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DTC Podcast
Ep 509: Tea Time at the Whitehouse: How Art of Tea Scaled Through Story and Quality
00:39:27
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- [00:00]
A
I see a lot of D2C companies try to go after everything. My experience, if you try being a solution to everyone, you'll be a solution to no one. What's been helping us is education. When we first started, there's these big world tea conventions. They were looking for someone to teach how to blend tea. No one wanted to do it. They're like, no, no, no, we don't want to give industry secrets. And my belief was, hey, if I can give away 85% of the secrets, then the chances are that people pay for that last 15% because we built that level of trust and authenticity. This is a SL industry. We're not looking at 100 or 500% growth year over year. We're looking at 20% growth year over year. We have to be really diligent, very responsible with our cash flow. That growth phase requires a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of intention behind what we're doing.
- [00:53]
B
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- [01:58]
A
It is. In fact, you know, tea. Another word for tea is cha. So obviously you've heard of chai before. So there was a major port where tea would come from, and it was the port of cha. And so if it went from all throughout Asia, it was cha. If it went down to India or the Middle east, it was chai. And if it went to Europe, it was a different port of the port of tea. And so but essentially, initially, it was carried by horseback and camelback. And. And so it was traded as a form of commerce because you can drink it to help the weary traveler. You could enjoy it for its health benefits, or you could trade it for cash. So actually, the first book ever written on tea was called Cha Ching.
- [02:42]
B
Oh, nice.
- [02:44]
A
Perfect. Yeah. And so cha meaning tea, and ching mean like the whey, Right? So you have the whey tea. But that cha ching really stems from tea as a form of commerce.
- [02:54]
B
Well, let's go back into your. I always like to start with the hero's journey. Talk to me about why you built Art of Tea and a little bit more about your hero's journey with the business.
- [03:03]
A
So I'll go way back in time. So I'm in my late 40s now, and I out of high school. I got a full paid scholarship to go to college. And about six months into college, my mom got diagnosed with brain cancer. So I dropped out of college. I moved out of state to move back in with her. And I took care of her. I was her primary caretaker. And we went from one Western brain surgeon to another brain surgeon, and nothing worked for my mom. And there's nothing wrong with Western medicine. It just didn't work for my mom. So she ended up passing away after 10 months. And it really woke me up. It got me thinking about health and wellness, and I want to learn about how to understand my body differently. I wanted to learn how to help my friends, my family, my community. Community. But I didn't want to be a doctor, and I didn't want to be an acupuncturist and stick needles in people. And there's nothing wrong with either of those. It just wasn't my path. But I found a school in New Mexico called the Ayurvedic Institute, and it incorporated Eastern and Western medicine together. And I just dove into it, man. I mean, I fell in love with the alchemy of blending herbs and teas and botanicals. So much so that I was chosen as the only student advanced enough to work with the masters at my school on how to blend and source. So I was responsible for sourcing. This is before the Internet really took off. There was something called ama, something where you can get books, but other than that, you couldn't find anything online. So I was calling sources overseas and faxing people. And I remember I was on a phone call with a supplier overseas, and it was like $2 and something a minute, and I said, I need to order some ginkgo. And he said, do you want ginkgo on an eastern slope or a western slope next to a river? And I said, it doesn't matter. I was just thinking about the time, right? I just needed to get through the time. I said, I just need to order ginkgo. And he said, no, sir, it does matter and you should come here yourself and experience it. So I was intrigued. I worked. I wanted to save up my money. I wanted to go to origin, right? I want to see how this stuff was grown and harvested. So I worked four different jobs. I waited tables, I cleaned houses, I worked at the school. I was in school full time. I did whatever I could. I saved my money, I got a backpack, and I started traveling around the world to find the best teas and botanicals possible. So I had no idea that I was going to start a tea company. I just knew that I was a huge tea nerd. And I started bringing stuff back in my backpack and then passing out to friends and family. And then I caught the attention of Wolfgang Puck and their team. And they said, steve, listen, we know where our coffee comes from. We know where our fish and our kale comes from, but we don't know if anything about where our tea comes from. So I leaned in on education, I leaned in on training and started sourcing amazing teas for them. Developed a whole tea program for their fine dining concepts and training programs around that. And then caught the attention of Caesar's Palace. Caesar's palace said, hey, we heard about you as this like tea guy can, you know, can. Granted, we've been at this for 21 years. So this is like year like maybe 19 or 20. I was still out of my living room. And so they said, can you train a t sommelier? So I said, sure. I started flying out there. They flew me out once a month for about a year. And I trained the first t Somalia in the US and fast forward, you know, we do. Part of our business is D2C on artoft.com and I wrote a book about it. It's a great book, a best selling book that just published. It's called Art of Tea. Yeah. And you can find on Audible, you can find it on. On Amazon. And it became a best selling book in several categories. It really talks about this journey and also creates a sense of ritual behind tea. And yeah, that's. And so now we do T programs for everything from the White House to we just found out we're doing the Supreme Court, which is crazy. And we do Google headquarters. We do a custom slack blend. A lot of hotels, cruise lines and. And then of course, you know, for those that just are big tea fans and don't want to get the supermarket tea stuff, they go to our website@r2t.com.
