唔怕貨比貨 最怕唔識貨
For the taste of quality
Those who know about finer teas buy from us not only for the highest quality, but also for the great values. We set our prices to be competitive with other providers of comparable quality anywhere in the world, including those in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan or China. While we carry extreme quality products such as those in our Trinity and Omega grades, we also offer price efficient gourmet fine teas such as our Connoisseur level products.
Price is relative to quality, not the tea name
One key to compare pricing is not against tea names, but rather the quality delivered.
For example, equivalents of our basic quality Keemun Snails black tea can be found in brand name stores in Shanghai under a similar Chinese name, selling at a few times our price. Or you can easily come upon a Longjing green tea labelled as premium quality in a much hyped up specialist tea shop in San Francisco that is a standard machine roasted mass market grade a similar quality of which we have been exporting in volume to retailers in Europe. The cost of the best of such tea is less than half of that of our Longjing Traditional Supreme, and more importantly in much lesser taste.
Take another example such as Cream of Puer. Tea Hong offers this well matured premium Spring harvest at 3% lower than if you were a local Mainland Chinese buying it online in China even for comparable quality, which is rare in itself. That’s not even counting the payment processing fees that Mainland online shops normally charge. We do not charge that. There are cheaper products from various notorious brands and mades of inferior quality and imitations, which should be avoided altogether for your own health. Ignorant merchants may be buying from them and re-selling them to you.
The same idea goes also for our Nepal, Taiwan, and Japan lines.
Those who understand real quality recognise our value. That is why our core wholesale clients and retail customers stay with us. As one of our loyal customers who posts the largest amount of product reviews on our site, N.N., wrote,
“The price to quality ratio is unbeatable and the flavor profiles are exquisite beyond belief…
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In a tea farm in Wuyi Shan with tea clients from Europe, 2003. They are still buying from us all these years.
Direct from farm, all the time
Our practice of buying directly from small farms and producers not only means lower costs but also higher quality. We know where to avoid and who to go to, and have a close relationship.
Still, that is only one facet of the picture. The major reason for our competitive pricing is a conscientious effort in maintaining a lower margin. We have learned that from a client who is a famous Swiss department store. “Optimum margin” — they believe — allows the space for mutual benefits between the seller and the consumer. This is of utmost importance in the increasingly transparent world of information today.
Although we have been in the tea trade for so long, the internet shop is still a new area for us. Hence it is not an easy decision to keep such a low margin, but we are betting on your return patronage. We believe in the ability of the customer to differentiate. We believe that true quality would ultimately be recognised and appreciated.
Our mother tongue Cantonese has a great expression for this:
唔怕貨比貨 最怕唔識貨
It roughly translates as “We fear not of comparison; but of ignorance.”
One of our routines: In a second round of tasting of a tea, the tea is infused with different parameters for three times for better understanding of its potentials and optimisation.
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About us | Direct from farm, all the time | Pure passion, pure quality, purely the finest tea