This week Taylors of Harrogate sent a shipment of £30,000 worth of flavoured tea over to Shanghai. Although much of it is high quality tea grown in India, Sri Lanka, and South Africa, the black tea used as a base in naturally flavoured blends such as Exotic Flowers and Moroccan Mint is in fact tea grown in China. Which means the company has cracked the seemingly impossible and managed to sell tea back to China.
"We have been trading internationally for 12 years and we already have a very strong market for our teas in Japan," said a press spokesperson. "We expect that the tea will end up in hotels and gift shops in Shanghai, where it is likely that tourists and wealthy Chinese are likely to buy it."
The company received useful advice on breaking into the Chinese market from its Taiwanese agent and a local branch of Business Link, which is funded by the UK government's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). As the first foray into China's market for Taylors, the knowledge Taylors had of doing business there was limited.
"We were given training via the York and North Yorkshire Business Link, received specific advice from its International Trade Advisor, and our Export Sales Co-ordinator attended a UK Trade and Investment Agency course, 'Passport to Export' ," said the spokesperson. "This really helped us to understand the export regulations for China and determine how to access that market."
The first consignment is relatively small, but it could be a significant move if the products are well received on the China market. However, the company is maintaining a cautious attitude towards the move.
"It is difficult to tell if this will take off as we have to see where this first consignment leads," the spokesperson said. "Our products are packaged and presented in a very traditional English way and we are hoping that, as in Japan, the China market will take up on this kind of presentation."
"Either way the story seems to have caught the imagination of the British press, which has picked up on it rapidly. It has appeared in a number of the national dailies, with the media viewing the move as quite an achievement."
China's major cities, particularly Beijing and Shanghai, have undergone massive expansion in recent years. And alongside this expansion the beginnings of a more sophisticated consumer society are starting to become show. Many industry observers believe that the consumer patterns evident in the Japanese market are becoming increasingly evident in China, with a growing penchant for any goods deemed to be distinctly luxury and foreign.
Alongside rising wealth in China, there is also an increasing tendency towards conspicuous consumption. Unlike in the west, where there is a growing trend towards subtle branding and understated affluence, in China it is fashionable to flaunt wealth in a more blatant manner. Often the more eye-catching and expensive a brand is the more popular it becomes. So perhaps showing your friends that your finely blended and distinctly packaged tea comes from England could well become the done thing in the upper echelons of China society.