Consumers have turned out to be the real winners in recent days, as a war between milk tea brands in Suzhou’s top mall brought chaos, pandemonium and more than a few bargains to the throngs drawn in by the lowest common denominator that is saving money.
Not long after opening, Suzhou Centre Mall won a MAPIC Award for “Best New Shopping Centre”, in recognition of its innovation and quality in global retail real estate. But that quality has recently been thrown in to doubt with the outbreak of that being termed “tea wars”.
It was then that brands such as Hey Tea, Baifen Tea, 7 Fen Tian and Moji Tea successively launched low-price promotions to grab business from the summer crowds.
And grab they indeed did, literally, as some brands mobilised staff to accost potential passing customers.
The questionable tactics led some to joke that it had been a long time since they had seen such a down-to-earth ways of soliciting customers. “High-end business wars are often presented in the simplest way”, said one, reports QQ News.
Taking Suzhou Centre Mall as an example, there are 11 tea shops, including Hey Tea, Lele Tea, Baifen Tea, 7 Fen Tian, Moji and CoCo on the first basement-level floor, and many are adjacent to each other.
Such proximity inevitably turned the war vocal. “Is there anyone who wants to play games and get a chance to drink milk tea for free?!”, shouted staff out front of Baifen Tea.
Not to be outdone, a staff member from Hey Tea held up a billboard and yelled loudly, “The new store of Hey Tea is open; just ¥9 yuan for everyone!”, with his voice heard to be a little hoarse.
Meanwhile, the staff of Baifen Tea held up billboards, while others paraded through the crowds thrusting advertisements into shoppers’ hands.
“At that time, the scene looked like a vegetable market.”
Finally though, Suzhou Centre Mall had had enough, declaring the scene too “lively”, confiscating the billboards and silencing the vocal sales people in order to maintain order.
That the tea wars have now come to an end, for the moment, is also an indicator that the new-tea drink market in first-tier and new first-tier cities is close to saturation. Last year, the milk tea market in China racked up a respectable ¥136.1 billion, but that itself was a year-on-year decrease of 4.1 percent.
