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News 12 Staff

511spotlightnjpart2_2024-05-11-09-31-14

Jayla Copeland is the founder and CEO of Lapis Lazuli Tease by Jla Alexandra Hill is the investor, supportive mom and freelance producer with News 12. I love this name and I love that hug. Where did this name come from? Lava is an ancient Egyptian um stone. It actually translates to heaven stone. And I did want to give um my supporters that heavenly experience when drinking the tea oh heavenly experience. I like the sound of that. And your mom has some tea over here for us to do while you talk about. Cheers. Cheers. Indeed drinking good health. And why was it so important to you to launch this company? By the way, she is 12 years old. I want you all to know that that's impressive. I have never really seen young adolescents, especially young people of color in this community. I did want to give representation and I did want to inspire other young people, not in New Jersey, but internationally, all around the world. I want to open up new experiences for all different type of people. And you started this at 70 Yeah. How did this come to you? Um I used to make tea for my grandmother. My mom actually never had sodas in the house. So I did have to find like another sugary, like another sugary um alternative. So I did reach into the spice cabinet. I rooted into the spice cabinet and I came up with um these different type of tea blends. And what do you sweeten your teas with brown sugar or Clover honey. Clover honey sounds good. And you know, I supported it because, you know, Della, you know, there's a lot of um diabetes and high rates of sugar related obese and o obesity rather with um uh people of color and young people of color. Um especially in places where there's, you know, they call them food deserts where there's not a lot of access to healthy teas or healthy food. Um So of course, I was supportive of this when she came up with the idea, you know, um it's healthy, these teas, I stopped drinking coffee because she started making these tea. Tea is so beautiful. It's the, the alternative, it's so much healthier than uh coffee than sugar, than sodas and all these things. So I was absolutely supportive of this and I think it's a good um are good for her to be represented as a young woman of color in this business. Do you come up with all the recipes and flavors for these teas? Yes. Yes, we do. How do you do that? Um I actually just come up with them, like, straight through my head. I came up one with one in class. I came up with one while doing homework. I come with them late at night. Like they just flow through my mind and you keep a journal. Yep. I do keep a journal and you all have a company in Pennsylvania that produces for you. Tell me about that. So the tea can company is our main distributor and they source the teas from all over the world. Um But they have been very helpful and instrumental in helping us get this, get our packaging done, get the concept from in your brain into an actual viable thing that you can touch and taste and drink. And so yeah, it's been an amazing journey learning about this industry. As we go at noon, we'll talk about that beautiful gold gift box on the table along with their best selling teas.

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511spotlightnj3_2024-05-11-12-27-01

You're looking at several teas that are produced by Lapis Lazuli teas by Jayla. Jayla Copeland is the founder and Ceo Alexandra Hill is the investor supported mom. She's also a freelance producer here with News 12 looking at everything on this table starting with the gift box right here, which is beautiful. You all like using gold. And the reason behind that, the reason behind gold, I think it complements my skin color. That's a good way of looking at it. Gold goes great with all the earthy tones brown. I think it goes great with green. It goes great blue. I love it. It really does. And what are some of your best sellers? The most popular flavors? One of our best sellers um is the Asian cherry blossom green tea. We did make this for the New York um cherry blossom Festival. This one's our newest one. Actually, we do have an open can if you do want to spell that out, I do. And this is the elderberry. That's the cherry blossom blossom, that's also a green tea base. And if you look, you can see the actual blossoms inside the tea bag and that's you and that's one of the things we strive to um do with Lapis Zul et is to, to, to keep everything organic and that you can actually see what you're ingesting. Why is that so important? We wanna keep everything transparent. So people know what they're getting. We don't want to be um misleading at all. We want everybody to know what they're getting when they got into this. We want everyone to have the same experience when we're getting this 100% heavily. That's what we want. How involved are you all in this whole process of running your company from the beginning? From scratch, start to finish? What do you do? Well, Jayla comes up with the ideas with the blends that she, you know, can come up with them as you said before, what, like in class at school while doing homework and she'll come to me and say, hey, I have this idea for this new blend and I'll get on the line with our distributor and we will sit there and she'll talk to Jayla over the phone sometimes and they'll come up with exactly what it is that she, she needs to make the vision happen. And so it's been a very creative process. Um We've developed a lot of relationships going through this process because, you know, as a parent, when a kid has an idea, you know, you wanna support them, especially when they have such a wonderful idea for a business at such a young age and we're talking age seven, Alex. How, why so early? Uh there was a reason. Yeah, it has something to do with soda or lack thereof. Um My mom never bought soda for us in the house. So I actually did have to come up with another sugary um alternative. So I just dug into the spice cabinet and they came up with different tea ones. And what do you sweeten your teas with brown sugar and clover honey. All natural, all natural, all natural, all natural sugar is.

