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Thailand's Advanced Matcha Market · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:07
Hello so Eddie Cup and welcome to the specialty match podcast.
0:10
My name is Ryan. This is Michael Ho Zhengjian who
0:13
also goes by Sam. Hello, hello and with the Co
0:15
founders of Sanko match products.
0:17
Yeah, we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey,
0:19
Matcha, share startup stories and interview experts.
0:22
And we are here in Bangkok, Thailand.
0:24
We just finished the Thailand Coffee Festival.
0:27
We were exhibiting there and had a lot of learnings that we're
0:30
both wanted to digest together. So this is a more conversational
0:33
episode between Sam and I to really just goes through all the
0:37
learnings that we had over the last four days because they
0:40
really should rename the Thailand Specialty Coffee
0:43
Festival to the Thailand Specialty Matcha Festival.
0:46
I think about half of that show is tea, yeah, Of which about 90%
0:51
is matcha. Well.
0:52
First painful learning. Do not ever ever ever use UPS.
0:57
Yes, so it seems still not here. It is very painful.
1:00
This was going to be the first time we were publicly unveiling
1:03
our Matcha milk Senko USU one to the world.
1:06
And unfortunately it was supposed to arrive 10 days
1:08
before the conference started on air freight cargo and got we had
1:13
four cancelled flights. And in theory it's arriving
1:16
today, which is Monday, which is the day after the last day of
1:19
the conference. So it was kind of deflationary
1:22
for us because we had to present from a poster what we were doing
1:26
at our with our partners Chaseki at their booth.
1:29
But we took the opportunity to learn as much as we could while
1:33
we were here and wanted to share those learnings.
1:35
And there's a shocking amount of interest for our machine,
1:37
considering we were only showing pictures on posters and on our
1:41
computer. One thing that's very
1:42
interesting as we are talking to people poaching us, getting
1:46
curious about the machine, is that no one asked why are we
1:51
milling matcha fresh. That's true.
1:53
Not once. Not even once.
1:55
Actually, I guess and one person asked me what are the benefits
1:59
of fresh milled matcha? But I think they just wanted to
2:01
be spoon fed marketing material that they could give to their
2:05
customers. Yeah, but for a lot of people
2:07
really just felt that obvious. Yeah, it's just clicks in their
2:11
head. Also, a shocking number of
2:13
people have a shocking amount of knowledge about macho milling.
2:16
Let's stop by. I don't know, maybe there's some
2:18
selection bias based on the people who would walk up to our
2:20
machine or the poster of our machine.
2:23
But like people are very well aware of Ishusu of ball mills,
2:28
the pros and cons of each, what you're trying to get for what
2:31
the Micron size should be. We get some really shockingly
2:35
specific questions about matcha, matcha powder quality in a way
2:39
that I just don't think would have happened anywhere else in
2:41
the world. When you talk to people in the
2:44
specialty coffee industry or even the matcha industry more
2:47
broadly in other countries, it feels like a very, very
2:49
developed market. So Zhangju, now that we have
2:52
both given our elevator pitch, I don't know, 100 times each over
2:56
the last four days, what is what is your pitch when someone walks
2:59
up and say, hey, like, what is this?
3:01
What are you guys doing? It's a mushroom milk.
3:03
That's the easiest part of this building this new company that's
3:07
kind of self-evident. Yep.
3:08
Yep, You don't need to set up the question.
3:11
You don't need to address any, you know, concepts very obvious
3:15
Tensile goes in from here and then Masha comes out from here
3:18
and I'm glad that that I end up bringing component from the
3:22
machine with me. It's the plate.
3:24
The hold plate set was with us for the whole time.
3:27
The Millstone service. Yeah, so, so that was very
3:30
helpful. Can basically point at it and
3:32
tell them that OK, so we actually trying to mimic the
3:36
traditional pattern of the issue used to by using ceramics and we
3:39
have these cooling system that can extract the heat from the
3:43
grind surface that's being generated from such high
3:46
compression coming from our compression mechanism to produce
3:50
very fine powder. So I think, you know, people
3:54
naturally would, you know, their second question will be like,
3:57
how fast can you produce matcha? Yeah, straight to business.
3:59
And using Ishi usu as a comparison both on speed and the
4:03
powder quality really I think resonates with people.
4:06
We took inspiration from a traditional issue user designed
4:09
on the grind mechanism, but we are increasing the production
4:14
speed and also we can match the powder quality.
4:17
And I think that's that that really, you know, that up
4:20
people's light in their eyes, especially when they touch the
4:23
actual matcha that's coming out from the machine.
4:25
Yeah, We brought some samples that we had milled and just
4:28
seeing people's faces light up and even from some of our
4:31
industry friends, which we think are, you know, very skeptical.
4:34
People have really high standards for matcha quality.
4:37
And, you know, hearing them say the matcha powder quality is
4:40
good. This was.
4:41
Seeing their facial. Expression very high compliments
4:46
of people we really respect. Very encouraging.
4:48
Thank you. Thank you.
4:49
So one of the things that we get asked a lot about is this more
4:53
innovation, is it killing tradition?
4:55
Like, should you know, is this going to be too much in
4:58
competition with matcha stone milling?
5:00
And what we keep telling people is that actually from the tea
5:03
Leafs perspective, if you put yourself in the POV of the
5:06
tensha turning into matcha, nothing's changed.
5:09
Almost nothing has changed. You're still going down a
5:12
hopper, you're still going onto a mill stone, you're still being
5:16
chopped up and into so many fine pieces that it's so small that
5:21
it's beneath the visual threshold.
5:23
The heat is still being removed from the system in the same way,
5:26
so you're not over generating too much heat at the moment.
5:30
There's only one material difference in that the what's
5:33
doing the grinding mechanism is something that is more precise
5:36
and less variable than something like natural stone granite,
5:41
which requires an artisan to be able to to carve in the grooves.
5:45
And we've actually tried carving in grooves with granite with CNC
5:49
machines and it ships. And part of the reason that it
5:51
ships is because it comes from nature and from piece to piece.
5:54
There's some variability. So it requires a lot of human
5:56
skill to do, which is fantastic art.
5:59
But unfortunately it's probably gated at, I don't know what two
6:02
or three dozen Japanese stone Masons in the world that have
6:06
the knowledge to do that. And that's great, beautiful art.
6:09
Absolutely not scalable and absolutely not scalable at a
6:12
cost where most people will be able to before.
