Eggs nobody eats, and a 25-year-old young man made his fortune from them
Program highlights: In 2010, as soon as he graduated from university, he went home with 210,000 yuan. Roller skating, billiards, he loved to play and wanted to start his own business, but in the three years after graduation he seemed to fall into a strange cycle, failing again and again. Ordinary eggs became his magic weapon for turning things around, and eggs worth three or four jiao each doubled in price in his hands. How did Chen Gongliang, a young man born in the 1990s, sell 3 million yuan worth of eggs in a single year!
This person wearing roller skates and doing all kinds of tricks is Chen Gongliang, a young man born in the 1990s. The roller skating area is not very big, and the road is not very flat, so it is easy to fall. Chen Gongliang chose to roller skate here. What was he thinking?
Reporter: I see you skate so coolly. Why do you roller skate in a chicken farm?
Chen Gongliang: Raising chickens and roller skating are currently my two favorite things. Why play in a chicken farm? Raising chickens is already quite tiring, and sometimes quite dull and boring. Occasionally roller skating lets me relax a bit, give myself a little break.
Having roller skated for seven or eight years, Chen Gongliang is an old hand, but when it comes to raising chickens, he has only just begun. Behind Chen Gongliang's roller skating area are two chicken houses, where he raises more than 30,000 chickens. Chen Gongliang is 25 this year. He usually loves roller skating and playing billiards, and anything that is fun, he can handle with ease.
Zeng Baoqing: For a while I suspected he had ADHD, he just could not stay idle.
Xu Feng: In high school, the two of us did not want to attend evening self-study, so we climbed over the wall and went out to use the internet.
Chen Gongliang loves to play and likes to study roller skating techniques. Apart from that, he is no different from other people his age. However, four years ago, Chen Gongliang did something very unusual. In 2010, when he graduated from university, he was originally going to work in Shenzhen, but the day before he was supposed to report for work, he returned to his hometown in Anhui. After switching through several industries, he fell in love at first sight with raising the most ordinary laying hens, saying he wanted to make his fortune by raising chickens and selling eggs, because he had discovered a new path for eggs besides eating them, one that could double the price of each egg worth only three or four jiao.
Chen Gongliang: To us normal people, eggs are just for eating and have no other function. This might be a business opportunity, because nobody raises them for this. As long as there is not much competition in something, I think you can make money from it. Others have not discovered it.
The most ordinary eggs that everyone eats every day, what kind of offbeat business opportunity did Chen Gongliang discover that could double the price of an egg worth three or four jiao? It was also by relying on this discovery that in 2014 alone, Chen Gongliang sold 3 million yuan worth of eggs just from selling eggs! What extraordinary entrepreneurial story lies behind this fun-loving young man born in the 1990s?
The university campus was once a place Chen Gongliang was proud of, because in this place where people competed over grades and futures, Chen Gongliang fought his way to the first pot of gold in his life. Chen Gongliang was born into an ordinary family in Qinlan Town, Tianchang City, Anhui Province. His father did landscaping, and his mother was a housewife. The family pooled money to send him to university. It was at this time that Chen Gongliang showed a side different from others. This fun-loving young man began doing all kinds of business on campus, and the campus became his "battlefield."
Chen Gongliang: Selling roller skates, digital products, then selling some accessories, selling some socks.
Xu Feng: He could be considered a big figure at our school too. He was restless. At that time, setting up a street stall was also his idea, selling mice, keyboards, daily necessities, and then we followed him.
Setting up street stalls, taking classmates to work as extras, Chen Gongliang did more than a dozen ventures, big and small. Not only did he make money himself, his friends who followed him also gained something.
Friend: I really like him. I like many of the ideas he comes up with. These are things I could not think of. After all, he can lead us to make money, so we are even more willing to be with him.
Xu Feng: At that time, each of us had about tens of thousands of yuan.
By 2010, when Chen Gongliang graduated from university, he had savings that surprised everyone.
Friend Wu Yong: The first pot of gold he earned was 210,000 yuan. We were spending money, but he came back with money. I quite envied him.
Friend Gu Anjun: A university graduate fresh out of school with more than 200,000 yuan in cash, that is incredible.
Chen Gongliang, who earned 210,000 yuan during university, became an object of envy. Companies also came to him proactively to sign him. But on the night before he was supposed to report for work in Shenzhen, Chen Gongliang took a bus back to his hometown and told family and friends that he wanted to start a business and be his own boss. But no one expected that from this point on, Chen Gongliang would experience a gray period unlike anything in his first 20 years.
Chen Gongliang's hometown, Qinlan Town in Tianchang City, had electronic photovoltaics, electrical components and plush toys as its main industries. Chen Gongliang first thought of opening an online store to sell plush toys. To reduce costs, he decided to invest 150,000 yuan himself to buy materials, then find a factory to do the processing. But when the first batch of goods was due for delivery, Chen Gongliang called for two days and could not get through.
Chen Gongliang: It was only on the third day that I drove over to take a look myself. The big factory was gone. Such a big factory, the people, the boss, the warehouse, all gone, completely empty. Then I knew, it was over, it definitely would not work.
Fresh out of university, Chen Gongliang lost 150,000 yuan in business. Next, he cooperated with others to sell mats and remote controls, switching through several businesses, but all ended in losing money. Chen Gongliang, who had always been able to make money, seemed to suddenly fall into a strange cycle.
Chen Gongliang: I realized it was different from school. My previous naive idea was that as long as you do business you can make money. That idea was completely gone. Only afterward did I know that doing business requires researching the market, calculating costs, and calculating profits.
Chen Gongliang was somewhat lost. Before, he led others to make money, but now from graduating in 2010 to 2011, after a year of struggling, not only did he not make money, he also lost more than 200,000 yuan. For a time, it seemed he had no direction.
Wife: Because his abilities were still quite good at that time, I did not expect that once he entered society he would hit walls everywhere, so he was quite sad and trusted himself less and less.
Chen Gongliang: I doubted whether I was no good, or what was wrong, whether I did not have the ability, or whether my ability had declined. I just thought if this does not work, then try again. The sentence I said most was, I am only around 20, what am I afraid of? I am not afraid of borrowing money, and I am even less afraid of losing money. I am not afraid of any of it.
During that period, Chen Gongliang taught others roller skating during the day and looked for projects everywhere, and at night he set up a street stall with his girlfriend. But one day in August 2010, a friend told him that someone locally could earn one or two million yuan a year just by selling eggs. When Chen Gongliang heard this, he was somewhat excited.
Within a week, Chen Gongliang went to investigate several times in a row. He found that with just one extra step, an ordinary egg worth three or four jiao could sell for as much as eight or nine jiao at the highest point. The other party also proposed that as long as Chen Gongliang provided eggs meeting the standard, sales would not be a problem. This excited Chen Gongliang greatly, and he decided to give it a try.