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CNBC
3 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
How a 25-year-old entrepreneur is using this Japanese concept to grow a successful matcha business
Angel Zheng is relying on the Japanese principle of "ikigai" to turn her passion for matcha — a powdered green tea with a unique taste and purported health benefits — into building what she hopes will be an iconic household brand of the future. At just 25 years old, Zheng has already owned at least five businesses — six, if you count her past as a social media influencer. Her latest endeavor may serve as the highest expression yet of her ikigai — which no less an authority than the Japanese government defines as "a passion that gives value and joy to life Zheng started her first two businesses — an e-commerce women's wear brand and recording studio — while she was still earning her undergraduate degree in business from Baruch College in New York. The clothing brand was an offshoot of her love of fashion, while the recording studio sprang up when she realized her co-founder, a music producer, was only using his space once or twice a week. In the years that followed, Zheng shuttered her first ventures, using the profits to open omakase sushi bars Moko and Shiso. The two fine dining spots garnered Zheng and her co-founder a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for the food and drink industry last year. But despite already making waves on New York's foodie scene, Zheng is far from finished. Her latest solo endeavor is Isshiki Matcha, a matcha-dedicated café located smack in the middle of Manhattan's trendy East Village neighborhood. Isshiki Matcha is unassuming from the outside — sharing the same space as Zheng's only other operating business, Moko, there's no sign anywhere on the storefront indicating its presence. But, if things go as Zheng plans, the café could one day be ground zero of a sprawling matcha enterprise. "When you think about coffee right now, you have those names like Lavazza, Illy, La Colombe. But when you close your eyes and think about matcha, it's such a new market that there aren't heritage brands yet. And that's what I want to be," Zheng told CNBC in an interview. More than an attempt to hop on the matcha bandwagon, Isshiki emerged from Zheng's own love for the drink. Matcha, a powder made from ground green tea leaves, originated in China but was refined into its current form in Japan. Its popularity has soared in recent years, especially among millennials and younger generations. Japan's matcha production in 2023 amounted to 4,176 tons—nearly three times more than the 1,471 tons made in 2010, the Japan Times reported, citing data from the Ministry of Agriculture. The same article quoted Kametani Tea saying it had increased its production by about 10% each year since 2019 just to keep up with demand. On Instagram, 8.8 million posts are tied to the hashtag ; on TikTok, 2 million. Celebrities from Dua Lipa to Gwyneth Paltrow to Jesssica Alba have publicly approved the drink, turning it into a cornerstone of the health and wellness movement. Matcha's popularity has swelled to the point where demand now outstrips supply, leading to a matcha shortage. Last fall, two well-known Kyoto tea companies, Ippodo and Marukyu Koyamaen, set strict purchase limits. These supply chain issues, combined with recent tariffs that threaten higher prices on imports, have caused Zheng many a headache in the past few weeks. Nevertheless, she remains steadfast in her mission to one day make Isshiki Matcha into a household name. Zheng, a first-generation Chinese immigrant, grew up on matcha, and credits the tea with helping bring her zen in an otherwise chaotic, entrepreneurial schedule. "Life demands so much from you — school, work, family, relationships, friendships. It's important to have pillars," she explained. "'Isshiki' means one pillar. You should have pillars in your day that ground you — like going to the gym, doing your skincare routine at night, making sure you have your time in the morning to make a matcha, or you come here and we make your morning matcha every day for you." This latest business, Zheng explained, feels different from her previous ventures — mainly because she believes that she has finally found her calling. And in pursuing something she's truly passionate about, Zheng has noticed pieces falling into place. "When you pour your love and heart into something, it's a very big difference, especially when it's something