Although I am torn about the commercialization of Black
Friday and Cyber Monday, I find it most amusing to watch the marketing machines
of our dear puerh vendors in overdrive.
In the West we are, of course, buying tea but I think a lot of what we
buy into is actually the marketing. Over
the course of this sale, we get to see their marketing at its finest and it
really does speak to each vendor’s brand and the core of how they present
themselves- their brand identity.
Like last year, there were some vendors that didn’t have any
markdowns at all on Black Friday/ Cyber Monday.
I think these are the “take it or leave it” or “our fair price is just
that” type of matter of fact vendors. I
really find this refreshing in this day and age. Last year, I chose to go down this route with
my only Black Friday puerh purchase from Teamasters. For those looking to avoid the
marketing hype and mind games of Black Friday, look no further than Teamasters,
Bitterleaf Teas, and Chawangshop to name a few.
Last year, I stated that the Essence of Tea’s “20% Free Tea Sale” was probably the best deal of them all.
This year they are trying to emulate greatness by offering it
again. This time they put a few
restrictions on it by restricting the age of tea you can select for free. Last year you could select any tea as your
free tea but this year you can only select 2008-2018 years. This is totally understandable because they
have listed a bunch of very expensive older teas from the 80s and 90s and other
antique teas that they probably don’t want to dispense 1g of. So this makes sense to me. The Essence of Tea vibe is “you support our
business, we would like to give something back to you”. I resonate with the message in this
sale. With so much old tea on the menu
these days, it would be cool to see a future Black Friday sale with some kind of
giveaway/ promotion/ draw with some really rare old stuff though… that would be
interesting and work with their marketing, I think.
The most interesting and arguably the most aggressive
marketing is the sale at white2tea. Last year, I think I overly criticized their Black Friday sale. To be fair it was a little weak on actual
deals. It was mainly just a release day
of new cakes with free shipping. I was especially harsh about the criticism of
the limited 100 cake run of the $15.00 2017 Snoozefest. This cake was a response to common criticism
of white2tea. Over the last year, with no new sheng puerh prices anywhere close
to being as cheap, I now see this promotion a bit differently.
I think it was a bit of a surprise to everyone that Paul of
white2tea released a limited 100 200g cakes of the $15.00 2018 Snoozefest this year. This lightening sale that almost
crashed the website and left the site moving at a snail’s pace for hours and
hours (this again). It sold out in a few
hours. The 2018 wrapper contains the
same wording as the 2017 with new words like “Stoked” and “W2t reppin” that
conjure up positive excitement for this surprise limited release.
They also used the sale to release a 50 cake limited run of
2018 Tunji for $89 that sold out Friday morning and a bunch of other not as
limited, non-sheng puerh cakes that have been teased on social media for weeks now. Besides this, they offered free shipping when
you spent $20.00 or more, a free tote for the first 50 people who spent $200 or
more, and $500.00 or more got a free December Tea Club membership. Overall, not that much discount but a lot of
hype- an improvement on last year’s sale though.
I think that Paul uses the stage of Black Friday to respond
to some of his critics. This year, I
feel that he redeemed himself a little and is more on point with his response…
If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that I am not a fan of Xiao (small) bings of puerh and have criticized
white2tea for perpetuating the popularity of this size of puerh. I have also stated and hinted a few times
that one of the Western puerh vendors has to press a Qing (Large) bing to make
it right. Of course, leave it to
white2tea to respond to this criticism in dramatic fashion… I love this…
As a response white2tea is putting all orders during Black
Friday and Cyber Mondy into a draw for an obscenely large, one of a kind 3KG
shu puerh Qing bing … Paul is now, officially my hero! The neifi cleverly states “pressed in 2018 by
the corporate hellspawn :)”. This phrase is in response to the increased demonization
of puerh vendors that we have seen over the past few years. Paul partly addressed this criticism rather well on his blog post here a few months back. Also there has been others like James of TeaDB to speak out on this issue as well.
The neifi continues to state “This tea my not be good but
there sure is a fucking lot of it.” This
comment is a response to the criticism mentioned above about the xiaobinging of
the puerh industry. It is a sarcastic
statement that basically makes the argument that white2tea makes tea that is
very good but in a smaller size- a statement about quality over quantity. Also, apparently, since he has only made one
of these and has not actually tired it, it has some blunt truth to it- he won’t get to taste it before sending it off to that lucky person. I’ve stated on my blog before if anyone will
press a Qing bing, I will put my wallet behind this endeavor.
My choice for best sale Black Friday/ Cyber Monday sale
this year is at Yunnan Sourcing. It is
big, bold, and simple- 15% off everything!!!! And do they ever have a lot of everything. Easily you can find something in their large selection. I had a feeling Scott might up the ante last week, and he did. What could beat
that? It speaks to Yunnan Sourcing’s big
presence in the Western puerh scene, a very big sale. The
best sale for sure!
I also got to tip my hat to those smaller vendors that
probably have less wiggle room in the profits to offer big cuts this weekend
but still offered something fun as an incentive. Crimson Lotus is offering 10% off everything-
that is pretty significant for a smaller vendor- good job. Farmerleaf is offering cumulative/ stacking promotions of rare and small puerh productions depending on how much you spend. Check out their website, for details on these interesting treasures they are offering. Tea Encounter is offering free, limited
samples. Teas We Like decided to release
a few new cakes. Its good fun that even these
smaller vendors are offering what they can.
Overall the sales are better than last year and probably
better than ever for puerh this year. It
had me purchasing from a few of these places and enjoying this spectator sport
of brilliant marketing. You lucky readers get to see me slowly and gradually sell my soul... hahahaha... Good job vendors!
Hopefully you got the deal you were looking for or at
least enjoyed the marketing mayhem… if
not, all these sales are still running for another few days…
Peace
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