Latest / The Scene Projects / Carmine Del Sordi on Building Pure and Easy Tea and Driving Passion into Business

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Carmine Del Sordi on Building Pure and Easy Tea and Driving Passion into Business · The Scene Projects

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  This program is part of the Scene Projects podcast network.
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  Scene Project features interviews with independent musicians, comedians, and artists
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  from across the Midwest.
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  Become part of our community and support local art wherever you are.
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  Well, welcome into this exciting episode of Real Biz.
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  I am your host, Bubba Starts, and with me today is founder of Pure and Easy Tea and friend of
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  the scene, Carmine Del Sorti.
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  Carmine, welcome to the show.
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  Hey.
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  Thanks for having me, Bubba.
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  It is absolutely my pleasure, sir.
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  We've been talking for several weeks now.
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  We have formed quite a friendship, and, my wife has formed quite an affection for Pure and Easy
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  Tea in that time as well.
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  So really excited to talk about your company, our new partnership coming up, and, a lot more
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  to come from us as a as a friend and partner group.
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  But I wanted to give you a few minutes right off the top of the show here to give us a
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  little bit of your backstory and then we'll pick it up with all the stuff that's going on
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  now.
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  Yes.
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  So thanks.
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  This was a completely new venture for me.
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  I had more than twenty years of corporate experience that spanned from consumer goods,
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  high-tech, and biotech, and actually retired from corporate at the age of 50.
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  So I was living life, enjoying retirement, and I became an avid tennis player.
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  And while playing tennis in the Arizona heat, I just burnt out.
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  Nothing was enough, nourishment wise.
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  And everything that I resorted to was just full of sugar, sticky aftertaste, and really made me
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  sick.
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  So water wasn't enough, and I had to find something else.
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  I went back to tea.
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  So during my days in my biotech career, I was drinking a lot of tea in San Francisco.
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  And I'm like, oh, I'll just brew some of my old teas and stay hydrated that way.
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  Well, I reach into the cupboard, pull out a canister.
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  As soon as I open it, the smell was just so off putting.
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  You could just smell the chemicals.
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  I was like, wow, this is just unbelievable.
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  The tea is not pure anymore.
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  And that's when I said, you know what?
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  I'm just gonna take matters into my own hand and started making my own blends.
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  And it was purely personal.
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  So I started doing that and it was so good, so nourishing.
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  It just provided everything I needed.
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  And then I'm like, well, I can't be the only one that would appreciate this.
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  And lo and behold, that's how Pure and EZT was formed.
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  It's it's quite the story.
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  And isn't that how most problems are solved in the world is that it it kinda become it it
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  comes from a selfish place.
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  Right?
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  We want better for ourselves, but in doing so, we realize that we could be doing better for so
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  many others.
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  And then the passion kinda changes, and it becomes a selfless venture at that point.
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  Exactly.
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  And that's exactly what happened.
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  Now, Pure and Easy Tea has been around for a few years now, obviously, selling, like, hot
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  cakes on Amazon, but you are looking to grow and more of a, direct to the consumer.
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  Right?
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  And to build more relationships, I feel like.
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  When someone buys from Amazon, they're just buying a product, but they're not buying into
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  the brand necessarily always.
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  Do you feel like that's kind of where, you know, you getting out and wanting to do more
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  podcast and how our relationship kind of started was to have an opportunity to form more
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  lasting relationships with your customers?
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  Mhmm.
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  So, yeah, this is the really, really interesting part.
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  Okay?
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  When I created the company three and a half years ago, I wanted to keep my anonymity and I
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  did.
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  And like when you look at a company like Nespresso, you don't know the founder or the
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  owners or who they were.
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  You just live by the brand.
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  Wow.
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  It's a really nice brand and I truly wanted the brand to speak on its own.
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  So I did that.
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  I launched it just as pure and easy tea without me whatsoever.
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  And we did it on Amazon.
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  And I'm like, let the product speak for itself.
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  And sure enough, it did.
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  It started to take off and grew and grew.
