Ellis Island Tea Founder Nailah Ellis is Paving a Path to Success
Detroit-based entrepreneur Nailah Ellis was born to build a business. She always had the heart, smarts and tenacity to pull it off but the biggest obstacle was simply finding the right product to throw her efforts behind.
“I knew being an entrepreneur was my destiny,” she says. “I sold candy, I sold everything—I always had some kind of business going on when I was younger.”
Originally, though, Ellis was distracted by the path-frequently-traveled. “It was going to be college, Wall Street, building a savings account, and then starting a business,” she says. “But with the student loans I would have needed, you’re not just paying what you borrowed. You’re also paying back that $100,000 investment from college.”
Detroit-based entrepreneur Nailah Ellis. (Photo: Ellis Island Tea)
Since Ellis already believed in her skills, the Detroit native decided to ditch the plan and take a leap of faith on a business idea that was always just under her nose. She launched Ellis Island Tropical Tea in 2008, founded upon the family recipe for hibiscus tea that everyone she knew had gone crazy for at special gatherings for years.
Even her grandfather explicitly instructed the concoction “was to be sold, not told” before he passed away. Ellis asked her father for the recipe but the problem was, she only knew the basic ingredients. She needed to find the exact right amounts to recreate his perfect tea.
“Everything was trial and error,” says Ellis. “I had to recreate it completely, measure it right, because my grandfather would just eyeball the ingredients for years.”
She had friends and family test out new incarnations of the basic formula. Time and time again they said, no, it was close, but not quite right. “It took a whole year to get it,” says Ellis.
From there, she sold the tea door-to-door in the Detroit area for $8 a cup. Every time she’d take a new batch out and about, she sold out. “I knew if I could sell it in a low-income area, then I could sell it anywhere.”
Ellis has slowly expanded from Detroit, to southeastern Michigan, and now outside the state into Chicago and New York in locations like Whole Foods, Busch’s, Meijer and Kroger stores.
Ellis Island Tropical Tea, which is hibiscus-based. (Photo: Ellis Island Tea)
What makes the tea unique? For one, it’s honest-to-goodness, natural, legit tea. “Oftentimes, I’ll get, ‘Oh my gosh, it tastes like real tea!’ It’s so smooth,” Ellis laughs. “A lot of brands will use concentrates, whereas we steep real herbs. We’re actually brewing the tea ourselves.”
And each bottle packs a punch of benefits. “It’s hibiscus-based, so it’s got this rich, red natural dye, using hibiscus rose, and peppermint leaves, and it’s sweetened with honey and cane sugar,” Ellis says. “Hibiscus tea itself is actually cherished around the world for lowering high blood pressure and for its antioxidants.”
In addition to lowering high cholesterol, curing gout, and fighting back against obesity, hibiscus is also good for treating colds, kidney concerns, menstrual cramps, headaches and more.
For Ellis, expansion is the next step, which she’s rapidly working on. However, the path to the top for a female entrepreneur based in Detroit, Michigan has not been an easy one.
“It’s been an emotional rollercoaster,” she says. “One day you want to quit, one day it’s an emotional high. Nothing is sure. I’ve walked by faith, not by sight.”
However, Ellis knows she’s just getting started. She credits her faith and family for being her soft place to fall back on. “What I thought was my limit, though—I haven’t reached that yet,” she says. “There’s no such thing as impossible to me anymore. You just have to take a step back and find that balance.”
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