6:15
And as far as a business is concerned, even people who own
6:19
traditional Ishiusu stone mills, the single greatest liability of
6:24
that piece of equipment is the millstone surface where all
6:26
those grooves are cut into. And if you don't know what
6:29
you're doing, which is nearly everyone outside of Japan, it's
6:32
going to be need to be refinished on a two to
6:35
three-year basis or maybe even sooner depending on usage and
6:38
what you put through the machine, right?
6:40
So now you have a life cycle problem, the life cycle of the
6:44
piece of equipment, like in the same way that we think about, I
6:47
don't know, the life cycle of a water bottle, right?
6:50
You have plastic, it goes to some manufacturing, they put in
6:52
some water, it goes to the convenience store, you buy it,
6:55
you consume it and you hopefully recycle it to which hopefully it
6:59
re enters the system. It's a life cycle for any
7:02
product. Same with iPhones, same with
7:04
computers and same with matcha mills.
7:06
And the life cycle and repairability cycle of Ishiyusu
7:09
is designed to only exist in Japan.
7:12
Because right now, the only way that you can do this is send
7:15
50kg of granite back to Japan, get refinished and then ship it
7:19
back. Or if you're very lucky, you
7:21
have a good relationship with the stone Mason.
7:23
They'll come to you and do those repairs and then every time you
7:27
do a repair, you take a thin layer off of that granite.
7:30
And because it's a gravity based compression system and you can't
7:34
control the level pressure, it will get thinner and thinner and
7:38
thinner over time, reducing the weight, which typically means
7:41
you have to reduce the speed, which means you have to reduce
7:44
your your throughput. So it's a very long way of
7:46
saying that by having controllable compression and
7:50
swappable millstones, it takes away a lot of those risks as a
7:55
business and but also hands over a lot of control where you're
7:59
able to see what does this taste like at this speed and pressure
8:04
and temperature. And you're able to actually
8:06
participate in a pretty large flavor creating step because
8:12
milling matcha slow and cold tastes very different than
8:15
milling matcha fast and hot. And then there's an in between.
8:19
And then this optimization needs to be dialed in depending on the
8:23
tea, whether or not it was roasted like a Yami tea, whether
8:26
or not it's like a super umami bomb like Asahi cultivar from
8:30
Uji, right? There's all of this variety and
8:32
where you can actually really participate in the step, which
8:36
got a lot of people excited as we were explaining this to
8:38
people because a lot of people say like how does this compared
8:41
to a still own MIL? So we like to approach it both
8:43
from the product and product quality lens, but also like what
8:46
is realistically scalable? Because buying a 10 to $15,000
8:50
machine after you take into account tariffs and shipping,
8:53
etcetera to send this granite to these countries, it just doesn't
8:57
make sense for it to scale. So if we want the world to have
8:59
fresher, better matcha, where matcha businesses are not just
9:02
repacking someone else's powder, we need a pretty fundamental
9:06
shift in the equipment ecosystem, which is where we're
9:09
trying to find ourselves. That was a great pitch, Ryan.
9:11
You make me almost I want to buy a machine.
9:14
I'll sell one to you. So along the way, have you
9:16
gotten any pushback from anyone you talk to?
9:19
I think people obviously cost is a concern and we're pretty
9:22
transparent. The retail cost of our machine
9:24
is 7 thousand U.S. dollars and we're doing a pre-order batch
9:27
before November 15th. People can buy one for 6500 as a
9:32
as a pre-order. So cost is a thing and it
9:34
depends on what their business is.
9:35
I mean some people are in the business of you know just
9:38
e-commerce. So it's a kind of a different
9:40
story. Some people are interested in
9:42
sort of a mill matcha fresh milled matcha club like
9:46
subscription service, others are cafe operators.
9:48
So it really depends on the context of the business, so.
9:52
And some people are holding a much larger breadth which the
9:56
current the capacity of the machine might not just make
9:59
sense for them. At their scale, in the way that
10:01
they manufacture. Yeah, if you're looking for like
10:04
a few KG or hundreds of KGS of production a day, this machine
10:08
is probably too slow. Well, especially if you're
10:10
centralized operations, but if you're decentralized operations,
10:14
I think there's a good fit and I think there's going to be an
10:16
interesting thing. So I'm walking around the floor
10:18
and there's just so many like just wonderful, fantastic new
10:22
matcha brands doing some really incredible sourcing work and
10:26
product descriptions and like extremely creative product
10:30
names, like really some very cool brands.
10:33
At the show, there were a total of around 40 different people
10:36
exhibiting that were selling matcha matcha brands.
10:39
And I was walking around thinking to myself, you know,
10:41
the moment that we start making pricing quality distinctions on
10:45
freshness, a huge problem is the MLQ problem.
10:49
When you're a small business doing interesting sourcing,
10:52
especially for some of the higher end specialty matcha
10:54
products, right, you got to commit to buying a certain
10:57
amount at a time and especially in the sourcing environment that
11:00
we're in, right? Like if you have the opportunity
11:03
to buy, I don't know, 50 KGS versus 20 KGS of something
11:08
that's really good. There's a really strong
11:10
incentive to buy 50 KGS if you can afford it based on your cash
11:14
flow. Because this stuff is just
11:16
selling out super fast and then you have nothing to sell.
11:19
And because of that, right, you're now stuck on what is
11:22
essentially parachutable inventory, which you can cold
11:25
store and keep in the freezer. And you know, the cold chain
11:27
will help prolong the shelf life.
11:29
But if consumers really make the switch to caring about a fresh
11:34
milk product, right? And we shift the definition of
11:37
what is quality to be based on a meal date.
11:41
It's like having a shelf stable inventory based business to
11:46
having a perishable inventory based business.
11:49
And these are two really different business models.
11:52
And my fear is, is that it will I could form some level of
11:56
consolidation where if you have a lot of supply chain control
12:01
and have are very good at churning over your inventory,
12:05
you're going to be naturally set up to succeed in that world.
12:08
Then if you just don't have that in your business because you're
12:12
too small or because you're new. So we're hopeful that, you know,
12:16
this technology is able to help out both parties and that a
12:20
$7000 price point is good enough for people to be able to mill
12:25
matcha themselves locally to maybe even distinguish their
12:29
products from some of the bigger players that do centralized all
12:33
those operations and have it. So we're hoping on the scale of
12:37
who that helps, it's the smaller businesses as well as the bigger
12:40
businesses. I mean, we we're also very pro
12:42
consumer. We want to see a fresher grown
12:44
product because the reality is, I think in 10 to 15 years, we're
12:48
all going to be saying that pre milled matcha is stale.
12:52
In the same way that the entire coffee industry has shifted
12:55
their definition of what they consider stale in the last 20
12:59
years to basically mean that you need to grind right before you
13:02
consume because there's a noticeable sensory difference.
