Ku Day Ta Tea Lounge
Bee-Bee Liew, MBA. Co-Founder, President & CEO
Raja Sundaram, MBA. Co-Founder
447 Great Mall Drive, #124 Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 935-9107 (408) 748-9694 (h)
beeliew@netscape.net
http://www.kudayta.com

Ku Day Ta is a new company that promotes tea drinking through a range of tea lounges where you can enjoy various tea drinks in a relaxed, stylish and contemporary atmosphere. In addition to tea drinks and unique confectionaries, they also offer a selection of packaged tea for sale. Ku Day Ta is an ideal location for corporate events, bridal showers, charity events and local club meetings. The company’s first tea lounge opened in September 2008 after a long two year process of business development that included traveling to several Asian countries - including China, South Korea, India, Thailand and Indonesia – to learn how each culture grows, brews and uses tea.

Co-founders Ms. Liew and Mr. Sundaram have a business and management background in business development, marketing, channels and sales. They earned their MBA degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and University of California Berkeley respectively. Ms. Liew is also a former senior hardware engineer at Cisco Systems in San Jose.

Ms. Liew came to the Silicon Valley Small Business Development center seeking assistance with validating her business idea, financial projections and planning her launch.

Susan Lewis, Primary business advisor, reviewed and made recommendations to define market entry strategy, to include an educational component and clarifying ‘keys to success’ to help focus resources. Having a hiring plan, training and employee handbook would be helpful as the staff will be an integral part of the experience. She also recommended additional revenue opportunities that would broaden her service offering such as baked goods and international CDs. Suggested Ms. Liew attend some SBDC classes such as Internet marketing and QuickBooks to supplement her knowledge. Susan also assisted in identifying local business opportunities to meet business leaders and community groups to help get the word out about her business and developing an overall marketing and launch plan. In addition, a review of her financials suggested a slightly less aggressive sales growth plan and updating her startup costs to be more conservative as they would most likely be higher.

Prior to construction, Estelle Cimino, retail business advisor, assisted Ms. Liew with negotiating her lease with the Great Mall, locating fixtures and working with contractors for the build-out.

Also, Kevin Shea technology advisor assisted Ms. Liew with her business technology requirements to run the business. He reviewed ‘point of sale’ needs and what to look for in merchant services i.e. hardware, software, vendor service level agreements and security.

As a result, Ms. Liew was able to move forward with more confidence, secure a location for her tea lounge and open her dream business. She also gained clarity and focus on what was really important for business success. Her tea lounge is beautiful and had a strong contractor who implemented her vision. She is also able to manage her cash flow due to the point of sale system.

Ms. Liew was able to hire 4 part-time local employees and feels part of the community. With this experience she will also be successful in other locations when the time is right.

“My experience with the SBDC has been invaluable – I received help that otherwise would not have made my business possible. ”