- [07:08]
B
Yeah, that's what I was going to inquire about because it's such a, you know, I see it in the, in the grocery aisle every week when I'm going through and it's like there are these just incumbents that are there and. And the story about how you kind of broke into that market, it sounds like, how just how did Wolfgang Puck find you? Was it literally like you're in the same city, you had a bit of a reputation? Like, how did that happen?
- [07:28]
A
Yeah, there were some contacts that I had that were working within the wine industry that said, Steve, you have to connect with the guys at Wolfgang. They'd love your story, they'd love what you're about. So I met with some of the decision makers and initially, like I drive out, I was in a Honda Civic, like barely any tread on my tires. I drive out to Vegas where some of their major decision makers were, and I would sit down with them and I meet with them. And it was quite a bit of expense to go out of the way to meet with them. But I being kind of old school, I just felt like building relationships one at a time is really going to be key to our business. I'd rather build a small tribe of few people that really believe in what we're doing and build on that than just try to go after everyone. I think I see a lot of DTC customers and companies rather that try to go after everything. My experience, if you try going and being a solution to everyone, you'll be a solution to no one. And so I kind of see it like a physician, right. If you're a physician and your general practitioner. Right. A doctor can make good money being a doctor as a general practitioner, but a physician that just handles, let's say that, you know, the right thumb, like the ability that they have to amass tremendous amount of one respect and reputation, but also success in that industry just by specializing in one particular area. So that's kind of the route that we've taken. Just really sourcing from the top 1 to 2% of all teas that are produced in the world and really being able to offer that as best as possible. In fact, our mission is to impact as many lives as we can through tea. So everything we do, every decision we make, from marketing to sales to hiring to vendors to customers, we really Try to align that around that mission.
- [09:11]
B
Talk to me about. I don't want you to necessarily trash Lipton, but maybe you do, or like, what's going on with retail teas or teas that are mass produced. Talk to me about the quality scale of. I guess.
- [09:23]
A
Yeah, amazing. So if you're, if you're at a supermarket, you see a wall of tea like you, like you just described earlier, it can be confusing. Right. And it's very much a race to the bottom. Do I go for something that has a product name that might service a particular function, or am I going for something on sale? Who knows how long it's been sitting in the supermarket shelf and what distributors and channels it might have gone through in order to get there, and the packaging and material in order to get on that supermarket shelf. And I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the Liptons of the world. I'm super grateful because they set a very particular standard and accessibility point. So for us, we kind of see it like a bag of unsalted, unflavored chips. So on the top of the bag you get these beautiful uniform shapes, and as you work your way down to the bottom, you get powder or dust. So what ends up happening, Eric, is that as they're producing our teas in the factories at origin, the dust flies up in the air, falls on the ground. They sweep that in giant piles, and that's what's reserved for traditional supermarket tea bags. And what we source is hand harvested, hand picked, just the top 1 to 2% of all teas that are produced in the world. And then we're taking those ingredients and we're blending it by hand, we're packing it, and that's what goes out just as fresh as possible.
