Raleigh-Durham, N.C.-based startup Mosi has a new patented infuser that “removes the steps and tools needed to steep the perfect cup of tea.”
Their new infuser – which can also be used to make matcha, matcha lattes, cold brew and coffee – took more than three years of research and development to bring to market, in addition to almost $500,000 in support from a highly successful Kickstarter campaign.
“Tea is the second most drank substance on earth behind water and is a $7.9 billion market in the United States and $200 billion globally, projected to reach $318 billion by 2025,” said Mosi Founder and CEO Paul Davis. “America is an on-the-go beverage market and we have engineered a product and secured a design patent for an infuser that makes it really easy to enjoy tea anywhere.”
Davis’ idea for the company came after growing up as a missionary in South Africa, where tea was an integral part of daily life. “I want to make it easier for Americans to discover and enjoy world-class tea without hassle.”
In addition to its infusers – which includes the All in One Infuser, the Mosi Tea Infuser, the Cold Brew Infuser and a Matcha Infuser – Mosi plans to launch its own line of 10 high-quality loose-leaf teas in the very near future.
Gavin Jocius, Mosi co-founder and COO, noted, “We are committed to innovation and finding new ways to help people discover amazing teas from around the world. Our backgrounds are in technology and digital marketing, with a focus on growth hacking, so we instinctively look for different ways to approach challenges. Our goal is to continue to design and engineer unique products that people love and want to make part of their day-to-day routine.”
Over the next few months – as Davis and Jocius focus on marketing and spreading the word – Mosi will have a presence at the World Tea Conference + Expo. The company is also planning on giving digital creators the tools they need to showcase the versatility of the Mosi infuser, and they’ll highlight their soon-to-be-launched teas. “We see platforms like TikTok as a great way for people to discover teas, recipes and more,” said Jocius. “There is so much versatility with tea, and TikTok allows one to discover countless ways to enjoy teas in new and novel ways. We are also looking to leverage data analytics to better anticipate seasonal tea trends and make those trends a larger part of our marketing strategy.”
World Tea News spoke with Mosi Founder and CEO Paul Davis to get more acquainted with the Mosi business and brand.
Question: Hi, Paul. Thanks for your time! First off, when did you begin to truly enjoy and appreciate tea? From what I see on your website, it looks like you grew up in Southern Africa, where you learned about tea.
Answer: Yes, I lived in South Africa for five years, and then Zimbabwe for five years between the ages of five and 15. My parents were missionaries, so I got to travel all over learning about different people, groups and cultures. I wouldn’t say that I learned very much about tea outside of it just being ingrained in everyday life. It wasn’t until I moved back to the United States and didn’t have access to high-quality tea that I truly began to appreciate really good loose-leaf tea. Tea bags are a lot more common and, obviously, it’s just not even close to the quality of loose-leaf, as you know.
Question: What’s your favorite tea or tea experience?
Answer: Tea time! In Africa, no matter where you went, tea was something that was a constant. It was almost expected that when you walked into a new home or village that you would sit down over a cup of tea – basically “breaking bread.” I miss sitting down with different people over a good cup of tea and just the conversation and experience of that.
Question: Besides Mosi, do you have a background in tea, or brand-building, before you launched Mosi?
Answer: My only background in tea is drinking it. Over the years, I’ve obviously learned a lot more about it. But brand building – yes. I have a master’s degree in brand Management. My career started in advertising, where I worked for many different companies building their brand strategy. I went into consulting for a little while doing the same thing, and eventually went into eCommerce for an early-stage home fragrance brand, where I was the brand manager and helped scale the company to $22 million by year four. From there, the CEO of that company and I left to start a SaaS company focused on customer support operations [which has since sold]. While building that company is when I started working on Mosi as a side gig.
Question: When did you officially launch Mosi? And it looks like you had a very successful Kickstarter campaign prior to your launch, correct?
