This year's spring tea season came a little earlier than in previous years.
Monitoring by the China Tea Circulation Association shows that due to the proper management and protection of the winter tea garden, the suitable climatic conditions for the opening of spring, and the improvement of picking and processing technology, the early spring tea in 2021 will be of excellent quality and sufficient yield. Taking West Lake Longjing, the first of the top ten famous teas with a history of 1200 years, as an example, since March 12, Shifeng Mountain, Longjing Village, Yunqi, Hupao, Meijiawu, five core production areas of West Lake Longjing, have been crowded with tea collectors.
Equally lively is the Spring Tea Festival of online e-commerce. Jingdong data show that since entering March, all kinds of teas have generally sold well, of which Longjing tea has increased by nearly 400% month-on-month in March; from the price point of view, the unit price of new teas in 2021 that are popular among brands is mostly between 200-500 yuan, but the price is more than 1,000 yuan, and even up to nearly 10,000 yuan of pre-sale limited edition high-end West Lake Longjing is also widely booked. This year, the predetermined explosion of the Jingdong Spring Tea Festival is the West Lake Longjing with a unit price of 2,000 yuan in the Shifeng Mountain production area, and the high-end West Lake Longjing with a unit price of 10,000 yuan also accounts for 18%.
This is very different from some people's stereotype that "e-commerce mainly sells low-end products in the tea industry". In the past two years, a number of tea brands have not only taken e-commerce as an important retail channel, giving priority to the online sale of high-end scarce products, but also incorporating the e-commerce operation strategy into the overall strategy of the enterprise, and actively cooperating with various online marketing nodes to promote products and brands.
The underlying reason for the change is not only the optimization of infrastructure such as logistics, but more importantly, the change in consumer mentality – people are increasingly convinced that reliable products can be bought online, even tea, which used to be a non-standard commodity with opaque information.
This has created a new sales dividend period for the Chinese tea industry, which was highly dependent on offline word of mouth. In 2021, in this "big year" where quality and demand are rising simultaneously, how can tea companies seize the time window of consumers migrating from offline to online and tell a new story about quality and brand?
Make buying tea online more credible
200g tea is priced at 3999 yuan, only for limited reservations. For people who don't know about West Lake Longjing, the knee-jerk reaction may be – is this an "IQ tax"?
In fact, this is the fair price. There has always been a saying that "Longjing before the Ming Dynasty is as expensive as gold", Longjing has the best quality of tea picking before the Qingming Festival, absorbing the nutrients of the whole winter, the content of tea polyphenols is much higher than that of two picking and three picking tea, and generally 50,000 buds can only be made into one pound of dry tea.
Among them, the West Lake Longjing is the jewel in the crown. In 2001, Hangzhou promulgated and implemented the "Hangzhou West Lake Longjing Tea Base Protection Regulations", which implemented hierarchical protection for the West Lake Longjing Tea Base and divided it into first/second level protection areas; tea varieties also have strict regulations, and only the Longjing group species, Longjing 43, and Longjing longye planted in the core production area can be called the real "West Lake Longjing".
Affected by factors such as origin, production process, picking time, and output, the market price of Longjing in The West Lake of the first stubble is between 8,000 yuan and 20,000 yuan per kilogram; the same is Mingqian tea, Longjing from Qiantang, Yuezhou and other non-West Lake production areas, and the price of one kilogram is only 800 yuan -1000 yuan. Under the 10 times difference, in the past, people bought tea more in the offline business.
But with the continuous penetration of e-commerce into the tea industry, the situation has changed. Since 2016, Lu Zhenghao, Meifu Mingjia, Shifeng, Gongpai and other well-known local tea merchants in Hangzhou have begun to "touch the net". Unlike offline tea shops based on interpersonal relationships, e-commerce tea selling is the first solution to the "trust" problem, only when customers believe that they can buy goods that are consistent with the quality of local tea shops online, they will be assured to place orders.