you consume like food," she said. "I have my purpose. There's this Japanese philosophy that I take to heart and live by every day, and it's called 'ikigai.' It means to find the thing that you're best at, that will help the most people and bring you the most joy, bring the world the most joy, and everything else will follow — the money, the success. If you chase money and success first, you're never going to have a fulfilling life." Zheng first came up with the idea to open a matcha café on New Year's Day 2024, when thinking through her resolutions for the year. During a trip to Japan soon after, she serendipitously happened to be seated at dinner next to the head of communications at a matcha farm. Since debuting early last year, Zheng has expanded Isshiki Matcha's presence through careful event curation and digital branding. A brand's online footprint can make it or break it, she told CNBC, which is why she still keeps up with influencing from time to time. "It helps a lot with the business," Zheng added. "I feel like — with social media and the landscape that we live in now — having a digital presence and digital currency is just as valuable as having a real-life presence." Isshiki serves between 100 to 300 customers daily between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Moko officially takes over the space beginning at 5 p.m., serving fresh sushi to sometimes as many as 150 customers. A digital and physical presence work in tandem, since Zheng publicizes the numerous events she hosts at Isshiki through her social media. Increasing the visibility of the local Asian community is also important to Zheng, many of whose events are free and open to the public. Many of the brands she's collaborated with have been Asian-owned or focused. Events she's hosted recently fit into the category, including a Lunar New Year party and a Valentine's Day popup with Asian dating app Yuzu. Other events have ranged from special morning matcha classes to a rave with a local DJ to capsule clothing collection launches to tea tasting classes. Zheng's influence in the New York community — online and in-person — has led Isshiki to host or cater events for brands including Uniqlo, Mastercard, Puma and Goop. Zheng credits her success to preparation, hard work and luck — which sometimes comes in the form of meeting the right person at the right time. Earlier this year, Zheng's next foray materialized after the owner of a bottled lemonade business, The Lucky Ox, another Asian beverage brand, walked into her café to pitch some of his products for her dinner menu. Zheng expressed interest in entering the ready-to-drink space, and the two soon collaborated on a new, bottled matcha lemonade. While Zheng already sells matcha powders wholesale, the motivation behind the ready-to-drink version was to create a convenient and easily accessible product. The matcha lemonade, which just launched a month ago, is already available in 120 stores, Zheng said, and is aimed at linking Isshiki as closely to matcha as La Colombe is to coffee. When part of being a successful business owner is who you know, Zheng said it's not necessarily a bad thing to suffer from the fear of missing out, or FOMO. In the past, she's found brand partnerships through other attendees at various events. In fact, she got her first internship after encountering the founder of a magazine company by chance. The two stopped to chat after realizing they were wearing the same perfume. "Literally, your network is your net worth. It gives me crippling anxiety to miss anything," Zheng laughed. It also pays to jump at unique opportunities when they arise. Last fall, Isshiki Matcha went viral after Zheng managed to import a shipment of the famous Olympic Village chocolate muffins to the U.S. Perseverance is also important, as when the Omicron variant of Covid-19 raged through New York City just one month after Moko's official opening. Now Zheng is at the point in her career where she can advise entrepreneurs first starting out, telling them to embody confidence and boldness. That's been especially important as a female entrepreneur: believing in her abilities, not selling herself short and advocating for any opportunities she's in the market for, Zheng said. Sometimes, Zheng has found it helpful when meeting potential business partners to not reveal her age upfront. "The best part of being Asian is that I can look the same age from like, 16 to 50," she joked. "So you don't know how old I am, and I've always carried myself this way."
