Meaningless tea subscriptions ?

[aet]

My apology for probably harsh name of the topic but I'm recently struggling with the idea of this Tea Club Subscription as I'm constantly being asked from some customers ( usually beginners ) . So I'd be eager to read community opinion about my my angle of view to this concept.

I understand the potential of expanding the clientele's horizon of understanding tea taste ( by actually give them try targeted samples ) but not sure about the boosting sales ( as mostly sampling people stay with sampling ) let alone the idea of making more money by doing so ( chipping off the samples is not the income which any vendor would be aiming for ) .
The other disadvantage I see ( I read this often on other forums ) receiving a tea which you might not like at all and ending up having quite few grams ( which is your money ) of useless tea for you.
Another issue I see , and that's from vendor's point of view ( or shall I say from realizing such a concept angle ) , I have to make sure every month to have some new tea to offer for sampling.
We add a new tea on shop only if I find something what worth the money for its quality and could be appealing for our clientele. Those variables quite narrowing down the potential selection even if we are actually based at the source of the tea and have a huge sourcing opportunity from local tea market or tea farms.
So there is no regular time pattern. I could not be adding anything new for 6 months if haven't bumped on something reasonable.
Should I guarantee having new products ( especially the variable products so the sample box is not boring ) every certain period of time ,means pushing the boundaries of the mentioned factors down in order to fulfill the project.
Simply said , I will be forced to take up some products on the board even if I'm not completely satisfied with quality=price=appeal , just to make sure I have the Tea Club Subscription running.
I understand that people are generally lazy to browse website and pick their own customized samples. Nowadays any online biz has to be user friendly , lazy-client friendly. I understand the we are in century where " I want it now and without thinking " is the way of shopping . Yet I'm asking my self a question : " do I want such a customers ? Why I should want? "
Pushing samples as the part of the advertising is the probably the best way how to promote the tea business, but if it is custom targeted samples ( like no point sending you a shu sample if u hate the shu ) . Splitting the Sample boxes on various teas is narrowing the mentioned selection even more.
So I'm just wondering, wouldn't be any other way how to approach to you as a tea drinker with targeted sampling with some "lazy friendly" factor but efficiency of the output ( getting the tea you are not going to throw away ) same time?
Thanks for sharing ideas.

[Baiyun]

Initial demand seems to be there, and it can serve to build relationships with a loyal customer base that trust your selection, so it will perhaps come down to whether the logistics are worth the semi-predictable cash flow for your business from such a model, at each stage of volume and growth.

Not sure the lazy beginner angle is a good way of approaching this long-term for a shop such as yours. Is it for people too dumb to shop or know what they want, or for people genuinely interested in well guided discovery, or who tried a lot and are interested in what good stuff a vendor may come across and have in the back room, perhaps too low in quantity, or too niche, to put into the shop.

You know your customers best, but for me personally, a smaller supply of high quality/niche/interesting teas with good variety that nevertheless falls within the vendor's expertise, in the spirit of exploration and comparison, make more sense than receiving big bags of more generic tea.

As for not throwing things away, send me 60g of red tea and I'm going to be annoyed because I don't like it and the 10 sessions of it will take me forever, no matter how much it tickles the red tea lover, but send me 3x20g of the same leaves processed as white, red, and puer, and I'm going to drink the 20g of red with interest, even if I don't usually fancy that tea type.

It may be hard to keep this going with a suitable angle and variation, require some planning and dedicated sourcing that differs from your current approach. To make this more worthwhile from an educational perspective or to satisfy interest, can you tell a story about the terroir, trees, processing, storage, the relationships involved? And do you actually care enough to invest the time?

[Andrew S]

I don't think I've ever used a tea subscription (or any other kind of subscription) for many of the reasons that you mention.

I don't want to get samples of styles that I probably won't enjoy. I also don't like sampling small amounts over and over (as opposed to buying a few bigger bags / cakes to enjoy over a longer time).

If I do get samples, they're usually ad-hoc from people I've dealt with and whose tastes I trust / agree with. Not on a regular basis, and not from new shops that I haven't experienced yet.

One possibility is to offer sample boxes instead of a subscription - that way, you retain control of when to offer samples and how many to offer, and you can provide different categories (raw puer sample box, cooked sample box, hongcha box, mixed box...). Maybe that would satisfy any potential lazy customers (but it wouldn't 'force' them to stay with you, unlike a paid subscription).

Another approach could be a monthly 'magazine' type of subscription - get people to sign up to receive updates, maybe discounts, maybe special offers or early offers, but without paying for it (and hence no pressure on you to find new and interesting teas every single month). That might get people 'hooked' on your tea, but it won't give you a steady income stream. A subscription might attract lazy customers, but it probably also attracts customers who want to feel like they're part of some kind of 'community', at least in some cases, so this might appeal to those people.

Perhaps you could offer an option where people who pay at least $X for an order will get a set of samples picked by you (but that would eat up a lot of your time for each individual order and won't get a steady revenue), or they get to leave a comment choosing $X worth of samples (same comments).

