How Empathy, Compassion, and Openness Built a Global Brand for PerfectTed | RTS 2026

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back.

This is omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton and we are coming to you live once again from the Retail Technology show in London from the exclusive Fusion podcast studio.

Now, my next guest I'm very excited to introduce.

We were just chatting.

We had to stop and say, oh, man, I need to hit record in this conversation because we're having so much fun before we let things get going on too long.

But I want to introduce Marissa Poster, the co founder of Perfect Ted.

Marisa, welcome to omnitok for the first time.

Thank you for having me, Chris.

I'm so excited to be here.

Yeah.

So I have to ask, to start, you know, what is the personal story that led you to create Perfect Ted?

And tell us about Perfect Ted too.

Right.

So I had a revelation about 10 years ago when I was studying at university, I was heavily addicted to caffeine through coffee and loads of energy drinks.

I'm sure you might be able to relate.

Oh, yeah, I've had like six cups today.

Oh, okay.

There you go.

Yeah.

How do you feel?

Not great.

Yeah, great.

Not going to lie.

Not.

Not going to lie.

Not great.

So.

So I was like, you and I would feel shaky and then suffer those inevitable crashes.

I'm sure you can also relate, hence why you've had six cups, right?

Yep.

So a friend who had just traveled to Japan with her family said, I learned about this type of green tea called matcha.

Apparently it has a lot of caffeine, but monks would use it before they meditated to give them energy and focus before these long meditation sessions.

Okay.

So I kind of thought, okay, you know what?

If it worked for monks, maybe it'll work for my studies.

And when I tried it, I was lucky enough that somewhere in the West Philadelphia area they actually had good matcha.

But when I tried it, I felt more focused, more energized.

I didn't feel anxious.

And as someone who suffers from crippling anxiety at times, that was really powerful for me when I moved over to the UK about five years ago, because as you can tell from my accent, I am American.

Like, that surprised me.

Yeah.

When I moved over here, I was really surprised by how few matcha options there were on the market, and it was just completely inaccessible.

So 45 days after moving here, we really created Perfect Head to resolve my own problem and bring matcha to the market in formats that are accessible, like ready to drink cans, like Matcha lattes, pods that are compatible with an espresso and our powder, of course.

But we've.

We've really tried to bring you Matcha in every format possible.

So, Marissa, is that a good philosophy?

What would a monk do?

I feel like.

I feel like it is.

I feel like.

I feel like that's just something you can kind of take to the bank 100%.

Seems like it's worked for you.

I mean, I read a book.

I forget where it was from, but it talked about your monkey brain versus your monk brain.

And I'm always trying to channel my monk brain, and I definitely feel closer to that when I'm drinking Matcha.

Right, right.

Okay.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Well, the other part, the reason I kind of said that I wanted to share that story.

It's a great story, but, you know, you've also said that people resonate with personal stories.

And a lot of some founders can be private, some can be uncomfortable with that.

Many, there's many that aren't.

But, you know, it's a deliberate choice.

So what instinct did you have that said, you know, that's the way you think you want to go with this brand?

So part of the reason why Matcha is so powerful for me is because of my ADHD and anxiety.

And in the beginning of the journey, I wasn't very comfortable with sharing that.

I think for very long, mental health or neurodivergent conditions have been seen as something to conceal.

And there's definitely a stronger stigma around it.

Less so now, but there definitely was at the time, and I didn't feel comfortable.

And it ultimately shifted because that was the authentic story and it felt unusual to lean into anything else.

It just didn't feel right.

So when we went on Dragon's Den, which is the UK's version of Shark Tank, and I basically revealed to 7 million people across the nation that I have ADHD.

Really?

And I'm a founder, and this is why.

And this is my business.

Yeah.

The response was tremendous from people who also have ADHD who said, I've never felt represented by someone who's so vocal about it, or mothers who said, my daughter has ADHD and now she has a role model to look up to.

And so by.

By sharing, I recognized how powerful that was in making others feel.

Feel seen.

And in doing so, I think it increases kind of affection, brand love and affection.

And I also think it just helps people more generally to know they're not alone.

So we have my story on the side of can.

I'm very public about.

Okay.

And actually, it's really important.

You can see maybe there.

Yeah, hold it up.

Yeah, why not have a note from our founder.

Here's the founder.

That's me.

But the reason why is because when someone picks up the can, I want them to understand, like, where it is coming from.

And I actually think they're then able to, they're able to have a closer connection with not only the product, but the brand.

Yeah.

The word I'm coming, the word I'm hearing resonated in my head as you're talking is empathy.

Like that appearance on Dragon's Den.

I almost said Shark Tank.

Dragon's Den, you know, unleashed empathy for you and for the product.

Do you agree?

I've always been a very empathetic person.

My mom unfortunately passed a few months ago.

Thank you.

And she had bipolar disorder for most of her life.

And in doing so, and watching someone you love kind of struggle with their own mental health so much, you develop such compassion for that person.

And you understand, you know, not everything is in your control and you have to try to empathize.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, and it's, it's also, you know, that empathy is part of what bonds people to brands, you know, at the end of the day.

