Shenrancaijing original
Author | Li Qiuhan
Edit | Wei Jia
If it weren't for live e-commerce, Guan Shuai, who was born in 1996, would still be working on the assembly line of Zhengzhou Foxconn.
His task was to put screws on the motherboard of the phone, 3 of which were installed on a mobile phone, pick up the tool, suck on the screws, and install the screws on the phone, repeating this for 12 hours a day. The factory stipulated that he could not turn his head to ear, so he buried his head in work. His parents are older, in 2019, he decided to return to his hometown of Zhenping County, Nanyang City, Henan Province, to help take care of the family's jade business, and then encountered the epidemic lockdown, the wholesale market traffic decreased by 80% or 90%, he did not sell 1 yuan on the stall for 40 days. Unable to go to Zhengzhou, he found a job as a live e-commerce packer in Zhenping.
Now, he earns more than 4,000 yuan a month, which is similar to when he was in Zhengzhou, living at home can take care of his parents, there is no rent pressure, and the money saved has become more. Recently, Kuaishou held a New Year Festival, "2022 Kuaishou Quality New Year Festival Consumption Trend Report" shows that Generation Z joined the online hoarding army, consumption increased by 254% year-on-year, specific to jewelry and jade, with the industry's jewelry trend, the consumer base is gradually younger. The 2021 Luxury Brand Strategy Research Report points out that Gen Z will contribute 180% of market growth from 2019 to 2025, accounting for 2/3 of the consumer group.
Guan Shuai also participated in the New Year Festival, he was responsible for combing the goods for the live broadcast room, packing and express delivery, and the workload was 20% or 30% more than usual.
Ping County, Nanyang Town, where he is located, is known as the "Hometown of Chinese Jade Carving", and is the largest jade carving processing and sales distribution center and jade culture research and dissemination center in China. The total population here is 1.09 million, and the jade carving processing is spread throughout the county in 16 townships and more than 100 villages, with 50 jade carving professional villages, 15,000 jade carving professional households, and the jade carving processing group accounts for 70% of the national processing group.
The tide of live streaming with goods is menacing and has also swept here.
According to the statistics of major live broadcast bases in 2020, the total transaction volume of the five baoyu stone live broadcast bases in the country is as high as 42.7 billion yuan, and the Nanyang live broadcast base is 7.73 billion yuan, accounting for 18.1%. Kuaishou is a short video platform commonly used when they broadcast live, as more and more new consumers pour into Kuaishou e-commerce, millennials have begun to become an important customer group, and the Zhenping Jade Industry Belt has also gained new growth in the Kuaishou ecosystem.
Wang Jian, director of the Industrial Digitalization Research Office of Xi'an Jiaotong University, recalled that he came to Zhenping and subverted his understanding of the industry. At the streetside market stalls, jade is placed on the ground like cabbage, and the sellers are dressed simply and chatting leisurely, but in fact, "the total value of jade in a stall is hundreds of thousands."
Now, they share jade knowledge on Kuaishou e-commerce, live sell jade products, and have new ways of trading with new consumer groups. And this town, which does not seem to be much different from other third- and fourth-tier cities, has formed a complete industrial system from raw material procurement to design creativity, processing and production, cultural research, from talent training to quality testing, publicity and promotion, from traditional e-commerce to live e-commerce, modern finance, and packaging logistics.
For Zhenping, the most practical change after the rise of live e-commerce is that it has brought more employment opportunities to locals and stimulated the development of local industrial belts. According to official data, Zhenping County has ten major jade carving professional markets, more than 30,000 jade carving boutique stores and stalls of various types, and 300,000 employees in the jade carving industry. From January to November 2021, the e-commerce transaction volume of Zhenping County was 28.8 billion yuan, and the online retail sales volume was 19.1 billion yuan.
Young people here have stepped on the cusp of the wind, and their lives have changed dramatically.
"There are not enough young people in the town"
In Zhenping, many young people have returned from other places.
A friend who worked with Guan Shuai in the Zhengzhou factory came back to do customer service in the live broadcast room. He had classmates to learn jade carving, opened a personal studio in Zhenping, and also did live streaming with goods. The boss of Guan Shuai, Lao Ren, is the manager of the Kuaishou account "Yurunde", and his team is about 50 people, 40% of whom are locals. He mentioned that many of the employees are young people, and the executive director of their company, who has just turned 19.
