s are an important, if sometimes overlooked,
segment of the loose leaf tea business and they add significant
value to the tea marketing and distribution process.
Tea wholesalers add value to the efforts of tea suppliers by
reselling tea and adding value added products and services.
Wholesale customers include hotels, restaurants, retail/grocery
outlets, and coffee bars/cafes
The value that tea wholesalers add is significant. For example:
-Hotels provide high quality loose leaf tea to guests in rooms,
room service, spas and restaurants.
-Restaurants complement high quality meals with good tasting
fine tea either in ice tea or after dinner hot tea.
-Retail/grocery outlets present quality tea products in an
attractive and convenient display
-Tea rooms, coffee bars and cafes add tasty food and
comfortable surroundings to the tea experience
It is important to understand that a wholesale relationship
should include more than a catalogue and a discounted price
list and should offer additional benefits to the qualified
wholesaler. A comprehensive package of services supports the
role of the tea wholesaler and the value they add to the tea
distribution process.
Services and benefits to the wholesaler should include quality
of product, quality of support services and volume pricing.
The supplier of tea must provide the highest quality, best
tasting tea on the market since this will attract and keep more
loyal customers to the wholesaler. Wholesalers should deal with
a supplier whose brand has a reputation for consistent quality.
Suppliers who cup every imported chest of tea add considerable
value.
Providing the wholesaler with dedicated customer support offers
the benefit of a dedicated representative to help with orders,
track shipments, provide billing support etc. This aspect of
customer service creates long term benefit to both suppliers
and wholesalers.
As an integral part of a long term relationship the suppler
should offer the wholesaler multiple-tier wholesale pricing.
Aggressive pricing provides the wholesaler greater profits
through larger volume based discounts.
In addition, some suppliers offer auto-adjusting price levels
that reward higher volumes from the wholesaler in real time and
wholesale status indicators that remind the wholesaler when it
is getting close to the next wholesale level.
Those suppliers with state of the art e-commerce sites provide
automatic retrieval of past orders that save the wholesaler
significant time when re-ordering. In addition these sites
often support auto recurring shipments that save time and
effort and avoids ordering errors.
In addition comprehensive order history lookup on e-commerce
sites is an attractive option because this feature avoids
ordering and billing confusion.
Finally, some supplier sites offer unlimited shipping locations
per order and single point of billing for multiple locations.
The wholesaler affiliation with the tea supplier is very
important because of the value added nature of the
relationship. A total package of services that support the
wholesaler will pay dividends in the future.
About The Author: Marcus Stout is President of the Golden Moon
Tea Company. For more information about tea, green tea and
black tea go to http://www.goldenmoontea.com
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