Village Taobao helps small mountain village onto a new road to prosperity

"Our village's tea online store has been up for only 3 months, and sales revenue has already reached 30,000 yuan. While achieving a breakthrough from 'zero' in the village collective economy, it has also let us find a path for developing the village collective economy." On the morning of November 27, the small mountain village in Jiuan Township, Huaxi District, was already deep in cold, but village committee director Chen Xiaopeng's heart was full of warmth: "Jiuan is high in the mountains and far by road, and inconvenient transportation has always been the bottleneck for the village collective economy. Now the online store's sales are promising. At this sales pace, it can not only drive the rise of a whole chain of industries including tea planting, processing, warehousing, transportation and tea culture experiences, but also solve employment for a group of villagers."

The small mountain village used to be a coal-producing village. Relying on coal mining, the villagers lived fairly well. But with industrial restructuring and water source protection requirements, under the national policy of shutting down small coal kilns, in 2009 all the small coal kilns in Jiuan Township were shut down, and villagers' incomes fell into difficulty. To get out of hardship, the small mountain village carried out industrial restructuring. Villagers planted vegetables, grew fruit trees and tried livestock farming, but all failed because of poor sales channels. The villagers' enthusiasm was repeatedly hit, and the overall economic development of the small mountain village lagged.

In 2012, Guizhou's well-known tea brand Guicha Company moved into the small mountain village, solving the township's problems of funding, technology and markets for industrial development, and bringing hope to the village's development. Developing the tea industry became the small mountain village's new road to prosperity. However, the traditional sales model still restricted the development of the tea industry.

"Although Jiuan tea has some reputation, because Jiuan is relatively far from Guiyang and sales channels are single, the village collective's tea sales were basically zero," Chen Xiaopeng said. How to break through in tea sales became a new issue facing the village party branch and village committee.

In July this year, the Guiyang rural party building work conference put forward a series of policies and measures to strongly support the development of the rural collective economy. The small mountain village firmly seized this opportunity and made clear its commitment to vigorously developing the tea industry. On the basis of maintaining traditional sales channels, it made full use of the new idea of "Internet + agricultural specialty products" to expand agricultural product sales and boost the development of the village collective economy.

So the village party branch and village committee of the small mountain village began new moves - on August 20 this year, Huaxi District's first village collective micro-sales online store, the Youzan micro-mall "Guicha Jiuan Township Xiaoshan Village Direct Sales Store," opened for business. At the same time, to reassure consumers, the small mountain village adopted an online ordering and offline experience model, displaying tea supplied exclusively online in a physical store. Consumers can go to the physical store to look at the tea, taste it and inspect the entire tea production and processing process. Apart from part of the sales revenue from the online and physical stores being used for basic expenses, all remaining income is used as a source of village collective economy, and the small mountain village's collective economy instantly became active.

"Next, we will step up improving supporting infrastructure such as roads, dining and lodging. While continuously developing and expanding the scale of Guicha's online direct sales, we will make full use of online platforms to increase publicity and keep raising the influence of Guicha's brand image of 'green, environmentally friendly and pollution-free.' At the same time, we will let other specialty agricultural products also join the ranks of online direct sales, and as soon as possible realize the small mountain village's integrated model of 'tea, agriculture and tourism,' so as to strengthen the collective economy and raise villagers' incomes." Chen Xiaopeng said they are currently preparing to open a tea direct sales store on Taobao as well.