Mint
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Mint
George Santos is the congressman America deserves
Editor's note: On May 10th federal prosecutors in New York unveiled 13 criminal charges against Mr Santos. The charges include wire fraud, money laundering, stealing public funds and lying to the House of Representatives. Mr Santos pled not guilty. This story was originally published on 17 January 2023. Why do the many lies of George Santos matter? Maybe some of Mr Santos's constituents, in a district stretching along the North Shore of Long Island, voted for him in November because they were impressed he was a volleyball star at Baruch College and worked at Goldman Sachs, though none of that is so. Maybe they voted for him because he claimed to be Jewish, though he says now, with Seinfeldian sangfroid, that he meant only that he was 'Jew-ish'. If such qualities did in fact seem like reasons enough to cast a ballot for someone, well, the voters deserve what they got. But those qualities were probably not why most voters supported him. During the campaign his opponent raised doubts about his biography, as did a local newspaper, the North Shore Leader, which noted an 'inexplicable' leap in his reported assets from zero to about $11m in two years. The national press exposed some of his shady business dealings, and Democrats branded him a 'flat-out liar'. The Leader went on to endorse the Democratic candidate, saying it wanted to support a Republican but that Mr Santos 'is so bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy that we cannot'. What seems certain is that, unlike the Leader, the majority of voters in New York's third district, which includes part of Donald Trump's home borough of Queens, did prefer a Republican regardless of how sketchy he might be. They were swept up in a wave of discontent that washed through the Democrat-dominated, troubled state of New York. The Republican agenda appealed to them, and Mr Santos, in his first votes, has supported it. But there is an even more troubling frame in which to view what Mr Santos calls his 'résumé embellishment'. The voters also preferred Mr Santos, by a margin of more than seven points, at least in spite of—though probably because of—a much more destructive and transparent whopper that he told, that Mr Trump won the 2020 presidential election. After running for the same seat in 2020 and losing, Mr Santos appeared at a rally in Washington on January 5th 2021, the day before the attack on the Capitol, to declare that his own election, along with Mr Trump's, had been stolen. Calling Mr Trump 'the best president in modern history since Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan', Mr Santos asked, 'Who here is ready to overturn the election for Donald J. Trump?' As a teller of tall tales, the man was not exactly hiding his light under a bushel. 'You can't make this stuff up!' Mr Santos declared at that rally— surely a contender for his most shameless lie. This is why the outrage of the press and the Democrats over Mr Santos is so poignant. Since he ran again, and won, they have not just torn away his veil of autobiographical humbug but turned his deceit into a national scandal. Yet given Mr Trump's enduring success at warping reality, this blow for justice seems even less satisfying than catching Al Capone for tax evasion. It is more like hounding one of Capone's accountants for jaywalking. None of this excuses Mr Santos. His lies do matter, but not really for what they reveal about him. That such a person should represent Americans in Congress is a national disgrace. But it is also fitting, because he represents something true and awful, particularly about the Republican Party, yet also about America, a nation lousy with misinformation, also known as deceit. 'In law and in journalism, in government and in the social sciences, deception is taken for granted when it is felt to be excusable by those who tell the lies and who tend also to make the rules,' Sissela Bok, a philosopher, wrote in her landmark book 'Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life'. Writing in the late 1970s after the deceptions of Watergate and the Vietnam war, Ms Bok was trying to make sense of the collapse of trust in American institutions. Ms Bok added a new introduction a decade later, after the Iran-Contra affair, and another a decade after that, once President Bill Clinton admitted he had lied about sex with an intern. Now—in the wake of the Iraq war and Mr Trump, Bernie Madoff, Q-Anon and Sam Bankman-Fried, after social media has turned so many Americans into deceptive brand ambassadors for themselves—it may be time for a fourth introduction. Without trust in veracity—'a foundation of relations among human beings'—institutions collapse, Ms Bok wrote. She placed particular responsibility for the fraying of trust on politicians, partly because political lies, even when thought trivial by those who tell them, spread so far and are so widely imitated. 'When political representatives or entire governments arrogate to themselves the right to lie, they take power from the public that would not have been given up voluntarily,' she wrote. That is what Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House, is doing by defending Mr Santos as innocent until proven guilty of a crime. In prioritising his fragile majority, Mr McCarthy is conceding that power matters more to him than veracity. The speaker has blown a chance to restore some trust, in himself and Congress. Joe Biden has a chance of his own. He is not the résumé-embellisher he was when he first ran for president, in 1987, and claimed degrees and honours he had not earned. But he still tells the occasional fable about himself, and he has also lied at points about the economy and the pandemic. Now it appears the White House misled Americans by withholding news for two months that classified documents were found in Mr Biden's private office and home, the first of them almost a week before the midterms. There is no sign Mr Biden deliberately held back documents, as Mr Trump did. But unless the White House comes up with a better explanation for its long silence than it has so far, Mr Biden should own the deception, and apologise. Mr Biden is no George Santos or Donald Trump, but deceiving the public to advance a political agenda should not be graded on the curve. It is always wrong, and America could do with a demonstration of virtue in leadership.
