Zhao Yayun, a post-90s crab inspector who grew up on the shore of Goseong Lake, has tens of millions of hairy crabs in the past thirteen years, and initially can only rely on eating one by one to accumulate experience, and now, take a look and grab to judge the male and female, weight and quality, and the weight error can be controlled within 0.1 two.
As the "gatekeeper" of the e-commerce team, since September, Zhao Yayun has had to hand check nearly 30,000 hairy crabs every day, and one or two seconds after the peak period to ensure that the real good crabs are sent. At this time of the year, he was busy until he slept only two hours a day, and he had to lose at least ten pounds.
What exactly is a good hairy crab? The answer given by Zhao Yayun is that in addition to the green shell white belly golden yellow claws, the overall look like buns, crab yellow is hard enough; and the answer given by the e-commerce platform is more practical: in order to solve the pain points such as shoddy charging, lack of two pounds, false publicity, etc., on September 13, Pinduoduo and the Jiangsu Freshwater Fisheries Research Institute officially released the "River Crab Commodity Grading Standard" in the Yangtze River Delta, and determined a new type of commodity standard for the detection method, quality assessment method, packaging, transportation and storage of hairy crab.
The hairy crab of Goseong Lake is condensed into 8 characters: green back, white belly, yellow hair, and golden claw. Photo by Azzur
"Crab II" turned to e-commerce
Due to the limited production of hairy crabs in Yangcheng Lake, the e-commerce platform has begun to cultivate lake brands such as Hongze Lake, Taihu Lake and Gucheng Lake in recent years, focusing on promoting high-quality hairy crabs in different production areas. The post-90s "new farmers" who saw the opportunity returned to their hometown to start a business, hoping to sell hairy crabs in another way.
The waters of Goseong Lake are hundreds of miles around, and the hairy crabs produced here have the reputation of "the crown of crabs". Photo by Anshun
After learning that the loss of the family's 18 acres of crab pond in 2019 was as high as more than 100,000 yuan, Chen Yun decided to return to his hometown to sell hairy crabs. The father who has raised crabs for more than ten years feels that interlacing is like a mountain, and Chen Yun plans to raise crabs for a year to find out the doorway, and then form an e-commerce team.
"It's not that the family crabs are not well raised, but they don't know how to sell crabs for a good price, and the sales channel is single." Chen Yun, who had done sales, quickly found the problem. She said that villagers around Goseong Lake began to raise hairy crabs in the 1990s, and their parents sold hairy crabs to middlemen at low prices, falling into the dilemma of increasing income and not increasing profits.
Born in 1990, the second generation of "new crab farmers" Chen Yun. Photo by Azzur
An Zhongda, a "new crab farmer" who mainly attacks the Hongze Lake area, is also deeply touched. Anzhongda, who opened a store in Pinduoduo last year, found that crab farmers had previously supplied middlemen, and it was up to the market of the day to earn more and earn less. It wasn't until direct cooperation with online merchants that crab farmers began to make a profit.
Chen Yun also began to open a shop in Pinduoduo last year, selling hairy crabs from Goseong Lake. It is understood that last year, Pinduoduo, together with Gucheng Lake, Hongze Lake, Changdang Lake, Gaoyou Lake, DazhongHu, Nanyi Lake, Wuhu, Xinghua and other high-quality hairy crab production areas in the Yangtze River Delta, initiated the establishment of the "Yangtze River Delta Hairy Crab Cloud Spelling Premium Alliance", Chen Yun and Anzhongda's store has also become one of the merchants of Pinduoduo's "Yangtze River Delta New Crab Farmer Plan".
Hairy crabs bring Wang new professions
Whether the crab is alive or not, whether the crab has yellow and meat is the most concerned issue for consumers to buy hairy crabs online. In recent years, in order to reduce the rate of complaints and returns, merchants have deliberately sought out or trained excellent hairy crab inspectors. This is also another high-paying occupation in the hairy crab industry after the crab tie division with tens of thousands of monthly incomes.
Zhao Yayun is a crab inspector on Chen Yun's team. Recalling the encounter of buying hairy crabs to entertain friends more than ten years ago, Zhao Yayun still remembers deeply, "I asked the boss to pick some good crabs, but when I returned home, I found it difficult to eat, so I began to study hairy crabs." "Initially, you can only accumulate experience by eating. After a long time, he summed up the criteria of "good crab" for hairy crabs in Goseong Lake, namely blue back, white belly, yellow hair, and golden claw. Among them, "yellow hair" refers to the yellow color of the crab's leg hair.
Zhao Yayun is a "crab inspector" with 13 years of experience.
There are more crabs in his hand, and Zhao Yayun has practiced the ability to distinguish male and female, weight and quality at a glance and scratch, and the error is controlled within 0.1 two. Another skill is to smell and distinguish crabs. He mentioned that mature crabs have a unique smell, and you can know if they are ripe or not.
Every September, during the peak season for hairy crab sales, he handles nearly 30,000 hairy crabs a day. The crab inspector is highly focused, passing a crab in one or two seconds, and requires a high accuracy rate. Zhao Yayun remembers that when he was busiest, he only slept two hours a day. At this time of year, at least ten pounds should be lost. It is understood that during the peak period, Zhao Yayun's monthly income was as high as more than 30,000 yuan.
