Tea expos are funny things. There are a million of them, at least here in the Greater China area. There’s one here every year in Hong Kong, and this year’s is coming up. Tea expos are funny because they, for the most part, pretend to be trade shows, but a lot of the exhibitors are really there to do retail. I think for shows like World Tea Expo it’s really much more of a trade show – Vegas isn’t exactly filled with retail customers for tea, especially an expo that size.

In Hong Kong, and many cities in the mainland, however, the tea expos are really more about connecting sellers with buyers, mostly in small to medium sized orders. What’s interesting is that for a lot of vendors these days, tea expos in China are an important venue for them to get publicity out to the customers and to also do some business. For example, the Best Tea House is very active on the circuit, and Mr. Chan travels around to various cities (at least the main ones) and do all the big shows. In Hong Kong, his home base, there is also a group of what can be called posse who hang around their booth. The booths that these vendors set up tend to be pretty big and spacious, and are meant to be seen from far away. They are showcases, basically. It makes sense – you don’t necessarily want to set up shop in second tier cities, but you want to sell to them, so going to a trade show where the locals come in to buy tea is a pretty good compromise. They can always get your contact afterwards and keep buying from you.

You also find, in Hong Kong, the big factories – Dayi, Xiaguan, and the like are usually here, but a lot of the medium sized ones are missing. Part of the reason is because they simply don’t have much business here – whereas a lot of Hong Kong vendors find better prices in the mainland, mainland outfits coming to Hong Kong will have a hard time finding buyers. Hong Kong buyers are not as willing to pay top dollars especially for new tea, so they’re usually better off selling stuff in the mainland.

Then you have the smaller exhibitors. Readers of this blog know that I’m more partial to finding stuff in the rough – shunning big brands in favour of the small and more interesting outfits. These things run the gamut, sort of like when you’re in a tea mall. There are small factories that you’ve never heard of that make pretty decent tea, but far more likely are companies that sell things that you’ve never heard of and really have no reason to try. I think quite often these are just junkets for the people in question and a chance to visit Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong there tend to be a lot of big vendors of green tea from lesser known provinces – I don’t even know why they come, because Hong Kong is a relatively small green tea market, and locals don’t like drinking it. Their booths are almost always empty. I suspect they come because they have a marketing budget and it’s just on their standard circuit, and maybe they can find some overseas buyers who are here to source stuff, but I really have trouble imagining they are going to recoup their costs this way. The booths they have tend to be big, flashy, with a few employees. I don’t know how they justify the costs of coming down.

The fun part of going to an expo is actually the weird stuff you never see otherwise. Last year here there was an Okinawa outfit that sells black tea made on the island. It’s delicious, but as you can imagine for a place with limited land and Japanese prices, the cost of the tea is very high. There are a couple Korean vendors, including Jukro, who come every year, and I almost always buy something from them. The black tea they made last year was really quite good. That’s also where I discovered Zeelong, and other weird tea ventures, some of which are very good, others not as successful as a product. And then you have the “friends of tea” side of things, as the expo organizers call it. These are things like canisters, teaware, and other related items. Sometimes you can buy some cans for cheap at expos.

If you ever have a chance to go to a tea expo, do go. I’d imagine at WTE in Vegas the scale is quite large and it’s a fun event to visit if you’re interested in tea. The HK Tea Fair has been getting worse the past few years, but even then it’s still nice to see what everyone’s up to. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing some old friends and maybe make a few new ones this week.