Forbes
01-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Crafted By Generations: How Susanna And Sai Chow Built A Brand On Love And Legacy
Susanna and Sai Chow - Co-Founders of Susanna Chow Every year, on Mother's Day, I highlight a business founded by a mother and daughter. This year is particularly special, as it coincides with AAPI Month. I had the privilege of sitting with Susanna Chow and her mother, Sai Chow, the dynamic duo behind the women-led, family-owned luxury outerwear, dresses, and bridal brand Susanna Chow. Susanna and Sai launched their business with only $500, just enough to build a website. They didn't have outside investors, fashion industry connections, or inventory. However, they possessed firm conviction, resilience, and a shared belief that fashion should be intentional and well-crafted. 'We started this brand with a simple mission: to create a sustainable luxury label rooted in timeless design and ethical values. Our mantra: Buy once, wear forever.' Sai immigrated to the U.S. from Hong Kong in 1970 at age 21, speaking little English. Determined to succeed in her new country, she enrolled at Baruch College to study accounting while working in New York City's Chinatown garment factories. Beading and sewing run deep in the Chow family: Sai learned the craft from her mother, who supported their family by beading and sewing garments at home after World War II. Sai later earned a master's degree from Pace University while working full-time as a manager in Citigroup's margin and derivatives department—and raising three children. A breast cancer survivor and a lifelong learner, she remains, to this day, deeply engaged in craft and community, teaching beadwork and origami at senior centers. Susanna and Sai's story challenges the traditional norms and celebrates reinvention. Before founding their brand, Susanna worked in global beauty marketing for MAC and NARS. At Estée Lauder, she led digital marketing strategy and collaborated with global e-commerce teams. Susanna knew what an ideal user experience should be like, but had never built a website from scratch. "Knowing what you want is one thing, but executing is a different game," she says. One core lesson from her corporate career stuck with her: "Everyone brings their skills to the table. That's how you build a great team." Susanna embraced Estée Lauder's strength-based leadership philosophy and continues to apply it today. Since their very first days, everything has been made-to-order or produced in small, sustainable batches. "We didn't want to just focus on what we were making, but how we were making it," says Susanna. Their commitment to craftsmanship extends to eco-conscious packaging and minimizing waste in every step of the production process. The original spark for the brand came when Susanna visited her mother's apartment—now their studio—and saw a table full of beaded tissue boxes and dolls. Her marketing instincts said, 'We can make handbags out of this.' In 2018, the two began creating handmade prototypes. Their first significant retail order came from Tribeca Boutique Ever After. As the business began to grow, Susanna left her corporate career to build her namesake brand alongside her mother. Ariana Grande - Saturday Night Live (SNL) While the handbags gave them their start, a coat named JoJo, after Susanna's sister Joanna, changed everything. Joanna couldn't find a stylish maternity coat during the pandemic, so Susanna and Sai designed one. It became their bestseller, and the brand's pivot into outerwear took off. The outerwear pieces quickly went viral on Instagram. Celebrities like Ariana Grande and Nicky Hilton were spotted in their coats. Soon, the Chows expanded into full outerwear production and are now stocked in over 30 stores globally, including Revolve and Bloomingdale's. Their feather-trimmed Dorothy coat remains a standout. The Dorothy Coat Susanna Chow This spring, they launched their first bridal capsule collection. Designed and handmade in New York City, the collection honors generations of craftsmanship—her mother stitched Sai's wedding dress. Susanna carries that tradition forward with heirloom-quality gowns meant to last a lifetime. Bridal dresses range from $695 to $895, and coats from $595 to $1,695. Each piece is crafted with care, minimal waste, and zero overproduction. Susanna Chow Sai, now 71, remains the creative force behind the brand. She describes herself as a maximalist who designs intuitively rather than through sketching. She can create a pattern simply by visualizing the design. Susanna leads brand marketing, e-commerce, and