On the evening of October 24, the “Double 11” pre-sale kicked off, which means that all industries have ushered in the 14th “Double 11” mega promotion — an extremely busy time of year for many brand enterprises, and also the moment when brands compete most fiercely with promotions and price concessions.
Right now, tea companies and tea merchants have surely long been sharpening their knives, pulling out all the stops to seize first-mover advantage in the market. So how are those “battle-hardened” tea companies laying out their plans for this year’s Double 11? And toward which battleground will tea brands steer their competition during the Double 11 mega promotion? Let’s take a look together.
Livestreaming becomes the main focus for tea companies
Under pandemic prevention and control, livestream e-commerce has opened up brand-new possibilities for many industries to expand their markets, and its ability to generate commercial returns keeps breaking through the limits of people’s imagination.
Behind this enormous space is the entry of players of every stripe.
From Taobao Live in the early days, to short-video platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin, and with JD.com and Xiaohongshu also following up with their own deployments, the entire business landscape of e-commerce livestreaming is constantly evolving.
In fact, Taobao has already stirred this year’s Double 11 battleground into a smoke-filled arena. Luo Yonghao, Yu Minhong, and several top livestreaming agencies have successively announced their arrival on Taobao Live, and on the first day of the pre-sale, Luo Yonghao even went “head-to-head on the same stage” on Taobao Live with another top livestreamer, Li Jiaqi.
It can be seen that e-commerce livestreaming remains a key area of platform support this year, and brand tea companies must ride this trend in order to win more platform resources and traffic.
At present, the flagship stores of brands such as Dayi, Xiaguan, Bama, Lancang Ancient Tea, and Lu Zhenghao are also actively deploying livestreaming during the Double 11 period, driving consumption growth for their own products during Double 11 through promotions, flash sales, recommendations of blockbuster items, blind boxes, and other methods.
In addition, tea brands such as Nayuki and Baidashi (Master White) have also joined the pre-sale lists of Luo Yonghao’s livestreams, laying a foundation for the exposure and sales growth of their own brands.
Moreover, some tea brands are simultaneously deploying on livestreaming platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and WeChat, carrying out omni-channel livestream e-commerce operations to build momentum and accumulate traffic for the entire Double 11 period.
From the livestream e-commerce data of tea brands during the “Double 11” mega promotions in 2020 and 2021, it can be seen that the livestream e-commerce model contributed enormously to the growth momentum of overall transaction value in the tea category. Back then, Dayi successfully entered the Double 11 “100-million-yuan club” by relying on livestream e-commerce. Today, more and more consumers embrace shopping in livestream rooms as a way of consuming, and it can be expected that livestreaming will remain an indispensable and important marketing tool for brands during mega promotions.
No gimmicks — more direct price concessions
This year, many e-commerce platforms have sought to simplify their promotion mechanics and even offer price-protection services for Double 11 products, with one-click refunds of the difference if you overpaid. We have seen that in the pre-sale activities and for some hot-selling blockbuster items, many brand tea companies have also avoided designing complicated discount schemes, opting instead for simpler, more direct price concessions, thereby improving the consumer experience.
The China Tea Tmall flagship store launched a “must-stock blockbuster Double 11” campaign on its homepage, with some products offering a direct concession of 35% off for a single item — very attractive indeed.
Autumn and winter are precisely the peak consumption season for ripe (shou) Pu’er tea, and during Double 11 the Dayi Tmall flagship store was likewise straightforward: for one of its ripe teas — Dayi Chunpin — the price of a whole stack was cut directly by 211 yuan, bringing the final price to about 55 yuan per cake.
The Shuangchen Pu’er flagship store, drawing on its advantage in aged vintage teas, ran time-limited flash sales with exceptional value on several vintage teas, leveraging the quantities and flash-sale prices of its vintage teas; for certain portable vintage tea products, it even launched a “buy one, get one free” offer, using a variety of bundled concessions to capture the minds of vintage tea lovers.
Xingcha Jun feels that the Double 11 period is already a peak shopping season, and by adopting clearer and more direct promotional methods, tea companies greatly improve the efficiency of tea consumers’ shopping decisions and reduce consumers’ doubts and confusion — which, we believe, will likewise significantly lower return and refund rates.
Some tea company executives believe that in the internet era, it is not hard for consumers to “compare a thousand shops”, and in some mega promotions, price remains a very sensitive touchpoint for most consumers. At a mega promotion like Double 11, for consumers, fewer gimmicks and more sincerity is the happiest thing of all.
In this year’s Double 11 promotions, it is not hard to see that livestream e-commerce will also help more tea companies and tea merchants capture the traffic dividends of internet platforms, sell products in more efficient ways, and interact with consumers at high frequency. In addition, as all major platforms emphasize the consumer experience, the various promotional methods and discount approaches of tea companies this year have also become more and more direct, no longer gimmicks. We believe these changes will help tea brands achieve even better results in this year’s Double 11 mega promotion.
Selected hot content from Xingcha
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Pu’er tea video interviews || China Tea Warehousing Industry Development Conference || Brand IP marketing
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Where are the growth opportunities for tea companies || New trends in the tea industry || Sky-high-priced tea
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Author: Lam Sam (LamSam), the Old Tea Head
ZENTEA MANOR
Alliance Supply Chain Services Limited
Unit 902-3, 9/F, Mini Cube, 10 Sam Chuk Street, San Po Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong
www.zentea-shop.com Email:info@zentea-shop.com