13:05
And that is just absolutely true with matcha.
13:08
You can open a can of matcha, you wait a week and the product
13:11
has completely changed. So it's it's a bit unfair at the
13:15
moment, I think to over market matcha freshness because
13:19
literally no one could compete unless you have that level of
13:22
infrastructure. I think there's going to be some
13:24
growing pains as this industry evolves, at least in the
13:27
framework that we're looking at things with regards to
13:30
freshness. But I really hope for consumers
13:32
sake and the products sake that people start making these
13:35
distinctions. What were some of the things
13:37
that surprised you or did either like didn't meet your
13:40
expectations or did meet your expectations just being exposed
13:44
across the four days in the show?
13:45
Like what was it like observing Thai consumers buy things, the
13:49
questions that they asked, because also at the boot that we
13:52
were out, there were a lot of macho sales going on.
13:55
It's pretty interesting just watching just how people buy
13:58
matcha retail. Like you don't get exposed to
14:01
that in very many environments. Like maybe you're at a cafe and
14:04
you're sitting and someone happens to be ordering something
14:07
and asking some questions. But I don't think we've really
14:09
gotten this level of consumer interaction at this density.
14:13
Well, I don't speak the language, I honestly do not know
14:17
like what you know the consumers were talking about most of the
14:20
time. But it was interesting to see
14:21
their eye movement across different items.
14:24
Consumers are very sensible to color, I feel like in this
14:28
market, and I think the brands here also noticed that too,
14:33
there's almost oversaturation of different color palettes across
14:37
different brands, different products and different items or
14:40
even within one item. It's very different compared to
14:45
other markets, like for example, Japan.
14:48
If you approach the Thai consumer with like 2, I guess,
14:53
authentic of the Japanese image, you definitely will stand out in
14:57
this market. Yeah, there's a really
14:59
distinctive level of tightness, like you were either sort of an
15:03
imported Japanese products and there were a lot of them being
15:06
resold from the famous Fuji companies and from some other
15:09
famous companies in Japan. But the local brands really kind
15:14
of felt local. The color palette was very loud.
15:18
And I agree, it was really distinctive.
15:20
And actually a lot of it was not to my taste, but by watching a
15:23
lot of the eye movement because because we don't tie right, like
15:27
we're constantly looking, OK, someone looking at our poster.
15:30
I had like, so we're really, we're tuned into that ready to
15:34
answer someone's questions if they were interested in learning
15:36
more about Matcha Millie. Just it was very interesting
15:40
seeing that and we had some discussions with some other
15:42
people to conference about that level of marketing.
15:45
The contrast was especially obvious when you have a bunch of
15:49
colorful bowls sitting right next to our poster.
15:52
Our poster was competing with these plastic.
15:55
Very colorful bowls and the amount of eye movement that went
15:59
toward an interest in these bowls was almost comedic.
16:01
We were trying to guess, OK, are they looking at our poster or
16:04
are they interested in this neon pink bowl which is. 9 times out
16:08
of 10 it was those bowls. Well, it was largely a consumer
16:12
show. It's it was it was interesting
16:14
to watch. So Zhangjun, for anyone who's
16:16
never been to Thailand, who's never experienced the way
16:18
products are marketed and sold here, if any one of our
16:22
listeners was to walk around conference, what is the look and
16:25
feel of the way these matcha products are communicated?
16:28
How are they differentiated? How are they sold by how are
16:31
they described? Like what?
16:32
How is this compared to like the way you would see coffee
16:36
somewhere else or something like that?
16:38
Or not even somewhere else, but something that is pretty
16:42
interesting to me and I feel like that it's not necessarily
16:46
happening anywhere else is a very clear distinction of a
16:50
brand or a shop selling matcha versus coffee.
16:54
I saw very few, most not in my impression, any brand selling
16:58
both matcha and coffee at that show.
17:00
That's true. It was just matcha or just
17:03
coffee, and there's no mixing. Yeah, that the boundary was very
17:07
clear. Even with loose leaf tea, there
17:09
was very little loose leaf tea mixing.
17:11
Very unusual. Made just a handful of booths.
17:14
So, so that that was very interesting.
17:16
Like people, people do make a very clear distinction of
17:20
product categories and their aesthetic and their
17:23
communication leaned 100% into the category.
17:27
It's a very, very full commitment, which naturally
17:30
inspire a question that I hope I ask during the conferences.
17:33
So what do all these coffee people think about Matcha and
17:36
Matcha's presence in the Thai Coffee Fest?
17:40
The name is still Coffee Fest. You cannot find the name Matcha
17:43
anywhere in the in the name or India in the branding of this
17:47
event. But the green radiance of Matcha
17:50
is just you cannot ignore that it I would say about 40% of the
17:56
booths at the coffee Fest for matcha.
17:58
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. It's really found an interesting
18:01
home in this market and close association with coffee and
18:05
cafes. I didn't mean it.
18:06
It naturally makes sense for where the business flows.
18:09
I mean, every cafe needs to respond to the preferences and
18:12
desires of their own consumers. And I think it's just a
18:15
reflection of how much consumers love matcha in this market and
18:19
that coffee shops have no choice.
18:22
They have to embrace it and now they have to embrace it levels
18:26
sophistication that really doesn't exist in any other
18:28
market. The level of knowledge about
18:31
cultivars that's here, the level of knowledge about origins
18:34
that's here really genuinely matters to people in in these
18:38
types of conversations. And the salespeople who sell
18:41
these macho actually have to know a lot about the product.
18:45
And that knowledge has spread and is ubiquitous and has really
18:48
kind of taken on a life of its own that just doesn't exist
18:51
really in many other places, especially in Japan.
18:54
I found myself asking, telling myself oh wow, I need to buy
18:58
this product or I need to go get another cup of this or that
19:00
thing because I am never going to find it again.
19:04
And we're in Japan like two or three times a year and I'm
19:06
thinking I have no idea where to find some of these products in
19:10
Japan even we were meeting some tea friends of ours in Tokyo.
19:14
I said hey, where can I buy some really good yami tea?
19:17
And we were like I think near Ginza.
19:19
I forget where we were, we were somewhere really central and
19:21
they had no idea. They barely found new like 2
19:24
places that had matcha of which it was mostly out of stock and
19:29
just the big quote of quote uji brands.
19:31
It was like they don't know where to find single origin
19:34
matcha in a random spot in Tokyo there, let alone to find a 45
19:41
day shaded zyrai from 100 year old trees from Kyoto nabe.
