Checking the clock for the umpteenth time in the last hour, Katherine Swift didn’t know what to do. Her mum Elizabeth was undergoing breast cancer surgery and time was dragging.
Terrified she was about to lose the entrepreneurial matriarch of her family, Katherine desperately needed someone to talk to as her mother lay on the operating table to give her some much-needed focus, hope and distraction.
Little did she know, that decision would have a profound impact on her and her mother. It was, she says, the first in a series of ‘OMG moments’ which, together, snowballed into the creation of her company which she fittingly called OMGTea.
And, while she has been on something of a rollercoaster ride with it post-launch – including an encounter with the dragons on BBC hit show Dragon’s Den, a visit to number 10 and OMGTea’s only wholesaler going into administration, costing the business tens of thousand of pounds – Katherine’s fortunes are flourishing as she drinks to the success of her matcha green tea company from her base in Brighton and Hove.
Today, celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Jennifer Anniston, Ryan Reynolds and Serena Williams are reportedly matcha devotees and attest to its anti-oxidising health benefits and feel good quality. But it’s been a long, hard slog for Katherine, 51, to get the company that she so believed in off the ground.
‘Nobody even knew what matcha was and, despite massive growth in popularity over the last few years, a lot of people still haven’t tried it today,’ the founder says.
‘The last ten years have been challenging. If I knew what it would be like when I started I’m not sure I would have done it, but I am so glad I did now.’
Katherine was working in event management in 2009 when her mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer at the age of 62.
‘My mum’s a proper matriarch,’ she tells Sussex Life. ‘I have three brothers and a sister and we were floored when she was diagnosed.
‘The day she was in hospital having her operation, I was all over the place worrying about her.’
To take her mind off the operation, Katherine picked up the phone to a high profile philanthropist and business contact she worked with at the time to talk about the judging day for an event she was organising.
‘Towards the end of the call, we got onto the subject of fundraising,’ she said. ‘He mentioned he was involved in a £5 million appeal for Breakthrough Breast Cancer, which has since been renamed Breast Cancer Now - the biggest breast cancer charity in the UK.
‘The hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end and I thought “OMG” as I told him about my mum.’
Katherine ended up running the multi-million pound appeal, identifying high net worth individuals and taking them around the research centre in Salford to see the breast cancer research that the charity was funding.
Her charity role connected her to Professor Michael Lisanti at the research centre who was passionate about antioxidants in our diets to prevent cancer cells growing.
‘I found out about the importance of antioxidants in our diets, particularly when fighting disease, and the high levels found in green tea,’ Katherine explains. ‘If my mum was going to drink any green tea, it had to be the best, and it was then that I discovered matcha.
‘I learned that during cultivation, four weeks before the Japanese tea harvest, tea growers cover the tea field to block out the sunlight, which encourages the plants to photosynthesize, boosting the nutrient levels to extraordinary levels, with the leaves becoming packed with chlorophyll and amino acids.
‘The tea is a powerhouse of nutrients – antioxidants, vitamins and minerals - and that was clearly going to have the biggest impact on Mum who was still recovering. I purchased some matcha direct from Japan and Mum and I started drinking it together every day. We felt great - Mum was taking back some control that her illness robbed from her and I was doing something positive to help.’
Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world, and there is a lot we can learn about healthier living from their lifestyle, says Katherine.
‘I felt totally compelled to spread the word. I had no intention of setting up a matcha green tea business but life has its twists and turns and that was my journey.’
So, in October 2014, OMGTea was born. ‘Matcha was still relatively unknown at the time and I felt so passionate about it and the potential it has to support a healthy lifestyle, that it was a no brainer.’
With an abundance of antioxidants, including the powerful EGCG (Epigallocatechin-3-gallate), it’s not surprising that matcha is often referred to as the superfood of all superfoods.
Studies on matcha have unearthed a wide variety of potential benefits, including lowering the risk of heart and liver disease, combatting free radical damage, regulating blood sugar levels and easing symptoms of IBS, and OMGTea has been involved in scientific studies, too.
‘We have been involved in a total of three studies with the University of Chichester, Acadia University (Canada) and Salford University regarding matcha and the impact on fat oxidation as well as the impact on breast cancer stem cells,’ Katherine says.
‘The latest fat oxidation study found that consuming OMGTea matcha during moderate exercise increases fat burning by 35% and the breast cancer study found that matcha has the potential to halt the propagation of breast cancer stem cells’ she claims. ‘The findings have been very encouraging and pave the way for future research.’
Katherine, a mother-of-two, said she started running the business small on the kitchen table with husband Jason helping with packaging the product, and invested £20,000 of her own money to launch her health company – at the same time as setting up The Healthy Life Foundation, a charity that funds research into age-related diseases.
Having promoted her matcha products via independent retailers in the Brighton area, she found the nation of tea drinkers slow to indulge in the matcha green tea option, but in January 2018 Katherine was approached by Dragon's Den to appear on the popular TV show.
Pitching to Dragons Touker Suleyman, Jenny Campbell, Tej Lalvani, Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones, Katherine was shocked when they all refused to invest.
‘It was a tough process but also extremely valuable to be able to talk about our OMGTea products and a market that felt like it was about to take off. But, as it turned out, matcha tea was still a relatively unknown product in the UK. Three of the five dragons weren't aware of what it was. So, it was a tall order to expect them to invest in a business that specialised in a product they were unfamiliar with.
‘While I may not have walked away with the investment, I was still confident about OMGTea. In fact, having survived the den, I felt I could do anything and was even more excited about the future.’
As things turned out, Katherine has worked from day one with suppliers AIYA Japan, the biggest producer of matcha in Japan who invested in her business last year having watched the growth of OMGTea, which is now stocked in Selfridges, Harvey Nichols and health food specialists Holland & Barrett.
In April this year, through her membership of Buy Women Built, a business movement supporting female-led brands, Katherine was invited to serve her organic matcha in a tea ceremony at 10 Downing St, where she was a guest of the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, who tried the tea herself.
Katherine is her product’s best advocate, getting up every single morning at 5am to make matcha for herself, Jason and sons Tom, 18, and Joe, 15.
As for mum Elizabeth, she is fighting fit, and practising daily yoga at home in Bolton, Lancashire.
‘My mum has an indomitable spirit and has an iron will,’ Katherine says. ‘She runs up and down stairs, eats very well and drinks lots of matcha tea.
‘If everyone drank a cup of matcha a day, I genuinely believe the world would be a better place.’
Read more details about the health benefits of matcha https://omgteas.co.uk/pages/health-benefits