Ultimately, I think that this is a good approach to follow:

I understand that people are generally lazy to browse website and pick their own customized samples. Nowadays any online biz has to be user friendly , lazy-client friendly. I understand the we are in century where " I want it now and without thinking " is the way of shopping . Yet I'm asking my self a question : " do I want such a customers ? Why I should want? "

Andrew

[mbanu]

I understand the potential of expanding the clientele's horizon of understanding tea taste ( by actually give them try targeted samples ) but not sure about the boosting sales ( as mostly sampling people stay with sampling ) let alone the idea of making more money by doing so ( chipping off the samples is not the income which any vendor would be aiming for ) .

Someone new to tea can't drink much tea, and doesn't know about tea. Traditionally this stage of tea-drinker was eaten up by older tea-friends or family members, who would simply invite them over to try their own teas, until they got to the point where they knew something about tea and what they liked, and had a tolerance for drinking larger amounts of tea, so that then the sample was mainly when switching from one tea of a preferred type to another of the same type, to see if it was what it claimed to be before making a bulk purchase.

However, in coffee-drinking countries, you may end up with someone who has decided to switch to tea for various reasons, but none of their friends drink tea, none of their family drinks tea, and there are no tea cafes. In the past, this sort of drinker would have gone to the one bulk teashop in the area (if it had one), and looked to purchase samples to brew at home. Since there were not enough tea-drinkers locally to support multiple teashops, you would have a teashop that sold multiple styles of tea, each catering to a different tea-drinking subculture, so sampling a different type of tea every week for several weeks became a reality, when in the past that would have been something for a tea-taster at an international company rather than for a casual drinker, who drank whatever was popular in their community.

Since there was no shipping cost to a buyer taking a sample-tour, this was not so expensive to the seller, and it was easier to bring the buyer back if they sampled a tea they disliked, because they were local. I'm not sure if it was moneymaking that way either, but eventually (the idea goes) it turns them into the sort of tea-drinkers that family and friends would create in a habitually tea-drinking country.

As brick-and-mortar teashops started to close due to online sales, this sort of sample-customer moved online too, joining the catalog-tea buyer who used samples in the traditional way.

[DailyTX]

I hope this is not too far off topic. I am not a big fan of subscriptions both for teas and wines. I have a tendency of accumulating too much small portion of teas that I may not open and eventually building up a pile at the corner of my tea cabinet. @aet I did enjoy reading your articles about tea, and journey to hunt for good teas. Since I am no where near Yunnan, I'd be interested in buying a curated set of samples from different farmers you have visited during puerh hunting season. So I can live vicariously through your adventures.

[aet]

To make this more worthwhile from an educational perspective or to satisfy interest, can you tell a story about the terroir, trees, processing, storage, the relationships involved? And do you actually care enough to invest the time?

Yes , it is doable and this seem to be the latest trend of offering some high end teas like that. It does worth doing so if you have some big amount of this tea in storage and can offer it online shop not only for sapling. But again, this is not regular . every month or every few months of the year tea concept. During the year I might add like 5 teas which are / have some trace of info like you mentioned , but there will be another few other which are just general factory made or tea farmer made but with no any special details provided ....means I'd have to make some up. Sometimes I'm surprised how some vendors posses so detailed information about the tea which on tea market here in Kunming is sold as a general like Fengqing black or Menghai shu . If I don't have some verified info , I don't make up any just to gain the marketing points.

[aet]

Perhaps you could offer an option where people who pay at least $X for an order will get a set of samples picked by you (but that would eat up a lot of your time for each individual order and won't get a steady revenue), or they get to leave a comment choosing $X worth of samples (same comments).

I actually pack free samples based on customer previous orders or feedback, if I have any. We do not charge extra for that as it is the part of the free samples with order. Yet, I find rather awkward to provide such a samples with orders which consist only or most of the samples already. Like we talk about the orders of 20 samples and customer asked if I can add some another free samples for him to review because he is already making big order. I always struggle with appropriate answer in order to avoid a wrong opinion about us.

[LeoFox]

To make this more worthwhile from an educational perspective or to satisfy interest, can you tell a story about the terroir, trees, processing, storage, the relationships involved? And do you actually care enough to invest the time?

Yes , it is doable and this seem to be the latest trend of offering some high end teas like that. It does worth doing so if you have some big amount of this tea in storage and can offer it online shop not only for sapling. But again, this is not regular . every month or every few months of the year tea concept. During the year I might add like 5 teas which are / have some trace of info like you mentioned , but there will be another few other which are just general factory made or tea farmer made but with no any special details provided ....means I'd have to make some up. Sometimes I'm surprised how some vendors posses so detailed information about the tea which on tea market here in Kunming is sold as a general like Fengqing black or Menghai shu . If I don't have some verified info , I don't make up any just to gain the marketing points.

Sometimes even something generic like this can attract people:

"Over the years, we have sampled many [type of tea] in [location], and have often been disappointed. This year, we lucked out. While working through [number] of [type of tea] samples deep into night, we came upon a [positive adjective] tea that fulfilled what we are always looking for in a great [type of tea]. We hope you will get a chance to try this."