19:47
Like that's crazy. And and it's expensive too,
19:51
compared. To very expensive.
19:53
The income, average income level here in this country.
19:56
Over 100 you I think close to 130 U.S. dollars for 20 grams.
20:00
Like very expensive tea in general, let alone for for the
20:04
category. People are really willing to
20:06
spend money on this, Sykes, this level of experience, which I
20:10
found it very fascinating. Yeah, the price sensitivity here
20:14
is pretty, I don't know, higher, low, whatever it is, people are
20:17
willing to spend money. The people that have money are
20:19
willing to spend money in like a lot of money, hundreds and
20:23
hundreds of U.S. dollars. We saw a lot of these
20:25
transactions and not all of them were for B2B.
20:28
Some of them, some people were like legit buying kilos,
20:31
probably cafe operators or people that have, you know,
20:34
businesses, but a lot of consumer too, very high prices.
20:37
So like Peace Oriental Tea House had a huge booth this year and
20:42
they're the official resellers for Hori Shishimayan and for
20:45
Maruku Koyama. And, and the markup, the retail
20:48
markup between in Japanese, the Japanese price and the Thai
20:52
price is enormous. Like it's close to it feels like
20:55
it's close to 3040% marked up from the Japanese retail price
21:00
and people are still paying for it.
21:03
Huge lines for those products. You did a pretty interesting
21:06
research on all the price points and product categories and
21:10
product names across the whole conference, right?
21:12
What is the markup difference between retail and wholesale?
21:16
This was really interesting So I got very inspired the last day
21:19
and I was like what could I use AI for that just wouldn't have
21:23
been possible two years ago and image processing has gotten so
21:26
good. So I decided to visit every
21:28
single matcha stand and I missed 1 and it possible I missed 2 but
21:33
nearly every single one. I took a photo of every single
21:36
matcha powder product menu that they had and I think I probably
21:41
captured about 95%. Maybe I missed one or maybe
21:45
someone was just, it was just too awkward.
21:47
My price espionage mission. But I was able to capture over
21:52
350 products with prices and also capturing the wholesale
21:56
price. And one of the more interesting
21:58
findings across all the vendors is, is a pretty universal price
22:02
markup between the smaller cans, let's say 203040 gram cans and
22:08
like the per the kilo pricing and it's about 1.6 X is the
22:12
average. So you can multiply a 30 gram
22:15
can by 1.6 X or excuse me, you can take the per kilo price and
22:19
multiply it by 1.6 X. And that's about the markup
22:22
between the retail and wholesale side of the business.
22:25
Which is not that high, not. That high, shockingly low.
22:28
I was very surprised. And there's a huge wholesale
22:31
price range ranging from around $80.00 to I think $900 per kilo
22:38
was the highest one that I saw. And then there were a lot of
22:41
really high end matcha products that that just were not
22:43
unavailable by the kilo. And the most expensive product
22:46
that I found, no surprise was Maruku Koyama and Tenju, which
22:52
was selling for 250 U.S. dollars equivalent.
22:57
I remember when we paid 80 bucks for that a year and a half ago
23:00
retail in Japan. Yeah, I heard and then they
23:03
raised the price to like 150. And then I heard the raise the
23:05
price again. I don't know if it's happened,
23:07
but the price, by the time it gets to markets like this, it's,
23:10
it's crazy. But based on my personal
23:12
experience that product, it was way better year and a half that.
23:16
Too. Yeah, we've noticed that maybe
23:18
it was the rush to market, but a lot of the blunt house products
23:21
quality has definitely changed. I don't know why exactly maybe
23:25
the there's too much pressure to get it to market before it's
23:28
been properly aged a six month Juke say process or maybe
23:32
there's just too much competition to find material in
23:35
the explosion of single origin single cultivar, single estate,
23:38
single farmer. Much of brands are cooling
23:40
volume out of the system and it cannot be poetically named
23:44
anymore. And now we're actually calling
23:46
it, I don't know, Huntu Asahi or you know, 45 day shaded Uji
23:51
Hikari from this or that place, which is a good thing to see.
23:54
And actually, if you really put it into perspective, I think
23:57
this is just a market maturing. It's still crazy that the best
24:00
thing in an entire category only costs $250 per can, which and if
24:06
you do this per gram, right, that's what is a $1213 per gram,
24:10
which means say 2G Usicha is still just 20, 5 bucks per
24:14
serving, right? Like even compared to something
24:16
like coffee, the per kilo lots of really special specialty
24:20
coffee are way north of that. Like very expensive.
24:23
Same thing, wine, same thing and, and a lot of other product
24:27
categories. So actually I think it's closer
24:30
to what that product is worth and products are worth what
24:32
people are willing to pay. And people in Thailand have
24:35
developed an incredibly complex and sophisticated set of
24:39
preferences to value something like that, which is the most
24:43
interesting thing here is that this market can sustain these
24:48
relatively high prices for products across the board.
24:51
And another way of putting it, people are willing to pay for
24:54
quality and they understand what quality means.
24:57
Asahi has a meaning in this market.
25:00
Handpicked has a meaning here. Hanzu has a meaning here.
25:03
And even more like niche specialty things like Xairi have
25:07
a meaning here and have a market things that people are looking
25:10
for, which is really exciting. And then also, you know, because
25:14
people are open about origin. I saw there were a lot of
25:17
Chinese vendors here. There were a lot of people
25:19
selling mixed Chinese and a Japanese matcha here.
25:22
And like the story is, it's a great value for the money.
25:25
Even now. We got some freebie samplers
25:27
that honestly look like a Japanese product.
25:29
I actually didn't realize that the product wasn't Japanese
25:32
until I opened this little 3G sample pack that I mixed
25:35
together with a spoon and a coffee cup in our in our hotel
25:38
room to drink for some caffeine during this recording.
25:41
And I looked over, whoa, this is from Jijang.
25:45
I thought I was drinking Yamai because it was being advertised
25:48
as nutty. But even this Judge Young tea
25:50
that I'm sipping on now is this sort of slightly watered down
25:53
usage mixed together with the spoon honestly is not bad.
25:57
Pretty good actually. I am not.
25:59
It's not usage a worthy by most people's standards.
26:02
But if you water it down a bit, you know, mellows the flavor and
26:06
I'm enjoying it. And, you know, this probably
26:08
costs 120 bucks wholesale, maybe a little higher, but, you know,
26:13
it's probably priced very competitive.
26:14
And it says it's great in applications like frappes,
26:18
lattes, baked goods, right? They're not, you know, making
26:21
the best of the best out of the stuff.
