Stonington Son Crowd-funding For New Tea Biz

What could you do with a passion for a project, entrepreneurial spirit, and a few thousand dollars in funding?

For James Fayal of Stonington and Rickey Ishida of Cincinnati, the answer is simple: make energizing teas.

Fayal, who graduated from Stonington High School in 2008, won the Connecticut Invention Convention, was a member of the lacrosse and tennis teams and did missionary work in Ecuador. He headed to the University of Maryland to study finance. 

The friends, both in their early 20s, were putting their respective degrees (Fayal's finance degree from Maryland and Ishida's biomedical engineering form Cornell) to good use as members of the Venture for America fellowship, an entrepreneurial program based in New York City that provides a pathway for top graduates to enter the world of startups and entrepreneurship. 

Fayal and Ishida joined the inaugural class of the program, and are currently in their second year of the fellowship.

“I had experience with entrepreneurship in the past,” said Fayal, who won the Connecticut Invention Convention with a small metal device that revived dying hearth fires. He built a small company around the product in high school, selling units to small southern New England shops.

“I loved my time building and running a small company in high school, so the VFA program clicked with me,” Fayal said.

Under the program, James worked in venture capital, while Rickey worked in a tech startup. As anyone who has worked for a new venture can tell you, there are some very long, demanding hours to put in. Thus, the friends were in need of caffeine to get their work done – but as tea drinkers, they weren’t getting enough of a charge from their favorite beverage.

“We scoured the market looking for quality teas that provided us the boost we needed,” Ishida said. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any – so we whimpered for a while, then decided to set out to fix the problem ourselves.”

 “Rickey started drinking tea as a young child in Japan and I started in the beginning of high school,” explained Fayal, who grew up in Stonington. “We both drank tea on a daily basis and while we prefer the taste and health benefits associated with tea, we found ourselves reaching for coffee or energy drinks when we really needed a boost of energy. We didn't like the compromise we were making, so we decided to try and come up with a fix ourselves.”

So the pair started blending teas for taste and for energy content and health benefits, trying brews with herbs, extracts, fruits and antioxidants.

“It's an amazingly complex and nuanced drink, which allows for a lot of creativity when developing new blends,” said Ishida, who, after moving from Japan, grew up in Bethesda, Md.

The experiment became a passion, and the two started thinking about all the other tea drinkers out there who might be in need of similar pick-me-ups. Soon, Zest Tea was born.

“We originally developed this product for ourselves because we felt the need,” Fayal said. “Since developing the original batch we've gotten great reviews from friends who have tried the blends, which is one of the things that has motivated us to look into expanding the concept and developing a company around it. There is obviously a strong base of tea drinkers out there, a lot of whom work long hours at high-stress jobs and need a boost, just like we did.”

The name is a play on the tasty but energizing nature of the tea.

“We tossed around a bunch of names, but kept coming back to ZEST,” Ishida said. “Usually I hate plays on words, but something about ‘ZEST tea’ and ‘Get ZEST tea’ sounded fun and energizing, without sounding cheap and sales-y. When we thought about the mindset and the benefits associated with the product, the idea of putting some ZEST in our step really clicked.”

In order to finance the startup, the two founders are currently competing in a crowdfunding competition run by Venture for America and American Express. They created a RocketHub site: “Zest Tea - Bold Teas With an Energizing Kick,” and have already started seeing contributions. The VFA teams who raise the most will have access to an additional $25,000 in awards provided by Amex and VFA.  

“Crowdfunding allows us to raise money from people who are truly interested in our product and company,” Ishida said. “It is an amazing way of rallying your biggest supporters. Also, it provides a certain level of market validation for the product and company. In addition to helping to raise funds, the founders get targeted market response from contributors who get free samples! This source of funding and associated immediate feedback was never available to companies, up until a few years ago. We're lucky to be living in a time when we can easily raise money from the people who are most likely to follow and support the company in the future.”

With the money raised, the pair plans to buy basic manufacturing equipment as well as fabricate some of their own. It will also help them acquire the ingredients for their first few batches. They plan to start small and grow the company through partnerships with independent teashops.

“This product was just for ourselves, so we were very picky about using quality ingredients and making the freshest and healthiest tea possible,” Fayal said. “Our biggest goal is to maintain that outlook as we grow. We never want to make and sell something that we wouldn't drink ourselves. We also want to make a product that can truly help people. We know that we wouldn't have made it through some long nights of work without the tea and we hope we can help others in the same way.”

While winning this competition would be great for these fledgling business owners, they are happy with the opportunity to test their product and bring it to market.

To sweeten the pot, the pair turned the funding process into a game—folks who contribute get to vote on which teas will make it to market first.

"We figured we’d let the funders make the final decision on the first four," explained Fayal, who enjoys all eight of the blends on the ballot, but admits to a particular fondness for the Pomegranate Mojito and Cinnamon Apple blends as well as the more traditional Earl Grey.

And funding this startup company has its own rewards.

“For one, you can try out our amazing blends of tea. More importantly, funders can get involved with a company and product that they feel passionate about,” Fayal said. “I've personally funded five or six projects in the past and I love the feeling of helping something great get off the ground and being involved with a product, company, or project from its most infant stage. There is a certain sense of ownership that you get from helping fund a product’s development that doesn't exist when you go to a store and purchase a mass-produced unit.”

For questions about ZEST tea, its products, campaign or founders, contact James Fayal at 860-917-0799 or JMFayal@gmail.com. You can also find more information and contribute to the project at http://www.rockethub.com/projects/26409 and www.Facebook.com/GetZestTea.