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  And then there were requests where people actually wanted to know more about the company
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  and the success of it was so good.
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  And I realized I sat down and I thought I was really contemplating it but this brand is a
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  culmination of my entire life story and my entire being.
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  And I'm like, why am I staying away from it?
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  And I know you know about my past And then this was one of the things.
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  So in the past, I did my own side hustles.
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  I'm an author of a book in corporate.
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  And, you know, with that, I spoke at colleges.
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  It was just all about me, me pumping carmine, pumping carmine.
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  And this was the last thing I wanted at this stage of my life and with this brand.
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  But when I focus on where I am today, living with purpose and everything I put into Pure and
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  Easy Tea, it truly is a culmination of my being.
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  From my background in consumer goods to the formulations and biotechnology to building the
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  brand.
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  And one of the most heartfelt stories about it all is my mother passed away very young.
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  She was only 54 years old.
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  And at that time, I put her on tea and I really tried to save her and studied nutrition and I
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  would be combing the Internet before the Internet was Lexis and Nexus databases back
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  then.
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  It wasn't even the Internet.
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  I'm reading clinical trials and studies and putting all I have into trying to save her.
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  And that didn't work out too well but you always maintain the knowledge.
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  And now years later when I'm trying to take care of my own health, everything came rushing
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  back.
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  All the knowledge with nutrition and all the studying and it just everything just folded
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  right in.
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  And so we started the company.
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  Now I wrote myself into the brand.
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  I'm doing more outreach.
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  I'm connecting with some of the customers, telling the story and it it really is.
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  It's just so rewarding and fulfilling on so many levels.
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  Well, and even when you were in the corporate world, while it may have been about Carmine, it
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  was always, you know, Carmine from this other thing.
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  Right?
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  And your your persona had been kind of baked into another brand where now your persona and
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  everything that you are is baked into Pure and Easy Tea.
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  And it would be impossible to tell the story of Pure and Easy without Carmine at least being in
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  the story.
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  You don't have to be the main character, but you can be a very big supporting character of
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  that.
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  Yes.
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  And it took a while to get here, but we're here now.
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  You know?
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  Well, I have some of the tea here in house.
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  You sent us some of the Soothe, and this is gonna be a product that we feature on the
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  podcast a lot, especially when we go out on our tour in March and we're out.
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  And we're not just bringing it with us and featuring it on the program, but we're gonna be
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  drinking it on the program.
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  We're going to be giving it to other artists.
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  This tea is absolutely incredible.
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  Not to pump your tires while you're on the show, but we're doing a lot of it on our other
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  shows and programs as well.
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  We're huge fans.
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  And I heard from The UK that they are all obviously huge tea drinkers over there.
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  He absolutely loved it.
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  Shout out to our host, AJ of unsigned spotlight, who, had rave reviews for you
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  already.
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  So, you obviously have a great product, but it's not always just a great product that
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  sells.
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  People want to know more, especially in this day and age.
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  They want to know who they're buying from, not just what they're buying.
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  Yeah.
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  That that's true.
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  But it really starts with the quality and having a great product.
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  You know?
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  So it's great to dive deeper, but it it's like the products truly are so good.
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  And the re the reason I'm saying that is because we really don't find it.
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  And I go back to my business background.
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  When I started the company, there's something, marketing called Blue Ocean Strategy.
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  And within Blue Ocean Strategy, there's, four actions framework.
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  And so t is a completely saturated market.
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  There's a ton of competitors in the space and so on.
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  So how do I dare enter?
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  Right?
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  So you're really assessing the market and you're trying to reduce and eliminate those
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  things that are no longer needed or bad and create and raise the stuff that's good.
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  So I totally the market had turned.
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  If you walk into any supermarket and buy tea, you're literally finding cheap tons and tons of
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  cheap teas that are tea dust with flavorings.
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  And usually in pretty bad containers like that contained microplastics.
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  So we eliminated all of that.
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  We're using whole botanicals, real nutritious ingredients that you could bake, you know, brew
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  for an hour and it's only gonna get more depth and flavor and nutrition out of it.