- [10:36]
B
You mentioned there's nothing wrong with Western medicine. And I feel like in the age that we're in right now, we're starting to see the cracks in a number of ways. With, you know, it has its, it has its place, but it's like, I think people are getting more and more interested in different kinds of modalities around health. Talk to me about the role of T in health.
- [10:54]
A
Yeah. In my opinion, I think that the, the hospital system, the medical system, it's broken and it's breaking and it's, it's cracking. Thank God it's there. Right. I mean, I'm so grateful that we have a system. You can go anywhere, pretty much any city in the country, there's going to be urgent cares, phenomenal doctors, phenomenal physicians, but there's still so many answers we don't have access to. And I think what's happening right now is people are starting to be a bit more aware of what they're putting into their body and seeing that their ecosystem, their body, how they're connected on this planet in terms of sunlight exposure, or what we might call today as needing red light therapy, or needing proper amounts of water, needing proper amounts of nutrition. So this is where tea becomes that ultimate ritual. Regardless of age, gender, religion, demographics, it's leaves and water. But if you take the time with high quality leaves and, and curating that right water, that right amount of temperature and steep time and being really mindful in that process, what ends up happening is you get so much more time back in that process. So if you just take. Everyone gets like 10 minutes break in the normal work environment. So if you take seven of those minutes, you get the leaves ready, you get the water ready, you get your cup ready and you watch the leaves unfurl. You're being fully mindful in that process and, and as you're sipping one, just that level of attention by holding something that's warm and by being, you know, feeling the liquid actually in your mouth and going into your system, that's one part of it. But the other part is tea has phenomenal traditional health benefits from polyphenols and flavonoids and catechins that it's. They use this in tea ceremonies throughout Japan and Zen monasteries as a tool for focus, as a tool for meditation. So you can sit for hours on end being fully focused and fully aware with tea that you wouldn't necessarily be able to with coffee. And I love coffee from time to time. But in terms of people owning their health, it can really start with that simple basic practice of high quality tea and that moment to yourself or that moment with a loved one around this simple ritual of tea when you decided.
- [13:05]
B
To like, because it sounds like you. It got it. You got into sort of wholesale and the kind of brand got built around what you were building out in wholesale. Was that accurate or did it.
- [13:16]
A
I'm laughing because like I. So I didn't know how to build a website. I didn't know that. So I took a course at SMC Santa Monica Community College and I failed the class, by the way, on how to build a website on Dreamweaver.
- [13:28]
B
I did the same. I did a similar thing actually.
- [13:30]
A
Really?
- [13:31]
B
Yeah.
- [13:31]
A
Wow, that's amazing. So I built the. And why did I build it? Because I was so. When I first started and There's a lot of founders out there that could probably relate to this. My customer service was. And marketing and sales and AR and AP was my cell phone. Like, everything connected to my cell phone and emails all went to me personally as well. And so I got a call at 10:30 night from a waiter saying, hey, is this Art of Tea? And I'm like, yes. Yeah, how can I help you? Like, well, am I calling your cell phone? I'm like, what can I. Yeah, but it's cool. Like, what can I do for you? He said, well, there's some guests here at our restaurant that love your tea and they want to know where to get it. And I said, okay, tell them to go back to our website@artoftea.com and that was a domain I didn't even own yet. It was fifteen hundred dollars for the domain. And I'm like, man, I don't even know if I can afford $1,500 for the domain at that time. And so I told them, come back and it'll be for sale. So I built a website initially in Dreamweaver, and. And I started seeing some transactions and I bought the domain and I thought it was way too expensive. It was crazy. But, you know, every time I've kind of pushed the envelope in terms of investing in the company, investing in people, investing in systems, it's always seemed to pan out.
- [14:45]
B
And how did you pick? Because there's. How many different varieties of tea are there, first of all?
