云南壹窑茶业 ( Yi Yao Tea Sourcing livestream)

Taobao Link: https://aj7y259cnagw18f8d0x3tm6yqtw2kot.world.taobao.com/shop/view_shop.htm?spm=a1z09.2.0.0.b9772e8dJ4D2HG&user_number_id=2219583519777

These guys are one of the most popular livestream tea channels in China based in Mengku Region in Yunnan. I’ve seen them top 250,000 live concurrent viewers on Taobao, with similar numbers on WeChat / DouYin Livestreams - so they are doing super well.

Yi Yao’s livestream interface showing the host, farmers, and tea tasting session with live viewer count

The format of the show is very interesting - the host samples tea from various farmers in Mengku and the farmers pitch one of their teas for sale. The host then samples the tea, showing different cups for the brews and tells us how it tastes. Then they try to strike a price for the tea - with the farmer entering a number on a calculator and the host brutally cutting it down. Honestly, it’s pretty entertaining and I can watch it for hours just for the banter alone - which explains the view count on the channel.

The channel advertises this as direct sourcing from the farmer. You see some farmers dress up in their traditional / minority clothing which is kinda fun. It’s also clear that some of them have strong regional dialects and even the host has difficulty understanding them. Afterall - tea farmers can come from different minority cultures who don’t speak native perfect mandarin. I’ve also seen some larger producers coming on board, and it’s funny for them to remark things such as “if you can sell it to producers you won’t come here”. I personally found this a funny meta because it implies that the quality of teas on the channel isn’t the top tier.

Packaging and Delivery

Yi Yao’s packaging showing their branded tea boxes and sample bags, they include some (not a lot) of info about the tea and farmers

I bought from them over several weeks and the teas came in different packaging. Some of them had the Yi Yao boxes whilst others came in bags. The packaging from YiYao is very decent quality - it’s top quality paper and with their logo. The insides of the bags are are lined and their boxes for the cakes are well padded. This is pretty typical of Chinese companies in 2025 - the Chiense are getting very good at operations and they make sure whatever is consumer facing is of decent quality. Around 20% of the packages came direclty from the farmers and they don’t have the YiYao logo. I guess this really depends on how they strike the deal and handle the logistics - it’s likely YiYao charges the farmer a hefty price.

Tea Samples

Every tea purchased always has a 8g sample that you can try. This is great for Chinese consumers because they can refund the tea if they don’t like it. At the end of the day, business is competitive in China and free refunds are expected and they cover return shipping. I do wonder how much this eats into their profit margins, so to have a policy like this they must have 20-50% margins to maintain a strong customer service, marketing and operations team.

Is it Real?

After asking around, there are some accusations that the show pays actors to come on and pretend to be farmers. I can definitely see there could be some truth to this - it’s not hard to just find bored tea industry workers such as pickers, packers, delivery guys to just pretend to be a farmer. This way they can fill the seats and also control the price and make good content. On top of this, some allege they have inflated view numbers - I mean 250,000 concurrent viewers is a VERY large number, I mean most prime time TV series get 1-2 million viewers so 250k per platform is definitely not realistic.

Some Rough Calculations

Here is my personal assessment. I see them selling ~500 cakes per farmer in around 10 min, assume 0.5% of the viewers buy their goods it’s possible they have 100000 real concurrent viewers. They can play some games and manually take products offline and pretend they sold it all between all the 3 streaming platforms. As to the paid actors allegation, I do believe they have real farmers and producers - there are just too many different people showing up stream for them to fake it all. The china rule should apply, 80% real and 20% fake, give or take.

Overall Thoughts

Overall I view this as the “McDonald’s” of livestreams / tea sourcing. They have decent baseline for tea quality and they will try to upsell as much as possible within reasonable bounds. The price will be good, the packaging will be good, and for Chinese viewers they always have the option to refund. That being said they will definitely have strong margins built in so they can market the channel and pay for advertising.

Tea tasting