Fake pu

[Baisao]

I love the smell of gasoline

[DailyTX]

Late to the party, this seems like a very interesting discussion. When I visit China, I typically swing by tea shops to restock tea. Although fake Dayi is well known. I am curious if anyone has thoughts about trustworthiness of “authorized seller” from a certain factories?

Ask for proof of authorized seller-ness; try to cross-reference with "find our products in these stores..." link on factories' marketing materials, otherwise, gamble with whomever tells you the best story.

@chadao
If I remembered correctly, it’s a little sign like “Dayi authorized seller” in Chinese attached to the tea shops company logo at the store front. If people can fake tea, I am not surprised they can reproduce those signs

[aet]

Speak of the Dayi.

Once I was in authorized ( genuine one ) Dayi shop on our market. I mean nobody would have a balls to open fake shop there for sure , and I think even can't, because needs to be registered on market head office. Anyway, I asked the boss how can I be so sure that tea from them is not the fake but real one?
I've got an answer : " we can get big penalty and loosing the license if we get caught selling fake Dayi . Also , if you buy tea from us and prove me that it's a fake I will compensate you with 100k CNY " ;-D
So I asked : " How do I verify fake or genuine ? "
She said : " Can go to Kunming headquarters to verify that , but once the tea leaves my shop , I can not take any responsibility because I have no guarantee that you didn't switch the batch "

sounds like catch 22 , or something

But true is , that they do keep an eye on their retail shops and might send somebody pretend to be a customer ( Mystery shopper ) . Also open the shop as an authorized dealer requires buy annually tea from them for around 10mil CNY / year. 1.5mil $ ( I think that's level 1 , level 2 and 3 are less, but something around 3mi CNY) . They do not let you open shop in any random garage but will make sure you are in lucrative place ( so your rent is also high ) . So all that strategy brings prices and pressure of vendors very high.

Lao Tong Zhi ( just visited one shop yesterday ) ..they pay 1.2mil CNY / year ( 160k $ ) for goods and 20k CNY / month rent of the shop which is located at the back of "useless" tea market.

So forgive me to steer away from the fake topic, just a thought of the day.

Cheers everyone!

[DailyTX]

Thanks for your input on Dayi, @aet
Dayi authorized sellers were one of the common tea shops I noticed last time I was in China.

[Chadrinkincat]

I love the smell of gasoline

+1
Especially when it comes from a semi aged XG raw cake.