TWG Tea

TWG Tea was conceived in Singapore in 2008 by Manoj M. Murjani, working with French-Moroccan tea sommelier Taha Bouqdib and his wife Maranda Barnes Bouqdib, as a venture of The Wellbeing Group -- the initials behind the "TWG" name. The brand opened its first Tea Salon & Boutique at Republic Plaza that August, pairing a retail counter stocked with more than 800 teas sourced from 46 growing regions with a dining room serving tea-infused salads, quiches, soups, pastries and desserts. The logo's "1837" references the founding year of the Singapore Chamber of Commerce, not the tea house itself, tying the brand to the city's trading-port history rather than claiming a two-century pedigree of its own. Loose-leaf blends and single-estate teas are packed into the brand's signature bright-yellow tins, sold both at the salon counter and shipped internationally. The concept scaled fast: within a decade TWG operated more than 70 salons and boutiques across roughly 19 to 23 countries, with product distribution reaching more than 40 markets, while keeping the same tin-and-salon format that debuted in Republic Plaza. A 2014 Hong Kong trademark ruling in favor of Tsit Wing Group, which had used the TWG initials since 1932, forced the Hong Kong outposts to rebrand locally as Tea WG -- a rare crack in an otherwise tightly controlled global identity built on one Singapore address.