- [14:49]
A
So that's a great question. All true tea comes from one evergreen shrub called Camellia sinesis. So kind of think about, like, coffee or wine, rather. So all wine comes from grapes, but depending on the type of grapes that you use, is it Cab, is it Merlot, is it Syrah? And then, of course, like, is it coming from a particular region in the world? Are they leaving the skin on? Are they. Are they cooking it? Is it stored in an oak barrel or stainless steel container? So all these play into master crafting that delicious glass of wine. So in the same way as all wine comes from grapes, the same sort of thing happens with tea. All tea comes from Camellia sinesis. So you have white and green, oolong black, and then another one called Puwer, which I'm drinking right now, it's kind of this funky fermented tea, and that's what creates tea. And there's different ways of producing it and different origins. And whether it's from Sri Lanka or India, North India, South India, is it from parts of China, Taiwan, Japan? But it has to come from Camellia Sinesis in order for it to be a tea. So if it's not from Camellia Sinesis, then it's not a tea. So for example, chamomile. I love chamomile. We source an incredible, incredible chamomile. And I could, you know, take your whole show just talking about chamomile, but it's not a tea. Mint, also amazing. Not a tea. It has to come from Camellia Sinesis in order for it to be a true authentic tea. That's more than like 99% of the world population when it comes to tea.
- [16:21]
B
I love it. I can new thing I can be a snob about. No, but it is super interesting. And I'm just on your website right now and I'm like looking at your bestsellers. I'm looking at your white coconut cream tea and just how beautiful it is as like, I didn't know tea looked that beautiful. And most of the time it's just. You see a cool logo or a tea pouch, but to actually like highlight the look of the tea with the bright blues and oranges, it's quite stunning.
- [16:47]
A
So, yeah, we believe that all tea should have beauty, brains and depth. Just like what you look for in a partner. Right. So it should be visually appealing. And that's part of the beauty behind it. It should have depth, meaning the taste, the flavor, and, you know, the overall profile and the brains is the intelligence behind the blend. So based on my background in Ayurveda, we have to make sure that the ingredients mix well together. Just like if you were to have a party, you want to make sure you're inviting the right people that can all kind of blend together. So there's no real conflicts in terms of personality. So the same thing with teas and ingredients. You want to make sure that they all blend and complement each other. And so that's, you know, that mindfulness and that attention to detail goes into each blend that we create at Art of Tea.
- [17:35]
B
Onto the growth side a little bit here. What's been maybe like, I think probably have wholesale and DTC kind of risen together since the beginning or what's. Talk to me a little bit maybe about how you've grown the DTC side of the business.
- [17:50]
A
Yeah, they've definitely complemented each other. Right. So people will find us in a restaurant and then they go online, or people go online and then they refer it to a venue saying, hey, it's great that you guys are online, but I'd love it if you can be Carried in Erewhon or if you can be carried in some high end little market. And so we have to be intentional with that. Play the D2C space. What's been helping us is education. You really lined up with wanting to be that leader and educator as best as possible. In fact, when we first started, there was these big world tea conventions and they were looking for someone to teach how to blend tea. No one wanted to do it. They're like, no, no, no, we don't want to give industry secrets. And my belief was, hey, if I can give away 85% of the secrets, then the chances are that people pay for that last 15% because we built that level of trust and authenticity. So I taught these and they were sold out for four years in a row. In fact, there was a guy named David that came up to me and said, hey, like, you obviously know a lot about tea. Can you create the original foundation for my company? I'll leave it at that. Good, dude. Really, really great. Great concept and T company. So we no longer do private label, but there was a period of time where we did do private label. So the D2C side, again, just really leaning in on education. So we have a whole how to become a tea expert on our website, our blog, or updates on. And then of course, the book.
- [19:19]
B
Yeah, when did you write the book?
