Standardization and convenience will renew the traditional tea industry

When it comes to China's tea industry, it has always been considered to have a category and no brand
.
In recent years, new brands have emerged in the traditional tea industry, and many new brands have also gained the favor
of capital.
New brands are constantly innovating in the tea industry segment, whether it is trying to create a standard Chinese tea, or focusing on compound flavor tea products, all of which have formed a differentiation from traditional tea brands
.
At the same time, new brands are also facing challenges
in supply chain, marketing and promotion.

Seek new ways to have conversations

In recent years, many new brands have emerged in the tea industry, among which many brands such as Xiaocan Tea, CHALI Chali, Cha Xiaokong, and T9Tea have also received capital investment
.
Tianyancha information shows that from 2016 to 2019, Xiaocan Tea obtained 3 rounds of financing; From 2015 to 2021, CHALI Tea has obtained a total of 8 rounds of financing, the latest of which reached hundreds of millions of yuan; ONCHA began to drink tea and obtained two rounds of financing in 2022, with a single round of financing of more than 10 million yuan; T9Tea received two rounds of financing from 2017 to 2021, the latest of which amounted to tens of millions of yuan
.

The emergence of these new brands has revitalized
the traditional tea industry.
Han Zhihui, a brand marketing expert, said, "The traditional tea industry is an industry
with categories and no brands.
When tea is mentioned, it refers to tea in a certain place, which belongs to the state of
having a local brand and no product brand.
Zhu Danpeng, an analyst of China's food industry, said: "Tea is a traditional category, China is a large tea production and consumption country, but there is no strong tea brand
.
" This is based on the fact that the entire tea industry has not entered a standardized, professional, branded, capitalized and large-scale development path
before.
”

The person in charge of T9Tea inspected many international brands and noted: "The difference between Chinese tea brands and foreign tea brands is very large
.
When we visited abroad, we found that foreign tea brands are very fashionably packaged, and many of the locations of stores are with
fashion brands and luxury brands.
On the whole, the image of traditional Chinese tea is not like this
.
”

For the reason why there is no particularly large brand in the Chinese tea industry, Han Zhihui believes: "The dispersion of the planting end and the overall processing mode of Chinese tea are still relatively traditional, and affected by the region, a mountain has a mountain tea characteristics, which makes it difficult for traditional Chinese tea to form industrial products
.
" ”

Both young consumers and entrepreneurs are looking for ways to dialogue with the traditional tea industry: new tea brands have launched cold brew tea, bringing on the fire of niche tea categories with interesting names such as "duck feces fragrance" and "broken silver"; During the Beijing Winter Olympics, the "tea brewing robot" that skillfully throws tea, pours water, and makes soup is out of the circle; On the short video platform, many videos and live broadcasts are also showing the vitality behind picking and stir-frying tea.
.
.

According to the "2022 Douyin E-commerce Tea Industry Insight Report", in 2021, the scale of consumers aged 18-30 in the Douyin tea industry will grow rapidly, and young consumer groups will use alternative teas such as herbal tea as the consumption entrance, and extend to oolong tea, black tea, Pu'er and other categories
.

"People's consumption is constantly escalating, the pursuit of a healthy quality of life, there is nothing more healthy than drinking a cup of pure tea
.
" Zhou Zhuoqun, a consumer in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, likes to drink tea, but traditional Chinese tea houses always make her feel very restrained, "especially the enthusiastic staff, a set of flowing tea brewing skills are displayed, and it is always embarrassing not to buy a bag of tea, but the price is not cheap"
.
Li Angyun, the founder of ONCHA Tea, also mentioned that the consumption tendency and consumption habits of the traditional tea industry and the current mainstream consumer groups do not match
.

"The culture and tonality of
the brand are what young consumers value now.
The backbone of the consumer industry is the 25-40 year olds, whose consumption habits will be younger and have higher
requirements for brands.
The products and tonality of traditional tea companies are actually not very in line with the consumption habits
of this part of the population.
Li Angyun said
.

Innovative consumption scenarios

Based on the situation in the traditional tea industry, some new brands have
innovated.

Small cans of tea try to create a standard Chinese tea, and its innovative launch of a small can of one brew packaging, the different categories of Chinese tea in the grade, specifications, price of the unified presentation
.
Lai Yang, president of Beijing Jingshang Strategic Research Institute, said: "Small can tea launches unique products for consumer application scenarios, has its own demand space, such as high-end gifts, for consumers, some high-end gift consumers value not the value of the product itself, but its pricing
.
" In addition, small can tea products do have their own unique and higher requirements in quality control, which is advantageous compared with many tea brand merchants
.
”

Differentiated from traditional tea, many new brands have made compound flavors in taste, such as CHALI tea made fruit tea, conditioning tea and other categories, according to CHALI Tmall flagship store data, peach oolong tea and other sales in the store leading; Capsule tea products include capsule tea, Kampo tea, etc.
with compound flavors; In the flagship store of Chaxiaokong Tmall, the top two sales are chrysanthemum snow pear tea and ginseng red date tea
.

