China’s Jasmine Industry Transformation Is All About “Innovation” & “Return”

“In June we launched a new jasmine soap. Now every day can sell 200-300 pieces.” says Chen Feng Jiao who’s a owner of a perfume factory. The demand is now picking up quickly in South Korea and the Middle East region.

Feng Jiao’s company is located outside the city Hengxiang, where she spend 20 years in traditional farming. The local keywords of success are ‘innovate’ and ‘return’. Innovation happens mainly in the supply chain space, by expanding into online sales channels such as eCommerce. At the same time, there’s this new demand for traditional jasmine products that used to be left behind in the past. People want to return to original small scale natural farming and jasmine products processed by hand.

“Our online sales of tea accounted for more than 30% of total sales and with higher profit margins than our offline stores.” as tea garden owner Huang Shanzhen. “While offline shops have regional advantages, an online store can instantly push our products throughout the country,” he adds.

Inspired by the success stories, many local young people enter the Internet Business forces. Effort is spend on the development of new jasmine products such as jasmine flower tea blends, oils, jasmine scented rice and even jasmine bonsai trees.

A  jasmine old root carved into art bonsai can sell for more than 1,000 yuan(150 USD) a pot these days. A local flower garden director closed says that with the improvement of people’s living standards, the value of jasmine has been extended from a simple drinking to aesthetics.

A local jasmine grower says “In the past, we mainly jasmine tea wasn’t popular in China, we mainly focused on producing bulk teas for abroad. These were served for free in restaurants or used for processing in other products. This is different today. We find there’s now a high demand for premium Jasmine tea in China and we’re glad that we’re able to grow and process the best jasmine tea we can.”

At last, the industry’s success and focus on ‘return’ also comes with surprising benefits. The town is now also seeing an inflow of local tourists.