With recent success in the United States, Nio Teas has started to turn its attention to the next biggest market, Europe. The online tea retailer hopes for strong growth in 2024, relying on a fast growing customer base in the European Union.
A Green Revolution
Out of 78 thousand tons of green tea produced in Japan, only 2% of it is exported abroad. This is a problem Oliver Staerkle, the founder of Nio Teas wanted to solve. The green tea he found in Japan was a league above what he was used to in Europe, and he wanted to find a way to bring quality, pesticide free green tea to people all around the world.
What started out as a stall at a farmers market in Lausanne, turned into a successful online business. While the company's largest market is in the U.S, it now seeks to return to its roots and expand in Europe.
Headwinds for Expansion
While the European market is lucrative, it comes with a number of linguistic and regulatory barriers that will keep the team busy. With its English-focused marketing strategy, the team has been able to capitalize on the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, but to expand to the rest of Europe, they will need to go multilingual.
Although the team is small, they have proficiency in French, German and Italian which will be critical to their plans for European expansion. The team has already localized their website to support customers in France, and will do the same for Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria in the coming months.
Customs
A second hurdle for expansion into the E.U will be the issue of customs. Online retailers rely on fast and consistent deliveries to customers, and this can be difficult when shipping from Japan. Luckily, the company has begun shipments from a fulfillment center in Ireland to reliably ship the tea to customers without shipping or customs fees.
New Hiring
In order to meet the challenge, the company has been making some new hires to help with the localization. The localization team currently consists mostly of remote workers in France, but the team believes this will soon extend to other countries across the E.U.
Opportunities for Growth
While there are many obstacles, there are also many opportunities. With easy shipping to every country in the E.U, the company sees growth opportunities almost everywhere across the continent. The key markets will be France, Germany and Italy.
France
The company sees the largest opportunities for expansion in France : Nio Teas France. This is currently the fastest growing market in the company's portfolio, driven in part by the efforts of the localization team.
Germany
After France, the next largest green tea market on the continent could be Germany : Nio Teas Germany. Not only does the country show an interest in pesticide free, loose leaf green tea, it also has the most customers under a single language, especially when Austria and Switzerland are added to the region.
Italy
Finally on the list is Nio Teas Italy. Although not the main focus for the company, the Italian market has seen a strong growth in the past year. The Nio Teas team is confident that with increased efforts on Italian, they will be able to grow this market over the next year.
Thinking Globally
In a demonstration of their commitment to the European market, the Nio Teas team has relocated to Europe in the past few years, and is now united under a single time zone. The company has benefited from the remote working boom, but now seeks to foster more in-person working opportunities.
“The future is looking bright for Nio Teas, particularly when it comes to Europe” says Will Klingner, VP of Marketing for the company.
No matter what the future brings for the company, it’s clear that the focus will be to create a tailored shopping experience no matter where the customer is. This means finding a way to support multiple languages, currencies and shipping locations to bring green tea to customers all around the globe.
Nio Teas is an online tea store that bridges the gap between the people that enjoy tea and the people that produce it. With a tea education platform, information on where each individual tea is grown and free shipping worldwide, Nio Teas seeks to make quality, pesticide free green tea accessible to people all around the world.