The Gong Cha Rebranding ‘Saga’ Has Actually Happened to Another Company in M’sia

Just yesterday (4 June 2017), a snaking queue was seen where people said their last goodbyes to the widely popular Gong Cha outlet at the heart of town. Gong Cha has now been rebranded to LiHo

And, well, this is not the first time such saga has happened too. Earlier this year, Malaysia’s  Chatime’s franchiser La Kaffa abruptly terminated their contract which caused Loob Holdings to be revoked of the Chatime franchise rights for Malaysia.

The reason over the termination was due to “disagreements over direction“.

This change caused Loob Holdings to bounce back even bigger and better 

With the rights to Chatime being revoked, Loob Holdings had to come up with a new plan for survival as almost 1,000 employees would also be affected. Plus, under Loob Holdings, Chatime outlets in Malaysia make up more than 50 per cent of Chatime’s global revenue.

This adversity helped Loob Holdings to bounce back even bigger and better to create their own brand of bubble tea – Tealive. 

Thankfully, only four Chatime franchise outlets decided to stay with the Taiwan franchise owner, while the rest decided to follow Loob’s holdings footsteps in the rebranding. 

The birth of Tealive

Similar to Chatime, Tealive can be pronounced in different ways. It can either be pronounced as tea-live (pronounced as ‘leave’), tea-life (pronounced as ‘life’) or even tea alive, a way to tell their customers that they are moving on and are still alive; that they are back, stronger than ever.

Plus, the drinks sold will be similar to the ones in Chatime. The menu will remain largely similar, with small tweaks and quality upgrades to the variety of drinks and toppings.

Website: Malaysia Tatler

Since they have always been bounded by a lot of constraints when managing Chatime, they now can have more innovation with their home-grown brand and come up with even crazier inventions than before. 

They now have 8 different category of drinks which include Smoothies, Tea Lattes, Fruit Teas, Milk Tea, Crafted Tea, Sparkling Juice, Coca and Coffee beverages.

As of now, more than 161 Chatime outlets have already been re-branded to Tealive. We can’t see what’s next for them!

Chatime turning into a Malaysia brand Tealive, and Gong Cha turning into a Singapore brand LiHo. What’s next?

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This article was first published on goodyfeed.com

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