The underground industry behind sky-high tea prices.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “microscopic Story” (ID: xianweigushi) , Author: Editorial Department of Microscopy Story.
Have you ever drunk Pu’er tea worth millions of dollars?
In recent years, Yunnan’s “high-priced” Pu’er tea has been reported frequently, from 680,000 tea kings to 880,000 Icelandic Laozhai ancient tree teas. Every year, the sky-high price of tea will set off a wave of public opinion.
But in fact, the price of most Pu’er tea is between 100 yuan and 600 yuan, a few are in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and there are even a lot of Pu’er tea that can be bought for more than ten yuan.
Where is the price difference between the sky-high Pu’er tea and the more than ten yuan Pu’er tea? Ordinary people may not really be able to taste the difference.
A group of tea industry practitioners told in this issue of microscopic stories, among them:
Some people have participated in “stir-fried tea”, and pointed out that the high price of tea does not come from those who love tea, but the underground black production behind it;
Some people are tea entrepreneurs, and they analyzed the boundary between tea cost and profit;
Some people are employees of medium-sized tea companies, and pointed out that high-priced tea is mostly one of the marketing methods of tea companies, and the purpose is to drive the overall sales of low-priced tea…
Here is the true story about them:
Text | Yang Qing, MacKenzie McAvoy
Edit | Wan Fang
High-priced tea is not bought and drunk
I participated in the “technological revolution” of this underground industry
Guo Renhui, born in 90s, Chaoshan people, trendy masters
Tea, which was originally used as a gift, has become a “financial investment” product in recent years, attracting my colleagues around me to gradually join the ranks of “stir-fried tea”.
The one who led me to the introduction was a brother who was laundering money in an underground bank. According to him, the number of tea shops that developed rapidly has something to do with money laundering.
In the past few years, “Internet+” was popular. At that time, some businessmen saw this trend and started to hype Pu’er tea with a bunch of ideas.
The capital side who entered the market first became the market maker relying on the stock volume, and through the stock of teaYe left hand over his right, and unilaterally controlled the price of tea.
Some in YunnanSmall villages get the first month near the water tower and start to play two-way futures trading.
They created a mobile trading platform and a large-cap index for this purpose, on which you can bet on the rise and fall of tea prices, and even increase leverage.
The gambling is tea, the real money is earned, and it is just like a romantic gambling game of a literati. It is common for people with bad luck to lose hundreds of thousands a month.
As for the reasons for the rise and fall of tea prices, no matter how well you analyze it, it depends on the mood of the dealer and the luck of the gamblers.
Part of the high prices is driven by criminals.
For those who want to “launder” their money, the way of laundering large amounts of black money in underground banks is cumbersome.
Many people will choose to resell real estate and antique artworks, or buy and sell stocks through financial means.
But this method of money laundering is too easy to be discovered, and a lot of hidden costs need to be paid for the management relationship. The super high premium of Pu’er tea is undoubtedly the “technical revolution” of this underground industry.
When encountering customers who need money laundering, the dealers in the underground bank and the Pu’er tea market will negotiate to raise the price, and then let the customers buy the tea at a high price.
When the price of tea slowly drops, the underground bank will sell this batch of teaYe bought it back, or sent the money back to the customer afterwards, and the money was washed away with the effort of turning his left hand to his right.
Banks laundering money in this way generally do not accept small orders of several million, and it is not easy for the dealers to raise the price of tea. The handling fee is naturally higher, generally around 20%.
Customers of money laundering will basically choose to leave this batch of tea. The bosses of the underground industry mostly need to give gifts and manage their relationship:
Please ask a friend to sell it to the chief at a low price, and then buy it back at a high price after a while, and this favor will be completed.
Or send them to the chiefs who help to clarify the relationship, and put them on the showcase, and those bosses who ask for these chiefs will naturally invite these tea leaves back at a high price.
National wine and famous cigarettes are strictly regulated, and Pu’er tea is at least safe at present. A few times back and forth, there were still those few Pu’er tea cakes in the chief’s cabinet, but the numbers in the account began to increase astonishingly.
This kind of theater naturally requires a lot of chips to operate, let alone, this Pu’er tea cake really looks like a casino chip.
The friend who brought me into the industry did a job of licking blood, and what he wanted was “stable”.
He often tells us that in a gambling game, only the dealer will always make money, and tea gambling should never be touched.
But he still pointed me a way to make money. In the second half of the year, the e-commerce shopping festival is the most, and the tea factory will release a small amount of tea for sale online at low prices.
Canghai Pu’er, which originally had a market price of more than 20,000, was sold on Taobao at an ex-factory price of more than 7,000 during Double Eleven.