26:23
And the stigma for Chinese Mark Matcha feels a little bit less
26:28
strong. What about the naming scheme of
26:32
all of these product Ryan? Like the comparison between
26:36
poetic names and also more transparent labeling?
26:39
Or a mixture of both. It's both.
26:41
I think on average it's a mixture of both.
26:43
When I was walking around, they're very good at tasting
26:46
notes and I did a really cool study.
26:48
So I took a photo of every menu and then had AI go through and
26:51
extract data about all sorts of things, about price, about
26:54
cultivar, about stated origin, about tasting notes and the Sam.
26:58
Can you guess what the most common tasting note was across
27:02
all of these products? Most common.
27:05
Yeah, most frequently occurred nutty, not smoky.
27:09
Good guess. But the no, not even the top 3.
27:12
Grassy, umami, umami #1 OK, followed by creamy, nutty,
27:16
seaweed, floral. And then the next are macadamia
27:20
that has 15 occurrences. Avocado, pistachio, sweet,
27:24
smoky, mellow, vanilla, asparagus, rich dark chocolate.
27:28
All of those have more than 10, followed by edamame nut, almond,
27:32
hazelnuts, smooth peanut butter, excuse me, peanut and then
27:37
butter. Umami, salty, it's interesting.
27:40
Chestnut, fruity, white chocolate, roasted.
27:41
So this gives you a sampling of the type of descriptors that are
27:45
being put onto these products. But nearly 50 products are
27:48
described as umami. And by the way, these are just
27:51
from the photos, like one photo. So I think a lot of cases, a lot
27:55
of these products have even more description if you were to
27:57
actually photograph each can at all the angles.
28:01
So this is very much like if you were like, like looking through
28:04
my eyes, quickly walking by the level of detail that you would
28:08
see, which is. Probably a very good
28:09
representation of the average consumer.
28:11
Is going to expect true? Yeah, yeah.
28:13
Because they're not really going to ask every every question.
28:16
Yeah, we're really looking to every products.
28:18
How about the comparison between Uji and Yame?
28:21
That was super interesting. So there should be an asterisk
28:24
next to everything regarding uji.
28:26
Because uji is such a complicated term, some people,
28:29
and I like to that this is happening, are separating out
28:32
non uji grown tensha uji macha from uji macha.
28:37
So there was a whole booth actually just dedicated to
28:40
Wazuka and some people are talking about Jo Yo or Mina
28:43
Minashiro. How do you say that?
28:45
Minami Yamashiro. There we go.
28:46
I think I've missed 11 Salable. They're talking about Jo Yo,
28:50
talking about Uji Tawara, which was really nice to see.
28:53
And then also some people talking about the the trademark,
28:56
other prefectural supply regions like MIE, there were some people
29:00
selling just Miya tea or Shiga tea or Nara tea.
29:04
So a lot of people labeling as Ujimacha really, it's actually
29:08
coming from Miya, Shiga, Nara or somewhere else in Kyoto
29:12
Prefecture, not from Uji itself. And if they call it an Ujimacha
29:16
blend, then up to 50% could come from Kagoshima or Shizuoka.
29:20
So with that caveat, turns out that there are more products
29:24
labeled as Yame this year, 2026, than there are Uji, which is
29:30
actually matches. A lot of the anecdotes we've
29:33
heard from our industry friends here is that a lot of people are
29:36
looking for nutty matcha. It seems to be the big
29:39
descriptor and flavor that people are actively caring
29:43
about. And even this this Jujiang
29:45
matcha I'm drinking now is advertised as nutty, a low cost
29:49
nutty option. Very interesting.
29:51
Although we do, we did learn that similar kind of tea
29:55
laundering scheme is happening in Yami too.
29:57
Yeah, apparently the math doesn't math when it comes to
30:01
the amount of YAMI T sold in the amount that can be realistically
30:06
produced there. Yami is definitely less
30:08
stigmatized than Wuji, which I think is part of the reason why
30:12
people are leaning into the brand.
30:13
Yami right now heavier than Wuji.
30:16
So Sam, can you guess the median price across what is it across
30:21
296 products that are retail price under 100 grams in dollars
30:29
per gram? Dollars per gram, medium price.
30:33
And I'm looking at the distribution now.
30:34
It's a pretty normal distribution.
30:37
It's got some outliers on both sides.
30:39
But you know, it really looks like a bell curve, which is
30:41
interesting, not skewed too much one way or the other, skewed
30:44
slightly to the right towards more expensive products. $1.00
30:49
or 1.2. That would be my best 70 cents,
30:51
70 cents, $0.71 a gram USD, Which pretty high actually,
30:57
Yeah. That's still pretty high, and
30:59
this is when you consider the average income of Thailand.
31:02
But there are a pretty significant number of products
31:05
that are above $1.00 per gram. And you know, I'm sure the
31:09
wholesale price that you know, these monster brands are buying
31:11
it for is probably closer between 1 to 300 for a lot of
31:15
these products. So probably there's at least a
31:17
2X markup, not taking into account very expensive things
31:22
like shipping, tariff, packaging.
31:24
So at the end of the day, probably it's not a super, super
31:27
high margin business, but it's this is this.
31:29
I found that data pretty interesting.
31:31
And the most expensive one program and it calculated for us
31:34
was 10 Jew at nearly $12.00 per gram.
31:37
OK. And what do you think the median
31:40
is for wholesale matcha that's over in package size formats
31:44
over 100 grams? 30 cents, yeah. 28 cents.
31:48
Oh wow. Close. $0.28 that's probably
31:52
what this market can sustain in terms of cup cost, which is
31:55
actually still pretty high. If you're dosing 4G, that's
31:58
$1.00 worth of cup cost in just a matcha, not alone, the milk
32:04
and the cup and the ice and the rent and everything.
32:06
So kind of makes sense. That's why, you know, drink.
32:09
Most matcha drinks in Bangkok are priced at least about four
32:13
U.S. dollars for a decent 1. So Sam, what do you think was
32:16
the most common cultivar sold? Okumadori.
32:19
Has rice. Is it?
32:20
Yeah, it's Okumadori by far, actually.
32:23
It's interesting, like I did notice a trend of people trying
32:28
to kind of establish the status of Okumadori being the actual
32:34
default cultivar for matcha versus Yabukita.
32:38
Yeah, there are more people talking about Yabukita being not
32:42
a matcha category based on its invention intention back in the
32:46
days in Shizuoka. Yeah, it was really not for
32:49
matcha. It was for for 1st century and
32:52
for Gilkaro at the time. And it got repurposed to make
32:56
matcha because of its biological benefits of cultivation.