Guan Shuai told Shen Yan that in this place full of jade, if the child did not have a particularly good learning talent, he would be sent by his parents to learn jade carving, in their view, high education and good craftsmanship are equal, "learning a good craft, you can also guarantee a lifetime of food." But not every young person is suitable for jade carving, want to learn jade carving, before the county job opportunities are few, the salary is not high, many young people choose to go to Guangdong Shenzhen and other cities to work.
The change began in 2017.
Wang Qingqi, a Kuaishou Zhenping service provider and president of the Jade Association, introduced that in 2017, the local e-commerce test line was launched to vigorously support e-commerce. Up to now, There are 3,000 anchors in Zhenping. A large team, "customer service has hundreds of people."
The industry has developed, anchors, customer service, procurement, packaging, express delivery, and all aspects of the industrial system need manpower.
Wang Qingqi told Shen Yan that on Zhenping Street, there are two types of information, one is renting, the other is recruitment, "live e-commerce is on fire, and the small town youth here are not enough." ”
It's a good job opportunity for them. Close to emerging industries, good prospects, work content is more interesting than boring part-time work, and more importantly, you can make money at the doorstep of your home.
Wang Qingqi said that the wages of some positions here are even higher than those in Nanyang City, customer service monthly salary of 3,000 yuan, good anchors monthly salary of 10,000 yuan, young people in other surrounding counties have also come, mainly after 95 and 00.
After 95 years of "jade craftsman" Xiao Xu, 13 years old dropped out of the jade carving factory as an apprentice, and later went to Xinjiang to make a living, accumulated a lot of fans on Kuaishou, after becoming the official anchor at the end of 2018, he looked at the jade resources of his hometown Zhenping, simply came back to start a business, and is currently the TOP1 anchor of Kuaishou jewelry and jade, with a maximum single GMV of 34 million.
Under the story of wealth creation, more people are starting businesses with the help of live e-commerce. Wang Qingqi introduced that in addition to live e-commerce related positions, there are many content-based talents who record short videos, do artists, and anchors, "which is equivalent to employment and entrepreneurship at the doorstep of the home."
The threshold for starting a business is also lowering. In the past, starting a business required a lot of money, and you could only do some traditional industries with large costs, but now as long as you have goods, pick up your mobile phone, you can disk a live broadcast room of your own.
The supply chain exhibition hall of a head anchor of Kuaishou is lined with thousands of bracelets
Outsiders are also coming.
The main manager of the account "Yuyuanren" is from the northeast, born in 92, three generations of the family are doing jade, and in 2019, they began to do live e-commerce on Kuaishou, and the goods in their hometown are not as rich as Zhenping, and they simply moved to Zhenping. Some locals like to speak dialects, he sounds hard, eating is not very adaptable, "this side eats noodles, we eat rice over there", but he still has a long-term development plan here, after coming to Zhenping, he has a better source of goods, with the help of service providers, he knows the flow techniques, and the daily GMV has increased three or four times.
Wang Qingqi introduced that in the past, foreigners came to Zhenping, and when they entered the goods, they went directly, and now they are more willing to take root here, "Xinjiang, Jiangsu, Guangxi, and Anhui have come to many people, and the permanent population of the town has increased by 30,000 or 40,000." ”
According to the "Zhenping China Jade Carving Industry Index Report", in the first half of 2021, the number of Zhenping jade carving e-commerce employees and the number of jade carving e-commerce enterprises increased by 0.94% and 2.21% respectively compared with the fourth quarter of last year. During this period, Zhenping held the Jade Carving Festival, with the help of e-commerce platforms such as Kuaishou, offline transactions were diverted, and the transaction volume during the Jade Carving Festival reached 300 million yuan.
Nevertheless, the report pointed out that the current number of e-commerce employees in Zhenping accounts for 13.37%, while Shandong Tai'an, Liaoning Fuxin, Liaoning Xiuyan, their e-commerce employees account for more than 30%, which shows from the side that there is still a gap in Zhenping's e-commerce talents, and more "small town youth" are needed.
Zhenping local government is also seizing the opportunity of live e-commerce, cultivating and establishing a professional e-commerce operation team, and learning the model of "e-commerce + star + internet celebrity + live broadcast". Wang Qingqi introduced that the local arts and crafts school that teaches jade carving has specially opened a live e-commerce major, which is "very hot and the local area is very supportive."
Local young people, in addition to learning jade carving, have more employment options, and Zhenping also has the vitality that other towns do not have because of the return of young people.
The town in live e-commerce has changed
Live e-commerce has indeed changed Zhenping.
