The Tea Set

Name: Lisa Hilbert

Business: Tea Tonic

Industry: Tea-based beverages

IP smart since: September 1998

Victorian herbalist Lisa Hilbert has made a name for herself through healthy lines of tea – and she is determined to protect her brand name and intellectual property.

The adage that necessity is the mother of invention rings true for Lisa Hilbert. Suffering from facial skin blemishes in the late 1990s, she developed her own organic tea blend to help treat the eczema. It worked a treat.

“It got great results,” says Hilbert, a herbal medicine specialist and founder of Tea Tonic, a supplier of first-grade organic teas developed from hand-harvested herbs that help cleanse the liver and blood. “People who knew me were quite surprised at the results and were asking me for bags of this tea.”

Tea Tonic has evolved into a respected brand that distributes a range of tea blends such as Complexion, Well-Being, Apple-Tree and Fruity-Tutti. Initially selling through markets and fairs, the products are now available through scores of stockists around the country. Hilbert opened the doors to a new factory two years ago, and runs a thriving micro-business that employs three staff.

Protecting her name

Two years after the soft launch of her business, Hilbert’s legal colleagues advised her to seek some form of trade mark and IP protection. Initial efforts to register Tea Tonic as a trade mark proved frustrating – it was rejected as being too “ambiguous”. With the aid of solicitors, Hilbert tried again and the application was approved.

What started as a casual business became more serious after Hilbert purchased a machine to make tea bags and she graduated from selling just loose-leaf tea.With huge growth around natural and organic products in Australia over the past decade, Tea Tonic has been in the right place at the right time.

Hilbert admits she received dumbfounded looks from most market shoppers when she first started out. “People didn’t know what I was doing or giving them – they thought it was all very strange and it took a lot of explanation. These days there’s such a vast change.”

The biggest challenge now is taking on the plethora of competitors trying to cash in on the growth of natural remedies. “I feel like there is a new tea company every day,” Hilbert says. “It’s very much the flavour [of the moment].”

Enforcing Tea Tonic’s intellectual property shapes as one of Hilbert’s biggest battles. “There have been other people out there who have copied lots of my teas – not properly but that’s another issue.”

One case has led to a fight over IP infringements after another tea company started copying Tea Tonic’s blends. Legal letters were dispatched and Hilbert says the process has been stressful. Financial restraints have made it difficult for her to take legal action, but she has had small legal wins. “At least they couldn’t use my name Tea Tonic, so it protected me in that way,” Hilbert says.

A key reason for pursuing IP protection, she says, is to protect customers. “I don’t want to create any market confusion.” Hilbert adds that many companies do not place enough importance on safeguarding their brand. She says: “It’s intellectual property – and it is valuable.”

A growing business

Tea Tonic has a small but growing export presence through sales to New Zealand, and its tea lines received positive feedback at a recent industry showcase in Paris. The business is also launching a new product under the Queen Tea label, which will feature distinctive packaging and be made from herbs not necessarily grown in Australia.

Hilbert draws business inspiration from natural products pioneer Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop. She also admires the success of Elizabeth Arden, who created a cosmetics empire in the 1920s and 30s “back in the days when women couldn’t even have bank accounts and get a loan from the bank”.

In the face of growing competition, Hilbert believes her true passion for the herbal medicines sector and the value of IP protection will hold her in good stead against profit-driven rivals. “At the end of the day it’s not just a business to me. I’m a herbalist and it’s my passion as well. It must be commercial of course, but it’s about getting people better at the same time.”

Hilbert is motivated by her customers. “The lovely feedback and the good results they get really make my day … Food is medicine at the end of the day.”

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