斗记鬥記
Douji
Pu'er brand launched in 2006 by Chen Haibiao, who began in Yiwu; now Guangzhou-based and built around high-end blended cakes.
- Kind
- company
- Based in
- Guangzhou
- Founded
- 2006
- Brands
- 斗记 (Douji)
History#
- 2002Chen Haibiao starts making tea on Yiwu Old Street.
- 2004德茗轩 workshop opened on Yiwu Old Street.
- 2006Douji brand and product series launched.
- 2008Blending set as the core strategy.
- 2013广州市斗记茶业有限公司 registered (26 April); first iron-pressed cake 岚风斗.
- 2020Repositioned as 高端拼配普洱茶引领者; specialty-store franchising.
Also sold or written as 4#
Chinese variants
- 广州市斗记茶业有限公司Guangzhou Douji — tea company, limited liabilityLegal name of the Guangzhou company (registered 2013).
- 斗记普洱茶(Douji Pu'er)
- 德茗轩茶坊(De Ming Xuan tea workshop)Chen Haibiao's workshop on Yiwu Old Street, which Jiemian treats as Douji's predecessor.
Translations and trade names
- Douji
Names and ambiguities#
Notes#
Founder Chen Haibiao (陈海标), the company's chairman, entered the tea trade in 1998 (CNPP). Jiemian reports that he arrived in Xishuangbanna in 2002 and began making tea on Yiwu Old Street (易武老街). His first tea, a 2003 pure big-tree Mahei of just over a tonne, was made by the 德茗轩茶坊 workshop, and he opened a 德茗轩 workshop on Yiwu Old Street in 2004. The Douji series began in 2006, the brand year in CNPP; CNPP also calls it a QS-certified tea enterprise in the Yiwu area.
Milestones from CNPP: 2007 '18-fold' (十八褶) cotton-paper wrapping; 2008 blending made the core strategy; 2011 a white-tea process; 2013 iron-pressed (铁饼) cakes, the first named 岚风斗; 2014 tightly pressed (紧饼) cakes, including 魁星点斗; 2017 a single-tree programme. The legal entity 广州市斗记茶业有限公司 (Haizhu District, Guangzhou) was registered in 2013. Douji ran a national 斗茶 (tea-tasting contest) series in 2014-2016. In 2020 it rebranded as 'leader in high-end blended pu'er' and moved to specialty-store franchising (PEdaily). It is a brand and blender, so Douji cakes are blends under its own product names rather than single-village pressings.