Were one sufficiently cynical and minded to create an on-line tea business for the acquisition of currency, there are two current schools of thought concerning the direction one could take:
i. Sell old pu'ercha, "vintage" pots, and wulong, with a limited selection of younger shengpu, typically via a nostalgic-styled web-site.
ii. Sell cheap-and-cheerful, typically via eBay.
Most vendors come down on either side of that distinction. The first is typically motivated by selling "rare" goods (actual value unquantifiable, large profit margins), while the latter is typically motivated by selling cheaply and in large volumes. The first method is easier - pick up some suitably "rare" goods from your last holiday in the orient, knock up a web-site that conveys a suitable impression of vintage quality, and hike up the prices. The latter is hard - it is the cut-throat world of small margins and large distribution.
Yuechen Yuexiang - "Will improve with age". An unproven sentiment.
While most vendors in (i) benefit from the opacity of their product's pricing and debatable market value, there isn't anything innately wrong with buying cheaply and selling high - it is the basis of commerce. Most pu'er drinkers are no strangers to a bit of sport concerning price gouging - we've happily been buying Taiwanese bingcha from
Houde for years. However, there is an insidious sub-class in type (i) vendors that actively tries to capitalise on consumer ignorance.
The formula for this sub-class is to hunt for accessible cakes from rock-bottom labels (modern CNNP, Haiwan, and their ilk), pick a small selection of around a half-dozen cakes (to suggest careful selection), pop them up on a web-site with plenty of white space, then turn up the prices above maximum and sell to the hopefully-ignorant public. For special effect, utilise plenty of vocabulary from the wine- and cigar-tasting spheres ("premier cru", "vintage", etc.), to reinforce the illusion of quality.
As shown on the wrapper, this was released by CNNP - the place where pu'ercha goes to die
Such practices are a time-honoured tradition, particularly amongst England's mercantile classes. Prices here are astronomical, for most things. Trainers [sneakers] sold in England are often 200% the price of their equivalents elsewhere; music CDs (remember them?) when bought in shops were typically extortionately priced; wine almost doubles in value the moment it crosses the Channel from France to Blighty. The Economist recently ran an amusing piece on the "expensive, tiny" houses of England. I was reminded of a long-time friend who, upon emigrating to California (the poor fool), bought a vast house with the money made from selling his tiny city property in England. My little brother tried the same trick, but he soon came back to our humble university after failing to negotiate eight-lane highways of Californian traffic on his bicycle.
Tea shops are no different. Indeed, they have the advantage that most English people know tea that can be an item of wonderful quality (it seems to form part of a long-neglected folk memory in our collective unconscious), and yet almost no-one knows any better than the dreary muck available from Whittards of Chelsea. Witness the success of Jing of London (not to be confused with the eternally-excellent
Jing Teashop), which I
recently bemoaned in a piece on - quelle surprise - modern CNNP sold at eye-watering prices.
I cannot be the only one who hears the voice of ODB when looking at these leaves
Tears well up in my eyes as we see that the 2004 Jixing "Yiwu" (no mention of CNNP) appears at the bottom of the list, weighing in at £78 ($121). I dare you to have a quick Taobao search for cakes from the Jixing factory. (Type "Jixing" into the mighty
Babelcarp, then copy the resulting characters into Taobao.) This is a factory whose products are, as anticipated, rock-bottom in price, seldom reaching above 200 RMB (£19), even for cakes with some age on the clock.
Contemplating the pretty sample packet at my tea-table, kindly provided by Edgar of Canton Tea, my mind is filled with the above prior assumptions, which are not complimentary.
The cake is made from smaller leaves, and has a dark, pungent aroma that reminds of modern Xiaguan. The presence of reddened, processed leaves confirms my suspicions, and further strengthens my unkind assumptions.
I like to think I'm not entirely close-minded, however. The tea itself surprises me - it is really very enjoyable. Delicious, in fact.
You will love or loathe this cake depending on your attitude to modern Xiaguan "special" productions. I love them, because they are as dark, blackened, and husky as the contents of my withered soul. They are stuffed full of faux-tobacco flavours and scents that bring to mind my father's pipe, and all the vicarious enjoyment that comes along with sniffing the smoke of a pipe-smoker, without being brave enough to smoke it yourself.
This is so much like processed Xiaguan that I would categorise this as more than an "homage" - it is, in fact, a direct copy. It has the blackened heart of Baoyan, but retains the cereal, grain-like charm of that Xiaguan area's unprocessed, raw leaves. It is absolutely akin to the
2008 Xiaguan "Duling Fengsao", released under their premium FT label.
(Note to self: "Ouch", has caused me to read this as "Duelling Banjos" whenever I write it.)
Delicious tea, for fans of Xiaguan
For £78, one would hope for single-mountain charm, carefully aged for a few years, probably from some highly-reputed producer. To charge £78 for something as immensely, almost overpoweringly, processed such as this cake... well, my dear wife described it as "criminal". Presumably, as with Jing of London, such teas are not aimed at you and me, but at the Whittards crowd. The danger is - when people know better, they'll buy elsewhere - hence the dependence on consumer ignorance. It's like the export wine market in the 1980s.
