Farmers pick tea leaves at a plantation in Weng’an County, Qiannan Bouyei and Miao Ethnic Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou Province, on May 26, 2015 (XINHUA)

The first thing Cai Banghong does every morning is to look at the sales figures of various tea brands on his online store, Hmongling Tea Garden, before posting promotional information and collecting customers' feedback to help target his products. Cai spent two decades growing his tea company, from a small backroom operation to a modern enterprise integrating production, processing and sales, in Duyun, southwest China's Guizhou Province. As chairman of the Guizhou Du Yun Maojian Tea Co., Cai also assists local farmers by running a cooperative tea plantation of about 16,000 mu  (1,067 hectares). In the process he has also raised the income of 448 farmers.

However, despite his success, Cai sought new challenges, which led to his online commercial venture. He wanted to introduce a wider consumer base to his tea brand with the advent of social media and online trading. His dream came true in less than six months. Cai's online store quickly gained popularity, and today his eponymous Cai Banghong black tea is his most popular tea product.

Jing Linbo shared Cai's dream to develop his own tea brand. Jing hails from the Hetaoba Village in Meitan County, another major tea-cultivation area in Guizhou, where 868 families are involved in the tea planting and processing sector. The per-capita net income of local farmers reached 14,200 yuan ($2,158) in 2014, yet they were no longer content with making money simply through tea processing. Instead, they switched their attention to online trade. In 2015, the 30-something Jing registered his own trademark and started promoting local green tea on the Internet.

Tea leaves are roasted using traditional techniques at a processing workshop in Duyun, Guizhou Province (XINHUA)

Brand building

Jing's fellow villager Liu Shengyan was busy recruiting skilled personnel in e-commerce in hopes of opening more online stores ahead of the spring tea-producing season. Currently, dozens of tea companies in the village have increased their presence on China's leading online retail platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, seeing an increase in sales year by year. The ubiquity of hi-speed Internet is promoting in-depth integration of information technology and traditional industries.

With its subtropical climate and clean air, Guizhou is ideal for growing high-quality tea. In recent years, the provincial government has vigorously supported the industry through attractive incentives. A three-year action plan for developing the tea industry in Guizhou, formally issued in 2014, promotes brand building.

According to the plan, by 2016, Guizhou is expected to build a tea plantation area of more than 7 million mu  (467,000 hectares) and set up more than 3,000 processing enterprises with an annual production capacity of 270,000 tons. The tea industry's consolidated revenue is expected to exceed 50 billion yuan ($7.6 billion).

The role of tea merchants on the online marketplace in achieving this goal should not be underestimated. Industry insiders projected that revenue of the tea business online will reach more than 100 billion yuan ($15.2 billion) in five years from roughly 10 billion yuan ($1.52 billion) at the end of 2014.

Cai believes the tea industry needs to make full use of information technology to provide expert services along with the rapid growth of the online-to-offline business. He said that the Internet community that is fair, open and transparent can make the consumer market much more transparent.

Apart from detailed photos and illustrations of tea products, Cai also displays each production process online, such as tea picking and processing. "How do you encourage customers to pay for commodities like tea when they can't taste it? So the more detailed information [included], the more confidence customers will have, which makes them believe your tea's quality is guaranteed," he told ChinAfrica , a monthly magazine published by Beijing Review .

Precision marketing

The combination of the traditional tea industry, a visible and tangible entity, and e-commerce, an emerging and virtual information industry, sparked a fantastic "chemical reaction."

Zhang Guanghui, Director of the Luo Shi Ke Riverside Tea Farmer's Cooperative in Duyun, said that technology can allow consumers intuitively to see every link in the chain of the tea industry, from planting, processing to sales. It plays a big role in tea marketing, according to him.

Zhang, along with more than 100 fellow farmers, not only established a standardized base for large-scale tea production, but also made use of the Internet to collect aftersales feedback and provide guidance for consumers through online communication--for example, how to brew tea and the best water temperature for each type of tea. Meanwhile, the feedback became a guide for tea farmers to cultivate products more appealing to consumers.

Compared with other counterparts across the country, Guizhou's tea e-commerce started late. Local online retailers were few while facing great competitive pressures. Yet, Ma Wenbo, General Manager of Guizhou Qian Cha E-commerce Co., thinks differently. He viewed the combination of the traditional tea industry and Internet Plus as a promising opportunity. "As the largest e-commerce platform for tea sales in Guizhou and a leading online business-to-consumer shopping mall of tea, we're working actively to promote premium tea," he said.

The company's high-quality tea has the taste of success. Based on Internet data analysis, Ma adjusted his marketing strategy and took the initiative to start pre-sales ahead of the spring tea-producing season so as to significantly improve efficiency. The company sold more than 1.2 million yuan ($182,400) online in March 2015 alone. It is estimated that sales will be higher this year.

Cultivating consumers

In the first eight months of 2015, the tea export value of Guizhou totaled $15.67 million, an increase of 50.2 percent year on year. But even so, President of the Tea Association of Qiannan Bouyei and Miao Ethnic Autonomous Prefecture in the province, Liu Shijie, said that it is important to increase brand awareness of Chinese tea and obtain a growing international recognition.

Traditional tea expos, always the barometer of the tea industry and trade, have started becoming aware of the Internet's advantages. In May 2015, the China International Tea Cultural Festival and Tea Industry Exposition, held in Zunyi, Guizhou, made use of the Internet to demonstrate tea fairs' process and tea products, as well as promote exhibiting companies. Not only could customers know more about preferential policies quickly through mobile apps and online stores, they were also able to directly order high-quality tea products online. It was part of Guizhou's efforts to promote its tea while attracting more tea merchants.

Four months later, during the Guizhou Tea Industry Development Conference in Duyun, the Duyun Maojian Tea Commodity City officially opened, attracting the first batch of more than 200 tea enterprises. Meanwhile, in order to improve brand awareness, it opened its own online platform on Alibaba, a leading online business-to-business marketplace in China. More than 40 tea-related enterprises have an online presence through the platform so far.

Chen Xiaoyun from one of the registered companies said that compared to scattered individual shops, the requirement for registered stores on the Alibaba Online Tea City is strict and demanding, requiring a series of certifications. In addition, it will implement spot checks for tea quality and safety.

The Internet can take Guizhou's tea trade to another level, but Cai believes traditional physical stores should be maintained and will be advertised by online shopping. "What we are selling is more than a commodity, it is a culture," Cai told ChinAfrica . "Physical stores are good places for popularizing tea culture, through face-to-face tea-tasting and appreciation between businesses and customers."

Copyedited by Francisco Little

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