33:00
There are more people trying to lean into this idea of Oka
33:04
Midori being the actual default cultivar from Russia, and I
33:08
think that's really making a presence in Thailand.
33:10
And there were a lot of single cultivar products.
33:12
Some others that were on offer were Siami Dori, Suyu Hikaru,
33:17
Samidori, Yabukita, Asatsuyu Karari 31, Uji Hikari Goko
33:22
potion, potion potion, Asahi Sayeh Qadi.
33:26
I don't know what that is and. Then I tried Hoshin the first
33:29
time here in Bangkok. Have you tried Hoshin?
33:31
Yeah, I have. I have.
33:33
I don't have a very strong memory.
33:34
Of Phoenix Sprint. Oh, that's the.
33:36
The name, the actual literal name, and there.
33:40
Was even some xyrai here too, which was nice.
33:42
That was one of the more interesting things that was here
33:45
that I found. So of the matcha that was here
33:47
about that 75% had an origin disclosure where they were
33:51
stating the prefecture that it was from.
33:54
So I mean, we're talking about the vast majority of this being
33:57
what most the, the broadest definition of single origin is
34:01
being marketed as a single origin product.
34:03
A single origin has its own rabbit holes on how you define
34:06
it, but let's just say they're giving you some level of detail
34:09
about where it's from and saying that something is from Kyoto
34:12
versus Fukuoka versus Kagoshima. It carries some level of
34:17
meaning. I don't think there's doing
34:19
anyone's really doing hand picking and Kagoshima.
34:21
So like you can do some pattern matching if you know something
34:24
about the place and you get an idea of the quality of the
34:27
price. And then regional styles for
34:29
Fuko goes a little more famous for the roasty toasty and Kyoto
34:33
is a huge grab bag. You might be getting something
34:35
really industrially produced or you might be getting something
34:38
incredibly expensive for all the right reasons because it's hand
34:42
picked luxury cultivars, right? So it's a, it gives you a
34:46
capability of what it's going to be like.
34:48
What's the percentage of brands that talks about information
34:52
beyond just origin and cultivar? That's a good question.
34:56
Should we ask the AI? Yeah, let's do it.
34:58
Let's do it right now. What's the percentage of brands
35:01
that talked about any detail other than origin and the
35:04
cultivar or tasting notes such as first harvest, ton of shelves
35:09
shaded, number of shading days, etcetera.
35:11
It's the beauty of AI. We can query the data set, as
35:15
you've all know, Harare Read, the famous author historian
35:17
puts. It's incredible when you can ask
35:20
questions to a text or data set. Of course, AI can get things
35:24
wrong. And a big thing for us that we
35:25
hate AI slop and we hate it when people just are lazy and they
35:29
don't double verify. So for the sake of this episode,
35:32
we're not going to go through every single claim, but we can
35:34
take this as some level of directional evidence.
35:38
That's a grain of salt. Yeah, big grain of salt on these
35:41
until we can dig into this further, It says that 42% of
35:45
brands print at least one processing detail beyond origin
35:48
cultivar tasting. OK.
35:50
Very high percentage. Yeah, very high.
35:51
So around 50% and I have a suspicion it's slightly higher
35:55
because this is getting one photograph, 1 angle, one menu.
35:59
And really when you talk to these people or you look at some
36:02
different sheets or you turn the can around, you end up getting a
36:05
lot more detail. Yeah.
36:07
And then other details include things like harvest or flush
36:10
number handpicking. 15 products were handpicked that it was able
36:14
to see. Organic, That makes sense.
36:16
Stone milled, shading, firing or roast level.
36:20
People really care about that farmer producer's name?
36:23
That's interesting, cool and awards.
36:25
Wow, very transparent. So I noticed there's was very
36:29
impressionable for one brand that went so granular into
36:32
single origin that they hand rolled a map of where each of
36:37
these cultivars getting farmed at which place in the city.
36:40
I think I know what you're talking about and they were
36:42
talking about the movement of the sun and also not only the
36:46
map but the topology. So where the hills were and how
36:51
the level of sun exposure was changing certain cultivar
36:55
fields. Flavor.
36:56
It's. A very wine concept.
36:59
Yeah. Of understanding the topography
37:02
and the geography. Jevon MTCH was talking about
37:05
that last year with me as well. Really love seeing this level of
37:08
detail. Yeah, but I really have to get
37:11
close to the producer. I didn't have to know the
37:13
producer there. There is no way that that
37:15
particular vendor did not have an incredible relationship with
37:19
their farming supplier because otherwise you just can't get
37:22
that level of detail. And their farmers must really
37:25
care about that too, because the only way that you know you can
37:28
hear about it is what the farmers care about and how they
37:31
believe that the tea is expressing itself.
37:34
They're willing to tell you. And they're willing to tell you.
37:37
So really developed market. I think it's impossible to
37:40
ignore what's going on in Thailand if you care about
37:44
matcha and any way is a specialty product, is an
37:47
agricultural product, is a cultural product.
37:50
It's really evolving in some pretty fascinating ways here in
37:53
a way that we're just not seeing anywhere else in the world,
37:56
which is why we keep coming back to center of gravity.
37:59
And we keep coming back too, because it's one of the few
38:01
places that we're able to learn really deeply about the product,
38:05
especially in English. You can go to Japan in Trying to
38:09
find someone in Japan that's willing to talk to you is
38:11
difficult, let alone getting through the language barriers,
38:14
even more difficult. And what the I'm so grateful
38:18
for, for the Thai Matcha community is they've done that
38:20
hard work and then they are so willing to share it with
38:24
everyone. So very grateful for all of the
38:27
founders and all of the educators here in Thailand land
38:30
that are so open and so willing to share their knowledge and
38:33
their passion for matcha and dimensionalizing it in just an
38:37
incredibly new way. And I think it's a great
38:39
template for what matcha can turn into, where we're honoring
38:42
the product itself and not just making up all these fufu words.
38:46
I asked it to also come up with things that would be interesting
38:49
to other matcha brand founders. And 1 is that the ceremonial
38:53
carries 0 price premium in this market.
38:57
It's very few brands use it. I think it was around 20, 5%
39:00
actively using the term. And when you hear these
39:03
conversations, sometimes people, consumers will ask is the
39:06
ceremonial And no one's condescending.
39:08
I've never heard anyone say that's just a marketing term
39:11
that doesn't exist. They just say yes.
39:13
And I think over time it's just going to fade out of use.
