College student discovers business opportunity while working part-time: selling fresh chicken via WeChat
Original title: A post-90s entrepreneur opens the door to entrepreneurship by selling good chicken
Wei Zefeng, founder of the "Haojiyou" e-commerce service platform, sells premium fresh chicken both online and offline
Wei Zefeng (right). Photo by our reporter Ma Haiju
Entrepreneur profile: Wei Zefeng, founder of the "Haojiyou" e-commerce service platform, a humorous "post-90s" young man.
Project brief: The "Haojiyou" e-commerce service platform, founded in 2015, allows premium fresh chicken to be delivered to customers' homes through online WeChat ordering, and drives the healthy development of conscientious farmers and farms. The project won the rural e-commerce group championship at the finals of the recently held 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 chicken; within Huicheng District, fresh delivery can be completed in one hour. Wei Zefeng said: "'Haojiyou' is an e-commerce service platform that specializes in selling good chicken, delivering premium fresh chicken 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 chicken."
Working at a fresh food store led to the discovery of a business opportunity
Slim Wei Zefeng has his signature spiky black hair. Starting in his freshman year, he began launching a series of entrepreneurial projects: "630 Campus Tobacco," "Zhongli Student Part-time Team," "Huihuang Festival Event 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 let me earn my first pot of gold, about 60,000 yuan, supporting all my expenses for three years of college, greatly reducing the financial burden on my family, and also building up my courage to start a business," Wei Zefeng said. Since childhood, his parents had taken him to the market to watch them do business, which cultivated his business mind.
In the summer of 2014, during the summer vacation of his sophomore year, Wei Zefeng came to the Tianyuan Fresh Food Store in the Donghu area of the urban district for an internship. Because of its high quality, the store's wild boar meat had always sold well. This made him realize that as long as product quality is controlled well, citizens have a large demand for healthy agricultural products, so he developed the idea of starting a business in agricultural products.
For this reason, while working at the fresh food store, he insisted on getting up at 6 a.m. every day, learning technical work such as slaughtering chickens and cutting meat at the fresh food 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, formal store manager, and deputy general manager, while also becoming thoroughly familiar with the entire operational process of the 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 other aspects. He also went to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other places for training courses and visited multiple farms and breeding farms on site, making preliminary preparations for entrepreneurship.
In the second half of 2015, a policy restricting the sale of live poultry within the Third Ring Road of Huizhou's urban area allowed Wei Zefeng to seize an opportunity: through investigation, he found that most of the chicken sold on the market was feed chicken and greenhouse chicken, with few high-quality fresh good chickens. In October of that year, Wei Zefeng, who had graduated only a few months earlier, gathered partners he had met before and began preparing to build the entrepreneurial project "Haojiyou."
Traveling around to investigate and find the source of "good chicken"
One idea, one burst of drive, two or three people, one small rented room, and one electric bike were all of Wei Zefeng's assets in the early stage of entrepreneurship. "The most difficult time was after paying the rent, when I had only two or three hundred yuan in my pocket," Wei Zefeng said, but this did not stop his entrepreneurial pace.
As for the definition of "good chicken," Wei Zefeng was very clear: in addition to 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 chicken, one must first find good chicken that meets the requirements. Through introductions from friends, Wei Zefeng asked around the market about various channels and sought chicken sources everywhere.
"At that time, in order to find good chicken, we also spent a lot of effort. We needed to find chicken, but we had no car. For closer places, we rode electric bikes; for farther places, we took buses or borrowed friends' cars." Wei Zefeng successively went to more than 10 chicken farms in Shuikou, Ma'an, and other places in Huicheng District, as well as in Huidong, Longmen, and elsewhere for on-site inspections. In the end, he selected 3 chicken farms located in Guanyinge Town and Haoyi Town in Huicheng District and in Boluo County as the chicken sources for "Haojiyou."
In December 2015, through cooperation with the Tianyuan Fresh Food Store, a WeChat group was established to provide online ordering services, and "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." Through analysis, it was found that repeat customers were an important source of sales: one customer bought almost 1 chicken every two days after trying it, and another pregnant customer bought 8 chickens within one month, which further strengthened his confidence in selling good chicken.
In March this year, Wei Zefeng's team signed an agreement with an investor in Huizhou and obtained 500,000 yuan in seed investment, completing personnel recruitment, office equipment purchase, company registration, preliminary publicity, and more. The entrepreneurial project entered a new stage of development. "We hope that through the 'Haojiyou' platform, we can drive more farmers to raise good chicken, increase farmers' income, and drive rural economic development; at the same time, we also hope to let more people eat safe and reassuring chicken," Wei Zefeng said full of confidence.
â– Dialogue
Entrepreneurship requires accurately grasping market demand
Reporter: What is the key to your entrepreneurial success?
Wei Zefeng: The key is accurately grasping market demand. The internship experience at the fresh food store let me see the market demand for the project, and practical experiences such as selling cigarettes during school provided me with valuable entrepreneurial experience. In addition, you need a good team. While studying at Huizhou Economics and Polytechnic College, I met a group of friends who also had passion and ideals for entrepreneurship. Now my team members come from fresh graduates and student entrepreneurs from many colleges and universities in Guangdong. It is a pure "post-90s" young entrepreneurial team with a relatively high degree of tacit understanding.
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 strong enough. I suggest that young people starting businesses go to first-tier cities more often to "recharge" and exchange ideas, activate their thinking, and broaden their entrepreneurial ideas. (Our reporter Ma Haiju, correspondent Liu Ruiqing)