At this time, take a part-time job as a scalper, put orders in various “rush groups”, let these terminals buy them, and then raise the price of 2000 to get them back.
A net profit of 10,000 yuan per order, “Double Eleven” and “Double 12” make more than a dozen orders, earning more than 100,000 yuan per year is not a problem.
Most of the people who snapped up Pu’er on the e-commerce platform were young people. Their main business was to drive up the price of trendy clothes and gamble on blind boxes in their leisure time.
As long as there are places to drive up prices, there will always be themIt’s just that the water in the Pu’er tea market is too deep for them to fry.
I’m not afraid that they will run orders in private. After all, these sky-high prices have no market for Pu’er, and they have no place to ship.
The head scalpers directly cooperate with investment companies. These investment companies are the group of dealers mentioned above. In their valuation system, Pu’er and Baijiu are excellent assets.
As mentioned in the movie “Blood Guanyin”, I will buy it for 10 yuan today and sell it for 100 yuan tomorrow. Who doesn’t like such a fascinating thing.
In this market, every few years, people sing bad news, saying that Pu’er tea is about to collapse.
I don’t quite understand their logic, maybe it’s just that their structure is too small. Once this hot spot has passed, it will be enough to change to another hot spot and continue to hype.
After all, there are only a small number of old tea customers who use these real gold and silver to soak in water. The stock of Pu’er tea in Dongguan is enough for all Pu’er tea customers in China to drink for a year, but with such a high transaction volume, the inventory pressure in Dongguan remains serious.
The serious old tea consumers all have their own taste preferences, and the capital who speculates on tea has also tried to drive up the duck dung-scented Dan Cong in the Chaoshan area, but basically lost money.
They are all old tea-goers. You can tell at a glance whether it is a mule or a horse. In the end, most of the young people born in the 90s who actually took over these sky-high prices for Pu’er.
Everyone has been shouting all day that the high premium of blockchain, sneakers and Pu’er tea is the IQ tax, which will be finished sooner or later. I don’t deny it, but it doesn’t prevent many people from making money in it.
Everyone is in naked swimming, we just need to make sure to leave before the tide goes away.
Don’t buy cheap tea
But expensive tea may not really be drunk
Zhang Xi, 35 years old, entrepreneur of Pu’er tea small business in Xishuangbanna
My wife and I are both Xishuang versionNaren, my wife has a tea tree at home. Helped to start a tea business together.
Our tea factory is small, but we have our own tea trees. In order to ensure the quality of tea and prevent pesticides and fertilizers from exceeding the standard, we never collect tea from outside, and we roast tea purely by hand. The output is very limited.
Different from big tea companies, our small factories do not have their own brands and do not have a particularly large sales network. They mainly do business with acquaintances.
Although the price is not as high as the “high price tea”, it is not low. For example, the retail price of tea at a price of RMB 600 yuan/kg was sold at a physical store in Shanghai, and the retail price reached RMB 2,000/kg.
There are many reasons behind the emergence of tea with a price of tens of millions and millions of dollars in the market.
Most of the people who fought in houses, stocks, and shoes were all the same people. They came to fry tea when they saw a profit, but they didn’t really like tea.
Many people who fry tea fry Pu’er tea. Unlike other teas, Pu’er can be stored, and the longer it is stored and the longer the fermentation time, the better the taste.
If stored properly, it can be held for a long time, making Pu’er more financially speculable.
The high-priced tea comes from ancient tea trees that are 100 or even 1,000 years old.
Take Laobanzhang as an example. There are only a few old tea trees with a history of several thousand years. Most of the old tea trees have been contracted early and were picked directly by the contractor in the spring.
Last year, an ancient tea from Iceland was auctioned for more than 800,000 yuan without picking it on the spot. However, it is estimated that it will only be one or two kilograms of tea after being picked, which can cost about 200,000 per pound.
But how many thousands of ancient tea trees can there be in the world? Less than two digits.
Therefore, most of the high-priced tea comes from the marketing routines of tea factories, which are fake.
I have seen too many tea cakes that sell for more than 10 yuan, and I say they are Pu’er tea cakes.
But everyone who makes tea knows that this little money can’t even cover the cost of picking, let alone the cost of processing, transportation, and marketing.
Therefore, some tea companies will use the sky-high price of tea to drive their own ration tea to help the low-end tea of the same brand to fry high prices and ensure the overall profit.
If you just love tea, don’t blindly buy hundreds of thousands of high-priced tea. Not only is it not fidelity, even if you buy real tea, it tastes the same as ordinary tea.
If you really like tea, as long as the quality of the raw materials is guaranteed and you can drink it comfortably, don’t be fooled by those businesses and pay IQ tax.
