Agricultural products sell well online, and college-graduate village officials are a big help
Original title: "When the Melon Is Ripe, the Stem Falls Off" - the growth story of a rural e-commerce venture
The photo shows Zhang Min inspecting agricultural products in a rural area (file photo).
The photo shows Zhang Min holding the bronze award of the 2015 National Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurship and Wealth Creation Competition and the gold award trophy of the 2015 Beijing "Post Youth Time Loan" Wealth Creation Competition.
On April 30, the reporter met college-graduate village official Zhang Min in a residential community in Xiaotangshan Town, Changping District, Beijing. He rents a house here as an office. Although it was the "May Day" public holiday, two employees were still working overtime in the office. Zhang Min told the reporter that the e-commerce platform he built single-handedly, "When the Melon Is Ripe, the Stem Falls Off," was currently focusing on promoting Hainan's Guifei mango. "It just went online at 11 p.m. last night, and in less than 12 hours now, more than 500 orders have already been sold." He opened the WeChat official account and showed the reporter his results.
The founding of "When the Melon Is Ripe, the Stem Falls Off" cannot be separated from a TV program called "I Am a Unicorn." On this program, Zhang Min obtained investment from ZhenFund and Ziniu Fund, and "When the Melon Is Ripe, the Stem Falls Off" came into being. Before the program aired, the promotional text the TV station posted on its website read: "Zhang Min, a young entrepreneur from a rural area in Shandong nicknamed 'Peach Brother,' made five awe-inspiring tiger investors instantly enter lamb mode."
Behind this story, which looks like an easy stroll to conquering investment giants, lies nearly ten years of accumulation and sedimentation from Zhang Min's e-commerce entrepreneurship.
Worked in online marketing, dabbled in group-buying websites - from "wild ways" to college-graduate village official
After graduating from university in 2007, Zhang Min came to Beijing. His first job was in sales with no base salary. After that, he worked as a marketing manager at an e-commerce company and a deputy general manager at an agricultural technology company, and he even borrowed money to take part in an online marketing studio. But one thing made him very different: he did not keep walking on the "wild ways." At the lowest point of his life, he decided to take the postgraduate entrance examination. In his words, it was to "break open his own limits." With 5 months left before the postgraduate entrance examination, he took 1,200 yuan and bought 35 books, then rented a house in Tiejiangying for a monthly rent of 180 yuan.
"The villagers of Tiejiangying still tell a story about a ghost making trouble in the middle of the night," Zhang Min laughed loudly. "Actually, that was me, because I often went to the small woods at midnight to memorize politics, haha!"
Zhang Min eventually was admitted to Beijing University of Agriculture with excellent grades. With a good supervisor and environment, he devoted more energy to research and practice in the rural market, and even founded the Yiya Group-Buying Website, becoming "one of China's first batch of people to dabble in group-buying websites." He subsequently published a book summarizing his past e-commerce experience.
After graduating with his master's degree in 2013, he decided to go to Suanzaoling Village, Xiaotangshan Town, Changping District, Beijing, to serve as a college-graduate village official. Born in a rural village in the Yimeng Mountain area, Zhang Min had a natural closeness to rural areas and even deeper feelings for farmers. With such an environment, Zhang Min was able to continue digging deeply into opportunities in rural e-commerce.
Seeing villagers worried about unsold agricultural products - founded "Tangbei Renjia"
"My hometown is the country's famous hometown of honey peaches. When I was a child, my school fees depended on the income from my parents selling honey peaches, but either the honey peaches could not be sold, or they were underpriced by dealers, and the villagers could not get the returns they deserved." Zhang Min came from a farmer's family and knew well how hard farmers' lives were.
From the day he became a college-graduate village official, Zhang Min wandered around rural areas every day, always carrying 3 notebooks (a notebook for researching farming households' situations, a notebook for recording college-graduate village officials' entrepreneurial practice, and a work log) and 1 pen. He asked whenever he had doubts and took notes wherever he went. He was especially anxious when he saw that many rural tourism villages had poor returns and that agricultural products could not be sold.
Faced with this situation, Zhang Min, who had studied online marketing and e-commerce, quickly decided to use his strengths. He resolutely took out all his savings of more than 30,000 yuan and developed a life service platform for Xiaotangshan Town - Tangbei Renjia - to publish convenience information and help farmers sell unsold agricultural and sideline products. From 2014 to 2015, over two years, he helped farmers sell honey peaches and various other agricultural products through WeChat crowdfunding, WeChat business, Taobao and other platforms, with the amount reaching more than 3 million yuan, earning himself the nickname "Peach Brother."
Turning passive sales into active planning - the birth of "One Origin One Product"
In the process of helping villagers sell agricultural products, Zhang Min gradually realized that he could not wait until agricultural products could not be sold before thinking of solutions; he had to turn passivity into initiative. Therefore, he mobilized and united more than 30 college-graduate village officials from all over the country, responsible for agricultural product sales and supply chain management, and for micro-marketing of agricultural products, serving as rural liaisons, rural material and information collectors, and discoverers of rural specialty products.
He successively opened 5 stores on Taobao: Ganlanpai, Yuanxiangyi, Yunxinyan, Bulao Shangpin and Shanbaoyang, integrated the resources of 5 villages, created 5 specialty agricultural products, and upgraded and integrated "Tangbei Renjia" into the Yiyuan Yipin flagship store.
In the Yiyuan Yipin model, he provided brand incubation services for rural specialty agricultural products and carefully created a self-owned bird's nest brand, Yunxinyan.
For Miyun college-graduate village officials, he created the first specialty agricultural product comb honey brand - Bulao Shangpin - and turned the college-graduate village official behind it into a star village official.
By obtaining strategic partnership rights for donkey-hide gelatin cake with a college-graduate village official in Dong'e, Shandong, he began planning the Yiyuan Yipin all-people partner model. Within one month, 50 agents were developed, 30% of them college-graduate village officials.
He stepped up brand planning and packaging design for Hongxiao pear, as well as the excavation of the production area's humanities, natural ecology, and the product's color, aroma and taste, and bought out the pears from 1 old farmer's trees aged more than 100 years.
Through active planning, Yiyuan Yipin began to develop in the direction of making premium agricultural products. "The more I do, the clearer it becomes," Zhang Min said. His thinking on rural e-commerce entrepreneurship was slowly corrected through actual practice.
Rebuilding consumers' trust system for agricultural products - "When the Melon Is Ripe, the Stem Falls Off" sets out again from a higher starting point
With the injection of investment funds and frequent contact with big names in the national venture capital field, the collision of ideas made Zhang Min rethink the positioning of "Yiyuan Yipin." Only making specialty agricultural products was still far from special enough. After multiple rounds of discussion with investors, from more than 200 candidate names, "When the Melon Is Ripe, the Stem Falls Off" was selected. "Yiyuan Yipin" was transformed and set out again with a new positioning.