Field Notes · 001

A first hello, and a first press feature

14 August 2026 · Keika Sugiyama

Hi, I’m Keika, the founder of Teasan, and this is the first entry of Field Notes: a journal of what actually happens while building this brand. Stories of sourcing trips in rural Japan, pop-up updates, small wins, and any spectacular faceplants. I find it easier to write than to post on social media most times, so here I am.

A quick intro for those I haven’t properly met yet: I’m half Japanese/Chinese, I’ve lived in Singapore for the last 7 years, and I spent the last decade in tech as a product manager. Teasan started with a realization over a decade ago that caffeine made me nauseous and scatter-brained, and since then I’ve been avoiding caffeine as much as possible. I don’t do coffee or matcha at all.

The problem was, caffeine-free options most times meant something sugary, a soggy chamomile tea, or… water. Somehow the whole world came to a consensus that caffeine-free didn’t deserve a good, satisfying option. Meanwhile the caffeinated drinks had so many options: lattes, cloud foams, iced teas, sparkling teas, and the list goes on.

But then I remembered that I grew up regularly drinking caffeine-free tea in Japan, most notably, ice-cold barley tea straight from the fridge in sweltering August. When I dug into it, I found well over 100+ teas like these, made from roots, twigs, grains, beans, seeds, leaves – and vast majority of them never talked about beyond regional communities in Japan. I started collecting and studying them ever since, and Teasan is my attempt to bring them out into the world.

If you’re reading this, we’ve probably met somewhere. Some of you are friends who signed up early to cheer me on (I noticed, and it means a lot). Some of you found us at a pop-up or a tasting, and let a stranger pour you a tea you’d never heard of. And some of you found Teasan entirely on your own, which honestly amazes me every time it happens. However you got here, I’m glad you did.

Now, the reason I finally sat down to write this first entry:

Last week, The Business Times ran a story about the new wave of specialty tea in Singapore, and Teasan is in it. You can read it here: Beyond matcha: speciality brews are the new ‘in’ teas in Singapore.

I need you to understand how surreal this is. Teasan as a brand has not even launched yet. I’ve only gone full-time last month. I’ve just done a couple of pop-ups and sold some hand-blended prototypes to validate whether people even like my teas. Yet there we are, in a national paper, alongside other tea entrepreneurs I look up to that have been working in this space, far longer than I have. Less than a year ago, I attended Inner Teahouse’s tea tasting workshop at Aa Furniture as a total beginner. Today, we’re mentioned in the same article. Life is absolutely wild.

The story is something I care about deeply, as Singapore is starting to look past matcha and ask what else tea can be. A Japanese caffeine-free tisane brand making it into that conversation before its own launch feels like a good omen for the whole category. I’ll take it.

And as you read this, I’m back in Japan for the third time this year. For Teasan, I only use teas where I’ve built a personal relationship with producers and processors, and can speak on the process of how it gets made. Here’s to hoping this sourcing trip will be as fruitful as my last one.

Thank you for being here this early. It matters more than you know.