First Secretary Peng Jun Leads Villagers to Dig Out a New World of Prosperity
"51 orders, sales of over 5,200 yuan." In the early hours of November 12, customer service representative Chen Yanqiu finished a busy day of work and tallied up the transaction records for the entire "Double Eleven" shopping festival. This was the first "Double Eleven" for the "First Secretary Helps You Shop" e-commerce operations center in Xidiantou Village, Laopo Town, Junan County, Shandong Province. Although the amount was not large, it was a good start, and every order carried trust and encouragement.
This is an e-commerce platform built by Peng Jun, First Secretary stationed in Xidiantou Village, Laopo Town, Junan County, on behalf of the Shandong Provincial Local Taxation Bureau, together with the villagers of Xidiantou Village. Two months after its launch, "First Secretary Helps You Shop" has completed more than 1,800 orders, with sales revenue of over 38,000 yuan. The "treasures" produced in Xidiantou Village are now riding the express logistics train, leaving the small village and breaking into the big market.
Quality agricultural products urgently need to board the e-commerce express
Xidiantou Village is 5 kilometers west of the seat of Laopo Town. The village currently has 756 households and 2,012 people, including 58 impoverished households with 101 people. In February 2015, Peng Jun was assigned by the Shandong Provincial Local Taxation Bureau to Xidiantou Village, Laopo Town, Junan County, Shandong Province, to serve as First Secretary, beginning a two-year assistance and support assignment.
Laopo Town enjoys exceptional geographical conditions, with clear mountains and waters, many hills and much forest land. Its apples, chestnuts, honey, peanuts, mountain eggs and other agricultural products are green and pollution-free, of excellent quality and rich flavor. However, due to insufficient publicity and promotion and narrow sales channels, it had become a "Peach Blossom Spring" blooming all alone.
"In the past, farmers only focused on bending over to farm the land, and good goods could not fetch a good price. If sold through the internet, the benefits of agricultural products would be even better!" After thorough research, Peng Jun, who studied information technology, decided to leverage his own strengths, lead the villagers in starting a business, and develop their own rural e-commerce.
To this end, Peng Jun led his team in cooperating with Qilu University of Technology, hosting rural e-commerce training courses and analyzing the broad prospects for developing rural e-commerce at present. After the training ended, most villagers left their contact information and proactively expressed their intention to have the First Secretary help them develop e-commerce for agricultural products.
In April 2016, Peng Jun organized the Laopo Town Rural E-commerce Practical Operation Training and Farmer E-commerce Matchmaking Meeting, invited e-commerce experts and scholars from within the province to provide professional training, and invited the county supply and marketing cooperative as well as more than 30 people from cooperatives, farm owners and contract farmers of a certain scale across the town to hold an e-commerce and farmer matchmaking meeting. Various e-commerce platforms showed strong interest in 8 products including mountain eggs, miscellaneous grains, mulberry leaf tea, peanuts and mixed fruits, and all requested to include them on their respective platforms for online sales.
At this point, establishing their own e-commerce sales center was an arrow already on the bowstring.
Carefully building the First Secretary e-commerce brand
In August 2016, Peng Jun raised 200,000 yuan in funds and built the Junan County Laopo Town E-commerce Operations Center in Xidiantou Village, where he was stationed, connecting upward with the Junan County E-commerce Industrial Park and setting up village-level information service stations downward. At the same time, Peng Jun concentrated the town's advantageous agricultural product resources, made clear his identity as First Secretary, and opened the "First Secretary Helps You Shop" themed e-commerce store online.
The lack of professional talent was the biggest challenge in the center's early days. Peng Jun carefully selected promising candidates throughout the town, improved their professional skills through free lectures, outings for study and observation, and other methods, and recruited 8 outstanding individuals to work at the center, establishing promotion, operations, customer service and finance work groups, forming a complete organizational and operational structure.
September 13, 2016 was a special day. On this day, the "First Secretary Helps You Shop" themed e-commerce store officially launched at the Shandong Provincial Industrial E-commerce Hundred Counties Tour Junan Special Session. In its first month, total visitors reached 1,178, sales reached 13,478 yuan, the payment conversion rate reached 9.1%, the positive review rate was 100%, and the store level had quickly grown to four stars.
Through the efforts of Peng Jun and his team, the e-commerce center has completed product matchmaking and online listing with more than 10 farm owners and professional cooperatives, with more than 10 specialty products listed. As of now, the total sales of the "First Secretary Helps You Shop" e-commerce platform (including Taobao, Weidian and other contracted online stores) amount to 59,259 yuan, the number of product orders has reached 2,900, the positive review rates for products and services are both 100%, and the payment conversion rate has reached 7%. The benefits of e-commerce reach impoverished fellow villagers
"This month the store paid me the first formal salary of my life, 800 yuan. I'm very happy, because I feel that as long as I work hard, I too have value." This is a passage posted on WeChat Moments by Zhuang Xinqi, a staff member at the Laopo Town E-commerce Operations Center.
Zhuang Xinqi is 23 years old this year and has a disability. Peng Jun paid 3,000 yuan out of his own pocket to sponsor her participation in e-commerce training, purchase products for consignment sales, and recruited her as a staff member at the center. Through this ordinary yet special job, he helped her regain confidence in life.
At present, the center has helped more than 10 impoverished households in Xidiantou, Shuangshan and other villages sell agricultural products such as peanuts, sweet potatoes, millet and mulberry leaf tea worth nearly 20,000 yuan. For impoverished households truly lacking labor capacity, Peng Jun secured 100,000 yuan in poverty alleviation funds to invest in e-commerce operations, adopting a shareholding dividend approach to distribute profits to impoverished households and help them escape poverty as soon as possible.
Recently, Laopo Town in Junan County was selected as a pilot township for the 2016 "Informatization Poverty Alleviation Demonstration Town" construction. First Secretary Peng Jun was indispensable to earning this honor!
Now, as the two-year assistance assignment is about to end, the personnel carefully trained by Peng Jun have already taken up the main responsibilities, and he has gradually moved from the front stage to behind the scenes. But for the Laopo Town E-commerce Operations Center, into which he poured his heart and blood, he will always have a deep attachment that is hard to let go...
Reporters Shi Yanan, Chen Yijiao