College student gives up state-owned enterprise job to start a hairy crab farming business
Zhang Mingwang, 35, from Xinghua, was a student in the Computer Information Management program at Soochow University starting in 2006, and after graduation worked as a senior executive at SAIC General Motors in Qingdao. Working at a state-owned enterprise, he earned an annual salary of nearly 100,000 yuan. In the eyes of family and friends, titles like graduate of a "211" university, bachelor of laws, and state-owned enterprise executive were definitely things to be envied, yet Zhang Mingwang wanted his own career even more. In 2010 he quit the secure state-owned enterprise job. After briefly working for a few months at a private company in Wuxi, Zhang Mingwang had his own entrepreneurial idea -- come to Bao to become a farmer!
Zhang Mingwang said that various media outlets had reported a lot on college students starting businesses, but reactions varied and there was considerable criticism, and he was inevitably affected by it. Quitting a state-owned enterprise executive job to go into aquaculture, Zhang Mingwang had struggled and felt lost. "First of all, getting past my father-in-law was hard." Going to the countryside to start a business, he had grown up in the city, and at that time, let alone going into farming, he could not even tell crops apart.
In order to gain experience in crab farming, Zhang Mingwang frequently went to libraries to learn about crab farming knowledge. He spent several months visiting nearly a hundred farmers in many places to learn from them. In early 2011 he invested more than 600,000 yuan and selected a pond covering 150 mu in Jiangzhuang Village, Xiaji Town, where he built an office, a disinfection pool, a feed warehouse and so on, and also purchased various types of machinery and equipment, bought crab seedlings, and just like that his aquaculture farm was up and running. "Farming pure wild hairy crabs, large and delicious, the market prospects are sure to be good." Zhang Mingwang had set a positioning for his crab farm.
"Hairy crabs are very picky about food and need large amounts of protein, amino acids and vitamins, and during the molting period the hairy crabs absolutely must be fed properly." Speaking of the habits of hairy crabs, Zhang Mingwang told reporters that hairy crabs are active by night and hide by day, like clean water with high dissolved oxygen, fear strong light and love quiet, and he used artificially cultivated aquatic plants, river snails and other feed in the pond, feeding them scientifically every day to preserve the pure wild taste. Last year the hairy crabs had a bumper harvest, but their value plummeted, market prices were sluggish, and many farmers were deeply troubled by this. But Zhang Mingwang's farming base kept receiving orders, and the sales situation was encouraging.
Unlike the traditional thinking of other crab farmers about market sales, Zhang Mingwang turned his mind to e-commerce -- opening a shop on Taobao. Through the online platform, he could promptly learn about hairy crab market conditions and sell at the highest price every day. "Consumers all over the country can find my shop and can place orders online to buy, and after I receive orders I ship to them through logistics," Zhang Mingwang said.
After 5 years of accumulated experience, his annual income is now more than one million yuan. In March this year, Zhang Mingwang also stocked mandarin fish and large shrimp. Speaking of future development, he said he would appropriately expand the farming scale, expand sales channels, and do a good job in distinctive ecological farming.