At present, every crab sent by the crab farmer, Zhao Yayun will divide the male and female, weigh the weight, judge the quality of the hairy crab in a short period of time, and put it in the corresponding crab pool. Some hairy crabs with yellowing shells due to lack of oxygen need to be taken back to spit water to avoid insufficient vitality affecting quality.
New ideas for crab farmers
With the development of cold chain logistics, the online penetration rate has increased year by year, and hairy crabs have long become a holiday traffic single product like mooncakes. At the same time of fierce competition, the hairy crab industry has shoddy, crab rope water injection, false publicity, "paper crab" and other chaos, consumers buy crabs not only have to carefully distinguish, after receiving the goods but also with the merchants to fight wits and courage.
In the view of the "new crab farmers", selling good crabs can have a big harvest. Chen Yun took the high-quality route of "full weight and two feet" at the beginning and created his own brand "Crab Little Joe". In addition to the special crab inspectors, this year also built a new warehouse of more than 1,000 square meters, and the core team was expanded to 40 people.
According to Chen Yun, this year's hairy crab season, "Crab Little Joe" can supply 1.2 million kilograms of hairy crabs. At present, she has cooperated with hairy crab head merchants on Pinduoduo platforms such as Weiku Seafood for the mid-to-high-end consumer market. "It is necessary to sell good crabs of good quality and cost-effective sources to the whole country, so that the hairy crabs of Goseong Lake will be well known to the people of the whole country." Chen Yun revealed that last year, through e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, the sales of "Crab Little Joe" Hairy Crab in Goseong Lake reached nearly 20 million yuan.
Anzhongda identified the "repeat customer" from the beginning. In an interview with Nandu reporter, he said that only good product users will buy back. The store promises to be full of yellow meat, and after receiving the goods, it can be returned if it is found to be different. The profit may not be too high, but the store's word-of-mouth sales have exceeded 100,000.
On the other hand, Anzhongda closely follows the promotion rhythm of e-commerce platforms. "Pinduoduo officially has an event, we will participate, a spike event order volume doubled by 3-4 times." He told the Nandu reporter that Pinduoduo starts quickly and is easy to explode. Coupled with tens of billions of subsidies, compared with other platforms, the price has a greater advantage.
However, he also mentioned that the hairy crabs in the store are priced according to weight and specifications, and there is no uniform standard in the entire industry. "We are new crab farmers after the 80s and 90s, when we do this line, we want to develop this industry, and we will use our own experience to set standards for our stores." I also want to have industry standards to refer to, so that consumers and merchants can refer to them. ”
River crab grading standards are out
Setting standards for fresh produce is not an easy task. "Hairy crab grading is inherently complex. Its specifications are many, and the quality differences are also very large, so it is made into a standard to divide in detail, and there is a certain complexity. Ge Jiachun, director of the Germplasm and Breeding Room of the Freshwater fisheries research institute in Jiangsu Province, told Nandu reporters that the formulation of such standards requires cooperation between industry and research institutions, and the standards formulated are both scientific and operable.
He also mentioned that there are three significant pain points in the river crab industry: first, there is no unified specification standard for the sale of river crab goods, and online sales have a phenomenon of large and small, which harms the interests of consumers and is easy to cause disputes; second, there is no relatively unified standard for the inherent quality of river crab goods, sales cannot be priced according to grades, and vicious competition is easy to occur, and some sellers sell inferior goods, which is not conducive to the benign development of online consumption; third, some high-quality products cannot achieve high quality and good prices on the Internet because there is no corresponding grade standard, and the online sales volume is small. Can not give full play to the advantages of network sales.
"In addition to weight, hairy crabs have many indicators related to the quality of crabs, and some consumers who often eat crabs may pay attention to whether there are broken limbs and broken arms, how much crab yellow content, muscle fullness, whether there is crab oil and other issues." From the perspective of industry practice, there should be a more general underlying standard to do the corresponding overall framework specifications, which will help consumers find good crabs, recognize good crabs, and taste good crabs. The relevant person in charge of Pinduoduo said.
On September 13, Jiangsu Freshwater Fisheries Research Institute and Pinduoduo officially released the "River Crab Commodity Grading Standard" in the Yangtze River Delta. On the basis of the existing general rules in the market, the weight of the river crab, the cleanliness of the appearance, the completeness of the claws and the foot, the color, fullness of the liver and pancreas and gonads, the fullness of the muscles, the smell, etc., the relevant identification standards have been confirmed, and the Yangtze River Delta river crab can be divided into four simple and clear quality levels of special, first, second and third levels.
In addition, the detection methods, quality assessment methods, packaging, transportation and storage of hairy crabs have also clarified the new commodity standards. For the above standards, Anzhongda told the Nandu reporter that next, he hopes that the platform will implement the standards. "It is not easy for us as a small business, we abide by the rules of the platform, and we also hope that the platform will implement the implementation of the rules."
The relevant person in charge of Pinduoduo said that the establishment of a unified standard is conducive to achieving excellent nutrition and excellent production and sales of hairy crabs, driving crab farmers to improve market competitiveness from the source, and providing consumers with consistent good crabs. Next, Pinduoduo will strictly implement the relevant industrial standards for hairy crabs in the Yangtze River Delta on the platform, starting from various production areas in Jiangsu and promoting them to more regions.
Written by: Nandu reporter Huang Pei