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.
