Monday, November 12, 2012

How to open a tea shop online

If you are passionate about tea, opening a tea shop online may be a great idea. It can help you make money by selling tea and at the same time allow you to enjoy various kinds of tea around the world. As a small tea shop owner, you may begin your tea-selling company with only a computer. It seems easy but making your online tea shop successful is still much challenging. Since four years, we began our oversea door-to-door tea wholesale service, we have gotten to know and cooperate with quite a large number of owners of online tea shops. Some of them now have already had a prosperous business but some of them shut down their tea shops just one or two years after they launched them. Why? Here, we just listed several steps of opening an online tea shop with some pieces of advice for you.

At first, if you have already had a physical tea shop, you can miss a few following steps but we still suggest you should hurry up if you still haven't had a tea shop online. You really shouldn't miss the web to cost-effectively reach your countless potential customers and if you are a novice and know little about tea, you should be cautious. Tea is a niche involving a great deal of expertise and you can't expect to earn a lot in a short time.
 
1. Learn about tea

There are six major types of tea--white, black, oolong, green, dark and yellow tea--and thousands of blends, brews and names within those groups. Tea has significance in various cultures and is touted for health benefits. If you are running a tea shop, you would be expected to be asked questions about tea. You'll need to be knowledgeable about the regions tea comes from, the processing methods for tea, health benefits of tea and importantly how to store different kinds of teas. 

Unlike other businesses you can choose, there is a lot to learn besides just how to open a tea shop. Read about tea books, join groups and go to seminars and presentations to get a good understanding of all. Some free online resources are also highly recommended such as Tea Guardian, Chinese Teas 101, TeaUSA and Vicony Tea Encyclopedia. (More resources can be found here). It would take a lot of time for you to learn. If you would get bored of it, you should consider whether you should give it up as early as possible.

2. Register your business

Register your business with the Internal Revenue Service. Fill out an application providing applicable details about your online tea shop. Once you're registered, an employer identification number, or EIN, is submitted for tax purposes.

3. Build an online presence

Build an online presence. You can sell tea through established websites such as Amazon and eBay but we recommend you create you own website. Choose a decent company to help you build an attracting online tea shop. Each tea in it should have photos, descriptions and prices. Choose a reliable Web-hosting company to host the online tea shop. Its service need to be stable.

4. Purchase tea

Purchase tea by wholesale. Carefully select teas that are proven to be popular, along with rare specialties that can attract individual customers. Try to cover more kinds of teas from China, India, Japan and Sri Lanka. Try to include green, black, white, oolong, Puerh and unique blends.



If you're running a business at home, you may not have a big space to store stock (important: different kinds of teas should be kept in the different ways). You can opt for a drop-shipping arrangement but we don't think it is a good idea because you can't keep your customers information confidential and it is also difficult for you to make your products privately labeled and sometimes easily cause a delay in shipment so it is great to cooperate with the companies that can wholesale bulk tea in small quantities. For example, Vicony Teas Company have a wide range of Chinese teas and you can wholesale from 1KG per kind. 

It is a good idea to use packages with your private labels. During the early stage, we recommend you choose common packages such as blank aluminum foil bags or paper bags pasted with your own labels. It is economical and at the same time can show your identity.

Take the storage requirements of different kinds of teas into consideration when you purchase tea. For example, green tea should be put in cold storage so don't purchase too much if your ice chest have already no space to store it. Black teas can be kept well for more than two years at room temperature only when they are sealed properly so you can make a relatively large purchase if you are satisfied with the batch of it.

Remember the proper time to purchase different teas. For example, you can start purchasing the best Chinese green teas of the current year such as Dragon Well or Biluochun in April while you need to wait and buy such as Jasmine tea and Wuyi Rock Oolong of the current year until Mid-September.

