Travelling Teabox?

EDIT Jan 5th
Due to possible privacy concerns I have chosen not to post the list of stops and recipients publicly. Also I figured some might think it was more fun to be surprised (I would). Those who would like to know the list or their number on it may contact me at iarnvidia@gmail.com and I’ll tell, but I’m not sure it should be publicly available.

EDIT Jan 3rd
I have planned the route today and all 29 participants should have received an email with their sender/recipient info. Nearly 30 individual emails. That took a little longer than I had expected. I sincerely hope I haven’t messed anything up. It’s a standardised message so the first person on the list gets to laugh at how silly it sounds for them.
I’ll send the box to the first person on the list in a few days time as soon as I get a few shipping supplies together, and I’ll put up a new thread on the boards for it when I do, where people can reply when they get it so we can see the journey through the list.

EDIT Dec 30th
Time for signing up is running out! As soon as we write 2010 on the calendar my time (GMT+1) sign ups are closed.
If you haven’t signed up already, you have 30½ hours left to do so in.

EDIT Dec 16th
I have discovered that Gmail, in all its wisdom, has sent at LEAST one sign-up email directly to the spamfolder. Awesome spamfilter you get with Gmail, but it does get a bit over-zealous now and then. I think I’ve managed to find everything that has been misdirected to spam, but just in case.

So far I have received sign-ups from Aeondax, Alannahrose, Bryan J, Carolyn, Chana, Cofftea, Denisend, Doulton, Frolic, Jack, Janni, JaquelineM, Jillian, Kitch3ntools, Laurenpressley, Lena F, Oolonga, PeteG, Ricky, TeaEqualsBliss, Teafiend and Threewales

If anybody else has signed up and isn’t listed here or haven’t heard back from me, could you pipe up, please?

EDIT Dec 3rd:

I thought I might as well recycle the same thread. :) WOW! Lots of interest! Yay, I’m so pleased! I’ve been trying to work out a tentative route based on the interest I got, and it should be possible to do it in a reasonable way although we’ve got the highest concentration of interest so far on the east coast there. I am now ready to start collecting addresses. :D

Here are some guidelines!

Contact Angrboda at iarnvidia@gmail.com with mailing address before Dec 31. Include your Steepster username. THIS IS BINDING! If for some reason you need to pull out, contact me as quickly as possible, so we can get the package redirected.

When I receive your address, I’ll send you a note back that I’ve got it. Give me a few days, and poke me if you don’t hear back. It would be an enormous help if you would put ‘travelling teabox’ or similar in the subject.

You will ONLY get the address of the person you are sending to, along with their email address and the email address of the person who sent the box to you.

Since we are all Steepster members (or most), it should be possible to contact all the participants in case anybody has any questions about some of the tea added to the box. If this is not possible, contact me and I’ll find the email address in question. I don’t think it would be a good idea to automatically share everybody’s email addresses as there may be some privacy issues.

When you receive the box, notify the person who sent it to you that it has arrived safely. Take out the things you are interested in and add new things to the box. Sharing is fun, but please be kind and keep shipping costs down, so DO NOT ADD SIGNIFICANTLY MORE THAN YOU TAKE OUT! Remember the people after you may not be happy about paying to send an enormously big box, so please try to keep the weight and size consistent.

There is a notebook included in the box. Make a note of what you add and what you take. It might also be a good idea, if you’re comfortable with it, to include your email address with your notebook entry so people can contact you if they have any questions.

Please make sure everything you add is labeled with the name of the tea and the brand. If you’re adding some kind of blend, it’s also a good idea to label it with what goes into the blend, as it may help people decide whether or not it’s something they want to try.

If you think the box is too big and expensive to send on as it is, take more stuff out.

Try to send the box on to the next person on the list within a few days. Everybody’s excited to get it, so don’t hang on to it for weeks on end. When you have sent it on to the next person, notify them that it’s on the way and tell them the tracking number if you have one.

Original post: Who is interested in a travelling teabox?

I don’t mind starting one and I don’t mind sending it across the Atlantic. I’ll put in some different teas and send it on to the next person on the list. They will then take out what they want and put something else in the box and send it on to the next person on the list. And so on and so forth until finally the box has come all the way around. Of course in order to keep shipping costs reasonable it’s important that people don’t put more in than they take out.

It will take some planning to ‘collect’ those who are interested and figuring out the best route so nobody have to ship further than necessary and crossing the fewest possible borders.

I thought that it would be a fun way to try a wider variety of samples and involving more people than just your average swap between two people.

How many people other than me would be intersted in this? (Completely non-binding at this point)