39:17
It's so I, you know, I talk about this a lot with industry
39:20
friends, like, like, how should we deal with this, the
39:22
ceremonial thing or even this UGI thing?
39:25
Like it's so condescending to say, yeah, it's actually not UGT
39:30
who care about terroir. It's, it's, it's a brand concept
39:34
almost. But you know, giving people that
39:36
framework, or as Marin said on on our episode with her, that
39:39
that web of context takes a lot of time and it has to be very
39:43
carefully delivered not to be condescending.
39:45
Yeah. But, you know, eventually when
39:47
the whole population moves past a threshold or a tipping point,
39:52
it's very natural that the the usage of these words would just,
39:56
you know, get retired almost from People's Daily.
40:00
Vocabulary. People just would stop using it
40:03
or talking about them. And I like how it's the brand's
40:06
leading in the all of these matcha brands are leading that
40:09
charge and they're just slowly dropping it.
40:12
They're not writing long blog posts probably about why it's
40:15
bad, blah, blah, blah, right? They're just dropping it.
40:18
And then eventually it's just going to be meaningless.
40:21
And it is meaningless here. And there's always going to be
40:23
laggards where people, you know, maybe, maybe they just don't
40:26
care much about matcha. They care about a good cop.
40:29
They're interested enough to come to this show, but they're
40:32
not keeping up with the news. Like, we can't expect that with,
40:35
you know, different matcha consumers aren't in the cutting
40:37
edge of matcha product positioning.
40:40
We are here, right? Like maybe they learned about
40:43
it. They got busy and they're just
40:45
like, they're mental models. Just a little out of date can be
40:47
a perfectly innocent question. And it's just falling out of
40:51
usage because everyone's taking the leadership to take it out of
40:53
usage, which is which is nice to see.
40:56
Yeah. Also the same thing with Uji
40:58
here. I think this concept of single
41:00
origin labeling Uji Macha, a single origin matcha is not fair
41:05
because it really is not a single origin product in most
41:08
people and people know. And of course there's some
41:11
deception. I went to one of the Japanese
41:14
booths here and they had a whole range.
41:16
They said it was all Uji. And I decided to to sort of
41:19
stress test this a little bit and said is like, is this
41:22
actually from Uji or is this from other surrounding towns
41:25
like Wazooka, Uji Tawara, Jo yo. And she said, Oh yeah, yeah,
41:28
yeah. Actually, all of all of this is
41:30
not from Uji except for the Asahi.
41:32
So they're honest. So they know and they're honest,
41:35
but I think they're being reductive in the same way that
41:37
maybe five years ago you say, you know, this is all ceremonial
41:41
great tea, right? Like people, they know that
41:43
people, you know, some people are searching for uji.
41:45
It is uji by the Japanese definition, which is not a but
41:50
you know, this is again where you can't just take a framework
41:54
and import it from coffee and project it on the matcha is that
41:57
single origin is a terrible deep rabbit hole and tea because you
42:02
have all of this stuff intermixed and for much it's
42:05
even worse because it's really not that terroir expressive, but
42:09
knowing where it was grown can tell you a lot of information.
42:13
Knowing that it was uji grown tensha does tell you something
42:18
not about the land, but about what people are doing on the
42:21
land and what people are doing in the region.
42:24
You can get quite a bit of product information out of it,
42:27
so you know, it's nice that people were honest there.
42:30
Yeah, but I really like your metaphor of calling Thailand
42:33
being the center of gravity for matcha.
42:35
It really is in Thailand, in Bangkok, in Chiang Mai.
42:40
It's really everyone. Everyone is here.
42:43
We met a lot of people from India, Japan.
42:46
The Chinese, Indian, Malaysia, American people from European
42:51
Union, everyone is here and everyone is talking to each
42:54
other. Everyone is learning the
42:56
state-of-the-art processing, state-of-the-art technology,
43:01
equipment, products and everyone is, you know, slowly forming
43:05
these loop for these community of people, of brands, of
43:09
insiders. I feel like it's very
43:11
fascinating to watch, and being part of it is even more
43:15
fascinating. Totally, totally.
43:17
It's a small world. It's a very small world.
43:19
Fake. World.
43:20
And there's a small world. Wow.
43:21
That's the other thing that we learned.
43:22
Just the level of how much everyone knew everyone.
43:26
Reputation travels fast too, so. At the booth, I end up I think
43:31
speaking Chinese for 30% of the time.
43:34
It was. It was crazy.
43:36
And they know a lot too. Wow, it's incredible.
43:39
Yeah, both from mainland Chinese, but also Taiwanese and.
43:42
Singaporean. Singapore and diaspora who live
43:45
in Thailand. Yeah, yeah, in Chiang Rai,
43:48
mostly. Interesting.
43:49
A lot of tea plantation in Chiang Rai.
43:50
They're making a lot of matcha now.
43:52
Yeah, we even met some people who do some work in Africa in
43:55
Kenya and they're saying, yeah, you know, the tea markets
43:58
getting pretty devastating in Africa or the CTC or Qatar curl
44:02
like very industrial black tea prices are just plummeting.
44:07
And it's a very low value crop. And they're working with farmers
44:11
there who are really struggling and trying to get them to switch
44:14
to matcha or tencha production because it's such a higher value
44:19
good, which actually I think does a lot of social good.
44:22
You know, this, this matcha is champagne and can only be grown
44:26
in Japan. One, from a quality perspective
44:29
just isn't true. If you have the right cultivars
44:31
and the right knowledge, the right fertilizer, the right
44:34
shading structures, the right infrastructure, you know, matcha
44:37
can great matcha can theoretically be grown on the
44:39
moon. That alone, you know, outside of
44:42
the country of Japan. And even this argument doesn't
44:44
even make any sense if you look at the broader history, like
44:47
Kagoshima was not a matcha producing region 100 years ago,
44:51
right? Like it like it.
44:53
So this even out much of the production, much of the volume
44:57
is super, super, super new. It's it if that culture can
45:00
spread out and even no one was allowed to do any shaded
45:04
cultivation outside of Uji until like what, 1860 right?
45:09
So that culture spread and culture can spread outside of
45:13
lines that have been drawn and made-up on a map.
45:16
Yeah, I mean, it was an international product to begin
45:18
with, from China to Japan. It's and also just like looking
45:23
at how many people from different corners of the world
45:26
are doing matcha, drinking matcha, even producing matcha
45:29
nowadays almost makes this whole discussion of like matcha has to
45:33
come from Japan a little childish.
