Melon seeds, probably everyone has eaten, are one of the most commonly seen stir-fried goods.
The fragrance of melon seeds will stimulate the excitement of the taste buds on the tongue, conduct digestive organs, and the secretion of saliva and gastric juice of various digestive enzymes will be correspondingly exuberant, which is conducive to digestion and stagnation. After tea and meals, taste melon seeds to promote appetite and digest food. Because the amount is affordable, melon seeds can be consumed by every household during the New Year's Festival and weekdays.
TV series "Wulin Wai Chuan" melon seed screen (photo / network)
And a small melon seed, in the history of commercial changes in the past 40 years of China's reform and opening up, has witnessed the chase between the north and south of China.
After Wuhu, Anhui, the melon seeds in Wuyuan, Inner Mongolia are walking out of the brand road
China's land is vast, the land of Shenzhou, and the north and south are not separated. Even the melon seed, a very vertically subdivided industry, was almost developed in the same era in the south and the north. Also in the 1970s, in Wuhu, Anhui Province, in 1978, on the one hand, residents bought melon seeds with tickets, and on the other hand, small traders Nian Guangjiu was secretly selling their own fried melon seeds. As an important production area of melon seeds in the north, the staff of the Institute of Agricultural Research planted 47 acres of sunflowers in the heavy saline land in 1972, with a yield of 98.2 kg. In the same year, the Xinyong Brigade of the Four Communes of Hangjin Houqi and the Red Star Second Team of the Red Star Commune also planted 1,700 mu on the heavy saline and alkali land, with a yield of 75 kg. Since then, large areas of sunflowers have been planted in the Hetao Irrigation District of Bayannaoer City.
By 1980, Nian Guangjiu had become famous for his "fool melon seeds", and sold 100,000 kilograms of melon seeds in Shanghai during the Spring Festival of that year alone. At that time, the sunflower planting area in the Loop area had exceeded 620,000 mu.
In the past 40 years, fools, true hearts, Qiaqia and even three squirrels have become a famous melon seed fried brand in Wuhu, Anhui. In the north, Bayannur is still the source and foundry of sunflower seeds, the raw material for melon seeds. In particular, the local Wuyuan County is already the largest sunflower growing county in the country, with an annual output of more than 500 million catties of melon seeds. It is no exaggeration to say that 1 out of every 7 melon seeds that have been Chinese is from Wuyuan.
Things are slowly changing. In the past two years, Hongsheng Village, Yindingtu Town, Wuyuan County, has welcomed a young college student village branch secretary Zhang Jing. After graduating from university and doing design in Xi'an for two years, Zhang Jing, who wanted to take care of his sick father, returned to his hometown to start a business, and set up a trading company with friends, the main business is to distribute melon seeds, with annual sales of more than 13 million kilograms, and once sold Wuyuan melon seeds to Central Asia and Europe.
Zhang Jing, a post-80s college student, returned to his hometown as a village official and led the villagers to rely on the melon seed industry to increase their income and become rich. (Shen Xiaokai/Photo)
During the National Day in 2021, Zhang Jing's long-awaited e-commerce team officially settled in the Wuyuan County E-commerce Industrial Park and opened a store on the Pinduoduo platform. Coincidentally, in the past year, more than 40 new merchants on the Pinduoduo platform have been added to the entire Wuyuan E-commerce Industrial Park. Everything is changing, with the arrival of new e-commerce, Wuyuan melon seeds are speculating on behalf of the north and walking out of the way of branding.
New e-commerce has opened up the upward passage of agricultural products, and small melon seeds have become a considerable industry for rural revitalization
Branding, which represents a premium and more profits, is the dream business goal of many people in the Wuyuan melon seed industry in Inner Mongolia. In fact, in the subdivision of the speculation industry such as melon seeds, it is difficult for any brand to establish competitive barriers. As a fried product, the technical content is low, and the quality of raw materials, taste formula, marketing and channels are important influencing factors for industry competition. After more than 40 years of reform and opening up, melon seeds have converged in the quality of raw materials and taste formulas.
The biggest development variables fall on the marketing and channels of the product. However, due to the low price of melon seeds, the innovation of marketing methods and methods is also extremely limited, and the main channel is to fight in the end. Sun Weiguo, such a representative of the five original melon seed manufacturers, used to mainly do offline distribution, a car shipped more than 10 tons, the situation in the past few years is indeed not looking at the single volume of e-commerce.