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  Some of our blends have 11 ingredients in them where you're just getting nutrition.
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  So you you walk in like a Costco today, you see a wall full of gummies.
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  Gummies for this, gummies for that.
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  It's like all chemical lab driven stuff.
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  Ours is direct from nature, masterfully crafted into a blend that looks good, smells good,
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  tastes good and has purpose.
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  So the products themselves are key.
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  The story, the heart, and passion behind it is all really the bonus and it keeps me going.
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  I mean, I I just feel like I'm living with so much purpose because we're putting something so
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  good out there.
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  And, you know, when you think about internally what tea means to me, we live in a very, very
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  noisy world today.
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  And tea literally is a ritual.
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  You sit down, you brew it, and you just have time to pause, take a breath, and reflect.
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  And when you do that, everything that matters most to your life surfaces to the top.
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  And it just reminds you and grounds you.
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  So it's the whole experience around it.
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  And so I'm loving what I do.
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  And it's starting to show and meeting great people and pursuing great projects.
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  This is all part of it.
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  Can you talk a little bit about the process of sourcing the ingredients?
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  Because, obviously, you're not going down to, the Whole Foods around the corner and able to
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  do that.
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  Were you going overseas and really looking at the places where they were coming from early
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  on?
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  And I'm interested in the early days of Pure and Easy and really developing your blends,
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  from your home kitchen before the company started and then into starting to produce en
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  masse with the company?
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  Well, in the very, very early days when I was brewing my own, I was buying ingredients on
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  Amazon because you can buy all the herbs you want fresh.
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  I mean, everything is on Amazon.
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  So I was buying all the herbs I was interested in and then started my own blending at home.
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  And then we would have taste tests with friends and so on when I decided to make this a
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  business.
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  So it all started from my personal source and that would be, you know, all on Amazon.
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  Then when I decided to make it a business, I already had a few blends already made.
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  So then it was going and finding the manufacturers.
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  And I have, you know, three manufacturers that I work with who are all experts in the game.
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  I mean, unbelievable.
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  And, you know, they're the backbone of who we are.
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  So was there a lot of trial and error for you early on, or did you from your time, just over
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  the years of being a tea drinker, kinda have blends, prepared, before, you know, the move to
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  Arizona and really starting to reaccess this part of your life?
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  No.
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  It it was all from ground zero.
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  And what I realized is a normal so where I started maybe a little bit wrong, I'd looked at
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  some of the tea bags on the market, and I didn't realize how much flavorings they were
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  putting in.
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  Right?
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  Because you would look at a teabag and they're saying, okay.
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  Well, for a cup, they're using one and a half grams of tea to make a cup.
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  If you look at that soothe, that bag, there's five grams in there.
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  Right?
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  So five grams in each tea bag.
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  So I needed so much more.
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  So you're thinking about five grams and I got it down in some case to three and a half
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  because it's really not about the weight.
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  It's about the density of the products and and the blend you're making.
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  But it takes at least three to five grams to get the benefits out of the tea that you're
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  you're making.
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  So the one thing you'll know from drinking all these teas, they have just incredible flavor.
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  Right?
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  So it looks good, it smells good, and then it tastes good, but it's giving you nutrition.
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  And so it was finding that right amount for every blend.
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  So much work goes into the craftsmanship of the blends.
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  Right?
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  So that soothe, I made that for singers.
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  I made it for singers and for immunity, for protecting your voice, for cold and flu season,
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  for all of it.
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  And I don't know if you could see, but you could read some of those ingredients on there.
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  Do you see how many are in there?
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  How many ingredients do we have on here?
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  Do you see if you look at the ingredients?
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  But I could tell you just from my head.
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  I'm I'm
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  gonna know.
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  Echinacea, eucalyptus, right, ginger root, turmeric, chamomile, orange, right, natural
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  citrus.
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  I mean, all these are just chemicals haven't touched them.
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  They're picked.
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  There's not one thing on here that I can't pronounce, Carmine.
