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Ali Village Commissioner used the Internet to justify the name of "the land of red dates"

author:Southern Metropolis Daily

Letting Qingjian red dates out of the mountains through the Internet is something that Ali Village Commissioner Liang Yu and local villagers are working.

Located in Qingjian County, northern Shaanxi, at the confluence of the Yellow River and the Wuding River, the local soil is loose, rich in red dates, is the famous "hometown of red dates", China's national geographical indication products. As a traditional pillar industry, the 900,000 mu of red jujube forest carries the dream of 230,000 Qingjian people to become rich. However, over the years, due to the influence of climate, weak market, short industrial chain, low technology content and other factors, red jujube harvests have failed year after year, date farmers have lost confidence, the phenomenon of abandonment of jujube forests has become more and more serious, and the red jujube industry has entered a "bottleneck" of development.

Ali Village Commissioner used the Internet to justify the name of "the land of red dates"

[Caption: Ali Village Commissioner Liang Yu (middle) collects dates with fellow villagers]

Liang Yu is a rural revitalization commissioner sent by Ali Public Welfare to Qingjian County, Shaanxi Province, where he discovered a red jujube product "Amethyst Jujube", and worked with fellow villagers to transform the product flavor, packaging, and operation mode through the Internet, so that Qingjian red dates were sold out in a recent Baba farm activity, exceeding 200,000 orders in a single month, and directly emptied the inventory. What makes Liang Yu even more gratified is that the local self-operated store is still maintaining the daily sales of 300 orders, allowing Qingjian red dates to continue to walk out of the mountain.

The plight of date farmers

In 2021, Alibaba released the "Hot Land Plan" for rural revitalization, and Liang Yu was stationed in Qingjian as Alibaba's rural revitalization commissioner. Because his previous black pig raised by the blockchain step counting "cloud raised" was very popular in the market, the name of "black pig network administrator" made him a hit in the local area, and many industries wanted him to help with digital upgrades.

Qingjian is famous as the "land of red dates", but red dates have always been a problem for local villagers. Red dates love light and are sensitive to climate change. In the past decade, due to the lack of refined local management, every September and October, when jujube turns from green to red, heavy rains have always caused date farmers to fall into the dilemma of poor harvest, and their enthusiasm is very low.

Ali Village Commissioner used the Internet to justify the name of "the land of red dates"

[Caption: Qingjian villagers collect red dates]

At the same time, in Liang Yu's view, low brand awareness is also a dilemma faced by Qingjian red dates. He found that on major e-commerce platforms, Xinjiang jujube occupies most of the red date market, and the thick skin and "not rotten" Qingjian jujube are not recognized by consumers, and can only be used as raw materials for boiling hot pot and eight-treasure porridge.

Through research, Liang Yu accidentally found some fellow villagers with bags of "amethyst dates" on the table. This date after boiling, baking and dehydration in two rounds is translucent and like purple crystal. But due to the lack of internet marketing awareness among locals, it is difficult to get out of the mountains. But this also made Liang Yu see a business opportunity.

Ali Village Commissioner used the Internet to justify the name of "the land of red dates"

[Caption: Qingjian villagers drying red dates]

China has always been one of the world's largest snack markets, according to the statistics of international consulting agency Frost & Sullivan, the snack industry market size in 2020 is close to 774.9 billion yuan, and it is expected to exceed 1,101.4 billion yuan in 2025. In this trillion-scale track, although preserved fruit candied fruit only accounts for about 3%, the scale effect makes this market full of business opportunities.

An idea to turn local homegrown "amethyst dates" into an Internet celebrity snack emerged in Liang Yu's mind.

Create influencer snacks

Liang Yu found the founder of purple gold jujube, Bai Ruxiang, who is over eighty years old, and asked him to teach him the process of making jujubes. In 1982, Bai Ruxiang, born in Hejiaban Village, Qingjian County, founded the Red Date Trading Store, which is the first date processing enterprise in the county, after ten years of ups and downs.

After getting the support of the founder of Amethyst Jujube, the systematic transformation of the product is very crucial in order to push the local traditional food to the Internet platform.

In terms of classification, amethyst dates belong to the snack category, and the customer group is mostly a young Internet group, Liang Yu specially invited Ali public welfare designers to design packaging for dates. The five huge characters of orange and white dolls and "Qingjian amethyst dates" are firmly printed on the packaging, changing the rustic atmosphere of the traditional packaging of Qingjian jujube, which is more in line with the aesthetics of young people now.

Ali Village Commissioner used the Internet to justify the name of "the land of red dates"

[Picture: Amethyst dates replaced with new packaging]

In addition, because the water content of amethyst jujube is an important factor affecting the taste, in order to find the most delicious amethyst date, Liang Yu and fellow villagers did a lot of offline tests, found tasters in various regions to taste, plus analyzed the sales data of Taobao and Tmall platforms... They finally decided to limit the moisture per 100 grams of amethyst dates to 20 grams for the best taste.

As a result, the Qingjian Amethyst Date ushered in its highlight moment.

Under the coordination and cooperation of Liang Yu and the Baba Farm team, the purple and transparent dates landed on the Baba Farm game interactive platform, and through the interactive method of "planting jujube trees and receiving fruits", many netizens came into contact with purple dates for the first time. In the following months, Amethyst Jujube successively created a sales performance of 200,000 orders per month, which not only emptied the stock of red dates in Qingjian, but also drove the sales of red dates in the surrounding areas, greatly improving the enthusiasm of date farmers.

What makes Liang Yu even more gratifying is that the local online sales channel has the ability to operate on its own. Due to the problem of salary and development, there is often a dilemma of "not enough people, not retained, and unable to recruit" in rural areas, so a complete set of industrial revitalization measures is needed to reclaim the lost young people in the local area. Therefore, Liang Yu can only cultivate local e-commerce talents through the red date industry.

Today, even if there is no activity, Qingjian's Taobao and Tmall stores still have the self-operation capacity to sell 300 orders a day. Qingjian e-commerce operator Huigang is deeply touched by this, in the months of promoting Qingjian Amethyst Jujube, "I think the rural commissioner conveyed to us a concept, e-commerce is not just a simple sale of goods, but a mature system, it requires the improvement of supply chain, logistics, management system, and the cooperation of various channels." ”

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