This article is from the WeChat public account: call me Jasmine classmate (ID: hirollingmolly), author: call me Jasmine classmate, the original title: "classical micro-business, cyber evolution", the head picture from: Visual China
Darwin once proposed in the theory of evolution: natural selection, survival of the fittest.
Beyond the biological world we are familiar with, the world of science and technology is constantly giving birth to new life forms.
One
How do you usually buy fruit?
In recent months, I have found that there are many fruit group buying WeChat groups around me, many of which are direct sales in orchards in the hometowns of acquaintances. These communities specialize in selling seasonal fruits, delivered directly from the place of origin to the doorstep, and after counting the freight, the overall price is more cost-effective than in chain supermarkets and fresh takeaways.
The community publishes fruit information every day, and some will send a red envelope in passing. Group friends see the right, can directly place an order, the repurchase rate is very high.
This type of fruit sales model is not new, and it emerged around 2015, also known as "micro-business", selling products through social networks, once linked to the myth of overnight wealth creation.
However, after so many years, there was a new round of activity, and I was a little puzzled, so I began to do my homework.
The reason why traditional micro-businesses are misunderstood by some people is because the product quality is uneven, the second is that the circle of friends social advertising is disturbing, and the third is that it has a unclear relationship with pyramid schemes in the early barbaric growth.
In the following years, micro-business was packaged several rounds in the Context of the Internet. From the earlier boiling micro-e-commerce, social e-commerce, to the popular KOC (key opinion consumers) and private domain traffic concepts in the past two years, in fact, the core and micro-business are inextricably linked.
Two years ago, the national development and reform commission issued a document clearly pointed out that "support micro-business e-commerce, online live broadcasting and other diversified self-employment, time-sharing employment", marking the formal "regularization" of these practitioners.
With the deepening of my homework, I found that although the Internet giants have already penetrated the agricultural products trade and built a commercial artery for agricultural products, the small and micro entrepreneurs who sprouted in the townships are like dense capillaries, still active in the last few kilometers of the tentacles of the big factory, through the WeChat Internet, the fresh agricultural products are delivered to thousands of households.
With curiosity, I recently visited two county Internet entrepreneurs engaged in agricultural product e-commerce, and began to realize that in the business world that often emphasizes capital, traffic, playing style, and ROI, this "micro-business" is no longer the "micro-business".
In small places where information and resources are relatively scarce, classical "micro-businesses" are evolving, rewriting the fate of civilian entrepreneurs.
Two
On the first stop, I went to visit Jacko. He is a self-made post-85 entrepreneur, the first wave of mobile phones to sell fruits in Binyang County, Nanning, Guangxi, and the earliest local entrepreneur to operate online e-commerce, self-taught and trained a group of e-commerce trainees, scattered in various places.
Stepping on the wave of micro-business and e-commerce prosperity, jiepai fruit online store operated by jie ge has exceeded 5 million yuan in online sales in 2018, covering more than 20 kinds of agricultural products such as passion fruit and perfume lemon, and the customers are mostly milk tea shops, beverage stores and other types, mainly taking the B2B model.
(The picture is provided by the interviewee)
In the past two years of the epidemic, business has not been easy to do, and the traffic of online stores has become more and more expensive and more tense. However, the micro-business channel has been contributing a stable order scale to Jiepai Fruit Shop.
I'm surprised, micro-business?
Jacko said, yes, don't underestimate micro-business, it has a low cost of starting a business, the investment is controllable, and it has really changed the fate of a generation of grassroots entrepreneurs. Very sincere in conversation.
I expressed confusion, your circle of friends does not brush the screen, then how to do the micro-business business?
Jie Ge began to do micro-business, stemming from a Shenzhen netizen who wanted to try local fruits in 2014. So he sent it to a friend, and later the feedback was good, and the netizen also recommended some friends to buy.
He pondered that many agricultural products in his hometown lacked sales channels, and social networks could connect many people, and this thing could be done. So he quickly became active in various types of communities on WeChat and QQ, made friends with netizens from all over the world, and sold fruits by the way. Later, he often participated in the country's largest agricultural micro-business activity "Farmers' Friends Association" and expanded micro-business agents in a wider range.
