Annual income exceeds 10 million! Foreigners bring Chinese tea to overseas markets

In recent years, Chinese tea brands have welcomed a wave of going overseas. New Chinese tea brands represented by Gongcha, Mixue Bingcheng, Nayuki Tea, and Heytea have successively expanded into multiple overseas markets with their own brand potential, and the number of overseas stores has increased dramatically.

Some time ago, Bawang Chaji was also reported to be opening stores in the United States in the spring of 2025, with the first stores to be located in Irvine and Los Angeles, California. Prior to this, Bawang Chaji had already set up shop in Malaysia.

As market competition becomes increasingly fierce, more local tea brands will go global to find larger incremental markets. Yunnan Sourcing , mentioned today, has achieved an enviable annual sales of over 2 million US dollars with its independent website alone .

With an annual income of over 10 million yuan, the couple went overseas to make a lot of money

Chinese tea culture is booming, and related tea culture products are hot-selling overseas. In recent years, China's tea exports have also shown a steady upward trend. Customs statistics show that in 2023, China's total tea exports reached 367,500 tons, with an export value of US$1.739 billion. It can be seen that Chinese tea has great development potential overseas.

Yunnan Sourcing is a brand that specializes in Yunnan Pu'er tea for overseas markets. The founders are a couple, the husband is a foreigner and the wife is from Yunnan. Relying on the geographical advantage, they purchase tea directly from tea gardens and tea factories in Yunnan, ensuring that they receive the freshest and best quality Pu'er tea, reducing the middlemen while also effectively controlling costs.

The husband and wife team mainly promotes products on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram . In the videos, the two will give detailed explanations of related tea products, and introduce the characteristics of tea, the growth process of tea, and how to brew tea, so that consumers can have a better understanding of the products.

The lifelike introduction method and interesting conversational explanation also make consumers happy to watch and bring the company closer to consumers.

Yunnan Sourcing's independent website has a wide range of tea products, including everyday black tea, green tea, white tea, etc., which can be seen on its homepage. The best-selling ones are black tea, oolong tea, green tea, white tea, etc.

Product types include Pu'er raw tea, cooked tea, brick tea, cake tea, etc. The product packaging is Chinese style, and Chinese characters are printed on the outer packaging. What impressed me most was a tea product with a Chinese dragon printed on it. While selling tea, it also spread Chinese culture.

The couple brought Chinese tea to overseas markets, allowing more and more foreigners to experience authentic Chinese tea and learn about Chinese culture. In addition, they mainly sell on independent websites and Amazon. Chinese tea is popular overseas. The couple's annual sales exceed 2 million US dollars just through independent websites .

Regarding the selling price, the price of tea on Yunnan Sourcing's official website ranges from a few US dollars to more than 100 US dollars. Among them, the best-selling product is Yunnan's "Black Gold Biluochun" black tea, which sells for 43 US dollars per pound (equivalent to about 300 yuan in RMB). The same tea is relatively cheap in China, so it can be seen that the profit is also considerable.

With over 200 million exposures, Chinese tea has become popular overseas

TikTok short videos are popular all over the world and have caused a craze overseas. TikTok's main user group is young people, whose shopping behavior is different from that of traditional consumers. They are more inclined to discover new products through entertainment.

This not only changes people 's consumption and entertainment methods, but also opens up new marketing channels for brands .

On TikTok, there are more than 27,300 posts with the tag #Chinese tea and have accumulated more than 200 million impressions, which shows that many foreigners are interested in Chinese tea culture and will further promote sales.

It is worth mentioning that in these videos, not only Chinese users are sharing Chinese tea culture with overseas consumers, but also many international friends are participating in them. They not only introduce Chinese tea, but also personally demonstrate how to make tea.

As Chinese tea becomes popular overseas, tea culture products such as tea sets and tea pets have also attracted more attention and demand, while also driving the sales growth of tea culture derivative products.

In addition, on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Target, the popularity of Chinese tea and matching tea sets has increased.

The overseas market for tea beverages is hot, and brands are competing to make their presence felt

China's new tea beverage market is growing rapidly. Data shows that the scale of China's new tea beverage market has increased from 42.2 billion yuan in 2017 to 193.3 billion yuan in 2023. It is expected that by 2025, the scale of China's new tea beverage market will reach 245.8 billion yuan.

As market competition intensifies, domestic leading players have opened a large number of stores, and the tea industry has entered the "10,000-store era". Various brands have accelerated the pace of new products, and there is serious homogeneity, forming a vicious competition situation. Now, some tea brands have set their sights on overseas markets to seek new development.

In recent years, Chinese tea brands have been going overseas one after another, springing up like mushrooms after rain. Mixue Bingcheng, Chabaidao, Bawang Chaji, Heytea, Nayuki's Tea, etc. are all competing to expand overseas. From Southeast Asia to Europe and the United States, Chinese tea brands can be found.

The Southeast Asian market has also become a new hot spot for tea beverage brands to go overseas. This is because Southeast Asia is close to China and has a large Chinese and overseas Chinese base. The language and customs are similar to those in China, and there is a common tea drinking cultural gene. These have laid the foundation for domestic tea beverage brands to go overseas. Therefore, many brands choose the Southeast Asian market as their first stop for going overseas.

However, each brand has a different positioning and targets different audiences, so many aspects must be considered when going overseas and markets suitable for brand development must be chosen. Crowding into the same overseas market may not be the optimal solution.

Mixue Bingcheng, the "King of New Tea Drinks" in China , has been opening stores overseas crazily in recent years. By September this year, the number of its overseas stores had reached nearly 5,000.

In 2018, Mixue Bingcheng opened its first store in Vietnam. In just five or six years, it now has nearly 5,000 stores. The expansion speed can be said to be very fast, and this is also because it chose the market that is most suitable for the development of its own brand.

In the context of the fierce competition in the domestic new tea beverage market, many tea beverage brands believe that if they do not go overseas , they will be out of the game. Those who are "going overseas" also hope to achieve business growth by relying on the new blue ocean market.

In the future, with the further spread of social media and Chinese tea brands continuing to gain new popularity overseas, more overseas consumers will learn about Chinese tea and China's new tea brands.

At the same time, as early adopters, they will also provide more Chinese companies with experience that can be used as a reference and help them explore areas where they need to avoid risks when developing overseas.

Chinese Tea

Yunnan

Sourcing