Answer: I worked on Mosi conceptually for a good two years before I launched the Kickstarter campaign. I believe the campaign lasted about 40 days, and man was it a wild ride. We set a small goal of $15,000 for the overall campaign, knowing we needed a lot more than that. The goal was to hit that number as quickly as possible so people would see it as a successful campaign, which would let the Kickstarter algorithms show it to more people since it hit its goal. I think we hit $15,000 within four hours after launch, and then by the end of the campaign, we raised almost $500,000, which to this day puts us in the top 0.5 percent out of over 350,000 campaigns that have launched on Kickstarter. We sold over 11,000 units to about 7,000 people in 85 countries! I look at Kickstarter as our pre-launch to raise the funds needed to tool and manufacture the infuser. Our official public website launch, however, was in October 2021, after we had fulfilled our obligations to our U.S. backers and made the infusers available for online purchase.
Question: What is the Mosi brand all about?
Answer: I think a lot about the Mosi brand stems from my experience in Southern Africa. An African proverb says, “Americans have watches; Africans have time.” In Africa, there was always time to talk, listen, reflect and enjoy those around you.
Wherever life takes you, it's our desire for Mosi to be a small reminder to slow down, be present, and turn moments into memories that last a lifetime. With the nature of the product, it allows you to just go.
We want to make it as easy as possible for anyone to brew anything and anywhere. Whether it’s through our infusers or our line of garden-picked and hand-picked loose-leaf tea, we want to be part of your tea journey. Mosi started with my story in Africa, and now, it continues with others sharing their stories with Mosi.
Question: What can you tell us about the Mosi infusers – the Mosi Tea Infuser, the Cold Brew Infuser, the Matcha Infuser and the All in One Infuser?
Answer: The Mosi Infuser is the world’s first multi-brew infuser. This means that you can literally brew anything. The All in One is our staple product, and it comes with all of our interchangeable sieves. Whether it’s loose-leaf tea, matcha, coffee, or even hot chocolate or a protein shake, you can literally make anything. You can also buy the infusers separately with a specific sieve, in case you’re just looking for a matcha infuser for example.
Aside from the versatility of the product, something we really focused on is the design, materials and functionality. It solves a lot of the issues that I found annoying with infusers – the mess that comes with a screw-off lid, the sieve at the bottom of the bottle leading to over-steeped tea, the lack of durability, etc.
Question: How specifically did the Mosi Infuser come about? Tell us about your product development journey. Did your background help in the creation of the product?
Answer: The idea initially came to me in college. I was always in a rush to get to class, and therefore never really had time to be tethered to the kitchen to make loose-leaf tea. Instead, I would just grab a thermos and make me a cup of Keurig coffee. It did the trick, but what I really wanted was a good way to take tea on-the-go. I went through all kinds of infusers, and although there were a few out there that sufficed, I felt like there was always something missing – especially when it came to the multi-brew aspect for different types of tea.
As far as my background helping, I think I’ve always been someone who likes to break things down and figure out how they work and how to learn or make things better. I enjoy that process, whether it’s building a product, a company or in my garage woodworking.
Question: In your product development research, did you discover that people were searching for something like the Mosi Infuser? And what makes the Mosi Infuser special or different from other infusers on the market?
Answer: To be honest, I was really building the product for myself. But yes, as I started to develop the product, I absolutely found that it was filling a gap for others. I asked other tea enthusiasts what they thought, asked for feedback, and even sent samples out. Many would say, “Why didn’t I think of this,” which was validating for sure.
I think what makes Mosi special is that it encourages people to explore. The versatility and the multi-brew aspect is key. When you can brew anything, the possibilities are endless. We’ve had stories of coffee addicts becoming tea lovers. We’ve had people infuse tea into liquor for tea-inspired cocktails – and we’ve done the same and we’re excited about this. People admit that they never really tried other teas like matcha or yerba mate because it just seemed hard to do, but Mosi makes it easier for them to do so. I think it gives people the opportunity to figure out what they like and gives them an easy way to better explore the world of tea.
We also spent a lot of time making intentional design decisions around safety, functionality, ease-of-use and aesthetics to ensure every cup you make is brewed to perfection. We probably tested every infuser on the market. Every millimeter of our infuser was thought through. For example, I can’t tell you how much time went into the design of even the spout – inspired by gongfu tea cups – which encourages chemosensation. The design allows you to smell and taste your tea at the same time, which enhances the flavor of your tea.
