GROUNDED

The Thinking

The tea category had two registers: functional commodity, or ceremony-as-costume. Neither felt like a real world.

What does stillness look like when it holds actual cultural weight?

Tea is one of the most universal products in existence — almost every culture has a tea ritual — but the story begins in one place: China. From there it travelled through trade, colonisation, and migration, becoming something different in every hand that held it. Britain made it a daily ritual. Morocco made it an act of hospitality. India turned it into something spiced and warming. The Caribbean made it medicinal, passed down through generations of women. That journey is the entire premise of GROUNDED.

GROUNDED is a global tea collection built across six origins — China (White Peony & Jasmine), Japan (Ceremonial Matcha & Yuzu), India (Masala Chai & Cardamom), Morocco (Mint & Gunpowder Green), England (Earl Grey & Bergamot), and Caribbean (Sorrel, Hibiscus & Ginger) — each with distinct packaging, colour palette, cultural references, and ritual objects. A single tea brand competes on flavour. A collection that spans six origins competes on story, craft, and range.

The signature format

Rather than tea bags or loose leaf, GROUNDED sells tea spheres — walnut-sized, hand-painted pressed botanicals that dissolve slowly in hot water, releasing colour, scent, and flavour as they open. Each one is finished in the style of a high-end Belgian praline: organic, imprecise, no two exactly alike. That hand-painted quality signals craft immediately, the same way it does in luxury chocolate or perfume. Two spheres steeped together make a stronger brew.

The sphere sits inside a branded infuser — a fine brass mesh cage on a slim brass handle, engraved with the GROUNDED monogram, sized to let the colour bleed through as the sphere dissolves. The infuser becomes a keepsake in its own right.

The six origins

Each origin has its own tin shape, colour palette, and design language, so each one feels true to where it comes from. China is a celadon green cylinder with a pagoda motif and ink-brushstroke detailing. Japan is matte black and square, with a torii gate embossed on the lid and a vermillion red band. India is a saffron and teal hexagon with tilework-inspired borders. Morocco has an arched lid referencing the doorways of a riad, in terracotta with mint inlay and hammered brass. England is a navy rectangle with Georgian proportions and a compass motif. The Caribbean tin is hibiscus red with a wave-shaped lid edge and the boldest colour-blocking in the collection.

Even though every tin looks different, they're unmistakably part of the same brand — the same wordmark, typography, finish quality, and the GROUNDED monogram stamped on every lid. The personality lives in shape and colour. The identity lives in the typography, the materials, and the restraint.

The Globe

The gift architecture has three tiers. The Globe is the hero piece — a large matte black spherical box that opens at the equator on a brass hinge, with a gold foil world map inside the lid connecting all six origins, and the full collection housed within. The Experience Hamper is a two-layer rigid box, spheres, cups and infuser on top, selected tins below, designed so opening it has rhythm and reveal. The Single Origin is the entry point: one tin, one cup, two spheres, the infuser.

How the brand shows up

The campaign follows product hero shots, lifestyle imagery built around three customer types — the deliberate buyer, the gifter, and the creative founder — and a signature image of a sphere dissolving in water, which works as the visual signature everywhere from social content to out of home. For OOH and experiential, the guiding principle is that GROUNDED never shouts: it shows up as moments — a fountain filled with dissolving spheres at dawn, a fully set tea table appearing in a train station with a note that simply says "the tea is ready," oversized Globe boxes placed overnight in a public square, a shop window glowing with dissolving spheres at night.