Chinese tea chain HeyTea has announced its latest collaboration, this time with the iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. From 7 November onwards, you can get exclusive Yayoi Kusama-themed cups, sleeves, bags and keyrings when ordering at HeyTea. Kusama has approved the merch and was involved in the design process.
In fact, Hey Tea is also sponsoring a public exhibition of Kusama’s “largest pumpkin sculpture to date” in Shanghai. Between 12 and 17 November, the installation will come to China for the first time and will be on display at the North Bund Bay in Shanghai.
The co-branding itself, called “China Project of Love & Life” was with an organisation called Yayoi Kusama China Project with the tagline “brings some bobo to the world”. It is a play on words as “波波” (bobo) has the same first character as polka dot (波点).
Most people found out about the collab because HeyTea has once again changed its logo to reflect this latest campaign. The mascot that sips tea from a paper cup now dons a bobbed haircut after the artist herself, with the iconic pumpkin yellow as its background. However, since fine art is still relatively niche outside major cities in China, the hashtag “HeyTea and Yayoi Kusama co-present” (#喜茶草间弥生共同呈现#) gained a moderate 3.90 million views after launching on 1 November. Many netizens jokingly complained about the images of polka dots being trypophobic.
The yellow colour of the Kusama collab is reminiscent of the Fendi co-branding that broke the internet last year. Coincidentally, Kusama also went viral with her Louis Vuitton (also of the LVMH group) collab in 2023. As HeyTea banks on a different brand positioning and moves away from the price warfare, higher-brow artist collabs can help establish the brand as premium. With reports that the collab might go global, it will be interesting to see if the campaign will be better received abroad.