5. Promote your online tea shop.

Promote your tea shop in various ways such as social networking, creating a tea blog, tweeting daily tea-related posts and creating a Facebook page for your tea shop. Signing up through an affiliate network to create online ads for your tea store is also recommended. Consult with a SEO & SEM specialist to make out a promotion plan and you can also find several books to learn SEO & SEM knowledge and apply them to your online tea shop.





25 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. Good Article. Keep up your effort.


    Could you advise us more in building e-marketing?


    You can reach us at
    www.puregreenteas.com
    support@puregreenteas.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. hi I'm planning to put up my on line shop. I would like to know if tea has expiration dates

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  4. Nice article .Thanks for sharing the open tea shop.Want some more knowledge about the tea shops so that i can implement it for my tea shop.You can visit my tea store Teanaga.
    Thanks for sharing

    ReplyDelete
  5. I am about to tell you about Build an online store? At first glance Build an online store may seem unenchanting, however its study is a necessity for anyone wishing to intellectually advance beyond their childhood. Remarkably Build an online store is heralded by shopkeepers and investment bankers alike, leading many to state that there are just not enough blues songs written about Build an online store. Often it is seen as both a help and a hinderence to those most reliant on technology, obviously. Keeping all of this in mind, in this essay I will examine the major issues.

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  6. TeaToxTime.com has been selling online now for two years. In our first year, we didn't sell more than 6 products. It became disheartening when I spent 14 hours on most days being active, writing comments to articles, evolving all my social media pages such as Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. Not only did I go from someone who specialized in tea, but I had to learn about postage, pr, social media, writing blogs, how to deal with different people and groups, but I jad to learn accounts, payroll and spreadsheet. I became an all in One. Starting a tea business is difficult in the beginning. Even the language barrier between suppliers can be challenging. Today, after two years of learning, our monthly (give or take) is about $45,000 profits a month. If you want advice, juat send me an email to; info@teatoxtime.com
    I'm happy to give you advice or guide you in the right direction.

    ReplyDelete
  7. My advice is to follow these steps;
    1. Do a survey, find out the types of tea are preferred. Learn that tea.
    2. Look for suppliers, calculate postage costs from suppliers!! This is really important!! Some suppliers have minimum quantities. This will determine how much you will sell your product for.
    3. Register a domain name and make a website. WordPress sites are the easiest to use.
    Register PayPal and attach it to your site, and set up who you will be using for outbound postage.
    4. Register a business.
    5. Populate social media sites, your tea should be your focus. Don't just try to sell your tea, engage the audience, write about a trip away, a few recipes, how naughty your dog was on Saturday, ect..
    6. Write articles on your blog page.
    7. Use Google ads to get your tea name on the first page whilst you are promoting your business. (It takes about 3 months for your long days and hard work to make it on the first 4 pages of ranking) Start an ad campaign once you have your products.


    Within this time, your tea is well on its way(takes about 6 weeks from ordering to your front door), so that when your products arrive, you will have something to sell.
    Happy selling!! If you need more tips and advice, send me an email via: TeaToxTime.com

    ReplyDelete
  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  9. TeaToxTime.com has been selling online now for two years. In our first year, we didn't sell more than 6 products. It became disheartening when I spent 14 hours on most days being active, writing comments to articles, evolving all my social media pages such as Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. Not only did I go from someone who specialized in tea, but I had to learn about postage, pr, social media, writing blogs, how to deal with different people and groups, but I jad to learn accounts, payroll and spreadsheet. I became an all in One. Starting a tea business is difficult in the beginning. Even the language barrier between suppliers can be challenging. Today, after two years of learning, our monthly (give or take) is about $45,000 profits a month. If you want advice, juat send me an email to; info@teatoxtime.com
    I'm happy to give you advice or guide you in the right direction.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How to I get the tea in a sealed package with a private business label. I am making homemade tea and putting them in the little tea bags and grinding them myself. I purchased the ingredients from a natural whole foods store. Please advise.

      Delete
  10. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  11. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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