China's Tea Industry Takes to E-Commerce

Home>>Business

Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, January 01, 2002

China's Tea Industry Takes to E-Commerce

China's traditional tea culture has recently entered the Internet, pioneering e-commerce in the tea business in China.

China's traditional tea culture has recently entered the Internet, pioneering e-commerce in the tea business in China.

By visiting www.sxs.org.cn, a newly-established multilingual website introducing China's tea culture in Chinese, English and Japanese, tea lovers can now keep up with the latest information and knowlege about various categories of Chinese tea.

In addition to setting up websites, many domestic tea companieshave begun resorting to e-commerce to promote their businesses.

The Shengmaotai Company, the largest tea-processing enterprise in this capital of south China's Guangdong Province, has recently started to improve its computerized management.

Experts have pointed out that the current development of China's tea industry websites falls far behind the Internet, which is progressing by leaps and bounds.

Before the founding of www.sxs.org.cn, most home tea websites only displayed a few pictures of tea products, accompanied by simple captions. Other useful information about the production, processing and sales of tea all over China could be accessed only through retailers, as well as through newspapers and magazines.

Statistics show that China now has tea plantations totaling more than 1.1 million hectares, and over 20 special tea research institutions.

However, there has never been an organization specializing in collecting, analyzing and spreading information about Chinese tea.

Though some domestic tea societies and companies have set up affiliated departments engaged in gathering and classifying data as well as issuing publications related to tea, they have never tried to take advantage of the Internet service. Some don't even have computers.

Yu Zijue, who is in charge of Shengmaotai's computerized management, said the reason why China's tea industry has no name brands despite its high-quality products is that information cannot be spread quickly and effectively.

The most efficient way of changing the situation is to present China's tea industry on the Internet, Yu said.

However, China's tea markets, scattered all over the country, are mostly small-scale and have distinctive regional characteristics. This sharply contrasts with the e-commerce systemdemanding a platform with comprehensive product information.

The southern tea market, one of the few domestic markets that can serve as a "platform", was the first to operate through e-commerce.

The market, of about 50,000 square meters, now has over 1,000 tea shops with a total annual transaction volume of more than one billion yuan (about 120 million U.S. dollars).

With over 1,000 varieties of tea circulating in the market, it has become a tea trade center fit for establishing the e-commerce system.

Yunnan to Promote Tea Industry