Are you a tea lover, looking for a more healthy option for tea then check out Teaglad.

Teaglad is an eCommerce store owned by Alfred Mai that sells Matcha green tea that they claim to be the healthiest tea on earth that contains 137x more antioxidants than regular green tea.

"Teaglad was founded based on a realization that finding high-quality specialty tea was much harder than it needed to be. As the popularity of tea is growing, we don't want to capitalize on a trend, but instead we want to ensure that people who do join the tea movement pick the best choices for themselves."

All Teaglad products come from actually where they originate like their Matcha green tea comes from the heartland of Japan.

Well, talking about the benefits of the Matcha green tea from Teaglad, it helps one:

• Lose Weight - Suppresses appetite, increases metabolism and boosts fat oxidation
• Boost Immune System - Aids in bacteria immunity and helps prevent brain and heart diseases
• Improve Skin - Fights UV radiation and other radicals before they can damage your skin
• Increase Happiness - Reduces anxiety and modulates serotonin, improving mood and thoughts

To know more about Teaglad, read on our exclusive interview with Alfred:

1. Hi Alfred! Please introduce yourself to our readers.

Thanks for the opportunity to share my story! I'm excited to talk about the journey I've had starting up and growing Teaglad. I've always been an entrepreneur at heart and have been glued to the internet ever since I received my first computer as a kid. I was extremely determined to join the ranks of people "making it big online" so I first started writing blogs and creating info sites - putting ads on them to monetize, but the process was long and slow, and the revenue was extremely small. With my professional background in performance online marketing, I decided to do it bigger and dived straight into starting my own eCommerce store and directly managing profit on ad spend.

2. Tell us something about 'Teaglad'. What inspired you to come-up with 'Teaglad'?

I grew up drinking tea and it was part of my cultural upbringing so I learned from an early age to appreciate not only the taste of tea, but all the health benefits that come from drinking tea (fun fact: tea is the second most drank beverage in the world - second only to water). After a trip to Japan, I came back home to the United States trying to find Matcha green tea, a traditional Japanese green tea which has more antioxidants than any other tea, but had an extremely hard time finding it back home. If I had a hard time finding it in a city like San Francisco, I can't even imagine how difficult it would be in other parts of the country - so I decided to fill that void  and started teaglad.com, focused on selling Matcha green tea.

3. What makes 'Teaglad' so different from all the other tea brands available in the market these days?

I've tried Matcha green tea at the larger tea retailers out there and it honestly was a pretty low-grade form of Matcha. I think being a mainstream large retailer, they jumped quickly on the Matcha green tea hype without (or hoping their average customers wouldn't know) about how sophisticated Matcha tea can really be. There are many different grades of the tea and it can get confusing. The difference with Teaglad is that Matcha is our initial main focus and we have poured all our resources into finding the best quality Matcha straight from Japan.


Some of the main factors when I was trying to decide on a name for the store was that it had to be easily memorable, made sense as to what the store sold, was a bit witty, and (of course) was available to be registered as a domain name. After consulting with friends and family, I decided to combine two short words that embodied everything we stood for: "tea" and "glad". As cliche as it sounds, it represents the happiness you get when drinking our tea.

5. You have been selling products online for a long time. What kind of products do you think get more buyers easily?

I think its less about the products you sell and more about where you find your potential customers. I've seen people make tens of thousands of dollars selling hair weaves online and I've seen others lose money trying to sell the same products. The focus should be on whether or not you're able to acquire customers profitably and less so on the exact type of product. Of course, finding newer products that are trending would definitely help as competition is usually a bit weaker!