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512spotlightnj4_subclip_2024-05-12-09-51-29

We are featuring Lapis Lazuli tease by Jayla in Essex County, West Orange. To be exact. You're looking at a beautiful photo of the inspiration behind it. Lydia is her grandmother. Jayla is pictured with her. Jayla is here in studio with her mom, Alexandra Hill, who is a freelance producer here at News. 12 ladies. Tell us more about this beautiful woman. Well, that's my mom and you know, a few years ago, she was uh diagnosed with dementia and Jayla and her were really close prior to her diagnosis and she was a big inspiration to um her creativity when it came to the tea company. Um She would get up in the morning, make her teas. You know, even before I would get up J Lo would be up in the morning, fixing her tea, making sure she got her breakfast. So you two were really close. Yeah. So we, we're, we're honored to be here celebrating Mother's Day with You Della uh with news 12 and three generations of women here from grandmother, daughter. Yes, she is very much with us. But you know, unfortunately, her dementia diagnosis has, has taken a turn for the worst but we're here honoring her and um we, we hope to continue to do so. You get the tea out in the community as part of your distribution. You recently did a Newark Street fest? Tell us all about that. Well, we've been doing street festivals for a while. We, we started off just vending. Um Our website is now active as you can see. That's how I look so awkward. I, who is this? As you can see J Lo is getting her um sales chops on here. You know, she's, she's a great seller. She's a great sales person. Her sales pitch is impeccable. People love her. People are attracted to her. So it's not hard when we go out there and you know, it's festival season now. So um the vending has become a huge part of our promotion and our business. And um we also did the Essex County Cherry Blossom Festival several weeks ago, which was a big thing now, you know, as the summer season is ramping up, you think the little girl is so cute? How do you feel when you have young clients like that? Yes. Oh, she's actually um she was helping me. She was so she wants to get started on her own path to a career too. How does it feel? Knowing you're probably inspiring people of that age like that? It makes me like generally so happy because I have other friends who have like other amazing ideas but it makes me sad because sometimes they're like, oh, I don't think I can do this because I'm too young and maybe I'll wait, like, I don't know, four years would I have to say to younger people who do have dreams and inspiration? Like this, your dreams aren't dreams. I like to call them highly possible realities. Oh, say that again. Highly possible realities. Once you get that quote unquote dream going, it shoots and it just goes straight up, straight up, straight up to the top. We're all the way up, we're all the way up. Della.

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512spotlightnj5_2024-05-12-09-23-00