- [19:21]
A
So I wrote the book right before I signed up, right before COVID I was really inspired by David Goggins, who wrote the book Can't Hurt Me. And if the book is great, but the audiobook is incredible. And the way that he styled the book was very much podcast style. Someone else was reading it, but he would interject from time to time. He's like, let me tell you what the heck is going on here. He used other words, you know, but so I just loved how raw and authentic his story was. And he went through a hard time. And I think we've all gone through challenges in life. I've definitely. I've been on my own basically since I was, you know, 14 years old. So there's some good story and narrative there. And my team was saying, steve, you really should write a book. You really should put something together. And I'll tell you where it's been really helpful. Eric is not just on the marketing side for new people and new customers to learn about us, but, boy, when we hire new people and we say, this is the story, this is the narrative, it adds something. It gets our tribe even that much tighter together and that much more meaningful behind the impact that we're looking at making in this world.
- [20:28]
B
How big's your team now?
- [20:29]
A
Close to 45 people at this point.
- [20:31]
B
And what would you say at this point in the business is the most challenging component of it?
- [20:38]
A
There's a lot of challenges. You know, we don't do this stuff as founders because it's easy, right?
- [20:43]
B
Yeah. And you may have not done it if you knew how hard it was going to be when you started.
- [20:48]
A
Yeah. Communication continues to be that, that, that number one thing that we need to, as humans continue to improve on and getting everyone really aligned, like as part of us as founders, we need to cheerlead, we need to support, we need to cast that vision and let people know, hey, this is where we're going. And just as you think you were super clear and you detailed that and everyone's tracking with you, guess what, you gotta do it again. And you got to do it again. And you got to do it again. And so, you know, that level of excitement and enthusiasm and vision. Painting is super crucial in our roles as founders.
- [21:25]
B
What about logistics? You've probably got ingredients coming from all over the world. Talk to me a little bit about the logistics challenges of this business.
- [21:33]
A
It's also an agricultural product, so we might be dealing with chamomile shortages or like our mint. We have the most phenomenal mint in the world. We could easily get mint from Egypt or from parts of China and, you know, great, great mint. But our mint comes from Oregon and Northern California. And what we do, Eric, is we literally buy two years in advance before they even plant it. They don't plant it until like a year out. And it's so incredible that, you know, even if they have like crop failure, we only get like 75% or an abundance of crop and we get like 110%, we'll take it. But our eyes literally water when the mint comes in. That's how fresh it is. And so for us, sourcing the best possible ingredients has been a really key survival mechanism for us and way of continuing to build our tribe and our audience and our community around what we're doing. We can't fool people when it comes to quality. You have to continue to win them on really great quality experience in the consumer packaged goods space.
- [22:32]
B
And you need to get them to buy again and again. And it's beautiful when your product is such a ritual based product. Right. Because people take so much. You just the way you described the meditative aspect of the product is probably, you know, super important to people's kind of continuing Continuing to buy it. You also have a tea club or a subscription program. Talk to me about that piece in the business.
- [22:55]
A
Yeah, the loyalty program is important. The subscription point. There's two basic proponents, actually, three. So the first is that ritual. So we're so addicted to this thing, the phone, right? It's. It's such a mind zapper and time zapper, and it's affecting sleep, it's affecting all these other things. So being able to own our time back. What do most people want? Founders, humans, Right. It's freedom. And I believe that taking those moments out with tea gives you that sense of freedom. It's a paradox. You don't have time to make tea, but when you make time, you actually end up getting so much more time back. So this is part of that ritual process. In terms of our subscription piece, two years in a row, we were voted by Food and Wine as the number one tea subscription program out there. So we've invested a lot in terms of the technology and in terms of the systems and analyzing what's working and what's not working on our platform@artoft.com and the third and final is our loyalty program. And that's something that we, we pay a lot of attention to. We want to really spoil our loyalty customers as much as possible through winning, through gamifying, through, you know, making it fun and engaging. And we hear, we want to survey and listen to what we're doing right, and where we're up and what we can do better and differently.
- [24:17]
B
The other thing that I noticed in your. When I did some ChatGPT research on the Art of Tea was that you guys have a mobile app. Uh, Tapcart's a big friend of the podcast. I'm curious, how. How has the app played into your retention strategy?
