Post-80s Young Man's Entrepreneurial Dream Sets Sail
The "Entrepreneurial Dream" Sets Sail
"This result was beyond my expectations, and I'm still very excited about it." Recently, the semifinals of the first "Chuangdong Rongcheng" e-commerce entrepreneurship competition in Jurong came to a successful conclusion. Yu Baofeng, born in 1988, brought his entrepreneurial project "Internet + Edible Fungi + Tourism," which entered the finals with the highest total score.
When the reporter met Yu Baofeng, the first impression he gave was: medium height and on the thin side, dressed plainly, no different from an ordinary young farmer. But in the course of talking with him, one could clearly sense that this was a university graduate who had received professional education.
Yu Baofeng told the reporter that he was different from ordinary university graduates: he started his business right after graduation, which, of course, had something to do with the fact that he had not found an ideal job at the time. He explained that after graduating from Jiangsu Agriculture and Forestry Vocational and Technical College in 2010, relying on the experience accumulated during his internship, he started selling mushrooms from a street stall. After accumulating some capital, he began renting a storefront, and later came to own two stores. With the expertise he had learned and a strong interest in edible fungi, Yu Baofeng felt the entrepreneurial urge to accomplish something in the edible fungi business. In 2013, he had his own edible fungi cultivation base for the first time, but it failed not long after, and all the money he had earned before "went down the drain." But this did not affect Yu Baofeng's "ambition" in the slightest. In 2014, with his teacher's help, he "set sail" once again. In the suburbs of Jurong, he contracted 10 mu of land and established the Runmin Edible Fungi Professional Cooperative cultivation base.
On the day of the interview, Yu Baofeng was working with workers at the base to package the mushrooms that had already been picked, preparing to haul them to the wholesale market for sale. He told the reporter that daily sales were about 100 kg. The entire base had about a dozen greenhouses; he had five himself, and the others were grown by farmers he had helped get started.
For agricultural products, cultivation is not the hardest part; the hard part is how to sell the agricultural products and sell them at a good price. Yu Baofeng knew this deeply from experience. He said that if he wanted to expand the base and realize his "entrepreneurial dream," solving the sales problem well was the key. And with the arrival of the "Internet +" wave, Yu Baofeng deeply realized that he absolutely could not miss such an opportunity. Only by advancing both online and offline in tandem could he accomplish something in the entrepreneurial wave. In April this year, Yu Baofeng and partners registered the e-commerce company "Mushroom DIY Products." In addition, he opened two online stores on Taobao. In May, he officially began selling mushroom-related products to the public, and as of now sales had reached more than 600,000 yuan.
Of course, merely cultivating and selling edible fungi was not Yu Baofeng's final "destination." He revealed to the reporter his ideal pursuit in entrepreneurship: everything he was doing at present was only laying the foundation. Once his products had a certain market competitiveness and influence, he would focus on deep processing of agricultural products, leaving the cultivation part to farmers, thereby forming an industrialization of the entire edible fungi chain from cultivation and sales to deep processing. In the future, he would also develop the tourism market.
"Grounded below, connected to the sky above." This was the evaluation the judges gave of Yu Baofeng's entrepreneurial project on the day of the semifinals, saying they were very optimistic about this project. At the same time, some social capital also expressed hope to cooperate with Yu Baofeng.
Regardless of the result after entering the finals, what is certain is that Yu Baofeng's entrepreneurial project can enjoy preferential policies such as investment and financing matchmaking, free incubation, funding support, and expert guidance. A relevant person in charge of the Jurong Human Resources and Social Security Bureau said that holding the e-commerce entrepreneurship competition was not only to reward excellence, but more importantly to establish a selection mechanism, so that excellent entrepreneurial projects can connect well with the market, achieve the integration of intellectual capital and capital, and the mutual promotion of talent and the economy, further advancing "mass entrepreneurship and innovation," and helping more excellent entrepreneurial projects take root, blossom, and bear fruit.