The tea merchant in Taiyuan, Shanxi, the cat can only get out of the predicament.

Mr. an, a tea merchant from Anxi, Fujian Province, went out with his friends early in the morning. As rents in Modern Tea City rose again, he had to find more suitable shops to continue his tea business, which he had run for more than a decade. Since the beginning of this year, like Mr. an, many tea merchants have to plan to get out of the "besieged city" and open up a new world on the basis of stabilizing the original market in the face of rising rents, difficult business, increased costs, and so on.

Non-local tea merchants expand Taiyuan market

In the 1980s, tea in Taiyuan has not yet formed a real market, due to the hard water quality in the north, people are still used to drinking scented tea with strong aroma and bitter taste. Local tea merchants in Taiyuan firmly grasped the hobby of Taiyuan people and popularized jasmine tea to every corner of the city. In the middle and late 1990s, with the opening of the market, tea merchants from tea producing areas entered the Taiyuan market one after another, especially Fujian tea merchants. "when I was 17 years old, I came to Taiyuan to do tea business with my friends. At that time, local tea merchants in Taiyuan were very strong. Yixiang, Qian Hexiang, and Taiyuan Tea Company basically monopolized the market. There is no market for Tieguanyin, our main product, so we have to make scented tea according to the demand of Taiyuan market. In our hometown, scented tea is the cheapest tea, we gradually opened up the market through low-price sales, and when the market improved, we began to push Tieguanyin slowly. " Fujian tea merchant Mr. Liu said.

As the state-owned tea enterprises at that time struggled to survive in the restructuring, Fujian tea merchants seized the opportunity to vigorously promote Tieguanyin through various media, so that the Taiyuan tea market gradually formed a market pattern dominated by jasmine tea at the low end and Tieguanyin at the high end, and the monopoly position of state-owned tea enterprises was replaced by small tea shops.

After entering the year 2000, Tieguanyin stands out in the Taiyuan tea market, and the marketing methods of Fujian tea merchants have also awakened tea merchants in other areas. for a time, all kinds of tea have appeared in the media, black tea nourishing stomach, Pu'er scraping intestines, green tea anti-cancer …... All kinds of gimmicks are rampant, not only stir-fry some ordinary tea all the way, but also make more fish eyes mixed with pearls in the tea. In the words of Mr. Wu, a tea merchant, "the market has been messed up by them."

Three public consumption restrictions on the decline in tea sales

Since 2013, the days of tea merchants have become increasingly tight.

"in the past, the price of tea could be sold, especially gift tea. Some people came in to ask for the best tea, regardless of the price. Now I can't. Good tea can't be sold, and no one buys too bad. Only those in the middle range do the best, but most of the tea buyers are individual customers. In the tea city, they all rely on wholesale, earning dozens of yuan per jin of tea. If the sales volume doesn't go up, we can't make any money. " Mr. Yu of Modern Tea City said.

Since the implementation of the "eight regulations" of the Central Committee, the tea market has been declining all the way, especially the middle and high-end tea, which has become the first category in the tea market to enter the "cold winter". Mr. Fan, who is in the tea packaging business in the small commodity wholesale market, has a deep understanding of this: "first of all, high-end packaging can no longer sell. Those used to be my main profit points, but now they have become my burden." The good tea of other tea merchants can no longer sell, so my high-end packaging naturally can't do so much. Now high-grade tin boxes and iron boxes are basically not made, only plastic and paper packaging are done a little more, plastic packaging can go well. "

A person in charge of the Taiyuan Tea Industry Association said that the decline of high-end tea consumption caused by the "eight regulations" is only one of the reasons for the downturn in the tea market, and the main reason is that tea merchants have wantonly hyped tea a few years ago, making tea prices false high, but the quality has deteriorated. "people have focused on how to advertise and promote tea, and there is basically no change in technology and planting, and tea farmers have secretly reduced and changed their processes in order to produce tea, using illegal pesticides. This adds to the already unstable quality of tea. What's more, wild tea is pretended to be regular tea, and old tea residue tea is used instead of new tea, which has a negative impact on tea consumption. To put it simply, if your things are bad and the price is high, we consumers are not willing to buy them. "

The cost is rising year by year, and tea consumption is going down.

