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
TEASENZ THE WHOLE LEAF continued from page 55 Tealet's Petersen when describing her site's clientele. She markets primarily to North America but notes that "to our great surprise a large portion of customers have been international (mostly Europe and South America)." That appeal to younger buyers can be attributed to the fact that those consumers are used to researching and buying online. But they're also increasingly interested in knowing all the nitty-gritty details on where their foods originated. Petersen found that most people interested in purchasing tea from a marketplace "are either new to tea or interested in exploration. … For this reason our most popular product is our Global Tea Taster subscription service. We introduce new teas and new growers on a bi-monthly basis and give the subscription members the opportunity to taste each tea first in 15-gram samples." Lin adds that on Teasenz a surprisingly high number of purchases—40 percent—come from male buyers. These upstarts now seem dedicated to bringing their exploration-minded consumers deeper into the tea game by presenting the compelling stories and mounds of knowledge that surround quality leaf. Yunomi.us includes an extremely detailed rundown of Japan's shincha (first-flush) harvest schedule, among other information nuggets. Tealet offers photos and profiles of 10 producers, as well as videos of a few in their fields. "Our advantage is definitely the human connections our brand and platform inherently offer for tea lovers and tea growers," says Petersen. T hough these marketplaces are for the most part consumer-oriented, they can hold value for small tea businesses as well. Visiting tea lands is expensive, time-consuming and difficult for low-volume specialty retailers, so ordering wholesale through an online marketplace becomes an attractive method to both get quality product and to gain a sense of connection to 56 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com the producers behind it. Lin at Teasenz says, "Half of our customers are small-business tea shop owners (both Web-based and brick and mortar) ordering a few kilos at a time." At Yunomi.us, wholesale accounts are available for resellers, but Chun says most retailers are using the e-commerce marketplace as a catalog to browse rather than a transaction platform. "So we actually do a lot of tea consulting as a result," he says. "I think the main reason for this is a lack of expert knowledge about Japanese teas … especially when we are introducing products such as a rare Shouju cultivar shincha from Kagoshima." Due to limited supply, Petersen, Chun and Lin all offer small retailers wholesale pricing for kilos, not shipping containers. "We made a decision not to offer large bulk orders, since our farmer network can't satisfy this quantity," says Lin. "In addition, bulk-order customers usually are looking for lower-end quality teas for blending." Retailers seeking shipments of 20 or more pounds at Tealet can log in to review tasting notes by tea reviewer Jason Walker, consultant Tony Gebely and celebrity tea drinker Kevin Rose (the Silicon Valley wunderkind who also happens to love the leaf). The lots are then auctioned to the highest bidder. Typical wholesale orders at all three marketplaces range from a half kilo to 10 kilos (one to 22 pounds), so clearly these marketplaces don't sell anywhere near the same volume as large wholesalers such as International Tea Importers and QTrade or multimillion dollar retail sites like Tazo and Teavana. Still, as missiondriven ventures that are focused on quality and connections, their progress bears watching. "Although we have confidence in the quality and attractiveness of the specialty tea on our Web site," says Petersen, "we know that building a trusting and transparent community is the most important task."