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  Right.
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  Right.
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  I mean, a lot better drinking it.
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  That's what you're putting into your body.
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  Right?
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  And so to get the blends right took a takes a lot of work.
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  It really does.
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  Well, not just on the research and development side to craft the brew itself, but then on the
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  manufacturer side to make sure that these blends are consistent.
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  You know, for Soothe, it it comes into the bags, but some of these other ones are mixed
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  whole in the bag themselves.
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  So you're getting you know, there there's a lot of science and a a lot of care that's taken
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  into the packaging as well, not just in the bags that don't contain, you know, bleached and
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  and microplastics and just all the things that you don't even think about.
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  Even if your tea is organic or healthy, they don't say anything about the bags that they put
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  it in.
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  Right?
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  So there's just so much care has been taken in each and every cup, and it really comes out not
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  just in the flavor, but in the way that it makes you feel drinking it.
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  Yes.
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  Yep.
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  And that's what's most important.
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  Right?
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  The constant nutrition for the body.
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  And I drink pots in a day.
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  You know, I do drink big pots.
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  My refrigerator's full of natural iced teas.
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  So it it's just they're incredible.
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  They really are.
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  We are getting there.
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  My wife is actually in the process where right now she's still just, like, trying each one,
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  but eventually she's gonna settle on a couple of favorites.
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  She definitely, loved the spa day, which I know is maybe, going off the shelves for a little
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  while here, but, she said she'll take everything that you still have left, as soon as
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  possible.
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  And, she loves that it it naturally, you know, for whatever reason.
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  She likes it.
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  It turns blue.
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  Right?
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  You know, it turns a little blue because of the blueberries or yeah.
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  And, she likes blue stuff.
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  Right?
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  She likes blue drinks.
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  I don't know what it is, but how nice to have something that attains that without having all
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  of the food dyes and everything else that she's using currently.
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  Well, tell her to put a splash of lemon in it, and it'll turn purple.
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  The blue magically turns to purple.
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  But so so this is a a really good point.
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  When I came first to Amazon, I eventually I started with five SKUs and I developed about
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  20.
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  And I had to learn the hard way, right, that Amazon truly is the most competitive
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  marketplace in the world.
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  Who am I that people are just gonna come rushing to Pure and Easy Tea, see us buy all of
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  our products, and so on.
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  And it's sad for me that I had to take down so many products from Amazon because you just
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  can't compete with them all.
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  It costs way too much to advertise.
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  You know, we just completed our second full year of business and really it was this past
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  December that just pushed us to profitability.
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  So think about that.
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  I I started, like, three more than three and a half years ago and took two years of business
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  to just of selling product, two full years of selling product to just turn profitable.
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  Yeah.
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  To make a dollar.
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  Yeah.
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  Right.
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  And then some of the blends, like, of my favorite blends, I can't even sell anymore
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  because the company is not big enough yet where it did take on to the masses and they're buying
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  them all.
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  And that was really sad for me.
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  It's like, wow.
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  The market just doesn't know yet.
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  They just don't know.
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  You know?
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  So so one good thing is our biggest seller now proved to be our gift box.
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  And the gift box has 10 different blends in it, And that sold incredibly well over the holiday
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  period.
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  That's what drove us to profitability.
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  And now our company's getting the emails.
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  Oh, well, where can I just buy this one?
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  You could've last year.
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  You're you're a little too late.
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  And now I'm hearing it with the spa day as well and, you know, with your wife.
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  And, yes, spa day is a a great blend, fruity with natural real freeze dried pear,
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  unsweetened fruits in it, and great iced tea.
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  It's a great cold brew, great iced tea, but I I just can't make it anymore.
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  Who knows?
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  Maybe one day we'll pick up and these SKUs come back.
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  Well, and let's dip in a little bit on the business side of that because I don't think a
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  lot of people would understand the manufacturing of these and the levels that
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  you're having to work with and the investment that you're having to make into the
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  manufacturing and the packaging of these to then have them sitting around and then take an
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  exorbitant amount of money to not just produce, but now to market those for them to not sell.
