A Chinese beverage brand has gained significant attention after it included messages on its product cup sleeves in Japan that criticized the contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
A photo of Xiang Piao Piao fruit tea displayed on the supermarket shelf / X(@haitainan3)
According to China’s state-run Global Times and other sources, photos of the sleeve of Meco-Xiang Piao Piao fruit tea, a product primarily sold in Chinese supermarkets in Japan, have recently been posted on various social media platforms. Most of these photos were taken by Chinese tourists who visited Japan during the Labor Day holiday from May 1 to 5.
The photos’ sleeves contained messages such as “The sea is not Japan’s sewer” and “0.1% of the land pollutes 70% of the sea.”
Following the buzz around these sleeves, it was reported that tens of thousands of people concurrently logged into a live commerce broadcast selling the product over the last weekend.
During this time, three out of six products for sale sold out, and daily sales jumped from $393 to $157,000, a 400 times increase.
Due to a surge in demand, the stock of these sleeves was exhausted. Xiang Piao Piao’s stock price also rose to the price limit as of May 6 (local time).
The decision to include the message criticizing the contaminated water on the sleeves was not a company policy but a voluntary act by local employees.
On May 4, Xiang Piao Piao posted a message on its official Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter), praising its employees for their excellent work.
The chairman of Xiang Piao Piao also announced during a live commerce broadcast on May 5 that the company would reward the involved employees with $15,700 and donate the profits from the products sold from 8 p.m. to midnight that day to an environmental protection foundation.
Meanwhile, from April 19 to May 7, Tokyo Electric Power Company released about 7,800 tons of contaminated water into the sea as part of the fifth ocean discharge.
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