Brewed for survival and innovation: Tealive survived lockdown and moves forward
KUALA LUMPUR, May 1 — Tealive, the largest lifestyle tea brand in Southeast Asia, will continue to innovate, improve the quality of its offerings and customer experience, and find opportunities to reward loyal customers.
Jessica Lee, the marketing head of Loob Holdings Sdn Bhd, the brand owner of Tealive, said the company is grateful to its customers who have been supporting the brand since it was “brewed” in 2017.
This has motivated them to continuously launch new products and cultivate collaborations with various partners from time to time.
“We are lucky we have collaborated with most of the delivery partners in the country even before the first movement control order (MCO) was imposed in March 2020.
“It greatly helped us to move forward unlike some that were unable to do so and had trouble sealing their (business) deals,” she told Bernama during the tea seller’s recent announcement of its collaboration with Kitkat, the international chocolate wafer by Nestle, and the launch of its new concept store, Tealive Plus, here.
Lee said finding the right partner with other food and beverage (F&B) players at the right time also played an important role in putting the brand in the limelight.
“For example, in October 2020, Tealive collaborated with bestselling instant noodle company Mamee to introduce Spicy Mi Boba. People wondered how it tasted, so they bought it. It went viral after they showed what they tried and for the first week, we almost ran out of stock.
“That was among the many reasons that many F&B players came to us to collaborate because they saw our drink as the next wave which customers love,” Lee said.
On its pricing strategy, Lee stated that all Tealive menus have remained affordable to ensure that all levels of consumers will be able to enjoy their products.
“Premium yet affordable for the higher range products below RM19, while our normal drinks menu is still capped at RM7, the lowest. We will maintain the prices to keep our customers, despite having 50-60 per cent of our ingredients imported,” she said.
With the opening of Tealive Plus, currently only available at the Pavilion Kuala Lumpur mall, it has also incorporated a QR code for customers to order in advance so that they don’t have to queue up and can collect their orders at a later time.
Tealive has over 730 stores in Malaysia at present and plans to open another 60 more stores in East Malaysia and smaller towns in Peninsular Malaysia to reach out to more Malaysians.
On its plans for overseas markets, Lee said Tealive, which opened stores in Manila, Philippines two months ago, is targeting to have another 10 more stores in Manila.
“Next, we will head for Mauritius sometime in the middle of the year. This will be a franchise market and we are planning to start with three stores, operating in stages,” she added.
Tealive is also available in Australia, Brunei, Myanmar, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, and Cambodia. — Bernama
TAGS: ,, Jessica Lee