Esin Rager, samova founder
For Esin Rager, samova founder with German-Turkish roots, tea roots, tea came right after breast milk. She has lived in Washington D.C., Ankara, Moscow, Vienna, Paris, Amsterdam and Hamburg shaped her as a child and later as a journalist. As a young mother she felt the need for a modern, cosmopolitan tea culture and developed samova: the premium tea brand for cultural diversity, creativity and sustainability.
Esin Rager about ...
"When money becomes an end in itself, greed, conflict and destruction follow"
Esin Rager was a journalist and media maker for a long time, including at the Hamburger Abendblatt. Then her life changed and she changed her job, founded the organic tea brand samova, became a thought leader in sustainability and Vice President of FC St. Pauli.
Interview vom Hamburger Abendblatt vom 6. Juli 2022
From the "Decision-makers meet Haider" series
Copyright photo: Roland Magunia/Funke Foto Services"
"I had the great honor of becoming head of department at the Hamburger Abendblatt at the age of 26, where I set up the LIVE magazine. That was a great time, but as I was not only very young, but also a very curious person, I was tempted to do something new in my early 30s. At that time, I received an offer from the 'Bravo' group to develop a new youth brand from Amsterdam, which I had to accept."
"I am a child of the big, wide world, my father was a diplomat in the service of Turkey, we were always on the move as a family. I was born in Washington, lived in Paris, Moscow and Hamburg, among other places, and my father worked in these cities. I have a German and a Turkish passport, but I see myself as a citizen of the world anyway, there are no borders for me, so passports are not that important to me."
"I haven't traveled by plane for 20 years. When you've traveled and flown as much as I have in my life, the desire to be on the road is no longer so great. I have rather longed to stay somewhere for once and come to rest there.I also started traveling on sustainability paths quite early on and have therefore resolved to only fly if I really have to, if there is no other way. And my experience is that things often work out differently, in my case for 20 years. As someone who has always been on speed in a figurative sense, especially professionally, I have discovered the slowness of life, which is very beautiful. My dream is to travel the distance that the ingredients for my teas travel, by boat or by train, it's a pleasure. I think we should take our time anyway if we want to get to know other cultures and people. In the company, I therefore make sure that my employees don't take too short a vacation. I also think it's great when someone says they want to go to Sri Lanka for two months to see the tea plantations there."
"I drank a lot of herbal tea during my first pregnancy because you're not supposed to consume so many sweet and stimulating things during this time. Then I simply made my own teas, that's how it started. We also served them at the dance teas that I organized as an entrepreneur at the Hotel Atlantic at the beginning of 2000 so that I could meet up with other female entrepreneurs in a family and child-friendly way. I had expected 60 people, but 500 turned up and afterwards my phone was ringing off the hook; everyone was asking: "Esin, how can we buy the tea you were serving? That's how it all started."
"At Samova, we started working completely remotely long before corona, wherever we wanted. We used to have large offices in HafenCity, but now we only have a small meeting place in Billstedt and are subtenants of the Kulturpalast foundation. We rented 1500 square meters in HafenCity, and at the peak I had 80 employees. At some point, I had to make a decision: Should Samova become another big tea company, with halls and the entire infrastructure? Or should I go back to what I'm particularly good at - product development, marketing and creativity? At some point, I made a cut, brought a partner into the company in Seeberger and moved the office close to my home in Billstedt. We have three desks there, my assistant and I work there, my dogs are always with us and we are in contact with everyone else via the Internet. It's really fun to work so freely, it broadens the horizons of my employees and the horizons of our brand. I had a conference yesterday where one colleague was sitting somewhere on the Alster, another joined in from Turkey and the third was out on a bike ride. My experience is that you can only be creative if you gather lots of impressions and inspiration. What we do has a lot to do with nature and cultures. I myself walk through nature with my dogs for five hours a day, talking on the phone or working in my head. These are the moments when ideas come to me, it doesn't work if I sit down in front of the computer in the office at 11.30 a.m. and hope that something will occur to me.
"Billstedt is beautiful and a great district with great people. I'm not sad that so many people don't want to live here, that makes sure that the rents and cost of living are very affordable. It's a great place to live together, where all cultures, skin colors and religions live peacefully together. And above all, there is great solidarity among the people here. In other words, the neighbors support each other. That's not always the norm in many other parts of the city, and it's a place that inspires me because so many things simply come together."
"The club wants to do even more in terms of sustainability and cultural diversity, and President Oke Göttlich asked me if I could take care of that on the board. To be honest, I never thought that I would one day be vice president of FC St. Pauli, I wouldn't do something like that for any other football club. It's great to be able to initiate sustainable projects in soccer because you can reach so many people with them. For example, I recently had a great meeting with three organic butchers from Hamburg and the catering managers from FC St. Pauli. We discussed what we can do to simply make the meat quality at the Millerntor sustainable in the medium term and to really pay attention to animal welfare. These are topics that interest me and I like to support people who are not just out to make a profit."
Esin Rager in the Abendblatt Podcast
In the podcast "Schmeckt's?" - samova founder Esin Rager talks about rituals, hash cookie ingredients and dogs that drink from puddles.
Listen to the podcast episode
