How to break the billion "magic spell" of the tea industry

1.3 billion of the super-populous countries are producing huge purchasing power every day. Backed by such a big market with natural advantages, the daily consumer goods of the masses have huge fertile soil for growth and room for development. Whether it is oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, tobacco, alcohol and other industries, hundreds or even hundreds of billions of big brands have been born. In contrast, tea, which is a product of rigid demand as well as tobacco and alcohol, has a long history and a large number of consumers, but the annual sales scale of the largest tea enterprises is not more than 2 billion, and most tea enterprises are "small, weak and scattered." it has become a strange phenomenon in the rigid demand industry.

This strange phenomenon has existed in the tea industry for a long time, breaking through the sales of "one billion" is like a curse and has become a pain for the development of tea enterprises. Why can a UK, which does not produce a piece of tea, be born into a multinational giant with annual sales of more than 30 billion, while Chinese tea enterprises have never been able to get out of the "billion curse"? In the final analysis, it is the tea industry that has been plagued by three major problems for a long time, making it difficult to cultivate influential and well-known brands.

The difficulty of standards is difficult to form a system.

Being trapped by the standard is the first difficult problem hindering the development of the tea industry. The difficulty of standards in the tea industry is mainly reflected in several aspects: there are no standards for products and no standards for prices.

Chinese tea has a long history and has a wide range of categories, such as "Xihu Longjing Tea, Dongting Biluochun, Anxi Tieguanyin Tea, Huangshan Maofeng" and so on. There are more than a thousand kinds of well-known tea, but they are only well-known teas representing the region, but they are never well-known brands. Compared with famous tobacco "Zhonghua" and famous liquor "Maotai", consumers do not have a reliable Chinese tea brand when choosing tea.

The current situation of non-standard products makes consumers confused when they buy. What on earth is good tea? To study the raw materials, origin, color, smell and even picking time of tea, these factors are inevitably too professional for consumers who are "laymen". Bringing a "person who knows tea" when buying tea reflects the lack of standards for products in the tea industry.

At the same time, because the product has no standard, the price is non-standard, which makes the tea industry even more chaotic. Take Pu'er tea as an example, from hundreds of yuan to thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan. For consumers, what is the difference between these different prices of Pu'er tea? Where does the price positioning come from? The mixed price has caused many consumers to be deterred from buying.

Products have no standards, which directly leads to consumers' lack of trust in products and brands. Without trust, there is no scale.

Because of the difficulty of positioning, it is difficult to make a big name.

To achieve a successful brand, we must first have a clear positioning of the brand. For example, the positioning of target consumers, the positioning of prices, the positioning of product characteristics, etc., but for a long time, most of China's tea enterprises do not have much awareness in this respect, and the tea industry basically sells scattered tea. Of course, more and more enterprises are beginning to cultivate their own brands, but most of the brands are either unclear or extensive. In order to solve the positioning problem, tea enterprises need to solve three levels of problems.

First, the positioning of the target population. The target group of the brand is the high-end consumer group, the middle class or the mass consumer. What are their core needs? What are the core benefits that brands should give them? Second, the positioning of tea products. Whether to make organic tea or famous mountain ancient tree tea, make bag tea, or original leaf tea, make popular tea, or business tea, or other more innovative products, and so on. Tea enterprises should focus on a focused development to form their own unique competitive products in order to achieve differentiation from many brands and achieve core competitiveness. Third, the orientation of tea category. Is to focus on a category, refined, strong, such as Zhuyeqing, Zhengshantang Jin Junmei, or the starting point is based on a full range of tea, such as a full range of high-end tea positioning of the small pot of tea.

Only with accurate positioning is it possible to develop products that really meet the needs of target consumers, to truly meet the needs of target consumers, and to achieve brands that consumers can trust and love.

Cultural difficulties, resting on one's laurels

The broad and profound "tea culture" has not only nurtured the whole tea industry, but also trapped the tea industry to some extent. At present, in order to complete self-image packaging, all kinds of tea brands almost without exception regard "tea culture" as a sales push, mistakenly bundling tea history, tea crafts, tea stories, and even some performing and technical elements into modern annotations of "tea culture", making tea culture more lofty or sublime, but this can only artificially create a gap between consumers and brands.

A culture with vitality must change with the changes of the times and cannot rest on its laurels. An influential tea brand needs to create its own unique brand culture based on the matrix of traditional tea culture, rather than following others.

Standard, orientation and culture have become the three major dilemmas hindering the development of the tea industry, making the Chinese tea industry in an awkward and helpless situation for a long time, not only did not produce influential brands like tobacco and alcohol at home, not to mention go abroad and compete with international brands. Fortunately, there are some tea brands, have been aware of the current situation of the tea industry, and put forward their own solutions to various difficulties.

Take the small can of tea newly launched in October this year as an example, "six major teas and eight famous teas". There is only one product for each kind of famous tea, all products are of the same grade and price, and through relatively standardized products, it makes it easier for consumers to choose and buy products. The eight famous teas of small cans of tea strictly limit the quality of raw materials, cooperate with eight national treasure tea masters in China, define the technological standards, and use the original aluminum cans of packaging to limit the packaging standards, so that the eight famous teas have relatively simple and intuitive selection criteria.

Through the establishment of standards to make good tea simple and transparent, small cans of tea have also completed its brand positioning in this process: focus on providing high-quality tea for high-grade people, and create a high-quality life.

Small pot tea with high-end consumer groups as the core,"all categories of high-end tea brand" brand positioning, so that small pot tea really focus on the target customers, insight into the real needs of consumers: tea is not only a necessary consumer goods for life, but also a way to taste a better life experience; tea is not only a healthy and natural drink, but also an elegant social way for high-end people in work, life, business and other occasions. Small pot tea is not only a high-end tea brand, but also a high-grade lifestyle.

Sixty years have made Chinese tobacco, and a hundred years have made Maotai wine. I believe that in the near future, with the promotion of brand awareness of Chinese tea enterprises, there will certainly be super brands of more than one billion yuan and more than ten billion yuan in the tea industry with the upgrading of national consumption demand, leading Chinese tea to the world again.