Taking Jingdong Supermarket as an example, in addition to its own accumulated brand endorsement and strict standards for quality, the changes promoted for this purpose also include product standardization, price transparency and marketing branding:
First of all, the local established tea houses recognized by the government or tea industry associations are strictly selected as the first threshold for quality assurance;
Secondly, the strict settlement standards, the selection of leading enterprises, well-known brands and long-established brands to cooperate, jointly with Sunshine Property Insurance and many well-known tea brands to jointly launch "tea without excellent insurance", so that consumers are more assured; on the page, the introduction of each product includes the tea production area, picking time, aroma / bubble resistance / taste and other indices, and even specific details such as tea makers and tree age, and the intrinsic value of tea leaves is clear to the "experts" at a glance;
Finally, the extensive cold chain distribution logistics, the next-day delivery experience and the offline store "buy and get" experience are not much different.
Based on the foundation of trust, in recent years, the importance of online channels in the retail of the tea industry has been increasing.
According to the "2020 China Tea Industry Market Status and User Survey and Analysis Report" released by Ai Media Consulting, in 2021, the three major channels for Chinese consumers to buy tea are e-commerce platforms (56%), tea stores (55%) and offline supermarkets (48.6%), and e-commerce channels have gradually become an important way for consumers to buy tea.
At the same time, people's consumer mentality towards buying tea online continues to change.
Jingdong's "2021 Spring Tea Consumption Trend Report" shows that on the one hand, the trend of online consumption upgrading is obvious, and the famous Mountain Head tea with brand effect is more favored, and this spring, the top three new tea varieties most liked by consumers are West Lake Longjing, Zhuyeqing and Xinyang Maojian; on the other hand, driven by new consumption factors such as new tea drinks, young customers also show their just demand for tea.
Source: 2021 Spring Tea Consumption Trend Report
Jingdong big data shows that 26-35-year-old consumers have become the "young force" to buy Longjing tea, due to the general emphasis on health and health, young customers pay attention to tea quality.
For tea companies that want to break through geographical restrictions, expand customer base and establish brands, e-commerce has become a new opportunity.
The new online gameplay of the old tea company
If you want to run a good e-commerce channel, it is not just as simple as putting the finished tea products online. Lu Zhenghao, who occupies the first place in longjing tea sales on the Jingdong self-operated platform for many years, is a typical case.
The 30-year-old tea brand entered JD.com in 2015, when e-commerce was still very unfamiliar to the entire tea industry, and Lu Zhenghao's sales on JD.com that year were only 600,000. However, in the following 6 years, Lu Zhenghao achieved an average annual growth rate of 128% in Jingdong, driving the overall performance of the company to achieve dozens of times growth. Now, Lu Zhenghao's sales in JD.com have accounted for 35% of total sales.
"Online and offline, there are two completely different ways." As the third generation of Lu Zhenghao and the helmsman of Lu Zhenghao's e-commerce strategy, Hu Biru mentioned two key points when summarizing the experience of the past 6 years:
First, find customers who match your brand positioning. When choosing to settle in e-commerce at the beginning, Hu Biru valued the fit of Jingdong's customer base. "Users with consumption strength and more pursuit of quality have a very large stock on the Jingdong self-operated platform, with high activity, and middle-aged high-income men have the habit of consuming tea, and the platform provides a relatively high-quality screening threshold."
Second, in terms of product categories, it is necessary to continuously adjust to the online customer base. For example, in view of Jingdong users' partial technology and business tea drinking habits, Lu Zhenghao has developed a high-quality, small package, easy-to-carry "idiot tea" series of products, 2 years of cumulative sales of 30,000 sets, this year's spring tea season, Lu Zhenghao also specially for e-commerce launched small weight, reduce unit price products.
In terms of consumer insight and product research and development, e-commerce can help tea companies to "take small steps and run" to taste new and trial and error for different user characteristics.
For example, when new products are listed, tea companies can produce a small amount, adjust the direction of operation according to market feedback after e-commerce launch, and then confirm whether it is rapid mass production or timely stop loss; in the reverse customization based on user big data, through the early online market research, enterprises can complete the preliminary test on the e-commerce platform in a small range after determining product specifications and packaging, obtain feedback suggestions, correct products and then lay the amount online.
The process of developing products is also a process of peeling away the user's consumption mentality layer by layer. Hu Biru found many features that were different from the offline.
