We love tea. In every imaginable form. We never tire of exploring the endless possibilities that tea offers.
Some of these ideas are implemented into elaborate craftsmanship. We take these creative excursions because we want to inspire people about what is possible with the traditional good tea. And we continue to research and, among other things, develop the ideas for the market of tomorrow from these creative projects.
With an unusual recruiting campaign, we are looking for new employees who have a special flair for the extraordinary possibilities of tea.
The motifs of the employer campaign under the motto "Seeing tea differently - since 1879" set standards for the selection of tea-loving applicants with a wink. They are modelled on classic eye tests carried out by opticians and ophthalmologists. In addition to the headline in the style of a near-far vision test, coloured tea circles with slightly contrasting numbers are shown, which refer to the Ishihara test for green-red vision impairment. Together, the numbers add up to the year Hälssen & Lyon was founded: 1879.
The creative project was honoured with two of the prestigious iF Design Awards in 2024 - in the categories Communication Branding and Communication Campaigns.
The recruitment campaign was recognised as one of the most creative communications efforts of 2023 with the Silver Bob Award, an established seal of quality for outstanding B2B communications in the DACH region.
Since the founding of our company in 1879, not a day has gone by in which we do not try to rethink the idea of tea. For this reason we are excited to announce that with the start of the new year, we present you with a composition that has never existed before: A tea, made from the body of a violin.
Together with the internationally renowned composer and musician Sven Helbig, we took up the thought of transformation, which Sven pursues even further in his new album 'Skills'.
Over the course of several weeks, we cultivated a Reishi mushroom on a violin which had previously been used to record the 'Skills' album including the piece 'Metamorphosis'.
In 2023, "Metamorphosis" was recognised with one of the world's most important design awards: the iF Design Gold Award in the Communication category.
The project was awarded gold in the category "Artist/Brand Cooperation & Fan Activation" at AudioComm 2023.
In 2024, "Metamorphosis" won three Clio Music Awards: Gold in the "Innovation" category and Bronze in both the "Partnerships" and "Partnerships & Collaborations" categories.
At Hälssen & Lyon we believe that tea never goes out of fashion. In a joint creative project with the agency Kolle Rebbe we uniquely linked the worlds of tea and fashion: we took the word teabag literally and created ‘The Teabag Collection’ - the world’s first tea bags in the shape of high-end designer handbags. The diminutive collection was presented at an influencer event during Berlin Fashion Week 2017 under the heading “keeping tea fashionable.”
A true expert was won for the unusual project: the multi-award-winning fashion designer Ayzit Bostan, who developed five iconic micro-format bag models that perfectly underscore the character and quality of our tea.
The teabag collection was designed as a handmade gift for business customers. It is not available for sale.
This 2013 project was born of the idea to merge the traditional commodity of tea with one of the world’s oldest promotional gifts, the calendar. This led to the creation of a unique annual calendar – made of real tea. It consists of 365 calendar pages formed from tea, pressed very thinly and delicately flavoured. It was elaborately handcrafted as a gift for customers.
We launched this new product idea together with the creative agency Kolle Rebbe, Hamburg. It won a series of international design awards, including the Cannes Golden Lion. At the New York Festival in April, the calendar won a gold award and two silvers. At the One Show Awards in New York, it also won gold and silver, as well as gold at the CLIO Awards and four bronzes at the Art Directors Club competition in Germany.
It was a labouriously handcrafted limited edition as a gift for business customers and was not for sale.
In 2015, Hälssen & Lyon submitted its LSTea creative project in the design and promotion categories of international design competitions, and won several awards including the international LIA Award. This customer promotion campaign, implemented together with the creative agency Kolle Rebbe, involved wafer thin tea leaves printed with psychedelic motifs by six international illustrators, deliberately and provocatively designed to look like LSD tabs from the 1960’s. In this case, it was only an invigorating blend of black tea with Guaraná and kola nut.
This product was handcrafted and is not for sale.
Hälssen & Lyon was involved in another project submitted to international competitions in 2015. The creative agency Kolle Rebbe developed a special drinkable version for the internationally renowned porcelain manufacturer Rosenthal. The fine porcelain was packaged in folded tea paper co-developed by Hälssen & Lyon. A packaging material, which could also be enjoyed as a delicious brew. The idea attracted great interest among expert jury members in design competitions.