Li Yao returns home to start a business, putting down roots in her hometown
“Because my baby had just turned one month old, I took some time off, but next week I'll be busy again!” Even though Li Yao (pictured above; file photo) is in postpartum confinement, her mind is still on her “Yaoyao” brand.
Li Yao grew up in Kukeng Village, Fengyuan Township, Liandu District, Lishui City, Zhejiang Province. The village is now dominated by middle-aged and elderly people, which makes Li Yao, a girl born after 1995, stand out all the more. Not only because she is young, but also because she is a well-known young entrepreneur. Over the past year, she has built a friend circle of more than 2,000 people and a large base of loyal customers, with average daily sales of five to six hundred yuan. Every day she promotes her family's local specialties on her friend circle: “I'm going to collect the duck eggs tomorrow. Anyone who wants some, place your order now. Limited quantity!”
In 2014, Kukeng Village's tourism industry welcomed its spring. The village was building a 3A-level scenic demonstration village, and supporting facilities such as homestays, a swimming pool and a reception center sprouted up one after another. Seeing her hometown flourish, Li Yao immediately quit her job in Hangzhou and returned home to start a business. She hoped the hometown's local specialties could also become tourism products.
Li Yao was especially confident about the quality of the village's local goods such as free-range pigs, chickens and ducks, and shiitake mushrooms. She first became the village's convenience center agent, helping villagers photocopy documents and pay water and electricity bills, and through this opportunity she conducted a detailed survey of all the village's local products. However, “the only shortcoming was that there was no customer base,” she said.
Last year, Fengyuan Township's picking festival began to make a name for itself. When Li Yao saw this, she had an idea. She applied to work as the “lady manager” at the reception center's Jingxin Pavilion.
While chatting with tourists, Li Yao promoted the village's local goods: free-range chickens and ducks, free-range pigs, fresh vegetables, tasty shiitake mushrooms and all kinds of dried goods. The tourists were very interested in this eloquent girl born after 1995. Some added her as a WeChat friend, and some helped her promote together. 300 people, 500 people, 800 people…… before long, a small circle of customers had formed.
In September last year, Li Yao founded “Yaoyao High-Mountain Agricultural Products” and became a “WeChat merchant.” She “packaged” all kinds of local goods from villagers' homes, then took photos, added captions and pushed them out in a unified way. Kukeng Village is more than 60 km from the city center, so Li Yao took a bus to the city center 3 times a week to deliver goods, record customer feedback and keep improving. She started by selling dried water bamboo, and after winning customer recognition she expanded her business scope. Fresh shiitake mushrooms, dried bamboo shoots, thousand-layer cake and original-ecology poultry have all become her signature products. Whenever villagers have agricultural products they need to sell, they all run to find Li Yao. Whether it is several hundred jin of shiitake mushrooms or just a few eggs, she can find buyers, and she can even sell them at a good price.
10 months ago, the successful Li Yao was about to become a mother. For the convenience of prenatal checkups, she moved to the city to live, but what was to be done about her “local goods” business? She had another idea and began making new plans, buying an oven, a frying pan, an egg beater……
Today's Li Yao plans to make a career in the dessert industry. She has long been familiar with how to make all kinds of cakes, puddings, sago soup, glutinous rice balls and omurice. She plans to open a comprehensive small shop that combines rural local goods and all kinds of pastries.
At this point, Li Yao smiled, a very sweet smile.