The Exchanges

Q All right. You go off to art school, and would eventually make your way back to the Bay Area, where you now live, and meantime, Ahmed, you would, you like, kind of left. You left the U.S., you moved to Europe. What, what were you doing?

A So a buddy of mine was living in Paris and said, Hey, come visit me in Paris. And you know, when you go in Paris and spring, what do you do? You know, you fall in love. And, uh, and so I stayed in Paris and France for almost two years. And, and then I was building my photography career and, um, got into fashion photography and, um, got into photojournalism. And a buddy of mine in Paris invited me to go to Germany to do some work in the mountains there. So I left for Germany and, and then I was leaving with a buddy in Germany. We bought an old RV, a gutted RV, and we built a whole home out of it. And we were on our way to go to Spain, to go live in Spain. And three days before I left, I met a guy from Czech Republic. He's like, oh, come stop by there. The food's really cheap. You can fill up your RV with food. And a week in Prague turned into almost seven years and, uh, bought a farm there.

AI assessment note: “I stayed in Paris and France for almost two years... building my photography career”

Q Were you ever under pressure from investors to reduce your price point or from distributors or retailers at all, Ahmed?

A Well, you know, it's funny cause when we launched 20 years ago, we were the most expensive tea on the shelf by 20, 30%. And a lot of retailers were like, you're crazy. You're never going to sell this at four 99 a box. And you know, the highest price tea other than us was three 99. And we're like, well, we can't get it to you cheaper than that. And now, you know, we're probably standard around six 99 and we're not the most expensive. We're still, you know, in the top two or three most expensive brands. So we still get that pressure and we, we see, you know, our biggest challenge today is some of the big conglomerates are buying the smaller T brands. So we do have to promote more now than we probably ever have, which is ironic. 20 years into the business we're promoting now than I think, yes, than we've ever had. When I look at our promotional spend, it's just getting tougher and tougher in the way that the Big, you know, multi-billion dollar corporations are buying all these small brands, and we're pretty much one of the last privately held brands on the market.

AI assessment note: “a lot of retailers were like, you're crazy. You're never going to sell this”

Q Ahmed, do you remember what do you, when you were a teenager, did you feel different? Did you feel like, you know, you were sort of, were you in a primarily white environment around, you know, sort of white Christian kids, or did you feel included?

A Well, I was definitely, um, picked on quite a lot as a young child, last kid on the school bus, standing by the bus driver, because people just wanted to pick fights with me, because I was different, had a different name, and dark skin. There was a lot of minorities in the public school I went to. There was, um, a lot of African Americans, and then my parents sent me to a private Catholic school for two years, which I never understood. And, um, and unfortunately turned my attention to all kinds of substances, um, to get through the being in a Catholic school that I had to wear a tie and go to mass, which I never went to. So definitely a lot of non-inclusion and non-equality, um, growing up in Cleveland as an Iraqi kid.

AI assessment note: “So definitely a lot of non-inclusion and non-equality, um, growing up in Cleveland”

Q I remember I interviewed Todd Carmichael and J.P. Oberti, founders of La Colombe, and we talked a lot about the flavor profiles that they were looking for when they were trying to create the right blends of coffee. And were you doing that? Were you just like drinking a lot of tea and just swishing it around your mouth and drinking? Kind of trying to find the right balance?

A Yeah, tea, I think, well, maybe coffee lovers won't like this, but I think tea is more nuanced and hundreds of more, if not thousands of more varieties of tastes than coffee. But I think for me, it was about where are we differentiating ourselves? Because I had done tons of cuppings in, in Europe and, and the tea houses. And we weren't really starting with a lot of blends. We were starting with straight ingredients, just one ingredient blend. So it was who's creating the most nuanced, full flavor. And then it was a lot about the leaf size with the co-packer we had. We had to really do a lot of trials and tribulations to make sure the machine can adapt to a larger leaf tea size because most tea bags were like Dust. So we really wanted to revolutionize putting a whole leaf in a tea bag at the time. So, yes, I was tasting all the time, making sure the quality was premium, um, and we didn't add any oils or flavorings, we just wanted the pure tea, so we wouldn't, you know, adulterate it with anything.

