About — TESMO

Origin

Torrance, California. Since 2008.

TESMO started when Lawrence — a data-driven marketer with a background in corporate finance, pricing strategy, and operations — teamed up with Matt, a developer with serious data chops. The first thing we built wasn’t a pitch deck; it was pricing and demand-planning tooling that read Amazon’s category demand curves against sales rank.

Then we did something most agencies never have: we became the merchant. In 2011 we launched our own retail operation and grew it to $20 million a year across five verticals — including a beauty business we scaled from $200K to $3M a month before FBA existed, and a treats brand (GCP) we built and sold in 2018. Every opinion on this site was earned with our own inventory.

Eighteen years later the tools are unrecognizably better, but the company is recognizably the same: data-first, hands-on, allergic to chaos, and genuinely invested in the brands we serve. That experience now also serves private equity firms running Amazon due diligence on acquisition targets.

The principals

Lawrence MortensonCo-Founder & CEO

Corporate finance, pricing strategy, marketing, and operations.

Matt TessarCo-Founder & Technology Visionary

Architect of the TESMO data warehouse and toolset.

How we show up

The principals are in the room.

Clients consistently tell us the most unusual thing about TESMO is that leadership is directly involved — in the weekly meeting, in the escalation, in the gnarly catalog problem at 7am. That’s not a phase we grew out of. It’s the model, and our systems are built to protect it as we grow.

“…working with the owners of the company — they have knowledge that no account executive would have at other agencies.”From independent client interviews

Core values

Five things we actually mean.

We run on EOS — clear priorities, disciplined processes, accountable execution. These values aren’t wall art; they’re how the work gets reviewed.

Collaboration

We integrate with your team — not sit outside it.

Constant Retooling

Always improving, always evolving — Amazon doesn’t sit still, so neither do we.

Getting It Done

Biased toward action and results. “Scrappy” is a compliment here.

Attentiveness

Highly responsive, proactive communication. You’ll never wonder where things stand.

A Systematic Approach

Clear processes, rigorous problem solving, no chaos.

“Your success — across all channels — is the benchmark of our success. And we behave that way every day.”

The team

Small enough to care. Built to scale anyway.

A cross-functional team of senior operators, an in-house engineering group focused on the data and AI layer, and leadership that still reads the weekly numbers line by line.

Clients once worried our model couldn’t scale — that senior attention was the bottleneck. Fair concern. It’s exactly why we spent the last several years building the operating system that lets a boutique behave like something much larger.

Meet the whole team →