Liang Jingang posted a video of Zhenping Luoying Village and Tianyu Market on his "Zhongyuxuan Culture" account, with stalls on both sides of the road, jade pieces, some on the table, some on the ground, the crowd of people surrounding the road, people holding brackets, walking while shooting, or live broadcasting, or shooting short videos, let people dream back to the situation of the town in the 90s of the last century.
Zhenping Luoying Village And tian yu market source / Kuaishou screenshot
Born and raised here, the older post-70s and 80s have witnessed the longer changes in Zhenping.
Liang Jingang is after 70, 15 years old with the master to learn to paint, carving, in Guangzhou, Beijing to do jade business, he remembered the deep burning, in the 90s of the last century, jade carving is still a high consumer goods, they do jade carving, the earliest to Guangzhou to sell to overseas Chinese, "At that time a town to do this business only five or six people, we can earn hundreds of yuan a trip, then the average monthly salary in some places is only 150 yuan."
Later, the national consumption level increased significantly, jade carving became popular, and more people came to Zhenping to shop for goods.
Wang Qingqi was born in 1983 and has been engaged in the jade carving industry in Zhenping's hometown since 2003. He introduced that at that time, many places began to build antique cities, and such tourist attractions had a large demand for jade, and "the amount of goods that were shopped once was very large." From 2003 to 2014, the size of the Zhenping jade carving market skyrocketed, and the stalls previously placed on the side of the road formed a fixed market. The store is also changing, "the beginning is in a tin shed, slowly formed an indoor market, and then slowly formed a raw material market, more and more subdivided."
At present, there are ten "big sellers" in Zhenping, and people come here to set up stalls or shop for goods, and the categories involve Hetian jade, Xiuyu, Dushan jade and so on.
In 2007, there were people doing e-commerce in Zhenping, but until 2014, the volume of e-commerce was very small. In 2015, the rise of micro-business, the market began to slowly contact the network, "in 2017, the era of live e-commerce began", Wang Qingqi introduced.
Wang Qingqi Company originally did leased properties, and when the live broadcast was budding in 2017, it successively participated in the establishment of live broadcast bases on various platforms. Recently, the Kuaishou New Year Festival event, in order to promote, the live broadcast background of many merchants in the base has been changed to big red, which has a very New Year's atmosphere. He most intuitively felt the changes brought by live e-commerce to Zhenping, merchants moved and left, and personnel turnover, "you can see the counterattack of many people."
Lao Ren is a merchant who takes advantage of the live e-commerce trend, when he first started to do it, in his words, in order to invest, in one or two days, he lost the accumulated 1 million yuan into it, and then the business improved, and in 2018, he spent 520,000 yuan to buy the first car in his life, and on the day of the car, he ran around the second ring road in Urumqi for a whole lap. Once, when he went out on a trip and saw that the local school environment was simple, the children were eating on the ground, and the windows were ventilated in winter, he funded 300,000 yuan to help the school renovate.
In 2019, Liang Jingang also returned to his hometown to start a live e-commerce business, and now the Kuaishou account has 200,000 fans, and is still groping for live streaming with goods. According to his observation, later the physical store business was not good, and many peers returned to Zhenping's hometown to do e-commerce and wholesale, and the wave of live e-commerce came to do live broadcasting.
More and more gold diggers come to Zhenping, which also boosts the development of Zhenping's industry.
Zhenping jade carving industry annual output value of 20 billion yuan, annual sales of 23 billion yuan, an average annual added value of 3 billion yuan, is China's largest jade processing and sales distribution center.
One of the changes that impressed Guan Shuai was that many of the people who came to the market to buy goods before were second-channel dealers, who would straddle a small bag obliquely and take a flashlight around the market to shop for goods. Now, these people take their satchels and sit next to the stalls, holding mobile phone holders to broadcast live while negotiating prices with the stall owners. Mobile phone holders are bestsellers here.
In Zhenping, a vendor's car at the entrance of a jade market, the mobile phone holder became the best-selling commodity
From offline transactions, to e-commerce, to live e-commerce, Zhenping has a new vitality. According to the official introduction, it is expected that by 2024, the number of jade carving processing enterprises in Zhenping County will exceed 20,000, the jade carving market will reach 12, and the number of various marketing enterprises, stores, stalls and e-commerce will increase to 40,000, and the number of employees will reach 400,000. The overall scale of the jade industry will exceed 100 billion yuan.
Can the industrial belt take off?
