Melon and Fruit E-Commerce Upgrade: Post-90s New Farmer He Feijie's Journey from Online Sales to Brand Building

He Feijie visits and studies at a Yanliang melon planting base. He Feijie visits and studies at a Yanliang melon planting base.

He Feijie collects melons in the fields.

He Feijie and his business partner discuss packaging design for the "Gua Pangdun" brand.

The "Gua Pangdun" packing warehouse, where packaged melons are shipped via express delivery to consumers across the country.

"In previous years, we focused on helping farmers sell more melons, but we didn't pay enough attention to branding. Starting this year, we began shaping a melon brand to improve the entire melon industry chain," He Feijie, founder of the Yanliang melon brand "Gua Pangdun" and a post-90s new farmer, told reporters. After adopting the "Gua Pangdun" brand, both the price and sales volume of the melons improved significantly compared with last year.

In the melon fields, farmers are picking melons according to the "Gua Pangdun" standards. In the packing warehouse, loading workers are putting "safety jackets" (protective netting) on the "Gua Pangdun" melons being shipped nationwide that day and attaching labels. Workers on site told reporters that the careful packaging is used to prevent the melons from being bumped during transportation, ensuring customers receive the melons intact.

Reporters learned that He Feijie, a post-90s entrepreneur, already has rich experience in melon and fruit purchasing, packaging, online sales, and express delivery services, all of which originated from his social practice during college.

During College: From a Courier Stand at the School Gate to Selling a Million Jin of Luochuan Apples Online

In 2009, He Feijie was still in high school. Influenced by his roommates, he began to notice Taobao, a newly emerging thing that was not yet widely popular at the time. Clever and eager to learn, he secretly slipped into internet cafes and began looking up and studying related information, and for a time became a child described by parents and teachers as "not doing proper work." After entering college, he still did not understand what online marketing was, and simply copied, uploaded, and posted a piece of supply information about apples from his hometown on different types of agricultural websites. In addition, he used his spare time to set up a stall in front of the school gate and run a small courier business.

He Feijie told reporters that in 2009 very few people were doing online sales, and the results were very good, with apple orders pouring in continuously. Starting from this, he became one of the leaders in his hometown selling Luochuan apples through the internet. With the development of the internet, by 2013 he had sold a million jin of apples from his hometown through the internet to a large supermarket in Chengdu, both providing high-quality products to buyers desperately looking for good apples and helping fruit farmers in his hometown of Luochuan County sell their apples, earning high praise from all sectors.

Entrepreneurship After Graduation: From Online Sales of All Categories of Fruit to Building a Brand for Specialty Agricultural Products

After graduating from college in 2013, He Feijie did not choose to work in a field related to his major, but instead continued to start his own business and devoted himself fully to the melon and fruit supply and sales business. After two years of running an all-category melon and fruit supply and sales business, he developed the idea of creating a brand, determined to make it a benchmark brand for Shaanxi melon and fruit products, and made Yanliang melons, the earliest Shaanxi melons to hit the market each year, the first specialty agricultural product to receive brand packaging.

Afterward, He Feijie and his business partner Zhang Zhanhai spent nearly a month going deep into Yanliang melon bases, consulting and learning from experienced melon farmers in the fields and agricultural experts, learning melon cultivation knowledge from scratch, and ultimately chose "Gua Pangdun" as the brand name for the melons they distribute. They also visited villages and households to investigate melon varieties and cultivation conditions, seeking high-quality sources for their "Gua Pangdun" brand.

He Feijie told reporters that the name "Gua Pangdun" was chosen partly because it reflects the image of the melon, and partly because the character "Gua" is taken from Shaanxi dialect, representing the tenacity of working steadily and persevering, which is also his firm attitude toward building his career.

It is understood that "Gua Pangdun" uses the Red Yanliang small-seed series of melons. The melons are sweet and fragrant without being cloying, each melon has well-proportioned lines, and the net weight is between 600-700 grams. Every morning they are picked and bagged at the base, then transported to the warehouse for sorting and packing. In the afternoon, the packaged goods are loaded onto trucks and shipped to various places, all fresh melons with their original flavor.

Transformation and Upgrade: "Gua Pangdun" Melons Sell Like Hotcakes, and the Melon and Fruit Brand Dream Sets Sail

At present, "Gua Pangdun" melons sell about two thousand orders per day online. Many e-commerce sellers and WeChat sellers across the country have joined in selling "Gua Pangdun" melons, making it one of the relatively popular specialty agricultural products sold online nationwide.

He Feijie explained that "Gua Pangdun" is popular because of its good variety, more scientific cultivation, moderate size, and sweeter taste. This differs from many melon farmers who sell varieties that are large in size, beautiful in appearance, but relatively poor in taste. Their "Gua Pangdun" brand melons have better quality, and only in this way can they go far.

He Feijie frankly said that building a specialty agricultural product brand requires relying on brand premiums to guide traditional farmers to change their mindset, look toward long-term benefits, and pay more attention to product quality rather than just yield. Only when everyone pays attention to quality can the Yanliang melon, a landmark industry, develop better.

He Feijie stated that agricultural production and agricultural branding require a group of new farmers to use new perspectives and new methods to carry out a series of accurate positioning. "Gua Pangdun" is the first step in his melon and fruit brand dream. In the future, he will build a batch of brands with their own characteristics around Shaanxi apples, kiwifruit, and other industries, and strive to make the brands stronger and stronger, helping fruit farmers generate income.