Our Story: Turning a Passion into a Business
This month, we officially began our entrepreneurial journey by establishing our own company. We are deeply grateful to every friend, coffee enthusiast and customer who has supported us since opening.
It had been about two years since I first entered the specialty-coffee world. Looking back, what began as a hobby had become part of a side business, and I had changed greatly along the way. I used to spend Saturdays, Sundays and holidays going out, then come home in the evening to relax with Netflix.
Now, my full-time work was approaching 100 hours a week (yes, I had just calculated it). Sleep felt like a thing of the past, and many parts of the business had to be managed with friends. Because I knew so little, I had to learn everything.
Coffee Stage's Vision: Building a Recognised Brand and Promoting Coffee Culture
As a brand, my goal was simple: for everyone to recognise Coffee Stage. A larger community would create more demand. Over the following year, I wanted to seek opportunities online to promote specialty coffee and become part of that movement.
Exploring Coexistence in Hong Kong's Specialty Coffee Market
Before establishing the company, I did considerable research. I spent a great deal of time finding coffee beans and equipment in Hong Kong and looking for people who could teach me. Competition existed, but in most cases we chose to coexist, which I saw as positive. Compared with the cut-throat competition in other industries, specialty coffee was a broad community, and our outlook as business owners was different.
Sharing the enjoyment is better than keeping it to yourself.
So I asked myself what else I could do, beyond the coffee-bean giveaways and coffee gatherings I had previously promised, while keeping the cost low.
I thought back to the previous month or two, when I wanted to try beans from different local roasters but found them genuinely difficult to discover. Everyone knows that without paying for advertising, it is hard for content to gain exposure on Meta. Listing on platforms such as Google can also be costly, and completing every step still does not guarantee visibility.
That was why I had struggled to find beans from small local roasters. A roaster first needed online-marketing knowledge, then had to cover numerous platform fees and the time required for maintenance. I was only considering what it took to list one product. A friend suggested HKTVmall, but I later learned that its annual platform fee was at least 18,000, excluding other charges. Money had to be spent before the work even began, on top of learning to roast and buying green beans for research; those investments already represented a substantial cost.
Coffee Stage's New Initiative: Promoting Locally Roasted Beans at Low Cost
I wondered whether, under the Coffee Stage name and at very low cost or even for free, I could help new roasters who wanted others to taste or buy their coffee beans.
Coffee Stage: The Idea for a Low-Cost Online Coffee-Bean Store
Could this become an online store for specialty coffee? Although Coffee Stage had only just begun and remained very small, could it mark the start of coexistence? I hoped to create one place where anyone interested in specialty coffee could discover beans from roasters across Hong Kong and buy them through the same online store. Could that also be a way to promote coffee culture?
Grow with Us: Coffee Stage's Invitation to a Very Low-Cost Listing Platform
The platform would have no annual fee or expensive listing charges and would not exploit its users. It would simply be a place where I could find the coffee beans I wanted and click to buy them.
Roasters would simply sign in, upload photographs, organise the bean information and set a price—done. Payment and shipping should be handled by the platform, although that required further research; nothing was impossible. I hoped the platform could reach that stage, and set myself the goal of trying to make it happen by 2024, during 1–2.
(Note: I had already shared some early information. If you were interested, you were welcome to message me privately.)
We established a company because some people had asked whether purchases from us were protected and worried about encountering a dishonest seller.
After a great deal of work, we finally saw our location on Google Maps. If you bought a product from us, you were welcome to leave a review.
Coffee-equipment prices, where available, might later also be listed on Price.com.hk — Hong Kong’s No. 1 Price Comparison Platform so customers could check prices and find products more easily.
That was everything I wanted to share. I may have said a lot—thank you for reading.