- [24:33]
A
You know, Apple just did a major update, right? And there's theories behind why they're doing it, why they're continuing to put more and more gates around their platform. And one is they want to own the retention piece as much as possible. They want to basically strip away as much advertising dollars for some of the big players. So that way, eventually, I don't have a crystal ball here, but eventually they may start pushing out their own advertising mechanisms. And so in the meantime, push notifications is a way to continue to really help make sure that you're staying engaged with your customers as much as possible. So, yeah, Tapcart's great. They feature us on their. On their website as a case study. We've been with them for several years. And what I like about it is we don't get a lot of problems with it. You know, it's fairly plug and play. They've customized some things around education for us that they haven't thought of before. And they're also continuing to innovate and share ways that they that we can continue to use the app as best as possible here too.
- [25:40]
B
We're always this year on the podcast talking about top of funnel awareness and consideration building efforts. And it sounds like you've got a really diversified stack when it comes to that from the restaurants, from whatever you're doing in advertising, from your loyalty programs. I also see a note here about public relations and events. You, you were talking about the story how important, you know, the book that you wrote is, but the story of the brand. Have you been able to leverage PR with to amplify this story to bring new attention to the brand?
- [26:10]
A
Yeah. So part of that is engagement. Right. So I'm going to be in New York later this week doing a blending class. Sort of, sort of think of like Cold Stone Creamery where you kind of break up the different ingredients and it can be made for you. So we're doing, we'll do these fun sort of engagements. So if you're in Miami, we're sponsoring Miami Open. We've never done anything like this before and so we're leaning in. One of the things that was recommended to me by Brian Lee, who's just a world class. Yeah. Just an incredible human being and definitely big in the subscription space. And I've learned a lot from him. He shared with me, he said, steve, one of the things that you should do is once a year have a freestyle budget for your marketing team to be able to do something wild and crazy. You know, set a cap. It doesn't have to be, you know, above your belly button. As I say, you shouldn't jump above your belly button, but like something where it's going to drive the needle. And we've had major failings in that and we've had some really fun wins around that. And so this Miami Open is going to be a way for us to engage with a new audience in person and test out what this offline online experience could look like.
- [27:17]
B
I have made it a personal goal this year to go to a tennis tournament in the United States. I was eyeing up, I think it was Indian Wells, the one in Arizona. But maybe I'll have to attend Miami Open. Will it be iced tea or will you be doing hot and cold teas?
- [27:31]
A
We'll be doing hot and cold. We'll be doing matcha, like a mixed drink with matcha. We'll be doing iced teas and we'll be doing some hot teas as well. There's, you know, the biggest issue for us is there's a lot of people that have no idea that we exist. They might be huge tea drinkers. Maybe they've heard of us, maybe they haven't. So how do we break through that obscurity and make that impact, knowing that once people try our teas, they fall in love with it. But because we're not at the supermarket level in terms of quality and also in terms of this ease of access, it means that we have to put more effort into reaching customers where they're at. And so sometimes it's doing these sort of wild adventures and seeing how we can connect with people. But I'd love for you to be my guest if you're open to coming to Miami Open. Man, it'd be so awesome to hang out with you there.
- [28:16]
B
That would be. And I could just see that demonstrative aspect being really important because there probably is a whole category of tea drinkers like Folgers drinkers in the US or all over the world that are just drinking coffee for its basic properties or people are drinking Lipton. So exposing people to this other meditative, high quality aspect of tea, tea and then what you get out of it is probably really important. You were saying education and I guess this in person aspect probably really helps.
- [28:45]
A
Yeah, we're really excited about it. It's going to be a new adventure for us. And tea is such a tactile experience. And if Brian Lee can, you know, sell shoes online and get people to somehow connect with shoes online, maybe there's something we can do with tea online and get people more connected that way in some capacity.
- [29:03]
B
Have you done much like, I almost see like a master class or something. Like, have you done much video content around this, like deep T expertise?
- [29:11]
A
Yeah. So during the beginning of COVID because we were doing trainings, you know, we'd fly out all over the country and even in the Maldives, I was doing, you know, hands on trainings. There's an Art of TT House in the Maldives and or Japan where like the Peninsula Hotel, we created like a signature blend for cherry blossom season in Japan, in Tokyo or Singapore, for some of the beautiful cafes that they have there. There's so much that we weren't able to do in person that. And I know that people are contacting us saying, hey, we still want to learn. We still want to grow, we still want to get connected. So we created a Level 1 and Level 2 how to become a tea Expert program on our website@r2t.com and that's, that's really helped create more engagement.
