Tea Master

On a chilly day last December, Cindi Bigelow ’82 was delivering a guest lecture in Fulton Hall to a collection of BC marketing students. For two decades, Bigelow has been CEO of America’s biggest tea company, Bigelow Tea. Since taking over the company her grandmother founded in 1945, she has presided over impressive growth. Today, the company is responsible for one out of every four boxes of tea sold in America, and each year, 2.3 billion Bigelow tea bags are steeped worldwide.

Looking out at the class, Bigelow passed out some sample tea bags, then opened a pouch of tea herself. She inhaled and then described the aroma of the fragrant leaves. “She’s comforting,” she told the students, speaking of the tea the way a captain describes a ship.

It was in classrooms very much like the one she was speaking in that Cindi Bigelow began her path to the helm of a multimillion-dollar business. After graduating from BC in 1982 with a degree in marketing, she began her career working in sales for the liquor company Seagram. “I was a twenty-one-year-old blonde in pigtails in a man’s world,” she recalled. “I’d walk into restaurants and liquor stores to make a sale, and they wouldn’t even look at me. It was a good experience, though. It made me think, This is the way the world works. How do I work around it?”

That kind of tenacity apparently ran in the family. Bigelow’s grandmother, Ruth Campbell Bigelow, was an interior designer who lost everything during the Great Depression, Bigelow said, then remade herself in her forties as an entrepreneur, launching Bigelow Tea with her husband, David E. Bigelow, out of a Manhattan brownstone. It was a very rare accomplishment for a woman in that era, her granddaughter reminded the class at BC. “It’s a history I’m really proud of.”

Bigelow knew by the time she was in high school that she wanted to work for the family business eventually. But it wasn’t until after earning her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University that she started at Bigelow Tea, in 1986, taking a job as a cost accountant. Through the years, she was promoted to roles such as purchasing manager and director of manufacturing. “I was the troubleshooter,”  Bigelow said. “Every two to three years, I’d move to wherever there was a problem.” Seeing the company from many angles prepared her to succeed her father, David Campbell Bigelow, as CEO in 2005. Since then, Cindi Bigelow has worked to strike a balance between pushing the company forward and staying true to what has made it successful through the decades.

When she was speaking to the BC class, Bigelow stressed her commitment to maintaining the same standards of quality that customers have come to expect since Constant Comment, the very first Bigelow Tea offering, was handcrafted in the kitchen of her grandmother’s brownstone. Once the students had finished smelling the spicy orange aroma of the Constant Comment tea bags she’d sent around, Bigelow passed out tea bags from her competitors. She instructed the students to sniff at these samples. “Do you smell that?” she asked. “It smells like nothing.” And that, she explained, is why she refuses to switch to cheaper, substandard materials even though new tariffs—particularly the 50 percent tariff on the imported aluminum Bigelow Tea uses as pouch lining to lock in flavor—have recently cut the company’s operating profit margin in half.

As committed as she is to the tried and true, however, Bigelow said she also prioritizes developing new ideas. She has expanded the company’s product line, which now includes 250 different teas, to reflect customers’ evolving tastes as well as current beverage and wellness industry trends. Besides classics like Earl Grey, the company now offers teas that incorporate ingredients such as probiotics, L-theanine, and plant-based adaptogens, all of which are said to promote health and wellness. “If you’re not innovating,” Bigelow told the students, “you’re done.”

Striking that balance of constancy and evolution has kept Bigelow Tea a market leader in an industry that is exploding. Americans are drinking more tea than ever, led by millennials, who represent more than 60 percent of tea drinkers. In 2022 the United States reportedly imported more than $508 million worth of tea, which is grown overwhelmingly overseas, nearly four times the total from thirty years earlier.

Today, Bigelow Tea employs around 450 people between its Connecticut headquarters and distribution center, production facilities in Idaho and Kentucky, and America’s only large-scale tea farm in South Carolina. Bigelow said she believes in corporate responsibility. Since becoming CEO, for instance, she has launched an annual road race that’s raised about $3 million for Connecticut charities, started a “Tea for the Troops” donation program, and worked to align company practices with standards for positive social impact. Bigelow Tea, for example, is now 100 percent Green-e Certified for its environmental practices, which include using only renewable energy and keeping 95 percent of its waste out of landfills.

With her talk nearing its conclusion, Bigelow fielded a few questions from the audience. “What’s your favorite thing about running a family business?” one student asked.

“That I can run a business and be a good person,” Bigelow responded. “I’m feisty. No one can tell me to not do the right thing.” ◽