Traditional tea industry sprouts new buds, radiating new vitality for development
The traditional Chinese tea industry has always been an industry dominated by growers. For a long time, the majority of tea producers have focused mostly on how to make a good tea, while intentionally or unintentionally neglecting the most critical link: consumption. This can be seen from tea production and sales in recent years. According to statistics, since 2001, the average annual growth rate of China's tea output has exceeded 14.1%, and the compound growth rate of production capacity has exceeded 22%. Last year, China's tea output reached 2.09 million tons, with a total output value of 134.9 billion yuan.
On the one hand, tea production has grown rapidly; on the other hand, tea companies and tea merchants complain that “the market is difficult to work with.” Some experts even assert that China's tea industry has entered a “post-crisis era.” Just a few days ago, Jiufeng Mingcha, a “Top 100 Chinese Tea Industry Enterprise” that had once been preparing for listing, closed all of its stores in Fuzhou overnight, causing an uproar in the industry.
Although it was only an accidental event, inevitability lies hidden within the accidental. In fact, with the sudden rise of tea e-commerce, poor performance at tea terminal stores has become a common phenomenon. The shift between old and new channels highlights the severe oscillation in the industry's development. From the perspective of the tea development industry chain, the strategic disintegration and reconstruction of marketing channels is only the beginning of the transformation and development of the entire tea industry.
“This is the best of times, and the worst of times.” This saying also applies to the tea industry under mobile internet, especially with the introduction of “Internet Plus,” which has pushed the traditional tea industry onto a new “outlet.”
As is widely known, the tea industry is currently one of the industries with the greatest concentration of small and medium-sized enterprises in China. Under complex and ever-changing market conditions and continuously rising marketing costs, the urgent task for the development of the tea industry is to promote tea marketing from purely offline physical terminals to simultaneous efforts online and offline. This is also one of the important measures for breaking the current sluggishness of the tea market and expanding tea market consumption.
It should be said that in recent years the development momentum of tea e-commerce has been very rapid, and a number of tea e-commerce platforms with some reputation have emerged, but whether viewed from consumer experience or penetration rate, the overall level of tea e-commerce still needs to be improved. For example, many tea e-commerce players blindly pursue low prices and high volume in bidding, resulting in insufficient supply chain integration capability and a disconnect between production and sales; some e-commerce players lack a sense of integrity, adopt a one-shot deal mentality, pass off inferior goods as good ones, and exaggerate publicity, affecting the healthy development of the entire tea market. The author has purchased tea from e-commerce platforms many times and has also bought “misrepresented” tea many times. Apart from complaining and giving negative reviews, there is nothing else to do.
There are believed to be no small number of consumers who have had similar experiences, exposing many problems in the current tea e-commerce field. To solve these problems, efforts must urgently start from three aspects: talent, standards, and brands. Compared with other industries, high-quality e-commerce talent in the “three rural” fields has always been lacking, and the tea industry needs to introduce and cultivate a group of tea e-commerce talents who both understand tea and possess internet thinking as soon as possible; the phenomenon of the tea market acting separately and lacking standards has been widely criticized, and mechanisms must be further improved, systems perfected, and supervision of tea e-commerce online operations strengthened to create a good environment for the development of the tea industry; strengthening e-commerce brand building is both a goal and a means, and is conducive to promoting the healthy development of the entire tea industry.
It should be pointed out that the concept of “Internet Plus” is by no means simply opening an online store or micro store. In essence, it is an innovation in industrial thinking, which will not only reconstruct the industrial model, but also produce disruptive reshaping of business models and even consumption models. Cloud computing, big data, and other technologies have brought consumers at the end of the industry chain from behind the scenes to the front. The thinking model of “from tea garden to tea cup” that tea companies were once accustomed to will be replaced by the model of “from tea cup to tea garden,” and Chinese tea companies will make up the lesson that “the consumer is God.”
For China's tea industry, the greatest opportunity brought by “Internet Plus” is that, against the backdrop of consumption upgrading, the tea market may usher in explosive growth. At a time when the concentration of the tea industry is relatively low and the market lacks leading brands, the internet has removed the distance between tea farmers and the market, and everyone has an opportunity. But who can truly seize the opportunity? As the old saying goes, opportunity favors the prepared.
As a global natural beverage, tea consumption has always shown a growth trend. Even Starbucks and McDonald's have successively started selling tea in their stores, showing that Chinese tea still has ample room for development in the future, and Chinese tea producers need to use their brains more and work harder.