A person in the tea industry said: "Flavored tea is actually an industrial product, which can be made in large quantities, and then the whole supply system has enough depth and the taste is very stable
.
" If flavored tea and blended tea can satisfy young people in taste, then its volume may be much higher than traditional regional tea
.
”

Zhu Danpeng believes: "The heavy consumer of compound flavor tea products is the new generation
.
For example, the new Chinese tea is so popular that it is a compound taste
.
In the future, with the continuous superposition of the demographic dividend of the new generation, there is still a lot
of room for growth and expansion of tea products with complex flavors.
”

In addition, many companies are exploring the retail + tea + space model, such as T9Tea setting up stores in shopping malls, which not only sell freshly mixed tea, pastries, but also retail tea products
.
The person in charge of T9Tea said: "It is difficult to make a tea brand without experience and no service
.
Beverage is a traffic entrance, and at the same time in the shopping center is a high-frequency use space, we use space + tea to solve the traffic problem
.
In addition, because the unit price of drinks is still relatively low, it is necessary to add retail products to increase the customer unit price
.
”

The interpretation of traditional tea culture and the style of traditional tea houses can no longer be widely accepted
by young people.
"Looking back at the long history and culture of our country, pure tea is the oldest 'drink'
.
How can the traditional tea culture that makes Chinese people proud really enter the lives of young people? Zhou Zhuoqun borrowed the homonym of the traditional Wenzhou dialect "drinking tea no", and founded the "Ha Chafu" brand in 2019, in addition to retail packaging fashionable tea, he also opened 3 new Chinese-style tea houses in Wenzhou and Hangzhou, "focusing on 'walking kung fu tea, making drinking tea easier', which is also what our young entrepreneurs should boldly try"
.

Lai Yang believes: "The model of retail + tea + space is one of
the future trends.
In fact, drinking tea, like drinking coffee, is not only the consumption of tea itself, but also the consumption
of lifestyle, interpersonal communication, etc.
Behind the growth of tea, in fact, a lot comes from consumers' demand
for social space and leisure space.
Therefore, I think this combination will have a great development trend and market share in the future
.
”

Standardization will help brands rise

According to data from iMedia Consulting, the market size of China's tea industry has maintained a trend of growth year after year, reaching 291.
03 billion yuan in 2021 and is expected to reach 321 billion yuan
in 2022.
iMedia Consulting analysts believe that with the intensification of market competition, tea market entrants have begun to explore the market demand for industry category segmentation, and constantly create new scenes, new products and new needs, and the future industry pattern will be a state of
multi-brand common development.

The person in charge of T9Tea said that there are also many subdivisions of the tea industry, such as freshly mixed drinks, bottled tea, tea bags and traditional tea
.
Tea retail, tea drinking space, bottled tea and other tracks have the opportunity to run out of large companies
.
"There is also a lot of space for bottled tea, there are no giants at present, but Japan has large bottled tea giants
such as Suntory, Itoen, and Kirin Overall, the future growth space of Chinese tea is very large
.
”

Lin Zhenchuan, chairman of the white tea brand Pinxiang, believes that when there is a trillion space in the consumer market, influential Chinese tea brands in the world will definitely be born
.

Regarding the problems that need to be solved to make a new brand in China's tea industry, Li Angyun said: "Supply chain and trust endorsement are two important things
.
In terms of supply chain, the ability to integrate the supply chain, the deep processing ability of the supply chain, including the ability to control the supply chain, etc.
are very important
.
Whether the quality and price of tea are competitive is very high
for the supply chain.
In addition, after having a good product, how to solve the trust endorsement is also very important
.
Tea brands have always been difficult to break the circle, and how to make the brand trusted and willing to buy is very important
.
”

In addition, in the view of the person in charge of T9Tea, there is a lot of room for Chinese tea brands to go overseas in the future, and it is also accompanied by great challenges
.
"China's tea brands do not have a global brand, in fact, it is also because of the pain points of the industry, that is, the lack of standardization, and the lack of simple and convenient tea drinking mode
.
" If we want to integrate into the world, we must do
so in accordance with international customs or international standards.
”

Han Zhihui believes that the next few years will be the golden period of the tea industry, and a number of tea brands will rise
with the help of standardization.
"It is expected that in the next ten years, more than 20 tea brands
will be produced in the six major tea categories.
As a healthy drink, tea should go to the world
.
We must do a good job in the standardization and convenience of a cup of tea, and promote a healthy and beautiful tea drinking culture, so that the brand building of Chinese tea must have a future
.
Lin Zhenchuan thinks
.

(Yuan Guofeng, comprehensive arrangement)

China Food News (October 13, 2022, Edition 07).

(Editor: Yuan Guofeng).