Mei-Leaf Chat
Just pin the thread already; it’s never leaving the first page of discussions anyway.
For those that may be interested…
Mei Leaf are the most loved shop in London (according to Timeout magazine). They are celebrating with Live session #8 this Saturday 8pm UK time
https://youtu.be/iunNsLOGoh4
And they broke 30k YouTube subscribers, now at 30,339.
I must admit I’m very pleased for them. I assumed it might be best tea shop or a similar narrow category… But it’s actually best local shop in the whole of London! https://www.timeout.com/london/love-city#/results/categories/Shop
London is a large cosmopolitan city with thousands of retailers. Mei Leaf produced a marketing video asking their subscribers to vote for them. How many of those who voted have been to London, how many visited the selection of stores there, let alone a little shop in Camden. Common sense should prevail rather than a lemming reaction to a faulty selection process. The video on its own was fun.
Mei Leaf produced a marketing video asking their subscribers to vote for them.
That was encouraged:
“We recommend you use social media to encourage your customers to vote for you.”
Mei Leaf is an independent business.
“The Time Out Love Awards is aimed at celebrating independent businesses.”
I still don’t understand why so many people here are so upset about this company. They make lots of videos ( although from 30 min video only 5 min is informational , in my opinion. But thats their style. ) They got their fan club very hard way and I wouldn’t like to be in owner’s shoes.
Just imagine that you have to pay an apartment and shop rent in London. Then flights to China , where you come as a foreigner knowing about the tea but totally not knowing the actual tea business ( judging by his last issues with Bingdao or other something hundred years tea trees ) , buying some average grade tea which you have to sell as a premium tea back home in London so you can cover your expenses. The most difficult Ive found that u actually have to believe that your tea is premium so you look authentic when making those videos full of awesomeness :-) Then u have to face attacks from other vendors who are not that successful, also from people who live and do tea business in China and know that “this is not what it says on the wrapper” .
Running luxury online shop in times of already high prices of good quality tea from producer and expanding competition sourcing directly from China , deserves an admiration ….at least from my side. Getting a customer’s trust , loyalty is a long journey and MeiLeaf do as much as marketing they can to get over all those mentioned points above and stay profitable ( at least I hope they do ) .
You might not agree with his marketing strategy but believe me , in China is much worse and MeiLeaf is at least spreading the tea culture in all directions ,not only at the shop’s doorstep. 30k followers is decent number and some of them might become your customers in future , so at the end u all might be profiting from this. The truth is that misinforming tea lovers that is possible to get tea from 400y old tea tree for few pounds and directly from London :-) is kind of pain for other vendors who do this tea more genuinely , or should I say : those who actually have clue about this matter. But I hope these small problems will get sorted eventually.
Just my humble opinion.
Again, I don’t care at all if people want a discussion space for the company/teas (in a positive or negative light). I think it’s great that people have found a company that speaks to them with teas they enjoy, and I also think that it’s fair for people to critize the company’s business practices.
I just get annoyed by the pointless posts that don’t contribute any sort of discussion and merely act as another way to just say ‘bump’ to raise the topic to the front of the discussion page. It annoys me with other threads too, but this one is especially bad for it. I’d actually love to click into the thread and, for once, see a post that actually tells me about the tea or product carried in a non biased way (one way or the other). That would be informative for me, as someone who doesn’t know much about the product Mei Leaf carries other than the controversy surrounding it or the blind adoration of it.
Instead I click, and it’s subscriber counts… :/
Cwyn please keep your bigotry off the tea site…or care to elaborate if I misread your comment?
@andresito Please keep from call others out for ‘bigotry’ form the tea site?
This entire thread is a troll-induced, and isn’t being used for ‘serious discussion’ 50% of the time. Why call out Cwyn for her comment, when others are bullshitting quite worse in this thread?
Why do they need to use lies about Bingdao to sell their tea when other tea merchants do not do the same? Honesty is an important standard for tea.
Àctually I’m Catholic so I can hardly bigot without doing so on myself. My point is that people can and do continue to patronize organizations with a bad history. Instead of arguing whether that bad history exists, it’s best to be up front about it. Those who wish to will continue to push for transparency and positive change.
I believe that Mei Leaf definitely will make changes based the feedback they got on both the old tea and the stickers.
tea123 – are you working at Mei Leaf?
No. I merely observe and share stuff of interest.
Youtube: 30,569
Latest pu-erh: This one is their first aged pu-erh, a 2013 Jing Mei: https://meileaf.com/tea/snow-listener/
Details: This tea is estimated to be made from between 300-500-year-old trees and potentially up to 700 years although it is important to say that since we did not directly source this tea from farmers, these figures are approximations.
Processed into cakes 2014, not directly sourced. Has anyone tried it?
357g 107 GBP, 158 USD.
Description:
Origin – Jing Mai, Yunnan, China
“The leaves look like they may be sourced from mixed, smaller leaf varieties compared with the standard Big Leaf Assamica. These smaller leaved varieties are found in Jing Mai but we cannot be certain.”
I’ve now had 4 sessions of the “Snow Listener” from Mei Leaf. I find it quite enjoyable. It does taste of fairly humid storage. It starts with a sort of creamy caramel sort of flavor. After the 3rd-4th steep the humid taste wears off to showcase a very fruity, sweet, quenching liquor. Glad to have it in my collection.
I just wonder, how many people here had an opportunity to drink real “gu shu” tea ( around 300y old tree ) ? Based on what fact you are sure that the tea was actually the old one?
Thanks for you answers.
Mei Leaf live sessions 9, this Saturday 7th July.
Youtube Subscribers: 32,882. Numbers appear to have steadied.
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