The earliest sale of fruit, and there is no third-party platform to guarantee the transaction, are first shipped, later payment. Because the quality of the fruit is passed, more and more customers are re-purchasing. Cooperation up to now, only one customer owes money, other collections are very smooth, many are perennial cooperation partners.
However, fruit e-commerce is different from other food businesses, and it is easy to cause losses in transportation and weather changes, so the quality of after-sales service is very easy to affect the establishment and maintenance of trust.
Before opening a fruit online store, Jacko had no relevant experience at all. One summer, a large number of fruits were improperly packaged and were badly depleted during the shipment to Yunnan, but he insisted on unconditionally re-shipping to the customer, who later became his long-term partner.
In this way, through quality and word of mouth gradually accumulated trust in the market, Jie Ge accumulated the first bucket of gold for entrepreneurship. Soon, he smelled the opportunity of agricultural product e-commerce and began to shift his focus to online stores, and a considerable proportion of customers were connected to WeChat through online stores for long-term cooperation.
Many micro-businesses are unsustainable, and another reason is that they only do simple intermediary business. When the Internet flattens the information gap and the sales chain is more efficient or shorter, it is difficult to compete with platform e-commerce, short video e-commerce and other channels.
The concentration of agricultural planting in the south is very low, most of them are small fields, and it is easy to follow the trend of planting, and most of them do not have stable sales channels before planting. Many farmers work hard all year round and do not necessarily guarantee a harvest.
Before doing e-commerce sales of agricultural products, Jie Ge once invested in planting passion fruit orchards, and later tons of fruit could not be sold and burned in situ. He deeply understood this pain.
During the exchange, I found that Jie Ge has been consciously collecting market supply information, sending it to farmers in reverse, focusing on subdivided fruit categories with local mass production planting capabilities and characteristics, and there is still a supply gap in the market, such as perfume lemons that are more suitable for the needs of beverage stores, red heart dragon fruit that follows the Taiwanese planting method, and so on. He will also give farmers a purchase price slightly higher than the market level, which naturally deepens the sales confidence and depth of cooperation on the supply side.
Talking about this, micro-business has made me refreshed, and the communication of the second station has opened up my new perspective.
Three
At this station, I visited a post-90s entrepreneur.
She began to do micro-business with friends around 2014, and initially as a side business, with a monthly income of about 3,000 to 4,000 yuan, and now the "micro" age has been nearly 8 years.
In 2020, Xiong Xiong and her husband began to start a husband and wife loan business, founded Bangyi Agriculture, operated their own orchards and fruit agent sales, focusing on high-end fruits such as Thai ruby grapefruit and Shakya fruit, as well as home-style categories such as wo citrus and red heart dragon fruit.
In more than 1 year of entrepreneurship, it has developed from a team of 2 people to a team of 5 people, of which more than 80% of the sales revenue comes from micro-business agency channels, and the rest comes from short videos and live broadcasts. Locals told me they are now one of the largest fruit agents in the region.
I asked Xiong Xiong, the milk tea shop is so good, why do you want to do agricultural products to start a business?
She laughed and said that it was all forced by life and needed to support the family. At that time, it was just concerned that thai ruby grapefruit was a promising high-end fruit variety, which had not been introduced into the country for a long time and the domestic market penetration was very low. So, they found all the grapefruits they could buy on the market, tried them one by one, and found that the ruby grapefruit did taste better than similar.
During the conversation, she took out her mobile phone calculator and quickly calculated to me the conservative return on investment for the first three years, and when I looked at the numbers, it was indeed worth letting go of in the county.
I said why didn't you go to the Tmall store? Now short videos and live streams are also very popular.
Xiong Xiong thought for a while and said that these two years are not the best time to enter e-commerce, especially small and micro entrepreneurs like them, and the cost performance of fighting for traffic and resources is not high.
In fact, in the first year of entrepreneurship, she spent a lot of time doing short videos and live broadcasts, but the conversion rate was not as high as the micro-business agent network accumulated in the past, and if she bought traffic, it was too expensive. Coupled with the fact that the business is running, it is really difficult to take care of it.
Later, they also tried to recruit, but it was difficult to find suitable candidates in the county, and several people did not arrive for a week and gave up. Micro-business is the resource she has been accumulating, and it has naturally become the main channel of sales.