- [29:57]
B
Super cool. And then you've got a quiz as well. I always love when people are incorporating quizzes because you've got so many. Because people, I guess a lot of people don't know necessarily what tea they like. If they're not tea experts, they might just, you know, you've got your all the different sort of flavor profiles down the side and that kind of helps. But talk to me about the role of the quiz. How many people who buy the product go through the quiz a lot.
- [30:18]
A
And I'll tell you where it's helpful is you come in your website, you're ordering for your coworker, your best friend, your mother in law, and you're not quite sure what to order. This quiz helps guide you through that best practice or let's say for yourself, you want to get off coffee and you want to start to look for something. Maybe you're more of a fruity guy or more of a, you know, like more cream or vanilla. So this helps kind of curate and guide you down that, that pathway.
- [30:46]
B
I wanted to ask about blends and just when, when you say blends, is that literally like just how much of tea versus and like do the teas have flavoring elements built into them? The ones that have flavors or are they just different profiles of the same tea plant?
- [31:03]
A
Yeah, it's an amazing question. So the first question is blends. So what's a blend? So a blend, a tea blend versus a Tasson blend. So a tea blend again has camellia sinesis in it. It means that we'll take let's say green tea and we'll take lemongrass and mint and rose petals. And we'll come up with the blend and we'll play with the different ratios to extract as much natural flavor profile out of it as possible. In some cases we'll actually use natural essences. So what is a natural essence or a flavor that we use? I can't speak for all companies that might be using flavors or essences, but we'll take, let's say mango for example. And there's aromatic compounds that come out of a mango when you smell a mango that has a certain fragrance. So what we do is we have that those compounds isolated in ethyl alcohol base and we apply that ethyl alcohol onto the leaves and the ethyl Alcohol dissipates, and what's left is the aromatic compounds of the mango that's just naturally left onto the leaves. So it has sort of this soft. And it's probably like 1% or 2% of that's actually on some of the leaves, where we'll dictate if it has natural essence or flavors. Or in some cases, we'll use, like, bergamot oil, like, actual oil derived from the bergamot to make Earl Grey. So it's not like a bergamot flavor or a lemon flavor. It's actual true bergamot.
- [32:27]
B
I also just noticed you have a Paddington in Peru. Like, so there's tea partnerships happening here as well. My daughter just went to go see her Paddington in Peru for a second time. What an amazing film franchise to be associated with. Or even maybe it's the books. I'm not even sure. Talk to me a little bit about how that partnership came about.
- [32:45]
A
Yeah, some of these. You know, thank God. I don't. I don't know. Like, it's just been. I feel like we've been so fortunate. Just they'll. You know, we've had some great success with Sony. We've had some great success with Warner Brothers, with. With having them approach us to see if it makes sense doing some sort of partnerships. So we've done. We did a special blend for Dune. We've done spice. Yeah, we did a spice blend. Yeah. And that was last year. We did a spice blend, and that was super cool. We've done one for Outlander, which is a TV show series, because there's a medicine woman on there. And so these partnerships are really interesting. You know, there's one that came out just a couple years ago where it was. The State Department reached out to us saying that the White House wants to create signature blends that can be gifted on behalf of the White House that represent the United States. And we ignored it. We're like, this is spam, right? Because how many, like, prints from Nigeria emails have you gotten? And they're like, this is B.S. like, don't. Whatever. So then they followed up, like, hey, yeah, we're trying to reach you. Can you. And here's the first lady's signature. Here's the State Department. Here's the White House logo. Can you. Can you do this? And. Okay, I guess this is serious. And so we actually created three unique blends on behalf of the White House. So that. That was awesome. But, you know, someone told me. I just. This stuff doesn't. On one hand, it can happen on the other hand, boy, you know, Again, this is 21 years in the making. But I learned from, I believe was Brian Tracy and he's, you know, great, like legend in the sales space. And he said that when you're taking off in your business, you need it sort of like a plane. When a plane is taking off a Runway, you put the gas in full gear and it stays in full gear until you reach a specific altitude, a cruising altitude and then you can pull back. So but you need to know when you can pull back and when you need to go full out and at least when you're starting out. And for us, we're not, even though we play with tech and it's, you know, we have an incredible tech stack when it comes to our website, but this is a slow growth industry for us. You know, we're not looking at 100 or 500% growth year over year. We're looking at 20% growth year over year. And so with that in mind, we have to be really diligent, very responsible with our cash flow. And you know, we have to know that this is something that compounds. And so that growth phase requires a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of intention behind what we're doing.
