Shaanxi college graduate resigns and returns home to sell kiwifruit, becoming a leader in rural e-commerce
When fruits and agricultural by-products have a bumper harvest, how do you sell them? Can you get a good price? This has always been a matter of urgent concern for fruit farmers. In the past, they relied on middlemen and distributors to come to their doors to buy, and not only could they not get a good price, but sometimes the goods would end up stuck in their hands and they would lose everything. However, in Hedi Village, Jinqu Town, Mei County, Baoji City, with the widespread use of online shops and WeChat shops, fruit farmers promote and sell their own products. The old problem of a bumper harvest hurting farmers has become a thing of the past and no longer exists. Selling through e-commerce and WeChat business not only saves a lot of trouble, but also greatly increases the income of fruit farmers. Hedi Village suddenly became a well-known local "e-commerce village." Among them, Dai Bin and Zhu Mingjuan, a "post-80s white-collar" couple who worked in Shanghai after graduating from university, gave up their comfortable city life and returned to the village for a "second startup," leading their fellow villagers to open online shops and WeChat businesses. They became the village's e-commerce leaders and made great contributions.
Nowadays, the villagers of Hedi Village pollinate fruit trees by hand, prune flowers and fruit, irrigate the land and spray fertilizer when farming is busy, and attend e-commerce training and sell agricultural by-products online when farming is slack. In this village of 600 households, 230 households have opened online shops and become e-commerce and WeChat businesses. On May 5, when the reporter interviewed Hedi Village in Mei County, the village style and appearance had taken on a completely new look. Most villagers were busy pollinating fruit trees, while the young women staying at home were busy shipping and selling agricultural by-products online, presenting a bustling scene...
"Shanghai white-collar workers" return home to open an online shop, selling 2 million jin of kiwifruit in one year
In Hedi Village, Jinqu Town, Mei County, Baoji, there is a young post-80s couple. After graduating from university, they went to a Taiwan-funded enterprise in Shanghai to engage in management and quality inspection work. They developed feelings for each other through work and got married. The husband, Dai Bin, had an annual salary of 150,000 yuan, and the wife, Zhu Mingjuan, had an annual salary of 50,000 yuan. They belonged to the company's white-collar class, but they gave up life in the big city and resolutely resigned to return to their hometown of Mei County for a "second startup" in e-commerce sales. They opened the village's largest online shop, selling kiwifruit online to all parts of the country. From September 2015 to May 2016, they sold an average of 10,000 jin, more than 2,000 boxes, of kiwifruit per day. Over the year, they sold more than 2 million jin and more than 300,000 boxes in total, accounting for one quarter of the whole village's sales volume.
On May 5, when the reporter interviewed Hedi Village in Mei County, because the local kiwifruit had sold out, Dai Bin and his wife's online shop temporarily took a break. The more than 50 migrant workers they had hired returned home to busy themselves with farm work, and the couple returned to Xiangtan, Hunan to visit relatives, so the reporter could only conduct a telephone interview.
According to Dai Bin, he is from Xiangtan, Hunan, and is a son-in-law of Hedi Village. In 2003, he graduated from Hunan Information College with a major in computer networks. His wife, Zhu Mingjuan, went to Shanghai to work after graduating from high school and enrolled in Shanghai TV University, studying logistics management, graduating in 2009. "I worked in management at a Taiwan-funded enterprise in Shanghai. Our department belonged to Guangda Group and was mainly responsible for after-sales repair of laptops. I was mainly engaged in management of the China region repair department, with more than 200 subordinate employees. Zhu Mingjuan worked in quality inspection in my department. We met at work and got married in 2011. At that time, my income was about 150,000 a year, and my wife's annual income was about 50,000 yuan. At that time, our rent in Shanghai was about 3,000 yuan per month, and with other expenses, it was about 10,000 yuan a month."
After marriage, Dai Bin and his wife felt considerable pressure working away from home. First, the expenses outside were indeed very high, and they could not save much money each year. Once they had a child, the pressure they might face would be even greater. In addition, the elderly at home were getting older. Relying on their income to buy a house and live in Shanghai, while also supporting the elderly and raising children, would indeed be very tight. Just then, they discovered that with the improvement of urban living standards, the demand for agricultural by-products, especially fruit, was very large, and small fruit supermarkets could be seen everywhere in cities. They themselves often went to fruit shops to buy fruit, but the fruit bought in fruit shops looked bright and shiny on the outside, yet was not necessarily tasty, and food safety issues were worrying.
