Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/139019
YUNOMI.US A market access, the solvency of quality-oriented e-marketplaces nother notable aspect of the push to develop increasrests more on providing buyers with a depth of delicious and ingly transparent Web-based sales systems is that doing otherwise tough-to-source teas. In places like China and Japan so may help bring more youthful energy to both the where tea culture is well established, the best teas rarely make growing and consuming ends of tea. their way out into the international market. Focused Web marChun is quick to point out that the tea-production indusketplaces could help buyers in America and other markets grab try in Japan has an old-generation feel (the average age of a taste of the world's best leaf. a Japanese tea farmer is 65.8 "We end up helping a lot of speyears, according to the councialty shops in Europe, America try's Ministry of Agriculture, Though these marketplaces are for the most and Oceania obtain rare teas Forestry and Fisheries), but that are usually reserved for the he thinks bringing the farms part consumer-oriented, they can hold value domestic market," says Chun. online and connecting them for small tea businesses as well. Visiting tea The latest players in this with American and European lands is expensive, time-consuming and difwave of online tea also tend to markets could spark revitalizaoffer plenty of regional expertion. "We hope to … demonficult for low-volume specialty retailers, so tise, another facet that can help strate that a significant global ordering wholesale through an online marketbuyers gain access to product market for Japanese tea exists place becomes an attractive method to both they might not otherwise have. … and thereby encourage more Sam Lin, founder of Chinayoung people to get into the get quality product and to gain a sense of conspecialist site Teasenz (based tea industry as farmers, manunection to the producers behind it. in Hong Kong), says he and his facturers or sellers," he says, team are constantly exploring noting that most of the farmers the tea fields on the Mainland featured on his site are in their and making connections there. He notes that in China, tea farm- 30s or 40s. "Without this effort, by mid-century we just may see ers often "just sell to people they know, as they see it as a social Japanese tea production disappear." happening. … So there is nothing more satisfying for me than to Dynamic Web marketplaces can also build (and then satisfy) a sell a tea that I tried at the home of the farmer while getting to thirst for great tea among 20- and 30-somethings in America and know the person behind it." elsewhere. "It is definitely a younger generation of shoppers," says continued on page 56 freshcup.com July 2013 55