Question: Mosi is also launching a tea line soon. When is that happening and what specifically will Mosi offer?
Answer: It’s launching in early March. We will be offering 10 teas that will include staples like Earl Grey to some more interesting blends like a Rooibos Lavender or a Vanilla Matcha. Here in the beginning, our goal is to just keep things simple. I’m always overwhelmed when there are hundreds of options, so our goal is to not overwhelm people and make it easy to try our teas. In fact, people can even win free tea for a year [click here to learn more].
Question: What challenges did you encounter when creating your business?
Answer: The biggest challenge was the transition from this idea on Kickstarter to actually getting the product to production. Our product is crafted in China with an amazing team, but with it being across the world in a different time zone with language barriers, it was really hard working on the design for the manufacturing phase. Aside from that, COVID-19 hit and that brought even more challenges to the process and production. It ended up taking about a year-and-a-half from the Kickstarter campaign until we actually could think of launching the company. That was really tough, but it gave us time to be really intentional with all of our decisions.
Question: What successes have you had thus far?
Answer: Since the Kickstarter, a few things: 1. Bringing on Gavin and having a partner. I couldn’t and wouldn’t want to do this alone. 2. We successfully raised a seed round, which was actually over-subscribed, this past November. We have some amazing investors, and it’s validating to us that people see what we’re trying to do and love our vision. 3. Launching our own tea! We are incredibly lucky to have found amazing farms and gardens. It's some of the highest quality tea we’ve come across, and we’re extremely proud of it and excited about the future.
Question: How will you be showcasing Mosi at the World Tea Conference + Expo. And are you excited about the upcoming event?
Answer: Yes. We are very excited about the show. Gavin attended it last year and raved about it. He said that all of the talks he attended were highly valuable, in particular Chris MacNitt’s blending class [MacNitt is the tea development lead at Starbucks]. This will be my first time attending. Mosi is sponsoring the Tea Business Incubator and will be donating infusers as prizes to the Incubator attendees. We are a tea start-up that focuses on innovation, so we were excited to have the opportunity to support other start-ups in the space.
Question: What’s been the reaction to Mosi from tea enthusiasts and the tea industry in general?
Answer: Everyone that we have interacted and worked with in the tea industry has been very supportive and helpful. There is so much passion and diversity in the tea industry, which has made this journey very rewarding, even when we have had setbacks. The reception thus far has been great. Our customer reviews are overwhelmingly positive. For people who want to brew anything on-the-go, we feel that we have the most versatile and convenient product available. We also believe that people will love our line of teas. We spent over two years trying thousands of teas and looking at countless different sources of teas. We feel that we got very lucky with our partnership and have a line of teas that even the most seasoned tea enthusiasts will love.
Question: Do you currently sell your infusers wholesale and work with retailers, like tea shops and teahouses, specialty and gourmet stores, etc.?
Answer: Currently, we’ve been solely focused on our website sales and Amazon. We’ve had wholesale inquiries, and definitely plan on offering this in the future. If anyone is interested in reaching out to us about our infusers or tea, they are welcome to reach out to us [their wholesale inquiry form can be found here].
Since we’ve only been focused on our own website, we are still developing, this honestly. But we understand that POS [point of sale] displays and the presentation of the product is important for the success of both us and the retailer, and will absolutely be thinking out of the box, so to speak, to ensure we have great relationships with retailers. Their success is our success.
Question: Thanks for your time! Last question: What tea trends are you paying attention to right now, and how does Mosi fit in?
Answer: Much like the third – or fourth – wave of coffee, I believe people are really starting to understand the versatility of tea in general. We see that specifically with the increase in popularity of matcha in general, the recipes, and different ways you can use tea. Whether it’s a new matcha, tea-inspired mocktails or cocktails, we believe there’s an exciting trend and growth opportunity for tea.
To learn more about Mosi, visit MosiTea.com.
Plan to Attend or Participate in the
World Tea Conference + Expo, March 21-23, 2022
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