- [35:17]
B
It's just a great story of, you know, taking literally one of the oldest industries in the world and through, you know, through your passion and perseverance, you know, really cracking it in a unique way. Like are you even in retail or is it all wholesale and D2C?
- [35:31]
A
We're in a little bit of retail. So if you're in LA and you've heard of, I'm sure everyone on social media has heard of Erewhon before. So we are in Erewhon and we're in a few other Erewhon style concepts, but we've deliberately not tapped into Whole Foods and into Sprouts. And just because of alignment with our philosophy of the quality of teas that we're sourcing, we don't want it sitting on a supermarket shelf for a long period of time. We really want to make sure that education and high quality is at the forefront of everything that we're doing.
- [36:05]
B
What are your goals with the business I guess in the next two to three year time frame?
- [36:11]
A
Yeah, it's a great question. So first, you know, I started this company with no investors. I started. Actually that's not true. I had Aunt visa and Uncle MasterCard, like literally a credit card for $1000 and another credit card for $1500. And that's how I started and I, my wife, you know, just kept me so diligent with making sure that we're paying it off every single month. And so managing cash flow has been very important for our business. You know, I'm going to be 50 very soon, and so I'd say over the next two to, yeah, two to five years, maybe even shorten that two to four years, we're going to be looking at bringing on a just great alignment, whether that's a partnership, whether that's a investor that can really continue to help usher us in as more of a global presence. But it's got to be alignment. We've done such a diligent job with making sure that our team is well taken care of, that we have a phenomenal company culture. So whatever we do moving forward, we want to make sure that that continues to stay true and positive. We can make sure that we have proper alignment in that respect. But I know that, sorry to say one more thing. I know that I'm on this planet only for a short period of time and there's got to be other people out there, a lot more people out there that can do this better and differently than me. And it would be the responsible thing for me to eventually pass that baton on to someone else that could do it better and different than me.
- [37:38]
B
Amazing. Well, I want to thank you for coming on the DTC podcast today. You put the T in DTC today. If people want to follow your journey, where do you suggest that they potentially reach out? Somewhere like LinkedIn.
- [37:49]
A
Yeah, LinkedIn is probably where I get the most engagement or otherwise. You can follow us on Instagram at Art of tla.
- [37:56]
B
Nice. And if you had any closing words for entrepreneurs in our audience who are looking to follow in your footsteps or build out their own business, do you have any other final words of encouragement or advice?
- [38:07]
A
Yeah, the one that continues to stand out for me on a day to day basis is if it freaks you out and you're excited about it, but you're just a little bit more excited than what you're. Than being freaked out, then you're doing the right thing.
- [38:23]
B
The obstacle is the way a little bit, a little bit of stoicism there.
- [38:26]
A
Well, but the excitement has to be a little bit higher. Like if you're more freaked out than excited, then question yourself. But if you're even like a fraction, a bit more excited, the chances are your gut is also telling you, hey, yeah, this is scary, but we got this, we got this. And if you can look in the past and realize that I'm going to get a little esoteric here, right? That the universe, the creator, whatever you want to call it, was there for you in the past, is there for you for the billions of cells that are vibrating in your body right now, then the chances are that that same force of life and energy will continue to be with you as you progress in this world.
- [39:11]
B
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumeralloneword. Co. I'm Eric Dick, and this has been the D2C podcast. We'll see you next time.