Lauren Danson Purvis was fresh out of college when she launched Mizuba Tea Co, her business that imports and sells fine matcha tea from Uji, Japan. A lifelong tea nerd, Purvis had befriended a tea farmer on a family trip to the region, which is near Kyoto and is the birthplace of matcha, a stone-milled jade-colored green tea used in Japanese tea ceremonies. Six months later, when the farmer she’d become friends with asked for help selling his tea in the US, Purvis decided to start a business. But she quickly realized how little she knew about business in general, let alone how to import tea, meet Food and Drug Administration regulations, and create sell sheets for retailers. “I never cried so much as I did that first year,” Purvis, 33, says. “The sheer learning curve was extremely overwhelming. I had no idea what this entailed, but I knew I loved matcha enough to want to see it happen.”
Her father, a family doctor who ran a practice in the Santa Barbara area for 30 years, shared advice on hiring and setting up her business, and staked Mizuba with a small loan. Purvis repaid him the first year, and has been profitable ever since. Her mom came onboard – now known as “the matcha mom” in the region around the family home – and handles deliveries, receives shipments and watches inventory. Purvis’s father joined as the CFO, and is in charge of payroll and financial matters. Her husband, Dan, is a graphic designer who started out working on packaging. In 2018 he came onboard full-time as the COO and food safety manager – as well as the company’s janitor.
As CEO, Purvis oversees purchasing, manages farmer relations, runs customer service, develops products and trains baristas around Portland, Oregon, where her company is based. She manages partnerships and marketing, collaborates on social campaigns, and plans events. Though she has a team of five others, Purvis touches every part of the business, including quality assurance and financials. “We all do what needs to be done,” she says. The one component they outsource is human resources.
Demand for matcha started booming in 2015. That was when National Public Radio named it “superdrink” of the year, and wellness influencers like Gwyneth Paltrow began posting the Kermit-green tea on Instagram. Tea drinking in general got another boost during the pandemic. A 2021 study found that a green tea component lauded for brain health also helps ward off Covid infections. The international matcha market is expected to nearly double from $3bn in 2020 to $5.62bn by 2028, according to Verified Market Research.
The word “matcha” means “rubbed tea” in Japanese, and there are specialized traditions around how it’s grown and made, especially around Uji. True matcha is made from Camellia sinensis leaves grown in shade so they retain a fresh green sweetness. While gourmet goods like champagne and prosciutto di Parma have an international body regulating their production, however, there is no such watchdog group in place for matcha. The tea market has been flooded with cheap and bitter “powdered green tea” from places as far flung as India and Australia.
With her offerings from smooth daily matcha to specialty versions such as okumidori (a savory matcha), Purvis’s business has grown steadily, and now has more than 600 wholesale accounts and thousands of direct consumers, even with a lean staff and very little digital advertising. This year, Purvis celebrated a decade in business. The challenges keep mounting, though. Purvis still finds herself getting bogged down with managing her inbox, instead of big-picture tasks. “Entrepreneurs have to develop a tough skin,” she says. She has found people copying her trademark or even whole pages of her website. She’s also come across people using her logo on YouTube videos to sell their own matcha. Purvis is now adept at writing cease-and-desist letters.
“It feels violating and a huge waste of time, but you have to deal with it,” she says. “The longer you do it, the more prepared you are. You get yourself a fabulous trademark lawyer.”
There’s another challenge on the horizon: now that she and her husband are expecting their first child, Purvis is wondering how she can balance sustaining Mizuba’s slow-but-steady growth and impending motherhood. “I’m asking myself what do I want the next 10 years to look like?” she says.
She doesn’t want to hustle so hard she burns out, and she isn’t interested in taking on investors or outright selling her company, like so many founders do after a decade, if not sooner. She’s even refused a few offers to wholesale her entire supply to a single national outlet.
“Tea is so dynamic and it’s such an accessible luxury,” Purvis says. Her dream is to steer Mizuba into a long-term business that her children might take over someday – if they want to. “My son can do whatever he wants. He better appreciate tea, but I’m not going to expect him to take over our family dynasty or anything,” she says. She wonders what business resources she should invest in to help her maintain business growth and balance her work and home life. The Guardian spoke with three experts about her predicament.
