2019 Black Friday Puerh Sales Fizzled Out…

Well, it’s actually still on right now…. Or is the real sale already over?

Certainly, Yunnan Sourcing’s sales are over.  They launched two big 15% off sales that were 3 weeks apart (Oct 21^st and Nov 12^th).  There is no better discount for their 2019 Spring line ups than Black Friday.  After getting the promotional email last month that Black Friday was cancelled, I wondered if they would attempt some different sales and promotions rather than the standard 15%.  Maybe some free shipping for those who are looking to put through a smaller order or maybe a sale that didn’t require a code so you could spend up your loyalty points?  As I just put through a few bigger orders at Yunnan Sourcing over the Summer I thought I might bite on a promotion that was geared to a smaller order.  I guess you can’t argue to much about 15% off, really.  As predicted this very nice 2018 Yunnan Sourcing Autumn Nan Po Zhai sold out before Black Friday.  Everything 15% off- it’s a very good sale and without the hassle.  I wouldn't be surprised if Scott dropped another 15% off sometime before now and the end of the year- a bit of post- Black Friday as well.

Also, white2tea’s limited releases of Tunji and Snoozefest are already sold out now too.  There Black Friday promotion is still on and was a bit of the same non-sale stuff with free shipping and release of years past successful limited releases of Tunji and Snoozefest.  The Snoozefest sold out in about the same amount of time as last year but the Tunji, with more name recognition this year sold out shortly afterward…  Or did they sell out…. It turns out the site crashing apparently caused some issues with the computerized stock counts… it turns out that a handful of Snoozefest and even more Tunji were added to the stock Sunday… I never know if this is part of the marketing stunt of white2tea or not.  Last time I checked the site for the research for this post there were still many Tunji left… poor Tunji…

For the mere fun of Black Friday’s hedonistic consumerism, I went in thinking I would just pick up 2 or 3 Snoozefest after a few good sessions with the 2018 over the last few weeks …. Just as a comparison… and to put an entry into the draw for the oversized cakes… I don’t know how I checked out with a few more Snoozefest than I planned… hahahah…. ah, consumerism….

Going in I thought that white2tea was going to offer more in the line of unique new limited releases and offer more of a new creative direction with their Black Friday promotion while still keeping the framework of their promotion.  Instead they ended up doing basically the same thing with their sheng puerh which was a bit uninspiring.  Of course, it’s good to stick to the formula if it has brought you past successes.  I was right about their promotional business structure being basically unchanged though.  If you look back to their Black Friday blog post last year it reads almost the same as this year.

The new creative change in direction was their releases of promotional and teawear which outnumbered their puerh releases.  Weird.  Their four different bamboo releases were the interesting part of white2tea’s Black Friday promotion.  I kind of predicted that they will be exploring more interesting shapes and forms for their shu puerh in this post back here.  The pre-Black Firday release was the main release of puerh and allowed for buyers to make more informed and developed, as opposed to more spontaneous, purchases when it comes to their puerh.  I wonder if the pre-Black Friday release allowed for those to put a quick order in before black Friday to sample them before the promotion.  I don’t know if that would even be worth it with white2tea’s business structure and lack of real discount.  I wonder how these changes will influence their sales, if at all, this year.

The Essence of Tea are continuing to go in the direction of anti- social media and anti-consumerism by offering less of a sale to the public than years previous.  I think is in line with their direction of their brand which has a really more mature core following, I think.  The 20% more tea was only offered to their tea club members this year the rest of us have to settle for 15% more tea.  They dropped only their second public pressing of 2019 a blend called 2019 Essence of Tea Spring “Singularity”Gushu.  It is a blend of two club exclusive cakes.  The action with Essence of Tea this year is all about their tea club.  This club is the most interesting one, I think.

A few puerh vendors which I haven’t tired yet… Bitterleaf is offering a 5-15% off sale with some other promotional giveaways.  Crimson Lotus is doing 10% off everything.  Farmer Leaf is doing 20%off!!! all full cakes with free shipping.  There are some sold outs already showing with that hefty discount.  Farmerleaf continues to amuse me from afar.  

A few longer running sales are taking place which include Tea Encounter with a 4-39% off Sale which I mentioned last week.  I have reviewed most of their catalogue if you are interested in more detailed notes on what they are stocking or are looking for a particular profile or quality.

I’ve said it in this post last month that this year’s black Friday played out very different than my prediction of the sale being even bigger.  I would say that this year it was wider and longer and took up even more space.  I wondered to myself, If the gap between sales was large enough could you place a sample order through, receive it, sample them, then place and order while still hitting up the discount?  That would be real ambitions and the packages would have to be rush shipping but maybe it would be possible?  This year was really all about the pre-sale.  With that said, most sales are still on but the vendor with the best sale this year, in my opinion, is ready over.