Which gets me to my next question I want to ask you, which was, you guys don't spend a lot on advertising, right?

No.

Yeah.

Do not.

How.

How have you.

How do you do that?

How do you make that?

How do you make that?

Because there's, there's a lot of brands out there and they're all spending money on Facebook ads and everything else, you know, till the cows come home.

How have you been able to do that?

So there's this brand expert.

I just, I didn't, I haven't read all of his books, but I know about some of his principles and his name is Byron Sharp and he talks a lot about mental availability and physical availability.

Okay.

And I think that with digital advertising, you do a really good job of increasing mental availability because you're constantly seeing that brand on your phone.

Like, how many times are you going to get an ad for that product and then think, okay, I might buy that.

But then for us, we went down the physical availability route and today we're available in nearly 40,000 sites across 50 plus countries.

And having that shelf space is prime real estate.

It's real estate that we will never give up.

And we will constantly iterate to try to always keep the perfect head brand there.

And it's real estate that we've since expanded, which is brilliant because we've been able to introduce new products in.

I think that is the most valuable Real estate, because consumers shop physically.

We live in an IRL world.

Right.

And as much as digital advertising is effective, and it is, and we will begin to do more of it.

To date, we've, we've not really had to because we have such great physical availability.

Wherever you go, wherever our customer goes, we're there.

Right.

We're here.

We're at the festival.

We're in the, we're.

We're in the goodie bags.

We're here.

Yeah.

And you're telling that story authentically, going back to what we talked about in the origin too.

All right, I want to make sure I got my numbers right here before I let you go, but 30,000 stores roughly.

Closer to 40 now.

40.

Wow.

Geez.

Okay, my data's out of date already.

50 Countries.

Yeah.

Wow.

All right, what's been the chat?

That's a lot.

So what's been the challenges of going from UK to 50 countries?

How much sleep are you getting?

What do you know now that you didn't know then?

Yeah, we've had.

It's been, been insane growth, truthfully.

Year one, we did around £200,000 in sales.

Okay.

That was four years ago.

In our fourth year, we did £30 million in actual turnover.

And this year we're targeting 100.

So it's been like, woo.

Which we're so grateful for.

Good problem to have, right?

Yeah, it's a good problem to have.

But what have we learned by doing so?

I mean, so much what not to do for sure, like spend on out of home campaigns that don't convert.

I mean, we've, we've actually been fortunate to avoid that.

But that was really.

Because we scrutinized the opportunity.

I think that's a very specific one.

But we've learned that, you know, you need to hire faster than you think.

Right.

Even though we live in an AI world now.

And of course we actually have an AI and automation team in house, which is brilliant.

But regardless, I do believe that the world will still run on people and people buy from people.

Our sales team all, you know, need to be staffed properly.

So I think hire fast, fire fast if it doesn't work out, really like be rigorous.

In your hiring process though, we use a culture test, which is actually a program that Steven Bartlett, one of the Dragons, created.

And it's brilliant.

It works really well for us, putting potential candidates into hypothetical situations so we're able to see how they'd actually act in the business.

That's been great.

And then also work with brilliant partners.

We're really fortunate to have the backing and support of the largest retailers in the UK and across Europe and Australia, the Middle east, all over.

And by finding the people that really understand the brand and understand the product proposition, we've managed to build this community.

It's not just a transaction.

It is a relationship.

And I always say transactions are temporary, but relationships are permanent, so.

So work on those relationships and find great people.

Yeah, well, that's.

I mean, that's really good advice, you know, and I think you can never.

You can never focus on talent too much, you know, and at the end of the day, regardless of how retail is changing, you sell a product, and you're gonna need to get that product manufactured and put on shelves, and that's gonna require people, so.

Absolutely.

So.

All right, well, what's next?

What's on the horizon for you?

What are you hoping to accomplish with the balance of the year?

Oh, wow.

We have a lot on the horizon.

We have new geographies that we were discussing.

Discussing before.

We have new products.

We have so much to go after, but really, it's continuing the mission of spreading positive energy through Matcha Green Tea and making its benefits accessible to everyone, everywhere through our various product formats.

Awesome.

Well, thank you for taking the time to interview with us.

It was a real pleasure.

It was a pleasure.

We're supposed to be the founder of Perfect Ted.

Yes, yes.

It's been a blast.

We'll have to have you back maybe when we're here next year.

Since you're.

You live in London, right?

I live in London, but I'm back and forth all the time.

I just got off a plane yesterday.

Yeah.

You're in Phoenix, my hometown, right?

Yes, Arizona.

Lovely state.

Beautiful sunsets.

Yeah, beautiful.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

The best.

The best.

Especially this time of year.

All right, well.

Yeah.

Well, thanks again.

It's a real pleasure.

Hopefully we'll do this again sometime.

And for all those watching, thanks to Vuzion and the Retail Technology show for making all these great interviews with all these fabulous people like Marissa possible.

And on behalf of all of us at omnitalk, as always, be careful out there.