Post-90s native of Huizhou opens the door to entrepreneurship by selling good chickens
Entrepreneur: Wei Zefeng, founder of the "Haojiyou" e-commerce service platform, a humorous "post-90s" young man.
Project profile: The "Haojiyou" e-commerce service platform, founded in 2015, lets customers order online via WeChat and have premium fresh chickens delivered to their homes, while also driving the healthy development of conscientious farmers and farms. The project won the rural e-commerce group championship at the recent finals of the second Huizhou Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.
Log in to the WeChat official account "Haojiyou" and place an order on the platform for premium fresh chickens; within Huicheng District, delivery takes just one hour. Wei Zefeng said: "'Haojiyou' is an e-commerce service platform dedicated to selling good chickens, delivering premium fresh chickens to customers' homes, and driving the healthy development of conscientious farmers and farms. We hope to use a different approach to let more people eat good chickens."
Discovering a business opportunity while working at a fresh food store
Slim-built Wei Zefeng has his signature spiky black hair. Since his freshman year, he had already launched a series of entrepreneurial projects: "630 Campus Tobacco," "Zhongli Student Part-time Team," "Huihuang Festival Activity Supplies Store," "Zhongbang Food Delivery Team," and others, being tempered through failure and success again and again.
"The most successful one in college was '630 Campus Tobacco,' which earned me my first pot of gold, about 60,000 yuan. It covered all my expenses for three years of college, greatly eased my family's financial burden, and shored up my courage to start a business." Wei Zefeng said that since he was little, his parents had taken him to the market to watch them do business, which cultivated his business sense.
In the summer of 2014, during the summer break of his sophomore year, Wei Zefeng came to intern at the Tiandiyuan fresh food store in the Donghu area of the city proper. The store's wild boar meat had always sold well thanks to its high quality. This made him realize that as long as product quality is well controlled, urban residents have a huge demand for healthy agricultural products, so he conceived the idea of starting an agricultural products project.
To that end, while working at the fresh food store, he insisted on getting up at 6 a.m. every day, learning skilled work such as slaughtering chickens and cutting meat at the store during the day, and studying cashier management systems online at night. While others worked 8 hours a day, he often worked 14 or 15 hours a day. In this way, over nearly half a year, he rose from delivery worker to reserve store manager, then official store manager, then deputy general manager, and meanwhile became thoroughly familiar with the entire operating process of a fresh food store. In the time that followed, he continued to learn about ecological agriculture, agricultural product cultivation and breeding, processing and packaging, logistics, farm experiences and more, and also attended training courses in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places and visited many farms and breeding farms on site, making preliminary preparations for starting his business.
In the second half of 2015, a policy restricting the sale of live poultry within the Third Ring Road of Huizhou's urban area gave Wei Zefeng an opportunity: his research found that most of the chickens sold on the market were feed-fed chickens and greenhouse-raised chickens, with few high-quality fresh good chickens. In October of that year, Wei Zefeng, who had graduated just a few months earlier, gathered the partners he had known in the past and began building the entrepreneurial project "Haojiyou."
Traveling everywhere to find sources of "good chickens"
One idea, a burst of drive, two or three people, a small rented room, and one electric bike, that was all of Wei Zefeng's assets in the early days of the business. "The hardest time was when after paying the rent, I had only two or three hundred yuan left in my pocket." Wei Zefeng said, but this did not hinder his entrepreneurial pace.
Wei Zefeng is very clear about the definition of "good chicken": besides good meat quality, taste and nutrition, the most important thing is that no hormones or antibiotics may be used throughout the chicken's growth process. To sell good chickens, one must first find good chickens that meet the requirements. Through introductions from friends, Wei Zefeng inquired about various channels on the market and sought chicken sources everywhere.
"At that time, to find good chickens, we also put in a lot of effort. We needed to find chickens, but we had no car, so for closer places we rode an electric bike, and for farther places we took the bus or borrowed a friend's car." Wei Zefeng visited more than 10 chicken farms in Shuikou and Ma'an in Huicheng District and in Huidong and Longmen and other places, and finally selected 3 chicken farms in Guanyinge Town and Haoyi Town of Huicheng District and in Boluo County as the chicken sources for "Haojiyou."
In December 2015, through cooperation with the Tiandiyuan fresh food store and by setting up a WeChat group to provide online ordering services, "Haojiyou" began trial operation. After one month of trial operation, the result of selling an average of 7.5 chickens per day completely exceeded Wei Zefeng's expectations. "Our original estimate was about 5 chickens per day." Analysis found that repeat customers were an important source of sales: one customer bought almost 1 chicken every two days after trying it, and another customer who was pregnant bought 8 chickens within one month, which further strengthened his confidence in selling good chickens.
In March this year, Wei Zefeng's team signed an agreement with an investor in Huizhou, obtaining 500,000 yuan in seed investment, completing staff recruitment, the purchase of office equipment, company registration, and preliminary promotion, and the entrepreneurial project entered a new stage of development. "We hope that through the 'Haojiyou' platform, we can drive more farmers to raise good chickens, increase farmers' income, and drive rural economic development; at the same time, we also hope to let more people eat chickens that are safe and reassuring." Wei Zefeng said full of confidence.
â– Dialogue
Entrepreneurship requires an accurate grasp of market demand
Reporter: What is the key to your entrepreneurial success?
Wei Zefeng: The key is an accurate grasp of market demand. The experience of interning at the fresh food store let me see the market demand for the project, and practices such as selling cigarettes during school provided me with valuable entrepreneurial experience. In addition, you need a good team. During my time studying at Huizhou Economics and Polytechnic College, I got to know a group of friends who were equally passionate and idealistic about entrepreneurship. Now my team members come from fresh graduates and student entrepreneurs from many colleges and universities in Guangdong, a pure "post-90s" young entrepreneurial team with a high degree of rapport.
Reporter: What suggestions do you have for young people starting businesses?
Wei Zefeng: Compared with first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, Huizhou's entrepreneurial atmosphere is not yet strong enough. I suggest that young people who start businesses should go more often to first-tier cities to "recharge" and exchange ideas, invigorate their thinking, and broaden their entrepreneurial ideas.