Grant Lang:
I was born in 1982 and grew up in a world (Teddington, Southwest London) surrounded by business, sport and on a growing number of occasions, coffee.
My dad had set up his own graphics and marketing business shortly before I was born and as a family we used to travel on numerous occasions to Europe, either to follow his business or his passion for skiing.
Both skiing and business were a passion that I picked up young and from an early age would try my hand at every sport from snow sports to rugby, cricket and more. Not content with just playing sports I experimented with various ways to make money from sports I enjoyed, such as coaching junior cricket and scoring in league cricket. I even, and unsuccessfully, tried making a little money working in a flower shop…it did not last long!
I breezed through school and college without ever working that hard but always just doing enough; guided by a sense that I would do something different. What I did know and what was very apparent was that I liked to debate and often did not agree with how things were done or how the world was run.
However, it was not until leaving for Southampton Solent University at the age of 18 in 2000 that I started to really express my views and experiment fully in the world of business.
My first efforts involved the staging and promoting of music nights. Starting small, my business partner Alex, and I had a few mini successes. We then decided to host bigger events and went head to head with an established student event. It didn’t work and I learnt a valuable lesson in business – timing. We simply did not have the money behind us to spend on marketing and promotion, and so came off second best.
Despite this set back I was hooked on business and was soon working (again with Alex) on an even bigger project to open a bar in a ski resort… we almost pulled it off! Armed with nothing but the innocence and confidence of youth we raised financial backing from a group of wealthy Southampton based bar owners, got the support of the mayor of Tignes (a French ski resort) and set about, with the help of a French friend, finding a property. With this found, we set off to Tignes feeling like we were living a movie with cash in a case (OK, it was really in a UK bank account, but that sounds a bit boring!) to buy our dream bar in a ski resort. Unfortunately we had not foreseen the cultural challenges that exist when doing business overseas, even in France. No matter how we tried we simply could not persuade the bar owner to sell up to two passionate, though a little naïve, English boys… he wanted to sell to a French man and although I disagreed I had to ultimately respect his reasoning; the desire to preserve tradition and values. So heading back from France with no bar but with yet another valuable lesson, that culture is key in both business and in life, I was doubly determined that my next business idea would have a little magic and a little luck!…
My quest to start a business had overtaken my university degree to such an extent that I failed my second year. This was quite ironic considering I was studying Business Management Studies, but as far as I was concerned I was learning business the best way possible… by trial and error! Not something necessarily agreed with by my mother!
It was what my university degree did not teach me, and still doesn’t to my knowledge about business that was to prove a spark in the eventual formation of Mozzo. For 4 years our business course focused solely on one type and meaning of business… profit. True profit is what makes businesses happen and is what rewards the people that build businesses and work in them; however it was becoming more and more obvious to me that profit is not what drives businesses and the people that build them.
I like to read, especially newspapers and if you had half an ear or eye open you would have realised that in the nineties and noughties we, as a society, had to change- and fast. Environmentally our lifestyle was and continues to wreak havoc with the natural world, and socially the rush towards a global consumer society while creating many opportunities, was resulting in escalating imbalances in wealth and social opportunity.
It was in 2003 that the penny dropped and I formed the platform of ideas and beliefs that would help me to eventually set up Mozzo… businesses in 21st century can and need to be built differently. They should be built on 3 bottom lines -
commercial, social and environmental.
I found my magic moment in 2004 when I was asked to create a market entry strategy for a make believe product by a university lecturer. Not sure what to do I asked the manager of a 5 star hotel I was working for part-time ‘why we weren’t serving Fairtrade organic coffee?’ His answer was ‘because it did not taste nice’. That’s crap, I thought. Because something respecting the people and environment responsible for it, does not mean it can’t taste nice!
Suddenly my passion for coffee became something far bigger and I saw an opportunity- a chance to take a different approach to a large and established industry. The more I found out, the more I realised it needed a little shake up or transformation.
Managing to scrape a pass at university, I spent 2004-5 creating Mozzo. Starting with the coffee, I created the UK’s first 100% Fairtrade 100% Organic 100% Arabica espresso blend. Then when the bank refused to give me a loan to open my own café I raised some money from a local bar owner and used my final student loan cheque to buy an Indian TukTuk from a gentleman based in Southampton.
Working with a friend at the time who designed yachts we built the world’s first solar and wind powered art covered coffee cart. It was from this small, yet remarkable little cart that Mozzo was first served to the coffee drinkers of Southampton on October 2nd 2005 and I set out to prove that businesses in the 21st century can and will be built differently.