When we start to research the brand, we found out the problem is not the visual identity, but the different business philosophy between 2 generations, the problem of insufficient local population and the single sales channel.
KAHEE HONPO has a wealth knowledge of tea culture, tea testing experience workshops and creative tea-related cuisine. They wish to open a new store near the old shop in the future. Because of the name registration problem of KAHEE HONPO, they can’t use the same name in the future store. Therefore, we propose a brand new project:
ttt Project Concept Store
t for tea and tea-related cuisine
t for tea testing workshops and tea utensils
t for trip of tea picking, tea leaves flipping and tea knowledge course
Through the new concept store and new business model, to bring the young people back and increase the local creativity and energy, to refresh the local and traditional culture, even to increase employment opportunities.