I then asked, how to sell through micro-business?
Bear bear slowly and logically said that micro-business should establish a mentality of sharing good things, and also do a good job in after-sales service, otherwise it will consume your social relationships.
The micro-business agents we recruit will do sales training specifically. For example, if a customer comes to ask you how to sell dragon fruit, you can't just send a price list. I would recommend asking customers what they need, whether they want to eat themselves or give gifts.
If you eat it yourself, it is recommended to pack it normally, and the quality is better and the price is more affordable, and it will not be forced to recommend the gift box, although the latter is more profitable. We still want to do business for a longer time.
There are actually many types of micro-business, including personal agents, teams, landing matching and so on. Personal agents are common mothers, full-time wives will do side business with goods. The team should be more mature, you are equivalent to recruiting a micro-business outsourcing team, the difference is that according to the performance of the members, the gradient assessment and commission. Many of them are agents of community station managers or neighborhood committees who enthusiastically organize group buying, specifically for the group buying needs in urban communities.
I am still a little confused, how can the fruit brands in the county compete for too much platform?
Xiong Xiong said that many of the fruits circulating in the city are first-class fruits, that is, they sell well, have good quality, and then transport and sell after waxing, involving a lot of sales links, and the price should also cover the cost of venue, population, transportation and so on.
Most of the platforms and merchants that operate group or community group buying are directly connected with the agricultural base, and in order to even out the profit space, they usually choose secondary fruits or other fruits, which sell poorly but do not affect the quality. Some farmers will also complain that some platforms push prices too low, which is more affordable for consumers, but is not an ideal solution for growers.
Every time we choose a fruit category, we will go to different planting sites nearby, personally compare the taste and planting stability, and then decide to cooperate. Now everyone also attaches great importance to the original ecological health food, just like the current very hot "adopt a cow", we are close to the "adopt a tree" model, are picked and sold now, not waxed, nine pounds of dragon fruit 49 pieces of free shipping, farmers have earned, for customers also can be drawn.
Four
Not only fruit sales, some drivers in third- and fourth-tier cities will encourage customers to join WeChat groups, publish carpool information, and place orders directly in private domain traffic. Sometimes, the efficiency of didi taxi is not even as efficient as the local vertical WeChat group, and the price is affordable.
As a result, an interesting phenomenon has formed in the market: even if large platforms have the advantage of scale, it is difficult to fully balance the distribution of benefits of multiple parties, which gives small and micro individuals the opportunity to survive. In the game with the big platform, they are anti-customer-oriented, not only make good use of the display window of the platform, or bypass the platform, aim at subdivided categories, establish closer ties with the upstream and downstream of the industry, and also give full play to the advantages of micro-commercial channels and compete with giants.
Seemingly "inconspicuous" productive forces, in the actual market, instead use the most simple and stable way, in the scale and advanced to get a piece of the pie.
However, it is indeed much more difficult to do agricultural e-commerce entrepreneurship in the county than in the city. During the conversation, they all told me about a small matter, the rapid transportation fee in the county is 2 to 3 times that of the urban area, which directly affects the gross profit space.
Entrepreneurship in the county is not like the urban counterparts, can be backed by more convenient infrastructure, larger to more smooth information circulation network, rich large warehouses, higher matching personnel recruitment, small to suitable size of the carton order, etc., more or less there is resistance. However, considering the family and many factors, they eventually chose to stay in the local area.
In the past, micro-business may have to send a circle of friends, and now it is more necessary to grow up as a super individual with a sense of business smell and sales strategy, do self-sufficient small business, and even "counterattack" life through struggle.
Classical micro-quotient, cyber evolution. In the market competition, self-organization, self-management, self-repair, self-purification, growth into a new life.
After the visit, Jie Ge sighed that in fact, agriculture is not a profiteering industry, there are very few practitioners in the hometown, and all aspects are relatively backward, but because they have a certain feeling, they have been insisting for so many years, growing in exploration and practice, and hope that more people can join this industry in the future.
This article is from the WeChat public account: call me Jasmine Classmate (ID: hirollingmolly), author: Call me Jasmine Classmate
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