Two million people draw lots to buy tea
Is it necessary to buy high-priced tea?
Yun Ye 30-year-old employee of the marketing department of Menghai tea enterprise in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan
Our tea factory was built in Menghai County, under Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, where there are five natural villages in the Bulang Mountain, including Lao Banzhang, Xin Banzhang, and Lao Man’e. The famous Banzhang Pu’er tea Main producing area.
Chinese tea is divided into four major tea-producing regions and six major tea types, but Pu’er tea alone is divided into many regions.
Pu’er tea is based on regions and mountain tops. For example, Iceland is produced in Lincang, while Yiwu tea is produced in the neighboring Mengla County. Although they are called Pu’er tea, the taste is different if the mountain top is different.
Stir-fried tea is not only due to the market, but also one of the commercial operations of tea enterprises.
As a medium-sized tea company, we have limited brand awareness. If we do not choose a risky development model, we will not blindly follow the trend and stir tea.
Some big tea companies in the industry fry tea, such as Dayi.
Some time ago, Dayi launched “Canghai” on Tmall, with a sales volume of 5,000 pieces (referring to every Qibing Tea packaged in a bamboo shell, one package is called a mention), and the selling price is 6199 yuan per mention .
On October 21st, after the pre-sale of “Canghai” on Tmall, the WeChat group, Dayi fan group, Xianyu and other platforms began to spread high prices.Information, prices have been pushed up all the way, and finally the price circulating in the market has risen several times over the offer price.
There is a lottery to purchase. In the Tmall lottery, there was a “grand event” of more than 2 million people.
Although tea is used to drink, it has financial properties that can be stored and value-added. There will be a part of the market that needs to be invested in it and cannot be eliminated.
The sky-high price of tens of millions of tea is a few in the market. But high-priced tea is indeed determined by the relationship between supply and demand, and its raw materials are expensive.
For example, Laobanzhang and Iceland, the raw materials are bought from tea farmers at 20,000-30,000 per catty, and the price of dry tea is naturally high.
However, most of the Laobanzhang of the Ten Thousand One Cakes is not necessarily all old tree tea raw materials, but the combination of ancient tree tea and small tree tea, and the final taste and taste are similar.
If you have money, you can buy some high-priced tea. Really good things are small in quantity and naturally expensive.
Opening a tea shop does not make money
It is said that those who sell tea to make money must not be serious businessmen
Xiu Chan 28 years old sales clerk at Longjing tea shop in Hangzhou, Zhejiang
I have been in the tea business for several years.
The profit of opening a tea shop is not as high as everyone thinks. It is good to guarantee that you can live without losing money.
People who make tea in the market may have tea hills and sales channels. Few people do this from scratch.
Tea shops are all “by-products” of tea companies after they have grown up-their purpose of opening a shop is to make tea into fast-moving consumer goods, gifts, or other brand marketing functions.
In our industry, fried tea is not a serious business, but a pure financial game.
My friend once bought Qibing old tea for 100,000 yuan. The seller said it was made in the 1960s, but we all felt musty after drinking it. The musty smell disappeared after ten times.
Not to mention teas that cost tens of millions. Most of them are fried.
If you save it for 20 years, you will fool you and say that you have saved it for 40 years. After all, no one can verify it. Most of them can’t drink it anyway. There are also people who use technical means to make fakes and re-make new tea with special techniques to make it taste like old tea.
In addition to Pu’er tea, Anhua dark tea has also been hyped.
Pu’er tea pays attention to the age, dark tea pays attention to the efficacy, say drink itCure all diseases. The sales method is similar to that of MLM, which can attract people, develop offline, and make profits from people…
But high-priced tea can also reflect some changes in market demand.
Some specializing in tea industry research will judge which tea will be popular in the future based on the physical condition of modern people, and stock up in advance the tea that will be popular in the next few years.
Immediately afterwards, tea factories, distributors, and stores will follow this trend, making certain types of tea even more popular.
However, if you want to buy some good tea, the price of 1,000 yuan per catty is at least.
Take Longjing as an example, if fresh leaves are 100 yuan/jin, dry tea will cost 400 yuan/jin, plus post-processing, manufacturer profits, distributor profits, etc., it is normal to sell them for thousands of yuan.
But even the best Longjing can buy at most 50,000 to 60,000 yuan, and the 100,000 yuan is definitely a hype.
If you really like to drink tea, you can consider some brands of green tea, Dancong, Dahongpao, Pu’er tea, and Oolong tea on the market, and it is best to go to the direct store to buy.
Compared with distributors and online stores, in order to create a brand, companies still have a lot of good-quality tea in their direct-run physical stores.