Seth Goldman's Success Story

Co-Founder of Honest Tea

Seth Goldman is the Co-Founder of Honest Tea, a company, specialized in making bottled tea from real tea leaves instead of lower quality dust. Seth was in the habit of drinking liquids a lot due to his athletic lifestyle. Whenever he ran or played basketball, he found himself looking for a drink that was neither too tasteless nor too sweet.

In 1997, after a run with one of his old classmates in New York City, they ended up concocting a drink to exactly their specific taste. This is when the idea of developing a new beverage was born in Seth’s mind. He contacted his business school professor, Barry Nalebuff, who also shared his passion for concocting drinks of different kinds.

At this time Barry was just back from India, where he had done a case study of the tea industry. During it, he found that most American companies purchased the lower quality dust for bottling. So he had decided even before Seth called him, that he would make bottled tea with real tea leaves. Barry had even thought of a name – Honest Tea. When Seth finally called Barry, the timing couldn’t have been better. They immediately decided to go for it. Seth liked the name and thought it was the best name for a natural tea brand that would endeavour to forge an honest relationship with its customers.

Seth spent the next few weeks in his kitchen preparing different batches of tea. He created a bottle with a mockup label and met with the folks at Fresh Fields to sell his new brand. They immediately liked it and ordered 15,000 bottles on the spot. Seth was at a loss as to how he would be able to produce such a high volume, but he grabbed the offer nevertheless. That is how Honest Tea got started over 12 years back in February 1998.

June the same year, the first batch of bottles from Honest Tea hit the shelves of Fresh Fields. By this time, tea production had moved from Seth’s kitchen to a facility in Buffalo, N.Y. The first year’s revenue was around $250,000. The very next year, sales crossed the $1 million mark. The company had added more varieties to their menu and the products were now being sold through a variety of retailers such as Giant, Wild Oats, Food Emporium and Harris Teeter apart from Fresh Fields.

In 2009, the sales crossed $47 million.