AI assessment note: “So, yes, I was tasting all the time, making sure the quality was premium”

Q owned, and you've got some investors, and you guys are obviously owners of it. I wonder, Ahmed, I mean, you guys have been grinding away now for a long time at this. I know you recently stepped down as CEO, but is there ever a part of you that just wants to, you know, sell your stake and kind of enjoy your life without having to grind away every day?

A Well, I do enjoy my life every day, and I don't feel I grind away. Luckily, we have a great team, um, so I feel the balance of life is, is here, but as far as the choice of whether I, we want to sell, I think it all depends on who the partner is. I think we'd be open to it if it really made sense for the future of Numi, because, you know, we don't want it to plummet and disappear and Three to five years, which some brands do when they exit, but we want it to thrive, and we want the farmers and the planet to thrive, because NuMe has created a legacy. I mean, it's in educational courses, it's a founding B Corp, it's one of the leading, um, uh, fair trade organic brands in, in the whole world now, and we want it to continue to live those values and, and change the way people drink and, and eat.

AI assessment note: “I think we'd be open to it if it really made sense”

Q I guess, from, from what I read, while you were in Prague, you got asked to build a, a tea house? What's the, what's the story?

A So, you know, Prague was an emerging place then, in the early 19 nineties, it was just, yeah, The wall had just been taken down in Germany. All the communism was kind of that whole part of the Eastern Europe. Berlin and Krakow and Poland and Prague were just these booming cities where anything goes. And some friends that I played music with said, hey, there's these guys opening up a tea house and tea houses were, are very common in Eastern Europe. They're very influenced by Russia and Middle East and the whole tea culture. Tea houses, you know, are where people go and spend two hours for lunch and have meetings and very different, not a fast pace, no to-go cups. So they had, they, they were looking for people to help and I was doing mosaics and tile work and all kinds of, um, creative stuff with ceramics and, and painting. So they asked if I would be involved in some way in helping design, being part of it. And then I started serving tea, and you know, we'd serve hundreds of pots a day.

AI assessment note: “So they asked if I would be involved in some way in helping design”

Q And the United States has to be one of the few countries on earth where people, maybe Canada, people drink tea directly in a mug. They put the bag into a mug, right? Because imagine most everywhere else around the world, it's in a pot.

A Well, it's a to-go culture, so you want something that you can take with you, um, where a lot of places they'll actually sit, and obviously in this time where everything is on the run, yeah, the ceremony of tea you can still find if you go to China, and Taiwan, and Japan. Yeah, I think we've lost that here. I, I've heard in the U.S. there used to be a ton of tea houses before the Boston Tea Party, and on all the taxation, um, and then it switched to coffee, but Unfortunately, now it's, yeah, it's a mug, it's to go, it's at your desk, not the ceremony or the ritual of making a pot and really enjoying it.

AI assessment note: “Well, it's a to-go culture, so you want something that you can take with you”

Q And when you say you talk to the FDA, did you just like pick up a phone and call the FDA?

A Well, that's the thing. The FDA told me that nobody calls us. We call you, but I got to know one of the FDA guys. Cause as we mentioned, we were learning about the different nuances of what you do in packaging and how you get it packaged. And I would just call and either leave messages or there was a couple of times I actually received the same person. And then he finally said to me, like, you know, people don't really call us. To ask us what you can do and what you can't do, um, on your packaging and what ingredients. So I even said to him, I was like, do you mean like you can put anything in a product and sell it and it's only until you call the person that they have to stop? And he's like, basically, yeah. And I was like, wow, that, that's a pretty free market. And then Rima and I changed places too with co-packers. I remember I used to call people for packaging and I'd say I'm from NuMe. And they would call me back. They would give me all the attention in the world. I'd be like, wow, they're really helping a tiny little startup. And then later on, I realized they thought we were new me, the new United Motors Inc company, which is now Tesla. So back then they had a warehouse and a facility to make cars in Fremont. And I was amazed on how people were calling us back so quickly.

AI assessment note: “I would just call and either leave messages”