I have had some amazing chats with my friend and now fellow Regional Vice President Japan, Akiyoshi Maeta in the past few months. During one of our conversations he told me why he liked our project so much that made him want to join. He introduced me to the story of the North Wind and the Sun, a famous ancient moral teaching story. In a nutshell: “The story concerns a competition between the North Wind and the Sun to decide which is the stronger of the two. The challenge was to make a passing traveler remove his cloak. However hard the North Wind blew, the traveler only wrapped his cloak tighter to keep warm, but when the Sun shone, the traveler took off his coat involuntarily in the warmth of the sun.” (from Wikipedia)
And then Akiyoshi said: the ITA way is like the Sun in this story.
I realized I could not have said it better than him. Our way is the “Sun Way”.
So how does this translate into our education system? Please read on.
Our Code & Professional Ethics
Educate by Showing instead of Telling
We show our students how to become professionals, how to make better decisions themselves, instead of telling them what is right or wrong or how they should think about certain topics. We do this by showing them all relevant aspects and help them become confident when talking about tequila.
Truthfulness
We are seekers of the truth and we do our best to collect and share knowledge that is logically sound and backed up by relevant facts and evidence.
Independence
Being independent allows us to show things the most neutral way as possible – we want to present everything in an unbiased way that makes the most sense for everyone.
Our stance on various important topics
We support authentic tequila brands
Authentic tequila represents the traditions, culture and history of tequila production. Without them, we would not have such a wealth of knowledge to talk about and we would not be able to experience the effect that the different terroirs and production methods have on the taste. On the other hand, most of these producers are small and independent businesses struggling hard to be in business at all. We believe if we want to see authentic tequila producers to survive and prosper in the long term, they need all support they can get from every educated tequila consumer – as such we feel that it is our duty to support them and we feel honored to have the opportunity to learn from them and to work with them.
We respect commercial tequila brands
Much like commercial beer and wine, commercial tequila brands play a vital role in the industry and we have a lot of respect for their great achievements. Without big, commercially successful tequila brands, tequila would not be recognized internationally as a unique, Mexican denominated drink and as a result, the entire tequila spirit category may disappear.
We tolerate additives in tequila products
Throughout the history of tequila, the tequila industry has changed in search of a taste that more and more people find appealing. This has brought diversity to the world of tequila and has led many consumers to choose tequila over other spirits. At the same time, however, there are a growing number of people who know about tequila but are not aware of the existence of authentic brands, representing the origins of tequila. Our job is not to judge the consumer’s preference, but to inform them that they have a choice.