I should add, however, that Canton Tea also provided us with an entirely wonderful lapsang souchong, which is precisely everything I have been looking for, if you recall my
old article on my quest for such a tea. The price is shocking for the Canton Tea lapsang, too, but I think it's worth it.
Thanks again to Edgar for two fascinating samples.
Addendum
I've had a surprising amount of feedback in the short time that this has been published - thanks to all correspondents. The general consensus is agreement, but I suspect this is more a function of the fact that those who know my e-mail address are usually on the same wavelength as me when it comes to tea, and agree with my assessment of highly-priced CNNP...
I had some excellent comments from one source whom shall remain anonymous, which led to a particularly lengthy and interesting discussion, of which I can summarise my part below. There's nothing that gets me going to work each morning like the prospect of a good, reasoned debate. If you don't like walls of text, then we'll see you in the next article...
Correspondent
[It's unfair to single Houde
out for criticism.]
Class (i) vendors are wide and varied - anyone who isn't selling in high volume, but who focusses on quality, falls in this category. "Boutique" vs. "quality". There will always be disagreements in price, of course, given that everyone has a different budget. The subject of Houde's perceived high prices in some categories is well-documented, and I mentioned it here as a reference to previous discussions had around the on-line "tea-sphere". Hence, I don't find it at all unfair to cite Houde as being highly-priced - we buy from Houde because we prefer the quality that comes with the high prices, as I mentioned. You know, I have spent more money at Houde than I care to recall, and will continue to do so because I (i) like Dr. Lee's tea, and (ii) like Dr. Lee. I have to be honest and say that I don't like his prices - it's not unreasonable to do so, I believe.
(I should add that I cite Houde as being an example of a good boutique vendor - quite definitely not of the sub-class that the article discusses, in which low-quality products are sold to a hopefully-ignorant public.)
I prefer direct criticism rather than sideways implication, and hence you can always rely on the grumpy fool at the Half-Dipper to tell you his opinion. I like to think that I've arrived at my conclusions through reason, though, and am happy to back them up with a good discussion.
In the same section, I described charging high prices as being entirely acceptable - it is the basis of commerce. Tea used to cost more than gold, at one point, and was bought with glee. If one doesn't like the higher prices, then one looks elsewhere.
The purpose of this article is that I believe that there is a sub-set of normal vendors who actually require consumer ignorance in order for their business models to function. I described how, in my opinion, certain vendors have such requirements in order for them to operate as businesses successfully, and then described how they arise naturally from cultural expectations of pricing in England.
Correspondent
[The value of many goods from a
"boutique" vendor is far from unquantifiable,
because they are being increasingly sold
to buyers from Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong.]
The pricing may not be opaque to those from Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, given their proximity to the market, but it is entirely opaque to Westerners, whom, I suspect, form the major market for such vendors. Opacity is a simple product of geography - we've been importing opaquely-priced goods for centuries. I believe it entirely fair to say that vendors in this class benefit from such opacity - it is a logical and indisputable fact. I have tried to look up the prices of so, so many products that I've bought from "boutique" vendors, and fail to do so 90% of the time. Such opacity is merely a function of the items being sold, and hence, I believe, my point is entirely fair. I'm happy to support it with further debate!
Correspondent
["Boutique" shops have a very hard time -
it's not easy compared to "high volume" sellers.]
My comments refer to the oft-played-out battle between "boutique" and "high volume". The latter, with their paper-thin profit margins, are particularly hard to make work due to their requirements of scale. The former enjoys higher profit margins, by definition, and is therefore afforded more flexibility in marketing. Whether or not either could be made to work as a source of primary income without difficulty isn't under discussion. I'm sure both require effort.
Correspondent
[What purpose does your post serve?
Who would find it useful?]
I rather like reading candid posts about people's opinions. If someone buys an overpriced kitchen, it gets installed badly, and then they have to sue to get it corrected, I would like to know about it if I were buying a kitchen. (I've been doing this recently, and benefitting from candid assessments.) The "free press" is a time-honoured method of enforcing honesty on our societies, through critical writing.
It has to be fair writing, but I would stand by my assertions as being both reasonable and based on personal evidence. If you don't agree, I'm happy to continue this well-argued debate.
Who would find it useful? The Half-Dipper is fortunate enough to attract a rather large quantity of readers from the more casual end of the spectrum, and I've had some good e-mails on the subject from a couple of new-comers who experienced similar frustrations when dealing with the sub-class of "boutique" vendors that is the subject of the article. They found it useful.
Looking further afield, it's also useful for tea companies. Bizarrely enough (and I have no idea why such a thing would occur), I've given advice to over half-a-dozen start-ups over the past few years, and the text of this article came from my correspondences with them. The found it useful, apparently.
Most of all, I'm writing for my dear Half-Dipper readers, who are people just like me. We support both types of vendors, and we love nothing more than to share opinions, information, and gripes in order to get us to our goal: good tea.
Thus, the article is simply one man's assessment of a market, how one would progress within it were one of the mind to do so, and a critique (and warning) of those whom I believe have got it entirely wrong.
(Certainly, as the market becomes more knowledgable, tactics will at least have to change.)