If you divide the sales channels of Wuyuan melon seeds into domestic and foreign. The channels for domestic sales are mainly fried factories in Anhui, Hebei, Henan and other places, and the annual sales volume is basically fixed. Export export is the main growth channel of Wuyuan melon seeds in recent years, but due to the impact of the epidemic and other factors, the price of sea freight in 2021 has soared, resulting in a trend of compressing the share of exports.
Everything must be tried, and there will be a breakthrough. With the rapid development of China's Internet, especially new e-commerce in the past three or five years, the advantages are obvious: saving a lot of intermediate costs, information transparency, social fission, and the market volatility is small while the single volume is actually considerable... Why can't the new e-commerce be a new channel for the sale of wuyuan melon seeds?
As early as 2019, Zhang Jing, the branch secretary of Hongsheng Village, briefly tried Taobao, but could not find a breakthrough. In 2020, one of Zhang Jing's classmates tried to open a store in Pinduoduo, and the single-day order volume of melon seeds quickly exceeded 10,000 singles, with a daily sales of 60,000 jin, which gave him new ideas. In fact, the Wuyuan County E-commerce Industrial Park has flourished, with more than 40 new Pinduoduo merchants adding in the past year alone, and the operation team of Zhang Jing on National Day in 2021 has also become one of them. Sun Weiguo also began to operate Pinduoduo at the beginning of last year, and sales soon achieved a breakthrough. He believes that melon seeds can now be sold directly to consumers through new e-commerce, and compared with Anhui and other places, Wuyuan has a natural origin advantage, whether it is raw materials, labor costs, or production and processing costs are lower, there is a full opportunity to change the existing industrial location and become a new highland for the melon seed industry.
Sun Weiguo took advantage of the origin of Wuyuan melon seeds to make a big fist and kick in Pinduoduo, and the sales volume of the store has exceeded 100,000. (Shen Xiaokai/Photo)
New e-commerce has opened up the upward passage for agricultural products such as Wuyuan melon seeds, and the small melon seeds have become a considerable industry for rural revitalization. Since its establishment, the local "three fat eggs" melon seeds in Bayannaoer City have adopted a differentiated competitive approach, focusing on high-end brands, and in just a few years, they have stood out from the Huipai brand and occupied a certain market share. In August 2020, "Three Fat Eggs" also entered the Pinduoduo platform and opened an official flagship store. According to the data given by the e-commerce person in charge of "Three Fat Eggs", the "Three Fat Eggs" as the main channel of a traditional enterprise was still offline, but in recent years, the proportion of online has continued to increase, accounting for nearly 40%.
The brand upgrading and operation of modern agriculture continues to write a new chapter with new e-commerce
Agriculture is the foundation of the founding of our country. The results of the seventh national census show that the total population of China is 1,411.78 million people. In a populous country with a large population, the people take food as the sky, and the three rural issues are the work that the state attaches great importance to the special research and deployment of the No. 1 document every year. In fact, for farmers, simply put, it is whether they can increase their income and whether they can live a good life. China has declared that it has won a comprehensive victory in the battle against poverty and has completed the arduous task of eradicating absolute poverty. At present, the state is vigorously carrying out various work to consolidate and expand the results of poverty alleviation and the effective connection between rural revitalization. This should help the revitalization and development of rural areas with talent allocation, scientific and technological support and modern agricultural empowerment.
Wuyuan County is no exception, and modern agriculture should and must be the foundation of the county. Melon seeds are becoming a representative industry of modern agriculture in Wuyuan. As early as 2003, Wuyuan County has begun to introduce leading sunflower seed processing enterprises at home and abroad to promote the transformation and upgrading of the local melon seed industry. In October of that year, Anhui "True Heart" melon seeds landed the first production workshop in Wuyuan.
In the past 40 years, wuyuan melon seeds from the planting era to the foundry era, after nearly 20 years of development, the local has formed dozens of factory clusters of large and small sizes, and has a mature industrial chain integrating planting, sorting, processing and research and development. Wuyuan County, which is in the upstream of the industrial chain, especially in the field of seed research and development, the "Sunflower Research Institute" established a few years ago has produced results, which not only breaks the monopoly of American seeds, but also reduces the cost of each bag of seeds by about 1,000 yuan, greatly enhancing the market competitiveness of local melon seeds.