45:36
Like it's like you are arguing for such a small thing whereas
45:41
so many people are already involved in making these things
45:45
a reality elsewhere. And it's really, it's a small
45:50
community anthropologically. Like you can almost know a lot
45:54
of people instantly in such a small place, but it's such a big
45:58
world geographically. Mata is being drowned in so many
46:03
places. This is a vast, vast world and
46:06
there's just so many places with so many interesting like the
46:10
techniques Tawas geographical or physical constraints that people
46:14
are working around it to create something just delicious or
46:18
interesting to begin with. And, and I think that's
46:21
something worth celebrating. That's totally right.
46:23
And one of the things we met with 1233, at least three
46:28
producers of Matcha in China here who are walking around with
46:32
an incredibly open mind. And we didn't see or were aware
46:36
of any Japanese producer walking around with an open mind seeing
46:40
what's going on in this market, which is the most sophisticated
46:44
consumer market in the world. I think you met one right?
46:47
Well, I met 1 indirectly, someone from a very I'll leave
46:50
the details to we don't want to reveal too much, but I met
46:54
someone from a very, very, very famous and arguably the most
46:58
important or one of the most important blend houses.
47:00
I met a family member of someone part of this dynostic family
47:05
that was very important. He holds a very, very open
47:07
minded. Very open minded mentality.
47:11
I don't think he's directly involved in the business, at
47:13
least not super direct from from what I was able to understand.
47:16
But the sad part is, is that the Japanese producer are putting
47:20
themselves in an environment, largely speaking, there's lots
47:23
of exceptions with people traveling abroad, but largely
47:26
speaking, not putting themselves in an environment and with an
47:29
open mind, understanding what people actually like about this
47:32
product. And the Chinese are learning
47:34
very, very, very fast and they're curious.
47:38
Every time we talk with the Chinese producer, I feel like
47:40
they just pick our brain for like half an hour.
47:43
What do people like? What are people willing to pay
47:45
for? What flavor should we make?
47:46
What do you think of this? What do you think of that?
47:48
How should we position ourselves, right?
47:50
They're they're hungry for it. And a lot of these are in areas
47:53
that are not doing well economically.
47:55
They need to do the business. Same story in Kenya, right?
47:58
If they can, like the CTC black tea sells for one or $2.00 a
48:03
kilo of finished process tea. It is like dirt, dirt cheap.
48:08
Probably the tea, the tea that this ends up getting sold at the
48:12
supermarket, the packaging and the tea bag and the staple that
48:15
hold it together cost more than the tea itself.
48:19
But you know, you know, even for the most commodity matcha,
48:23
right, like stuff that is destined for a birthday cake,
48:26
right, maybe they can get 10, fifteen, $30 a kilo from shaded
48:31
material that is good enough for those applications.
48:34
And that's where it can start. And that's kind of where it
48:36
started in China 10 years ago. But then it has the opportunity
48:40
to be able to involve. And we met some Japanese people
48:43
who were at a tea manufacturing, tea, tea manufacturing equipment
48:47
business that were in Thailand trying to sell, sell tea
48:50
manufacturing equipment to repackage matcha to even mill
48:54
matcha. They were selling ball mills to
48:55
mill matcha locally. Like very open minded people
48:58
saying that, yeah, it's we're trying to promote it because
49:01
these farmers in Kenya just can't get a high enough price
49:04
for their tea. So, you know, if they can learn
49:06
some of these techniques, they can create a product that people
49:09
value and that people want. So I think it's really a shame
49:12
that the best producers of Matcha in the world are
49:15
indisputably in Japan aren't going to wear such a strong
49:20
culture of product appreciation exists because essentially much
49:24
has gone through three different waves of consumers.
49:26
You had the samurai nobility in Edel during Meiji.
49:30
You had this girls school training with the schools and
49:34
Ordis Anke, Amato Sanke and sort of this bridal training concept
49:38
where most of the practitioners actually doing the consuming
49:41
consumers were women. And then this third wave of
49:45
consumers, which is this global audience and all of these are
49:48
focused around around the tea ceremony schools, the temples,
49:52
the elites in Japan. And it's not necessarily focused
49:56
on who is actually doing the consumption anymore.
49:59
I would wager that there is more maruku or hori shishimei and tea
50:04
consumed by non tea ceremony practitioners than there are
50:07
that there are tea ceremony practitioners. 100%.
50:11
And like coming to a place like Bangkok, you can really find
50:15
those people that are spending $250 on a can of 10.
50:20
What do they like? What do they want?
50:22
Or people who spend $50 on a can of matcha.
50:25
They're like Chateau Lafique. Yeah, probably.
50:28
They're probably completely not price sensitive but but I mean
50:32
really for everyone else, you know, learning this nutty
50:35
preference, learning the preference for cultivars or from
50:37
these different origins or even cold whisked matcha.
50:40
A lot of people don't even use water to make their matcha
50:44
drinks. It's 100% no because they don't
50:45
want any dilution and it's done in a cold brew.
50:48
Think about that. Even from a extraction theory,
50:51
everyone's evaluating tension using boiling water in a bowl.
50:54
Here we are having an entire market that doesn't even use
50:57
heat and doesn't even use water for a very large portion of the
51:01
drink sales. Like it's a completely different
51:04
consumption scenario than what most people are envisioning in
51:08
the crafting of the product, which I guess is a perfect place
51:11
to end going full circle. We're especially too much a
51:13
podcast. We really believe that the final
51:16
touches of the crafting of the product should happen as close
51:19
to the consumer as possible. Because none of the the great
51:23
tea masters, great tea blenders and the, you know, these people
51:26
in Japan, which are from a demographic perspective, old
51:29
Japanese men have no blue what a teenager in Thailand wants or
51:34
someone working in tech and Antwerp wants.
51:37
Like it's they're just so far away.
51:39
There's this distance problem between them and the consumer
51:42
where we can really increase product quality from a
51:47
perspective of preference. What makes this product higher
51:50
quality for these people, this consumer group, this country,
51:55
this demographic? And that can only be done
51:58
locally. Yeah, totally.
51:59
And it's very excited that we can also be part of this
52:02
community too. This is really wonderful and
52:04
exciting time. And he honestly feels very great
52:07
that we are building something, not just adding another chip to
52:12
the big piece, but building a tool that liberates people's
52:16
imagination and empowers people's imaginations to build
52:20
something even greater or more interesting.
52:23
Totally, I think it's a great place to stop.
52:25
Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this, please
52:28
consider sharing with the front. And if you ever have time or the
52:30
opportunity, you should definitely check out the Bangkok
52:33
Matches scene. Yeah, and we are coming back
52:35
too. Yeah, see you here.
52:37
See you next year. Take care, bye bye.