styling. While their aesthetics sometimes differ, the creative tension results in some of their best work. "When we compromise, we create our most beautiful pieces," Susanna explains. Their deep ties to New York's Chinatown remain foundational. It's where Sai once worked in a garment factory while studying at Baruch and where the brand's studio operates today. Supporting the local community is central to their mission. Their story is more than just building a fashion business—it's about resilience, identity, and the power of family and legacy. "It's okay to feel scared when you try something new," Susanna says. "Let's normalize this fear, overcome it, and embrace it. Just push forward anyway." Much of that mindset, she adds, came from watching her mother overcome breast cancer and the sudden loss of her parents in a motor vehicle crash. "When faced with unimaginable life circumstances, it puts things into perspective. What do you have to lose? Or another way to think about it is—'Oh, but what if you fly?'" "She always says she's proud of me," Susanna reflects, 'but the reality is—I'm so proud of her. And the best part is, we're just getting started.' Sai's advice? "Keep going. Keep learning."
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ex-NYC Rep. George Santos sentenced to 7 years, 3 months in prison for scams, lies
NEW YORK — Republican fraudster George Santos, whose congressional career famously collapsed under the staggering weight of his lies and criminal schemes, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison Friday in a Long Island courtroom. The term marks the end of a staggering fall for the disgraced Queens politician, who broke down in tears when he heard his sentence. Santos, wearing a gray suit with blue sweater and tie, was also ordered to pay $373,749 in restitution to his victims. He was told to surrender to the court on July 25. Santos received the full sentence of 87 months that prosecutors were seeking for a string of scams, including stealing the identities of 11 people to falsely report tens of thousands of dollars in donations to his campaign, using his donors' credit card information to buy designer clothes and pay personal debts, and tricking donors into giving to a nonprofit that led to his personal bank account. His lawyers, citing a litany of childhood and personal problems, including mental illness, had asked for the minimum two years. Santos, 36, became a national punchline within weeks of his 2022 election to the House of Representatives, when the New York Times started pulling on the threads of his personal biography. His numerous fabrications including claims that he graduated from Baruch College and attended New York University, and that he was once employed by Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. At one point he said he was Jewish and that his grandparents fled the Holocaust, but that claim also fell apart under scrutiny. Santos's profile went from an 'SNL' punchline to a criminal matter in 2023, when federal prosecutors indicted him on a litany of charges. From the start, legal experts described prosecutors' case as a slam dunk. The House of Representatives expelled him in December 2023, and in August, Santos pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, three weeks before he was set to go to trial. In a letter to Long Island Federal Court Judge Joanna Seybert, Santos' lawyers laid out a very different biography than the one he tried to sell to voters and campaign donors. 'His father had 'high drinking proclivities' and his mother gambled frequently, his lawyers wrote, and the two divorced in 2000. He moved to Brazil with his mother and sister after fourth grade, and when he returned to New York, he attended William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens for just a month in 2004, before leaving because he 'was being bullied by older students,' his lawyers wrote. He got a high school equivalency diploma in 2006. His lawyers also describe Santos' struggle with mental illness, including a voluntary committal in 2013 or 2014, and touch on problems with alcohol consumption. He's asking for the mandatory minimum two years behind bars. Federal prosecutors countered last week that Santos's social media activity shows 'he remains unrepentant for his crimes.' They pointed out an April 4 post on X where he wrote, 'No matter how hard the DOJ comes for me, they are mad because they will NEVER break my spirit.' In another post, he denied using campaign cash to buy luxury goods from Hermes, even though he didn't object to that detail being in a pre-sentencing report to the court. In even more posts, he called himself a 'scapegoat' and said Department of Justice officials 'refuse to prosecute the cabal of pedophiles running around in every power structure in the world including the U.S. government.' Santos tried to explain himself in an over-the-top letter to the judge Saturday. 