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  It's very easy for something to become a total loss.
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  Right.
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  Oh my god.
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  It it it really is.
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  And the biggest thing and you might be aware of this as well, but just the cost to advertise
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  now on social media, it's astronomical.
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  I mean, it became so high that it drove direct to consumer companies back to brick and mortar
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  shops.
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  Right?
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  So ten years ago, you could advertise and market your company so cheaply on Google,
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  Facebook, and so on.
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  The ads went so far.
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  And then they all realized, wow.
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  These companies are making so much money on our platforms.
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  We're gonna raise our prices.
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  And their advertising costs increased eight x.
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  800% they went up driving all of the profits out of businesses.
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  And so it it's very, hard to advertise on those platforms.
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  Even when I first went to Amazon, the first few months in business, there's a metric you look
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  at and it's called advertising cost of sales.
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  Okay?
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  So for every sales dollar you take in, how much are you spending in advertising?
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  And when I first started, you know, no one told me, like, okay.
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  Here's your products.
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  You're on Amazon.
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  The world's gonna come to you now.
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  Right?
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  No no one told me.
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  But our advertising cost of sales back then were at a 110% for the first three months.
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  That means if we sold $10,000 worth of goods, we spent 11,000 on Amazon to sell them.
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  Right?
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  Yeah.
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  And
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  so now Does it
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  take a does it take a math genius to figure out that that's not gonna work long term?
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  No.
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  You're not factoring any any this is just advertising.
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  You're not factoring in your cost of goods, your bills, everything.
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  Right?
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  So it's like two to one.
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  You're spending almost to sell a product.
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  You're spending twice as much to manufacture and create it than for what the price you could
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  sell it at.
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  Yep.
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  I mean, it's just so different.
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  Liquidating your own product at retail at your highest retail value.
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  Right?
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  Exactly.
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  So and so those were the challenges.
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  And now I feel, we're at that point.
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  We fulfilled 30,000 orders in those first two years.
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  We're growing at a 100%.
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  It's nationally accepted.
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  And so now it's about just trying to get more exposure, continuing to let it grow
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  organically.
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  But we're a small business.
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  We're still very small.
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  So just like the artists you're interviewing.
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  Right?
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  A lot of I mean, it's the same type of thing.
• 25:22
  We're all at the same level trying to grow, trying to make it in a good way when we're
• 25:28
  loving what we do.
• 25:29
  So I love the synergy all around.
• 25:32
  Yeah.
• 25:32
  Well and and exactly what you talked about is what we are you're looking for multipliers now.
• 25:38
  You know what it costs you to just one for one try to digitally market this product and sell
• 25:44
  on Amazon.
• 25:46
  And you know that the margins aren't there, without having a loyal fan base there to do it.
• 25:54
  Now you can rely a little bit on repeat customers and people, you know, maybe a
• 25:57
  subscription program or, you know, a fan club of the tea where people are, you know, the
• 26:02
  retention of the customer, but also having someone like myself and others and hopefully
• 26:08
  more of our artists inside of the scene as ambassadors for the product that gives you a
• 26:14
  little bit of authority out there without the massive ad spend and to lower that cost of
• 26:20
  acquiring a new customer substantially.
• 26:23
  Yep.
• 26:24
  But truly, it's about a win win.
• 26:26
  Right?
• 26:27
  So everything I look for is purpose driven.
• 26:30
  I follow I have a lot of good intuition and always follow my gut.
• 26:35
  Right?
• 26:35
  It it's a win win.
• 26:36
  I mean, you want good people, good ambassadors of the product.
• 26:42
  You wanna reach people, and you wanna reach it in a pure way, like the tennis world that I'm
• 26:47
  in love with as well.
• 26:49
  I mean, I wish I had the funds to just sponsor every tennis event and be there.
• 26:54
  It's like, oh my god.
• 26:55
  You see certain things like Red Bull.
• 26:58
  Red Bull at a tennis event.
• 26:59
  Are are you kidding me?