Yes, today is Mother's Day. We do have a mother daughter duo here in studio to celebrate. They're from West Orange. Jayla Copeland is the founder and CEO of Lapis Lazuli Teas by Jayla. Her mother Alexandra Hill investor, supportive mom and freelance producer with News 12. Now, let's take a look at this T shirt one more time with the slogan. Don't you love a T? Say it again. What's the T Della? What's the T new New 12, New Jersey? We know your mom inspired you some of the other people. Um A lot of my friends and a lot of my teachers actually because when I first came up here, they were like, yeah, do it. Yeah, I do it. Um Autumn Keith uh Naya and my teachers, Mr Cray and Miss Silvani, Miss Lopez, my art teacher, my art teacher is one way like biggest inspirations because she really uh helps me keep my creative thing. Like off did she help you with this design? Your logo? No, that was me. I was right. The logo was all Jayla as you can see like you know, she said Jla step out for a second. The um logo she came up with was based on the lapis Lazuli stone, which is the ancient Egyptian healing stone that is blue. It has all of these different hues of blue and specks of gold, which also translates to our little gold gift bag here that we have our gift boxes. And um yeah, so this was all Jayla, the design of the logo. Let's talk about your Cherry Blossom Festival that you did recently because you have a tea called Cherry Blossom. How did that festival go? Uh That was like the biggest festival that I've been to aside from the Kwanzaa one because I met like a lot of different people. Um That was like a really awesome experience because I got to like embrace different cultures. Um I met different other people of color. They always supported me. That's like the best thing ever in my experience. What do people say to you when they come up to your tent? When I tell them that I'm 12 years old. They do not believe me at all. Yeah, they're probably shocked. I was like, what? Well, at the Kwanzaa Festival, someone thought I was 1818. I know mom loved that, you know. No, no, no, no. But that festival, I mean, Essex County Cherry Blossom Festival. That was one of the bigger festivals that we've done. It was upwards of 7000 people there. Yeah. So we did really, really well and the, the, the reaction and the love and the support and the outpouring of just like, oh my God. I can't believe this is a 12 year old girl doing this. Where do you all go? You do festivals? Where else do you take your teeth to display the? Well, right now we're looking to um partner with some local coffee shops and coffee and tea companies. Um in the local area, there's a few in Montclair that we've reached out to and we're gonna continue to reach out to and we're gonna be doing all the street festivals and music festivals around the state um this summer. So you'll be able to catch us every and anywhere. And on our website, we will absolutely be posting all the events and festivals and locations where we will be.

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Isn't this the cutest picture ever? This is Jayla Copeland, so adorable founder and Ceo of Lapis Lazuli Teas by Jla. Look at this, tell me about your website and what people can find on it. Ok. People can find on the website. Obviously all of our blends. There's Jayla. Oh my God, that was my first um thing. I was so awkward. I had no idea what I was doing, but this is um also our Elderberry blend right there. Those are our honey tea sticks and like you were talking about the ingredient in the bag. You can see the blossoms right there. That's the cherry blossom blend that I'm a little bit obsessed with and it's not flowery or floral at all. It's actually very nice and very smooth and you know, these are just photos of our other events that we've done around. There's Jayla at the Newark Museum doing one of her first pop ups there and the voice you are listening to is Alexandra Hill. She's the investor, the supportive mom and freelance producer with News 12. Continue with your thought. Well, I just wanted to maybe partake and give some um info information or support to parents out there who have a kid. Um, that wants to start a business because she came up with this idea when she was seven. But because I was working and, you know, time and life is life thing that you don't really get to, um, necessarily attack it and, and it's not something that happens overnight. Right. It's something that takes when you found out your child wanted to launch a, I was fully on board, but I was also hesitant. I was like, where am I gonna get the money from for start up cost? Do I have the time? How am I gonna do a website? I've never put a website together. I have to hire a web designer. So you start getting into your head about all the things that you don't have instead of focusing on the things that you do have and when you have a child that's passionate about it about something like that, it's important to kind of nurture it and support it and do your research and do your research obviously and do your research, take your time and think about the things that you do have and start with the resources that are right in your home, which were for you all her brain? Ok. And my pocketbook, two good ones. I like that. And what was it like having your mom's support? Because were you afraid when you initially thought I want to launch a tea company. Um, no, it felt nice. It felt really good, having a supported mom that was there. But, like, also I was also very skeptical, I didn't think I could do it. I thought it was just like an idea what I was saying and, like, back to what I was saying, possible realities. I didn't really think it was possible reality at the time because I was like seven, I was just seven years old. I didn't really know how the world works. Who would know at seven. But at what point did you have a feeling this could work? Um When we finally got it off the ground and we got a distributor and we started up the tea company, we started up the website. That's when I was like, ok, maybe this could work, maybe this could work. Ladies. I want you to say something to the moms out there for this Happy Mother's Day. Go ahead and wish them a Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day. What's the Tea girls? Happy Mother's Day. What's the tea? Get your mom some lapis Lazuli teas to celebrate this Mother's Day, right? Jayla. Yeah.

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The company was created by Jayla Copeland. Her mother, Alexandra Hill, is the bankroller.

Spotlight New Jersey: Lapis Lazuli Teas

The company was created by Jayla Copeland. Her mother, Alexandra Hill, is the bankroller.

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