Suneel Gupta
Founding CEO of the Rise nutrition coaching app and author of Everyday Dharma
“The most important resource Purvis can invest in is her own energy,” Gupta says. “When entrepreneurs fizzle out, it’s very rare that they run out of time or talent. What they run out of is energy. Troubles arise when they don’t have enough gas in the tank to continue going after the vision they set out to see through.”
Gupta recommends that a busy entrepreneur such as Purvis stay sharp by dividing each hour into a 55-minute work sprint followed by five minutes of rest. He calls this cycle “rhythmic renewal”. At first, the 45 minutes of rest in a nine-hour day may seem like a loss of productivity. “[But] those five minutes make the other 55 far more creative, collaborative and energetic,” Gupta says, adding that most high performers take eight mini-breaks a day.
These five-minute breaks spent walking outside sans cellphone, playing Wordle, doing push-ups or chatting with a friend lets you end the day with as much energy as you had in the morning. Gupta says this practice allowed him to have energy and attention when he came home to his small children.
“If you want to go far in a month, you have to hustle nonstop, but if you want to build something great over time and go far, there has to be a different way,” he says. “Rhythmic renewal carves that path for us.”
Maria Uspenski
Founder of the Tea Spot, an online retail and wholesale tea business based in Boulder, Colorado, and author of Cancer Hates Tea: A Unique Preventive and Transformative Lifestyle Change to Help Crush Cancer
Many tea purveyors struggle to verify the purity and authenticity of tea supplied by overseas brokers, Uspenski says. So Purvis’s direct access to impeccable, farm-fresh matcha from Uji, Japan, gives her a huge advantage. Uspenski advises investing in brand marketing to highlight this difference. “I would focus, focus, focus 100% on marketing and differentiating myself that way. Americans need education and a foundation on why her okumidori matcha is better. I would try to own the premium matcha space. Purvis should develop storytelling around an aspect of her brand difference she wants to emphasize.”
With more than 20 years in business, Uspenski has learned that a circumstance that initially looks like a disadvantage can be flipped into a strength. So while any ground-up green tea can be labeled matcha, and pretenders have flooded the market with bitter, bad-tasting product, Purvis can use that to her advantage. “It all ultimately comes down to taste,” Uspenski says. Once people who started drinking bulk matcha try Purvis’s brand, they’ll be delighted, and keep coming back.
Asahi Pompey
Global head of corporate engagement and president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and leader of Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses program
Purvis should feel proud of building a thriving business from scratch, and she is doing so many things right, Pompey says. For the next phase of business and life, Purvis needs to start thinking – and functioning – like a leader rather than an employee. “She’s ready to transition from working in her business to working on her business,” Pompey says.
She recommends investing in a strong person to handle operations. “That person can keep the business going, allowing you to think about strategy and really expand and grow beyond the day-to-day,” Pompey says.
Many entrepreneurs believe they have to choose between family or business. “That’s a false dichotomy,” Pompey says. She suggests Purvis consider Goldman Sachs’s 10,000 Small Businesses program, a free in-person curriculum accepting applications from entrepreneurs in the US, Puerto Rico, France and the UK. The class teaches entrepreneurs about growth margins, wholesale pricing strategy and price elasticity, and brings them into community with others.
Pompey also suggested that Purvis consider pruning her wholesale client list to the most profitable, and reflecting on whether her pricing conveys the quality of her matcha. “Customers see price as a signifier of quality,” Pompey says, adding that just 2% of the green tea market is organic.
More educational marketing content will help consumers understand why Mizuba is worth a premium price. “People need to be able to differentiate between authentic and imitation,” Pompey says. “She should really make sure she’s bringing the customer along to understand green tea.”
Purvis’s choice
“They’re all great,” Purvis says. “In light of the next chapter of life, Asahi’s advice paired with Gupta’s will help me because becoming a mother is going to be a huge shift. I also love Maria’s tips because to some degree marketing is something I’m already doing but probably want to see it at a stronger level.”
“I actually resonate most with Asahi’s suggestion about thinking and functioning more as a leader rather than an employee. I’m always struggling with getting lost in my to-do list rather than deep-focus projects. Hiring an operations manager is a smart idea. While I appreciate everyone’s insight and I am super thankful for them, I think Asahi’s advice would be the most dynamic. I also love the impetus to dig deeper into education, which is our No 1 pillar.”