Great job all vendors who offered us a sale…

Peace

2018 Puerh Situation in the West So Far...

The 2018 puerh production started off with murmurings of even higher maocha prices than 2017 which really is no surprise at all.  What was really surprising is that we didn’t see the almost predictable vendor blog posts, tweets, or Instagram updates warning us of this dire situation.  I think it was way too obvious even for them to try to rattle the cage on this one.

A few Western facing vendors were out of the blocks quickly.  Crimson Lotus kicked things off with a release of a special Jade Rabbit blend of different areas and years which he unveiled with James of TeaDB.  Cody of theoolongdrunk also has a review of this unique puerh.  Seems like Crimson Lotus has gone the routeof mainly blends in 2018.  Bitterleaf dropped their whole 2018 Spring pressings real early.  Bitterleaf went back to one of their solid 2016 tea farms for their popular 2018 Secret Garden, they also offered some puerh from an area less Western vendors have been pressing lately, Lao Man E.  See Cody’s reviews of many of their productions and Cwyn’s look at the Lao Man E.

Essence of Tea has really been the talk of the puerh world this spring with so much news and very big change. They seemed to really steal the spotlight this spring with the announcement they will be moving their operations to Kunming (while continuing to store long term in their warehouse in Malaysia), they launched a new beautiful website, and will be accepting USD as a trading currency.  These are giant moves from one of the most popular puerh producers.  On top of that, they started up a new tea club that looks a lot like white2tea’s.  I think they learned that keeping it simple, fun, and educational is the way to go here for these tea clubs.  No doubt, it will have a very Essence of Tea feel to it though.

Another thing Essence of Tea started doing this year is offering pre-orders of their puerh.  This year many actually sold out.  Check out Thomas’review of one of the sold out preorder, this 2018 WuLiang Forest Garden.  You can sense from his review, lamentations of it selling out before he could even order more.  It’s a weird world we live in, a sign of the times, when some of the best puerh is completely sold out before anyone has had a chance to even taste or sample it!  I guess this is the new reality with puerh.  White2tea played around with this idea with the release of their Snoozefest tea on Black Friday.

 Yet another thing they will be doing is starting to de-list cakes, white2tea actually started this with two of their 2017 productions.  Again, a sign of the times.  By removing some of the product that they didn’t sell, vendors are increasing the feeling of exclusivity while removing options from the customer.  I really don’t like this as it creates an artificial feeling, a fear of missing out.  On the other hand, there will be others who will appreciate that the selection of teas in these vendors catalogues cleaner, less intimating, and easier to navigate.  For the case of Essence of Tea puerh, they will presumably benefit from being in the Maylasian storage vs the Kunming.  So I think that this is more of the reasoning here.  Personally, I think digging through the back catalogue of a vendor’s tea selection makes much more sense because of the rising price of maocha these days.  I think you can get almost 2-3x the quality for what you would pay for 2017 (probably 2018) puerh if you just go back 5 or so years.  I have been doing this lately.

Yunnan Sourcing is sitting on a majority of their 2018 cakes no doubt.  So far the 2018 wrapper design for their Yiwu release is one of my favorite from them ever.  Scotts dog is featured on this Year of the Dog, so meaningful to him no doubt- beautiful stuff.  No questions Scott will be releasing puerh from towns and areas we have not heard of, I’m excited to discover these new areas with his help.  He is a pro at going to more remote areas in hopes of keeping the prices of puerh low for us.  Of particular note, is that Scott continues to guarantee that all of this cakes are of the highest level of purity by testing all his pressings for pesticides each year.  This must not be cheap, but is a guarantee that I appreciate.  He is the only Western Vendor that currently does this with all his product.

It seems like white2tea is doing all they can to address some of the criticism they received lately.  There were some complaints that their catalogue of 2017 puerh was too massive to navigate (25 raw puerh) , considering they offer little in the way of meaningful descriptions.  So far they have released a much smaller catalogue this year (12 raw puerh) with much clearer, but still ambiguous, descriptions.  They seem to be following the idea that there are two categories of puerh buyers- the value buyer and the big spender.  They seem to offer a lot less of the middle price category.  They have also brought only 3 popular cakes back from the previous years.  Something to note is that they seem to be holding the same prices of the previous years on these cakes.

A vendor that I often fail to mention, Farmerleaf, has also released their 2018 for those into that, oh so fragrant and soft, Jingmai puerh.

I got to say that out of all of these so far, I almost did some Essence of Tea pre-order but managed to not purchase any 2018 yet.  Not easy to do these days.

Thank you vendors for putting all your love and qi into getting these wonderful puerh to us every year.  

Peace