What Chinese Teas Should I Sell?
Hello, I am building a company called Sweetest Dew, www.sweetestdew.com, and I am planning a trip to go to China to buy tea right from the farmers. My initial inventory will be select since I am starting from scratch so I want to know what I should get. I am visiting Dong Ting for Bi Luo Chun and Feng Huang for wulong. What else would you guys like me to pick up?
For me Chinese tea is all about Puerh but that is a hard tea to choose to start a business I think. There are a lot of established vendors from China I think it will be difficult in general to build a customer base but I wish you luck.
Thank you for responding Allan.
I actually at the moment have not much interest in Pu Er. While I know that it is very popular right now, and there is a lot of talk about it I want to focus more on the other types because I think they have a lot to offer that people in the west dont know about mostly because there is a lot of bad stuff out there. I might pick up some pu ers later, but for now I will leave that market alone.
Please message me Allan, I would like to send you some Chinese teas that I think will show you the flavors they offer.
Difficult is putting it mildly. The tea market is absolutely satuturated. Just being honest. The best advice is to look at who is already doing what you want to do and see what you would do differently and how it would compare in terms of cost.
If you offer a tea that cost 2x the amount of Yunnan Sourcing’s bilouchun people will notice and ask what makes it worth more. As saturated as the tea market is, knowledge within the community is no where near lacking which makes new starts in business a very hard thing unless you’ve got a crazy story to go with it…
The broader tea drinking public who gets their tea from a supermarket has little to no knowledge of real tea but it is hard to reach them because few of them are going online to buy tea and as they have little knowledge of tea are not willing to pay the comparative premium that good Chinese tea goes for. Many people just go under the belief that better tea is not worth more money.
Quality and consistency of what you have goes a long way. It will be a hard market to break into. It takes years sometimes to get the contacts and the trust of the farmers. It can be done but there is a lot of upfront you will have to endure. If you aren’t Asian you may be seen as different and not knowing much about tea. I know they can be harsh on westerners at times but that is all part of the endurance you must show. They may offer you something that is a bad product to see if they can goad you. I have heard lots of hardships for someone breaking into the market.
When they ask I will tell them location. Yunnan Sourcing’s Bi Luo Chun comes from Yunnan, mine will come from Dong Ting which is an area famous for growing Bi Luo Chun which means it will taste better. I dont want to sell with crazy stories, I want to sell with facts, which the educated market will understand.
As Yunnan Sourcing sells really good tea you will have a hard time competing with them. If you charge twice the price of Yunnan Sourcing, no matter what your reason, people will still tend to buy from Yunnan Sourcing. If you are going to charge more I suggest offering all your teas as 10g samples. People are more likely to try them if they can get them as samples.
I somewhat agree with him here. While I like and frequently purchase from YS, their Bi Luo Chun and green teas in general are not my favorite. And they’re not the only game in town. Companies like Teavivre also have excellent offerings and reasonable pricing. I don’t mind paying a little more for quality tea.
I just think that there are so many sellers in the game you have to have competitive prices. Yunnan Sourcing is my favorite not for green tea but for puerh. I don’t drink too much green tea. And Teavivre is as you say an example of another competitor. They have excellent prices although I tend to order from them mostly when they have a sale. I managed to miss their last sale.
I am curious about your trip to China. Do you already have contacts? Because if you don’t it may be more difficult to get good tea. In my understanding the tea market in China is fairly cutthroat. I have even heard of sellers there sampling a really good tea to get you to buy it and then substituting a lower quality tea for the one they give you in bulk. A lot of people who aren’t careful will get ripped off. I think it’s just the way business is done there.
I’ll second what everyone here has said. Been to China myself to look at the market of the tea industry and got totally gobsmacked. Though I am all for diving into it if you believe you have a market and know exactly how to sell it to them by demonstrating some sort of value. It’s hard educating an uneducated market unless if they’re the type to go out of their way to research it themselves but otherwise convenience and ingrained habits will always be king. What’s your competitive advantage? What’s your edge over the competition? Hope this helps and hope you succeed!
I agree with what everyone else has said. The tea market is already pretty saturated. I think it’s important to be able to identify two main things: who is your target market, and what can you offer them that isn’t already available. If you’re marketing to the Steepster kind of tea drinkers, I think you’ll find there are already quite a few options available:
http://www.teavivre.com/bi-luo-chun-green-tea-pi-lo-chun/
http://www.taotealeaf.com/bi-luo-chun-green-tea-premium/
http://camellia-sinensis.com/en/bi-luo-chun-du-yun
http://www.jkteashop.com/premium-dong-ting-west-mt-bi-luo-chun-green-tea-p-168.html
https://www.soleiltea.com/product/tea/green-tea/bi-luo-chun/
https://www.teaspring.com/Dong-Ting-Bi-Luo-Chun.asp
https://sevencups.com/shop/bi-luo-chun/
http://www.tenren.com/greentea1-pilochungree.html
https://www.teasenz.com/bi-luo-chun-green-tea#.V74m75MrKCQ
So… think seriously about what you can realistically offer, particularly if you don’t have strong family/personal connections with tea farmers/sellers in China. It is very very easy to get ripped off.
Yes I agree, if you don’t already have strong connections it is very easy to get ripped off. I have heard the story of them sampling one tea and then giving you a different tea and you won’t find out you were ripped off until you have the tea twelve thousand miles from it’s origin. Another trick I have heard of them doing is sampling a fantastic tea first. Then with this fantastic tea still on your taste buds they sample an inferior tea and because you are still tasting the first you buy the inferior tea.
These are great responses, I have a lot of competitors tea to drink and many conversations to have with the various people I’m working with.
Thank you again, and keep any eye on my site I have some good things coming
It’s a pleasure to read the discussions in this post. There are quite a lot of arguments here against starting a Chinese tea business. And they’re very valid. However, starting any business in any industry can be pretty challenging.
I’m not sure if the tea industry is that saturated. There are indeed lots of Chinese tea sellers, but the tea market is big. Starbucks puts a 90 Billion USD tag on it, and it’s growing. Big sellers like Davids Tea and Teavana can’t cover the whole market. As an entrepreneur, make sure you can find the right niche to serve.
I’ve had a look at your site, and I see that you’ve listed some teaware. That might be perhaps a good starting point, because finding good teaware isn’t that easy today. And especially because you don’t know much about tea yet, which is pretty risky. You might want to get into teaware and slowly expand in tea knowledge.
When in China, try to visit the city of Yixing for zisha teaware, and pass by Chaozhou for some porcelain products. The latter is near Feng Huang, which you’re already planning to visit.
Thank you for your response.
I was actually going to visit Jingdezhen for porcelain. I think this is going to be the hardest part of my search, cause my tea judging skills are better than my porcelain judging skills xD.
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