Mr. Wu, a Fujian tea merchant, rented a front house on Kangle Street five years ago. The annual rent was 36000 yuan at that time. The tea market was depressed in 2013, and many of his fellow villagers in Chacheng were forced to withdraw because the rent was almost half cheaper than that in Chacheng. Stick to it until the end of 2014. However, the landlord recently told him that the rent had to go up, otherwise it would be rented to someone else.

"now it has risen to 45000 yuan, which is a bit high for me. Apart from the rent, water, electricity and living expenses in 2014, I basically made no money. In 2015, it increased by 9000 yuan. If this year is the same as last year, I will consider working in other industries." Mr. Wu said that because all the teas he sold were grown in his own family, he contracted a new tea mountain when business was good a few years ago, resulting in hiring people to pick and stir-fry tea every busy season. "the labor cost there is very high, which makes the cost of tea much higher. In the past, when he picked tea and fried tea, the labor cost was not calculated, but now he employs people every year, even if the cost is included in the tea. So the price of tea is a little higher than before. "

Mr. an, a tea merchant in Anxi, Fujian Province, is even more anxious recently. "the rent went up twice last year to 70,000 yuan a year, and this year it will go up by 30%. Now the tea business is so difficult, I really can't go on with the rent increase. Since I came to Tea City in 2008 to start a business, I have settled down in Taiyuan and made some tricks in making tea. I didn't say anything about raising rents when business was good, but now business is really bad. If my home is not in Taiyuan, I want to quit. Now the only way is to find other places to reopen the store, it is best for everyone to move there together to do a more stable tea wholesale market. "

Under the collective protest of tea merchants, Modern Tea City has delayed the rent increase, but it is an indisputable fact that the operating cost of tea has risen. It is understood that in recent years, in large tea markets such as Fangcun Tea Wholesale Market in Guangdong and Maliandao Tea Wholesale Market in Beijing, shop rents have been rising, resulting in some shops being overwhelmed and withdrawing one after another. In November last year, the rent increase in Guangdong Fangcun Tea Market, the largest tea wholesale market in the country, caused merchants to go on strike and protest.

Turn to the civilian market and find a new way.

Compared with the instability of the real tea market, what the online tea shop has done is unboiled water.

A tea online store in Xiamen, Fujian Province has recently launched a strategy of low prices, which has led to a sharp rise in its Tieguanyin sales. In December last year, it sold 34578 pieces, each piece per jin, 48 yuan per jin, with a total of 253809 reviews, of which 251145 were well received, with a praise rate close to 99%.

The staff of the shop said that they were also a small tea wholesaler whose boss was from Fuzhou and had been in the tea business for more than ten years. It was the idea of the boss's son to do the tea business online. They collected the tea from the local tea farmers, then found someone to pack it. After calculating the total cost, they added 5 to 8 yuan on this basis, and then took photos and sold it online. After two years of operation, physical stores have basically become warehouses, and online sales have become the main channel, with an annual profit of more than 3 million yuan.

With regard to the sale of tea in online stores, many tea merchants disagree. "Tea is a special commodity that cannot be distinguished from good or bad just by looking at it, and different people have different tastes, which requires people to taste and choose in person. If sold online, it is good to meet the taste that everyone is satisfied with. If someone is not satisfied, it will screw up their own brand." Mr. Zhang of Maliandao Tea City in Taiyuan said. And Mr. Zhang's view is quite representative among some tea merchants in our city. Most of them think that the tea on the Internet is messy in terms of price and quality, and it is not easy to do.

However, some people in the industry believe that some tea merchants are unwilling to take the road of networking, not because online sales are not easy for people to taste, but mainly because the price is transparent, resulting in relatively thin profits. "Tea merchants are used to the huge profits brought by the hype of tea a few years ago. They earn hundreds or even thousands of yuan per jin of tea, and they are resistant to the increasingly transparent price. If they sell it online, it is very difficult to earn dozens of yuan per jin of tea, not to mention hundreds of thousands of yuan." A person in charge of Taiyuan Tea Association pointed out.

Professor Li, a marketing major at Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, believes that the market has its own regulation mechanism. When goods are unsalable, they will force manufacturers to improve their processes, improve production efficiency, or change production methods. Make sellers change their business thinking and change their sales methods. "in the Internet era, we must do business with Internet thinking. Any business behavior that is stuck on its laurels is tantamount to chronic suicide. No matter how the market changes, everyone should find ways to actively deal with it and take the initiative to meet new changes and challenges. Otherwise, it will be eliminated by the market."