Also through e-commerce purchases, consumers' trust and purchase of Jingdong's self-operated are significantly stronger, and they are more patient, "When going to new tea, consumers are more willing to buy in Jingdong's self-operated stores than to go to the stores opened by tea merchants, thinking that they are more secure in quality." ”
Most consumers value "direct hair from the place of origin", "for example, gan orange must be shipped from Jiangxi, shipping from Fujian is not authentic", and the same is true for tea. "However, when a platform is strong enough, consumers will be willing to believe that what the platform sends him is authentic, more than the merchant sends it from the place of origin, which is a very cattle thing," Hu Biru said.
A single category has a strong driving effect on the brand as a whole, "drinking Lu Zhenghao's Longjing tea feels good, and will buy Lu Zhenghao's other categories of tea."
The sense of ceremony for young people to drink tea is reduced, and the consumption capacity is improving, tea has become a daily drink, "30 yuan a cup of milk tea is good, or 500 yuan a good tea, as long as the price is reasonable, everyone can drink the different feelings inside, tea is still widely recognized." ”
The continuous positive feedback of the new channels made Hu Biru start to think about more possibilities and how to tell the ancient story of tea in a new consumption language. Last year, Lu Zhenghao and the Internet red tea brand Lele Tea launched two joint products, hoping to convey oriental aesthetics to young people through this cross-border, thereby leveraging the consumption enthusiasm of new customers.
Can e-commerce change Chinese tea
From the perspective of the entire industry, there is still a lot of room for e-commerce in the integration of resources and the improvement of efficiency in China's tea industry.
Since 2017, Lu Zhenghao has only harvested fresh leaves and no hair leaves, and his ability to control the overall quality of tea has reached a new level, but this has also brought new challenges to the entire enterprise such as warehousing, labor, and cash flow. The core of this decision is big data: the evaluation and control of e-commerce at the sales end, which in turn provides accurate guidance and support for front-end stocking.
"This year, we ate more than 4,000 kilograms of fresh leaves in the first-class production area of the West Lake, and in the early years, we did not dare to do such a big thing, the sales customer base became high-quality, the consumption capacity was enhanced, and I was more confident when I was a foodie." These are all mutually reinforcing. Hu Biru said.
Not only to help tea companies understand the changes in consumer demand and manage procurement and production more efficiently, e-commerce platforms are increasingly involved in the upstream of the industrial chain.
Taking Jingdong as an example, in 2018, Jingdong began to "pack tea mountains" in Hangzhou, signed direct supply agreements with local well-known tea merchants, and jointly built a "Jingdong tea pollution-free base" to achieve the "fidelity direct supply" of Longjing tea in West Lake in the Ming Dynasty; in 2019, Jingdong and the Wuyishan government cooperated to launch a digital ecological tea garden to implement fully traceable digital supervision of tea planting, picking, production and storage in tea gardens; in 2020, Jingdong Supermarket joined hands with Hangzhou Zhenghao Tea. Representatives of leading tea enterprises such as Sichuan Emei Mountain Bamboo Leaf Green Tea Industry jointly established the "Jingdong Spring Tea Quality Alliance".
The benefits of these initiatives have broken the information black box of the tea market and made market supervision more transparent and efficient. Based on the traceability system jointly created with tea enterprises, governments and industry alliances around the world, consumers can inquire about the origin, planting and picking, transportation, distribution and other information of tea at any time, especially for famous mountain species such as West Lake Longjing and Wuyishan Dahongpao, eliminating people's distrust of online tea purchases. This not only broadens the sales radius of tea companies, but also promotes the transformation of consumer cognition from "category" to "brand".
But e-commerce has not changed the most essential part of tea production and manufacturing. The high-quality West Lake Longjing completely relies on the hands of the stir-frying master, and constantly uses the ten unique stir-frying methods of Longjing in the iron pot of "shaking, building, pinching, pinching, grasping, pushing, buckling, pressing and grinding", and in the process of frying, according to the size of the fresh leaves, the degree of tenderness and flexibility to change the techniques, in order to fry the longjing tea with excellent aroma and shape.
This is difficult to replace by the industrial production of machines.
The transformation of e-commerce into China's tea industry is not a overthrow of the existing model, but a new balance between maintaining traditional cultural meaning and being compatible with modern consumption habits. Whether it is 2,000 yuan or 200 yuan of tea, every consumer who wants to drink tea can buy value-for-money tea on demand and with confidence, so that many people recognize tea culture and consume tea products, which is the long-term value created by e-commerce for China's tea industry.