• 27:02
  Who could play five hours of tennis drinking Red Bull?
• 27:04
  Your heart would explode loaded with chemicals.
• 27:07
  Right?
• 27:08
  We should be the ones, you know, at the event, right, full of nutrition.
• 27:14
  So I I I believe we're on our way and we'll eventually get there.
• 27:19
  But this is, you know, just a great perk along the way all around.
• 27:25
  Well, and what we're touching on in this relationship that we're forming is actually on
• 27:30
  a much greater scale, something that's happening across the board in media and
• 27:36
  influencer economy that we live in now.
• 27:39
  These influencers have the attention.
• 27:41
  So it's now forming relationships with people that don't break the bank, that don't run on a
• 27:46
  CPM model necessarily because downloads and views don't necessarily equal sales, influence
• 27:53
  does.
• 27:54
  And that's why I I think we have both seen the wins in this.
• 27:57
  For me, I get access to a product that maybe I can't afford to go out and to buy on the
• 28:04
  shelves every week, but I get to use this product.
• 28:07
  And now by telling other people about it, not only do I, you know, retain the product and
• 28:12
  maybe a little bit of money, but now I have a relationship with a company that we're helping
• 28:17
  to grow as well.
• 28:18
  And over time, as we both grow, maybe there's more support that can come down the line to
• 28:23
  help us with the events that we want to do.
• 28:25
  Now we are not the US Open.
• 28:27
  Right?
• 28:28
  But we may be able to to form these events that get these products in front of maybe a few 100
• 28:35
  to begin with and leveling up to a few thousand.
• 28:39
  And not just being a drink that's available, but being the official drink of the scene
• 28:44
  projects.
• 28:45
  And for me, that's where I see it.
• 28:48
  And now, for me, I don't have to go to an alcohol company or a Red Bull or one of these,
• 28:55
  companies that have massive marketing budgets on Monster Energy or, you know, god forbid, any
• 29:01
  of these companies that are harming people, you know, albeit sometimes in small ways.
• 29:07
  That's not the pharmaceutical industry, but that we can get behind a product that is
• 29:12
  actually extending people's lives and is making people healthier down to a very cellular
• 29:19
  biological, area.
• 29:22
  And that's what I love about our relationship and where we go from here.
• 29:27
  Yeah.
• 29:28
  100%.
• 29:29
  That's awesome.
• 29:31
  I see it the same way.
• 29:32
  Very good.
• 29:35
  Carmine, where can everyone find the products online?
• 29:39
  I have the video queued up here as our outro, the brand video, so people are gonna learn a
• 29:44
  little bit more as well.
• 29:45
  But a chance for you to kinda plug, where other, you know, maybe influencers or other
• 29:50
  brands that are interested in working with you for their events, they can find you, and and
• 29:55
  I'll let you get out of here.
• 29:56
  Yeah.
• 29:57
  No.
• 29:57
  I mean, pureandeasytea.com.
• 30:00
  That's the best place to go.
• 30:02
  There's an email.
• 30:03
  You could reach sales@pureandeasytea.com.
• 30:08
  Everything will sift through me.
• 30:11
  Register on the website and, yeah, just help wherever you can if you have an interest.
• 30:17
  It's great.
• 30:20
  Fantastic.
• 30:20
  Well, Carmine, we're gonna talk more every day.
• 30:24
  I'm gonna keep you around after the show, and we're gonna chat a little bit while I have you
• 30:28
  as well.
• 30:29
  But say hi to the wife and dogs for me.
• 30:31
  And you guys have a great rest of your day.
• 30:35
  Alright.
• 30:35
  Thank you.
• 30:36
  You too, Bubba.
• 30:40
  Imagine capturing the raw essence of nature with its infinite color and beauty.
• 30:50
  Now, envision turning that into something truly transformative.
• 30:55
  Pure and easy tea cultivates the goodness of nature's bounty into fuel for your body.
• 31:02
  We are what we drink.
• 31:06
  Pure and easy tea, the pure nourishment your body craves.