A Low-key New Tea Player: Chayan Yuese
When mentioning new beverage brands in China, the first two brands that may come to your mind are Hey Tea and Nayuki Tea, which are very well known for their rapid expansion, viral marketing campaigns, cross-collaborations with other brands, and their ability to constantly launch new products. However, lately, what has been interesting us are niche Chinese brands that are finding success by choosing slow steady growth (and by slow we mean slow in Chinese terms haha). When it comes to the new tea industry, there is a noteworthy low-key player: Chayan Yuese (茶颜悦色).
The brand was founded in 2013 in Changsha (长沙), Hunan Province. What’s interesting about the brand is that, though it is super popular among consumers, especially young people, in its 7 years in business it has never expanded beyond Changsha. Only weeks ago it finally opened a store in nearby Wuhan, not those first tier cities like Shenzhen or Shanghai, but a second tier city Wuhan. And they have plans for 2 more stores in Wuhan.
How popular is Chayan Yuese?
According to China Business Network (第一财经), Chayan is the most liked brand among consumers. Only 1.34% of consumers that have had it don’t like it while 8.56% of consumers don’t like Hey Tea.
Changsha is famous for its stinky tofu (臭豆腐), the Orange Island and the Yuelu Mountain (岳麓山). People are saying Chayan is Changsha’s fourth name card because it is so good and has been always staying in Changsha for so long. For many people who visit Changsha, Chayan is in their to-do-list, and in fact, many people go to Changsha just to have a taste of Chayan.
How does Chayan differentiate itself from the big players?
The taste is the first thing that helped Chayan gain so much popularity among consumers. Those ingredients are carefully selected. The second thing is the service. It can be compared with the hotpot restaurant Haidilao’s (海底捞) service. Staff will always tell you that the drink will taste better if you have the nuts and cream first, and then drink the tea. Customers also have the right to have another one for free if they feel like the one that they’ve gotten doesn’t taste very good.
While Hey Tea and Nayuki’s images in many consumers’ eyes are more like wanghong, Chayan is very approachable and down-to-earth. Chayan has around 300 stores and the number for Hey Tea and Nayuki are both around 400. However Chayan’s stores are only located in Changsha at the moment, so in many spots, almost every 50 meters there is a Chayan store.
Chayan’s WeChat articles are also very cute. They are like a friend briefing you on what’s happened recently. For example, the orange goes bad, what “s/he” had for lunch or what happened today. Those articles are written in the tone of Chayan’s employees.
The receipts that they give to customers are also very fun. Some of them are saying how’s it going with the company, and one time, the receipt went on Weibo’s hot topic ranking board because at that time many brands are copying Chayan and on the receipt it said “once we have enough budget, we will sue these brands” (等我们有钱了就去告他们). It really feels like this is your friend or your neighbours talking to you about small and casual things.
Accidental Collaboration with Hey Tea
In March this year, Chayan and Hey Tea went viral due to a Weibo lucky draw activity started by Hey Tea. A Weibo user @等一杯茶颜悦色 (waiting for a cup of Chayan Yuese) won the prize provided by Hey Tea. In the comment area, people were joking that Chayan and Hey Tea were coupling. “CP” or “coupling” is a trendy term in China and has been leveraged by many brands in China as a marketing tactic. Check out this article to learn more about it. Chayan’s logo is a drawing of a Chinese woman, and Hey Tea’s logo is a cartoon of a Chinese boy, so netizens were joking that the Hey Tea boy liked the Chayan girl.
To leverage this viral accident and continue the joke, Chayan and Hey Tea had a collaboration in July. Hey Tea’s team visited Chanyan’s team in Changsha. They tasted local food and went to local landmarks. Together, they launched a co-branded box which had a key chain, a sticker and a glass bottle.
It might seem odd that two brands which are competitors working together. But in fact, this is a smart for tactic for both. It is such an unusual collaboration that created lots of social media buzz and grabbed consumers’ attention. They were guiding traffic for each other.
Read more: 茶颜悦色为什么蜗居长沙？