The Gohara "Sunflower Research Institute" broke the monopoly of American seeds. (Shen Xiaokai/Photo)
By 2021, the market for melon seeds is good, and each kilogram of melon seeds can sell for more than 4 yuan, which is 1 yuan more expensive than last year. According to the current market price, the income of farmers in Wuyuan County can reach 2200 yuan per mu, and the cost can be net 1600 yuan. But we must rationally see that if the local agricultural enterprises are only OEM, the profits are very thin, so it is right to insist on taking the brand road. The breakthrough of sales channels and the upgrading of branding operations, new e-commerce is undoubtedly the first choice.
In recent years, Wuyuan County has a broad vision and clear thinking. The county's efforts focus on the development of e-commerce, the support is large, and the warehouses are free for local businesses to use. Pinduoduo has become one of the important boosts for the development of the e-commerce industry in Wuyuan County, and is also a representative platform for the brand upgrading and operation of Wuyuan melon seeds. The brand owners of Wuyuan Melon Seed not only see the low operating costs of the new e-commerce platform of Pinduoduo. More importantly, we have seen that Pinduoduo started with agricultural products and has always focused on agriculture.
According to media reports, there are currently 280,000 agriculture-related businesses and 850 million consumers directly connected, and Pinduoduo has become the largest uplink platform for agricultural products. Are there any successful cases that have made the brands of Wuyuan Melon Seed believe that new e-commerce companies like Pinduoduo can help their development? The answer is yes. In 2020, Ningxia Tan mutton brand "Xi Xian Ji" cooperated with Pinduoduo, through online live broadcasting, offline tasting, etc., users can eat authentic Yanchi Beach lamb without leaving home, and in the first half of the year alone, "Xi Xian Ji" sold more than 50 million yuan. Sichuan Huili Pomegranate spokesperson He Shuang's company will sell 2.2 million orders in 2020, with sales of 51 million yuan; by September 2021, the "Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival Golden Autumn Consumption Season", her newly built 3,000 square meters warehouse can issue 35,000 orders per day, and the daily single volume has nearly doubled...
(Figure/Network)
Different from other e-commerce platforms, Pinduoduo is not only shortening the supply link and reducing the terminal price in the agricultural field, but also "heavy warehouse" technology, vigorously developing agricultural technology in the whole industrial chain from top to bottom. According to media reports, Pinduoduo is investing 10 billion yuan to set up a "10 billion agricultural research project". For example, in terms of digital agriculture, Pinduoduo relies on its farmland cloud spelling system, with the help of cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies, to integrate the scattered production and demand of agricultural products, thereby driving the large-scale upward trend of agricultural products.
Hao Heng, 40, is the head of a local melon seed factory in Wuyuan, Inner Mongolia, and has been engaged in the OEM processing business for many years. With a daily output of more than 20 tons, the plant is one of the largest foundries in the region. Foundry profits are low, but the new e-commerce has brought new opportunities to Hao Heng. In 2020, Hao Heng mainly focused on the operation and maintenance of Pinduoduo stores, and registered the "Hao Heng" brand melon seed trademark. Integrated production and marketing operation, with the support of new e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, the quality of the melon seeds produced by themselves is guaranteed, and sales channels are quickly opened, and the repurchase rate of consumers is very high. At present, the sales of Hao Hengguazi online have surpassed the offline OEM, accounting for more than 60%.
The sunflowers in Wuyuan County, Inner Mongolia reach 1.2 million mu, with an annual output of more than 500 million catties. ( Shen Xiaokai/Photo)
Rural revitalization is imminent, and modern agriculture has great potential. Rather than saying that a small melon seed has a 40-year history of business changes, it is better to say that in the trend of the times, everyone, every enterprise and platform, and even every industry will roll in. Pinduoduo is no exception, and this new e-commerce platform has stressed more than once that it wants to become the world's largest retail platform for agricultural products. In China, modern agriculture is writing a new chapter with new e-commerce. Thousands of agricultural products and their brands, such as Wuyuan melon seeds, are using new e-commerce to achieve the "Wuhu" take-off of their own business.