6. How do you see the advent of eCommerce and now mCommerce? Share with us your experience as an etailer.

I think that eCommerce has matured a lot since it's earlier days and there's no questioning that this industry has much more room for growth. Online shopping has become the norm now and most people, at least compared to a decade ago, are very familiar and comfortable with the idea of buy something on the web. Now mCommerce is going to be the interesting thing to watch. It's no secret that the world is shifting towards mobile and that the mobile ecosphere is where every company is putting their focus on. However, its also well understood with us online commerce folks that mCommerce is still not a matured platform for us to really take seriously right now. Countless studies and tests show that conversion rates on mobile is very weak and in the mobile advertising world, competition against a more mature ecosphere like mobile app downloads is nearly impossible to beat for mCommerce stores. Until there is an easier system of payment like they have in the mobile app world, mCommerce is going to be taking a backseat.


Since my professional experience has been in performance acquisition marketing, I've focused Teaglad's advertising efforts on online performance display ads with a very tight watch on ROAS (return on ad spend). As an online marketer, for me, the most important types of promotions are the ones that you can track the performance of. I personally wouldn't spend hundreds of dollars for an offline billboard campaign or a video campaign in the hopes of it going viral - I like to focus my spend on efforts that I can see first hand the direct return I can get back. However, I do believe in word-of-mouth promotion because you don't necessarily have to spend money on that - you just need to provide a good product and let people do the work for you and even if you set up word-of-mouth campaigns like we have such as a refer-a-friend campaign, you don't really need to spend a lot of money there too. Simply place referral campaigns post-checkout at the thank you page and you'll be surprised how many people will actually share with people they know. This is essentially free exposure that can only help your store.

8. You must have received many compliments for 'Teaglad'. Which one do you cherish the most?

It's always good to hear people say that our tea was delicious but the ones that really solidify what I'm doing is when I hear people tell me that they've changed their lifestyle around and it all started with the tea. Tea has tremendous health and weight loss benefits but it isn't a magical elixir that will fix all your problems with one drink, but what it does help with is to push people into looking at their diet and lifestyle as a whole and make genuine strides to a better and healthier life. Those compliments are the ones that makes me realize that what I'm doing is more than just starting an eCommerce store.

9. 'Teaglad' is doing great. After being in business for only 4 months, the revenue figure is just unbelievable, how does it feels?

It's not celebration time yet for me - exceeding revenue targets have only solidified that there is a demand out there and now I have shifted into high gear focusing on growing the business. I feel more excited than ever knowing that there is potentially a huge opportunity but aside from that I'd much rather be focused on building up Teaglad into being a serious eCommerce store for specialty tea. I'm on guard and optimistic about growth but I also know that anything can happen, so no time to relax and feel happy or proud of small milestones at such an early stage.

10. What were some of the hurdles you faced in while working on 'Teaglad' and how did you surmount them?

The biggest hurdle for me was to be able to prove that I can generate revenue with very limited investment. I think the biggest mistake any entrepreneur can make is to invest inefficiently too much money into something they're not sure can even generate cash. So from the get-go I took no outside investment and I worked with what I personally put in - it was no easy task trying to get all the necessary components in setting up a fully functioning eCommerce store and gathering all the products and packaging requirements without a large pool of cash but that struggle taught me how to spend as efficiently as possible.

11. What are your future plans with 'Teaglad'? Should we expect to see some more variants?

I started off selling only one tea first, Matcha, because I wanted to keep my focus down on the product as well as the marketing campaigns for that one product. Being an early-stage start-up, I didn't want to stretch myself and the team too thin but of course once we're satisfied with the Matcha campaigns, we're going to use the data that we have and replicate that success with other teas.

12. What piece of advice would you like to pass on to aspiring sellers and entrepreneurs?

The most important advice I would have is to spend your money wisely. I am a firm believer in having a lean start-up and to not overspend money without proving that your start-up can even generate revenue. I've had plenty of failed ideas and businesses before and I was able to walk away from them because I didn't sink everything I had into them. Ideas might sound great and you might think you have the best plan to execute that idea, but until it is put into motion, you probably haven't even thought of a fraction of all the things that could go wrong or the estimates that you've overestimated. It's always best to start off slow and at every revenue target, reinvest and grow.

Alfred, thank you for being with us. It was a wonderful experience learning so many things about you and Teaglad. Our best wishes are always with you!