Overseas-Returned Executive Becomes a Farmer Back Home: Poultry Sales Storefront Is Booming

Farm owner Tong Qian and her employees

Early in the morning on Mid-Autumn Festival in 2015, a storefront selling fresh poultry in Jilian Market in Zhuhai stood out as especially busy. Guangdong's food culture is rich and varied, and everyone knows how important "eating" is to Cantonese people. Poultry, especially the many varieties of chicken, is an indispensable delicacy for Cantonese people during festivals and holidays. This green-farmed poultry brand in Jilian Market attracted so many consumers precisely because it focused on food quality and safety. What is unexpected is that the founder of this agricultural company turned out to be a beautiful and fashionable "overseas returnee."

The glamorous and fashionable Tong Qian in front of you makes it hard to connect her with raising chickens and working the land. Tong Qian, who had already reached an executive position at a multinational company abroad, was the only daughter in her family, and at first she resolutely returned to China to take care of her parents. At that time, Tong Qian worked at a foreign company in Beijing while looking for entrepreneurial opportunities. She found that Chinese people today are paying more and more attention to food safety issues, so she chose to develop green, environmentally friendly, pollution-free agriculture. She said: "As an overseas returnee and a Chinese person, if I can make even a small contribution to the livelihood of Chinese people, I am very willing to do this. I think this is a very meaningful thing. At the very least, I can ensure that my company's products are guaranteed to be food-safe, absolutely green and pollution-free."

Tong Qian, who had been pampered since childhood, knew nothing about agriculture at first. Therefore, in the early days of developing the farm, she encountered quite a few difficulties and made quite a few embarrassing mistakes. Once, when inspecting the farm, she actually mistook a papaya for a mango. The company's sales manager, Li Yu, came from an agricultural background. He said that when he first met Tong Qian, he wondered whether such a fashionable young woman could really run a farm, and whether she would be afraid of hardship when working out in the fields. But later cooperation made him look at President Tong with new respect. He said: "At first I didn't believe she could do agriculture. When we opened our first store, the government required us to become a model. The day before, we worked on preparations until very late, but the next day she arrived very early for the opening, before anyone else. She is truly dedicated; now she can even be called a professional."

Although Tong Qian had never set foot in the agriculture industry before, in her view, management and operations in every industry share common principles. She hopes to bring the advanced business concepts and management models she learned at home and abroad into agriculture, and to develop a new agricultural operation model different from traditional agriculture. She said: "Green agriculture is a sunrise industry. Agriculture does not have to be rustic; it can also be done in a stylish way. Some things are common across industries. Through a period of understanding and learning, I have also grasped the thread of this industry. Combined with my previous experience, this has achieved a fairly good integration."

For Tong Qian, product quality and safety are the most important things. Therefore, she was also extremely meticulous in choosing the farm's location. In the end, she selected the area beside the scenic Changkeng Reservoir in Taishan. The farm sits in a tranquil environment, with the scent of grass everywhere and medicinal herbs all over the hills. The main poultry raised on the farm, royal chickens and free-range chickens, eat purely natural feed every day and roam and run freely across the hills without being confined, truly achieving green farming, and the growth period of the poultry is strictly guaranteed. It is precisely this rearing model that has earned the fresh poultry raised on Tong Qian's farm recognition from the Cantonese people, who are extremely particular about ingredients. Auntie Li visits the storefront of Tong Qian's company in Jilian Market almost every day. She praises the green, pollution-free chickens raised by Tong Qian's company without end. She said: "I have been here many times. The company's general manager is very young and beautiful. The staff have a good service attitude, and the chickens are very clean."

At present, Tong Qian's agricultural company has opened six storefront stores in Zhuhai. Daily sales of fresh poultry exceed 1,000 birds, and during festivals and holidays they are even higher. Tong Qian said she is determined to capture Zhuhai's fresh poultry market in the coming year, become Zhuhai's number one chicken brand, and build her brand across the Pearl River Delta and even throughout China, so that more consumers can buy top-quality, safe and reliable agricultural products. In addition to fresh poultry, green-grown vegetables and fruits, corn, beans and honey are all projects they are researching and developing. In order to expand into a broader market, Tong Qian is working hard to develop an O2O business model for agriculture. Due to the transportation limitations of fresh products, online customers currently account for only 15% to 20% of their company's total. However, she has always believed that internet sales of fresh products are a very good development trend for the future. She said: "I am designing the company's own sales website. At present, Chinese consumers still need an adaptation period for buying fresh products online. As a small enterprise, we hope to get on this train and be able to stick with it. As long as we can persist, I believe this will be a very good development trend in the future. Our company is also putting effort into researching a more convenient payment method. If the payment method can be made as simple as possible, the development potential of online purchasing is very, very great."

The entrepreneurship of "overseas returnee" young people not only brings new ideas and models to traditional industries, but also drives local employment. Many frontline breeding and sales staff at Tong Qian's company are local farmers and laid-off workers. Tong Qian said they are experienced, willing to endure hardship, and approachable, and that working with them is also very happy. Wu Shusen, the farm's production department supervisor, known by everyone as Brother Hua, is a well-known chicken-raising expert in the local countryside and has been engaged in poultry farming for 15 years. Before working on Tong Qian's farm, Brother Hua had opened his own chicken farm. Brother Hua said that Tong Qian's farm differs from his previous one in both its business model and its rearing methods, and that his income has also increased greatly. He said: "After cooperating with Yinong, our scale has expanded a lot, probably more than tenfold. In the past I raised more than 10,000 chickens myself; now the company has 100,000 to 200,000 in total. In the past my annual income was only 20,000 to 30,000, but now it can reach more than 100,000. The quality of life has definitely improved."

With an endless stream of customers and enthusiastic staff, Tong Qian's company storefront has become the busiest stall in Zhuhai's Jilian Market. Young "overseas returnees" have brought entirely new concepts to traditional agriculture, while also returning already formulaic production to simplicity and authenticity. As Tong Qian said, what they pursue is a spirit and a dream: making sure all Chinese people eat healthily and safely is their original intention.