However, doing live e-commerce in Zhenping is not something that can take off casually. In terms of industrial standardization and the professional training of talents, practitioners, platforms and townspeople have spent a lot of effort.
In addition to the common problems of increasing fans and converting live streams, Liang Jingang told Deep Burning that the price of jade on the Network is expensive, and users are cautious in purchasing. Many people will buy small pieces of jade through live broadcasting, the price is about ten yuan to 100 yuan, some people are willing to buy thousands of dollars, and a precious jade with a price of thirty or forty thousand, only a few knowledgeable people dare to buy.
For non-standard products such as jade, live e-commerce has solved the pain points of consumers' difficulty in selecting goods and viewing goods in time and space, and jade sales based on e-commerce channels such as short videos and live streaming have gradually become the mainstream trend of jewelry and jade transactions. But one of the industry problems it has not solved is that the quality is uneven, easy to shoddy, the price is not transparent, consumers are difficult to distinguish, and the decision threshold is high.
Wang Jian explained that this is because the jewelry and jade industry, from production to circulation is scattered, transaction data and context, difficult to trace.
According to him, at present, when some jade is circulated through the short video platform represented by Kuaishou, the retail end of B to C has realized digitalization, that is, the jade received by consumers can be traced back to the merchant side. However, between the producers and brands of B to B, it is not fully online. That is, middlemen or brand owners, when taking goods from the source manufacturer, it is difficult to judge the quality of the goods obtained, and many of them are judged through experience.
Source / Visual China
Unlike traditional e-commerce merchants who are centered on goods, in the era of live e-commerce, anchor masters are more important roles, they have traffic, there are fans, but non-standard products such as jade, it is difficult to have professional identification capabilities, which requires professional intervention.
In order to solve this problem, Wang Jian mentioned that the Belt and Road New Economy Research Institute of Xi'an Jiaotong University, the National Hetian Jade Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, and the National Jade Gold and Silver Jewelry Quality Supervision and Inspection Center have created a pre-position digital trading warehouse, trying to standardize, digitize, and financial empowerment of the industry.
Roughly can be understood as, with reference to the diamond industry, from the color, clarity, cut, the diamond is divided into many parameters, in the jade industry, but also to grade the jade, do through the professional physical identification, grading, for the jade to give a digital certificate (similar to the digital ID card), while establishing a smart warehouse, set quality inspection, traceability, warehousing and hosting as one, the goods that people come here to take, are through the official identification of goods.
In June 2020, in Zhenping County, Nanyang City, the "Jushi Intelligent Warehouse Digital Supply Chain" collection platform began construction, was completed in March 2021, and has been operating for more than half a year now, "the model has been run through", Wang Jian introduced. "Now there are 120,000 smart warehouses and Tian Yu bracelets", Wang Jian introduced, which is similar to organizing and standardizing the supply chain, and then recommending goods to various live broadcast bases, institutions and anchors, he mentioned that now Kuaishou's first-line live broadcast agencies, such as Kamela, are here to take goods.
The standardization and digitization of the jade industry can help the development of the Zhenping industry. To use digitalization to improve an industry, it is not a sporadic problem to be solved, an industry insider mentioned that digital trading warehouses still have a long way to go and need patience.
In addition, in terms of talents, Wang Qingqi introduced that live e-commerce as an emerging industry, the development of fast, many Practitioners in Zhenping have not received training, "when you come to work, you do not come to work with technology, you need to learn while going to work." "Talent also needs to be cultivated and developed. From the northeast to Zhenping, the porter mentioned that some practitioners can meet some mechanical tasks, and more professional and high-level talents need to be patiently cultivated.
At present, Zhenping has taken off steadily in the outlet of live e-commerce.
Brother Porter returns to his hometown every New Year,and this year's plan is to spend time in Zhenping. Guan Shuai said that he liked his life now. In the assembly line factory, the stools and chairs are all fixed, everything requires the whole, unification, standard, the workers around them, today they still talk and laugh, tomorrow they will be promoted and begin to have an official style. Now in the live broadcast room to learn, everyone here is very motivated, do not care about the rank, encounter things to take the initiative to solve, unlike the face on the assembly line without expression, he likes the vitality here.
After the Busy New Year Goods Festival, in a few days, on the twentieth day of the Waxing Moon, guan Shuai's family will start to buy pork and prepare new year goods. The roadsides and markets are covered with red lanterns and streamers, and everything is getting better.
*The caption image is from Visual China.