So Dai Bin and his wife Zhu Mingjuan discussed: "Rather than living under such great pressure in the city, why not go to the countryside and do something practical? Rural economies are developing very quickly now. Some local farmers in our Mei County who grow kiwifruit also earn an annual income of more than 100,000 yuan. If we fail, at worst we can go home and grow kiwifruit. That would still be better than working in the city."
They acted as soon as they decided. In early 2014, they resigned from their jobs in Shanghai and returned to Zhu Mingjuan's hometown, Hedi Village, Jinqu Town, Mei County. They invested nearly 100,000 yuan, set up an online shop, purchased kiwifruit for sorting, packaging and sales, and began their startup.
The early days of the startup were full of twists and turns; once on track, it benefited neighboring villagers
As the saying goes, "Everything is hard at the beginning." Once the online shop platform was set up, his wife Zhu Mingjuan was responsible for online promotion and sales, while Dai Bin and his wife's second father, Liu Xiaoying, were responsible for purchasing kiwifruit from surrounding neighboring villages. In order to open up sales, they first gave free samples for people to taste. The purchase price was 2.5 yuan per jin, and they sold online at only 9.9 yuan for 3 jin. After deducting packaging and postage, they did not make a profit but instead lost money. His father-in-law, Liu Xiaolong, had been half-believing and half-doubting online sales from the beginning. Facing this situation, he frowned, not knowing how these two children would end up after carrying on like this.
Dai Bin later recalled, "Our operations in the first year (2014) were not very ideal. Actually, the main reason was that at first we were unfamiliar with e-commerce sales techniques, and in addition we did not have enough experience in distinguishing kiwifruit varieties and the quality of goods, so quality control was not very strict either. In 2014 we sold only about 50,000 jin of kiwifruit and saw little profit. At first, when family members heard that we were coming back, they did not particularly oppose it, but because the first year was not ideal, the family began to distrust us a bit."
After summarizing their experience, Dai Bin began to establish a "green fruit" brand online. On the online platform, they made the entire process of kiwifruit planting, cultivation, pollination, fruit thinning, fertilizer spraying, picking and packaging into pictures and videos for customers to understand and watch, and welcomed free tasting. Three months later, sales surged. From 2015 to April 2016, Dai Bin's online shop sold 2 million jin of kiwifruit. In order to expand the business, their online shop hired 50 villagers, including 40 fruit sorting and packaging workers and 10 customer service and after-sales workers, with an average monthly wage of about 2,000 yuan per person. This solved the employment problem for some local villagers and won praise from the villagers of Hedi Village.
Liu Xiaoying, a 48-year-old villager from Group 3 of Hedi Village, is Zhu Mingjuan's second father (uncle). He had grown kiwifruit for 16 years. At first, he collected kiwifruit together with his niece's husband Dai Bin and then sold them online. Seeing that his nephew and niece had made money by opening an online shop, he also became interested, but he did not know how to use the internet, so with the help of his son who was in university, he also opened an online shop and used his mobile phone for WeChat business sales. Last year, he not only sold all 20,000 jin of kiwifruit from his own home, but also sold all of the more than 6,000 jin of kiwifruit he had purchased. The purchase price per jin of kiwifruit was 2.5-3.2 yuan. The online selling price was the same as the retail price, more than 6 yuan per jin, with a profit of 5-15 yuan per box. They were mainly sold to Guangdong, Hainan, Shanghai, Fujian and other places.
As for selling kiwifruit online through WeChat business and e-commerce, Old Liu was full of confidence. He said, "In the past when we sold peaches, we relied on middlemen and customers to come and buy them, and the price was entirely up to them. Three mu of kiwifruit could sell for more than 20,000 yuan, and the price pressure broke our hearts. Now it's better. Three mu of kiwifruit can sell for 50,000-80,000 yuan online, and the price is up to us. We won't do that losing business again."