Question

1. What are some of Seth Goldman’s responsibilities as “TeaEO” of Honest Tea? Provide at least three detailed examples.

Answer 1

Mr Seth Goldman is a very well known business leader and C.E.O for TeaEO (Honest Tea). He has to take care of a lot of responsibilities regarding the company and has to implement honest policies. The three detailed examples are:

• Fairtrade
• Environmental concern
• Keeping the brand 'Honest Tea'

Fair Trade: The name of the company itself represents honesty and it is the responsibility of Mr Seth to maintain this while building and selling the products. Currently, only whole trade guarantee label is displayed on the product, but to say that product is sold as per Fair Trade rules, 20% more ingredients used in preparing the product has to be certified by Fair Trade USA. The total ingredients used to prepare the 'Honest Tea' product has to be labelled on the packet cover following the guidelines of Fairtrade U.S.A to gain the trust of the customers and to full fill, the promise of fair trade as well by the company. Seth has to think about this and has to take appropriate steps to see that the company aligns with the fair trade rule completely.

Concern for Environment: Seth used to maintain his company's environmental sustainability practices by partnering with local communities to produce organic ingredients for manufacturing 'Honest Tea'. However, in recent times 40% of the company's stake is obtained by the COCA-COLA company, which has lot of issues regarding environment in the past. However, Seth Goldman has to look into this and has to bear a great responsibility to keep up the promise of maintaining environmental sustainability while producing the quality drinks at Honest Tea.

Keeping the brand name:

Honest Tea is the business started by Barry Nalebuff at Bethesda, Maryland in 1998 and Mr Seth Goldman is the president of it. The company has a unique brand name for selling low sugar bottled tea. This brand name awarded many accolades to the company and it has $47million net worth by 2009. This made Coca Cola purchase a 40% stake in the company and promised to buy the company completely within the next 3 years. Now, it is a big challenge for Goldman to keep the reputation until the complete acquisition time and has to maintain good relations with stakeholders and also has to build new strategies to increases the brand worth of Honest Tea company.