'Every sunrise since that plea has carried the same realization: I did this, me. I am responsible,' he wrote. 'But saying I'm sorry doesn't require me to sit quietly while these prosecutors try to drop an anvil on my head.' In another florid passage, he writes, 'The red, white, and blue runs through my veins long before the ink of any plea agreement. … So when I fire back, it isn't vanity or defiance for sport; it's my way of saluting the messy, glorious free-speech tradition that makes this country worth every bruise.' _____
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ex-NYC Rep. George Santos set to be sentenced in federal fraud case
Republican fraudster George Santos, whose Congressional career famously collapsed under the staggering weight of his lies and criminal schemes, will learn Friday morning in a Long Island court how much time he'll spend in prison. Prosecutors are asking the disgraced Queens lawmaker get 87 months for a string of scams, including stealing the identities of 11 people to falsely report tens of thousands of dollars in donations to his campaign, using his donors' credit card information to buy designer clothes and pay personal debts, and tricking donors into giving to a nonprofit that led to his personal bank account. Santos, 36, became a national punchline within weeks of his 2022 election to the House of Representatives, when the New York Times started pulling on the threads of his personal biography. His numerous fabrications including claims that he graduated from Baruch College and attended New York University, and that he was once employed by Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. At one point he said he was Jewish and that his grandparents fled the Holocaust, but that claim also fell apart under scrutiny. Santos's profile went from 'SNL' punchline to criminal in 2023, when federal prosecutors indicted him on a litany of charges. From the start, legal experts described prosecutors' case as a slam dunk. The House of Representatives expelled him in December 2023, and in August, Santos pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, three weeks before he was set to go to trial. In a letter to Long Island Federal Court Judge Joanna Seybert, Santos' lawyers laid out a very different biography than the one he tried to sell to voters and campaign donors. 'His father had 'high drinking proclivities' and his mother gambled frequently, his lawyers wrote, and the two divorced in 2000. He moved to Brazil with his mother and sister after fourth grade, and when he returned to New York, he attended William Cullen Bryant High School in Queens for just a month in 2004, before leaving because he 'was being bullied by older students,' his lawyers wrote. He got a high school equivalency diploma in 2006. His lawyers also describe Santos' struggle with mental illness, including a voluntary committal in 2013 or 2014, and touch on problems with alcohol consumption. He's asking for the mandatory minimum two years behind bars. Federal prosecutors countered last week that Santos's social media activity shows 'he remains unrepentant for his crimes.' They pointed out an April 4 post on X where he wrote, 'No matter how hard the DOJ comes for me, they are mad because they will NEVER break my spirit.' In another post, he denied using campaign cash to buy luxury goods from Hermes, even though he didn't object to that detail being in a pre-sentencing report to the court. In even more posts, he called himself a 'scapegoat' and said Department of Justice officials 'refuse to prosecute the cabal of pedophiles running around in every power structure in the world including the U.S. government.' Santos tried to explain himself in an over-the-top letter to the judge Saturday. 'Every sunrise since that plea has carried the same realization: I did this, me. I am responsible,' he wrote. 'But saying I'm sorry doesn't require me to sit quietly while these prosecutors try to drop an anvil on my head.' In another florid passage, he writes, 'The red, white, and blue runs through my veins long before the ink of any plea agreement. … So when I fire back, it isn't vanity or defiance for sport; it's my way of saluting the messy, glorious free-speech tradition that makes this country worth every bruise.'
