A thousand "second-generation orange growers" in Linhai break into the market through online promotion and sightseeing-picking tours
In golden October, the more than 40,000 mu (approx. 2,667 hectares) of mandarin oranges in Yongquan Town, Linhai, are gradually ripening. These days, Feng Qianqian, born in 1989, eats two big bowls of plain white rice at every meal. She takes orders on WeChat at night, helps pick fruit in the orchard during the day, and on weekends busies herself arranging picking tours. In this harvest season, the slim woman's appetite has grown along with it.
At the Yongquan citrus demonstration zone in Linhai City, we are greeted by one youthful, bright face after another. According to preliminary statistics from Yongquan Town, there are already more than 990 "second-generation orange growers" like Feng Qianqian in the town. After graduating from university, they returned to their hometown, took over the orange orchards of their parents' generation, refined their brands, promoted online, and developed sightseeing-picking tours... The Yongquan mandarin orange market is stirring with new momentum.
Sightseeing and Picking
The orchard scenery is wonderfully beautiful
In a mountain bend of Xia'ao Natural Village, Shazhu Village, Yongquan Town, lies a high-mountain orange orchard covering 400 mu (approx. 26.7 hectares), along with a flat open space that can park more than 40 tour buses at once.
Walking into the valley orchard, a pretty girl in a loose white knit top and ripped jeans, carrying a picking basket, came toward us with light footsteps. This is Feng Qianqian, who graduated from university in 2011 and returned to Yongquan from Hangzhou in 2012 to devote herself to helping her parents run the orchard.
She established the Linhai Yongzhimei Citrus Professional Cooperative and boldly took on the role of "chief"; she leveled an abandoned mining site into a spacious parking lot; she had a wide concrete road built directly to the top of the hill; winding concrete-and-stone step paths run through every corner of the orchard; and 3 mu (approx. 0.2 hectares) of flat orange grove were covered with greenhouses, extending the picking season to the beginning of the following spring... As the young mistress of the orchard, Feng Qianqian's energy and courage are far from small.
Gradually, her parents stepped back to manage the orchard behind the scenes, handing the heavy responsibilities of running the cooperative and selling citrus to their daughter. The picking tours led by the daughter are a completely different way of selling oranges from her parents' generation: the 400-mu orchard produces more than 400,000 kg of mandarin oranges annually, 50% of which are picked and taken away by visitors, greatly saving the cost of manual picking. In July this year, Feng Qianqian also brought back from the Provincial Tourism Standardization Technical Committee a plaque designating it one of "Zhejiang Province's First Batch of Fruit and Vegetable Picking Tourism Bases," and she said, "This year we'll try hosting groups of ten thousand visitors."
During this year's National Day holiday, she began stepping into the ranks of WeChat sellers, selling more than 100 boxes of mandarin oranges a day through her WeChat Moments alone. When the peak sales season arrives in November, she also plans to open a Taobao store to sell Yongquan mandarin oranges across the country.
Feng Qianqian gave herself a very special WeChat name - "Orange Seed." She says the name has two meanings: she is a WeChat seller, representing her family's oranges; and she is the daughter of an orange farmer, raised by her father's orchard. Every day, she posts selfies and bright orange fruit in her WeChat Moments to attract mandarin lovers to place orders.
Strict Quality Control
Building a Brand to Expand the Market
Passing by Hengshanqian Village, a giant billboard stands out with such phrases as "Designated Mandarin Oranges of the 13th Zhejiang Provincial Universiade," "Exclusive Interview by CCTV's 'Road to Wealth,'" and "China's Top 100 Agricultural Brands." They all point to a rising new Yongquan mandarin orange brand - "Yumanyuan." And the person who founded this brand is Feng Renfang, a university graduate who returned to his hometown.
Feng Renfang, born in 1986, resigned in 2011 from a listed company in Taizhou and returned to his hometown, and since then has been doing one thing: segmenting the Yongquan mandarin orange market, ensuring product quality control, and strengthening the "Yumanyuan" brand. "Let the best Yongquan mandarin oranges realize their greatest market value," said Feng Renfang. He studied marketing in university, and he wants to apply what he learned in his hometown.
Linhai Yongquan mandarin oranges began to make a name for themselves in the 1990s. Under the management of the parents' generation, hundreds of brands have emerged, but the relatively well-known ones are only "Yanyutou" and "Wangbuliao." After carefully studying the existing brands, Feng Renfang decided to create his own brand, "Yumanyuan." "Buying 'Yumanyuan' means buying Yongquan mandarin oranges with the most guaranteed quality," he said.
In just a few short years, by participating in youth entrepreneurship competitions in Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province, and even nationally, sponsoring the 13th Zhejiang Provincial Universiade, taking part in the Provincial Agricultural Expo, and introducing cartoon mascots, Feng Renfang's professional cooperative and the "Yumanyuan" brand rose to fame. He himself also received honors such as National Rural Youth Wealth-Building Leader.
To ensure fruit quality, as early as 2012 the cooperative established an almost strict set of process standards: three assembly lines of purely manual sorting. Any citrus showing black scars, smooth skin, sun scorch, thick rind, speckles, rot, or puffy fruit was to be screened out.
"According to these standards, even if I go picking, from two trees with a yield of 200 kg, I can only pick 1 kg of 'Yumanyuan.'" Feng Renfang's sister said, because some minor flaws do not affect the taste of the citrus. But Feng Renfang believes that to build the brand and win market position, standards must be upheld.
E-commerce Players Band Together
Online sales exceed 60 percent
The young Feng Qianqian and Feng Renfang are both members of the Yongquan Town E-commerce Association. The association's chairman is the even younger Lin Dongdong - chairman of Taizhou Wangbuliao Agricultural Development Co., Ltd., a "returnee" born in 1990. On July 2 this year, 54 enterprises in Yongquan Town banded together to establish the e-commerce association, and most of the members are "second-generation orange growers" like Lin Dongdong.
In recent years, with the rise of rural e-commerce, in Yongquan Town, the "Home of Seedless Mandarin Oranges in China," 468 online stores have emerged one after another, including more than 30 large-scale online stores, with more than 3,000 e-commerce practitioners. Whether opening online stores directly or cooperating with e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Benlai Life, online sales already account for more than 60 percent of the town's total mandarin orange sales.
"Even if they work during the day, they still expand sales through online stores at night," said Zhu Lingfei, deputy mayor of the town. Yongquan Town still has many part-time "second-generation orange growers" who help their parents sell oranges through e-commerce.
Although online stores are blooming everywhere, growing bigger and stronger is no easy task. After the association was founded, the first thing Lin Dongdong did was unite the members to negotiate with local express delivery companies to minimize delivery costs. Previously, business operators and Taobao stores each acted on their own, with relatively small shipping volumes, and no single household could reach the standard of 300,000 yuan in express fees per month, so the express companies refused to offer discounts.
"Now that the association cooperates as a whole, we have bargaining power, and express fees have dropped quite a bit," Lin Dongdong said.
The newly established e-commerce association also gives university graduates returning home to start businesses more opportunities to gather and exchange ideas. "After joining the association, I realized that so many 'second-generation orange growers' have returned to Yongquan in the past two years. There are still many problems to be solved in fresh fruit e-commerce, and how to further raise the profile of Yongquan mandarin oranges nationwide - all of this depends on our joint efforts," Lin Dongdong said. A new chapter has already opened in the story of the orange orchards.