Linyi County, Yuncheng City, Shanxi Province is a famous fruit county. Driving on the main road of Linyi County, you can see the signboard with such big characters as "Build Yuncheng Emei Fruit Museum and Build a Fruit Distribution Center in Northern China", and the lintel reads "Advantageous Area of Chinese Characteristic Agricultural Products".
At the edge of the main county seat of Linyi, cold storage is distributed on both sides of the road, and large trucks are parked at the door to pack boxes, pulling the fruits stored in various cold storage and warehouses to be sent to various places. Wei Rongping, president of the Linyi County E-commerce Chamber of Commerce, introduced that Linyi County has 1.1 million acres of forest and fruit area, with a fruit output of more than 7 billion catties, 520 cold storages, and a fruit storage capacity of 2.5 billion catties. There are 158 fruit varieties in Linyi, with apples being the most abundant. The fruit express delivery volume of Linyi County accounts for 1/3 of Yuncheng City and 1/10 of Shanxi Province.
24-year-old Dong Chenxu after several years of hard work in the fruit e-commerce industry, closed all stores on other platforms, and only opened a store in Pinduoduo, he wants to focus on this platform, strive to be the best, sell all the good local fruits to the whole country, and create a fruit brand belonging to Linyi.
Dong Chenxu Photo provided by the interviewee
Last year, Dong Chenxu sold more than 20 million kilograms of persimmons in Pinduoduo, and helped the locals sell all the unsalable crisp persimmons, solving the heart disease of local farmers. This year, he participated in Pinduoduo's agricultural cloud action, stockpiling the best apples early when the frost fell, and now the daily shipment volume is stable at tens of thousands, and can reach 34,000 orders at many times. Shipments need to be packed, and he has created more income opportunities for farmers in those villages.
The "Agricultural Cloud Action" was officially launched in February this year. As the country's largest uplink platform for agricultural products, Pinduoduo has invested superior resources to help producing areas solve the three major difficulties of talent, quality control and branding, and promote 100 agricultural production areas across the country to "join the cloud" faster and create a more resilient and competitive digital agricultural belt.
The 24-year-old guy focuses on fruit e-commerce on the Pinduoduo platform
Linyi County, Yuncheng City, Shanxi Province, has an innate advantage in fruits, especially growing apples. Linyi County is located at 35 degrees north latitude on the golden belt of apple planting, the county Emei Mountains traverse the whole territory, the Lianshui River flows through the east and west, and the Yellow River irrigates the whole county. The county has a mild climate, fertile soil and abundant sunlight, and although Linyi's apples are nicknamed "ugly apples", they are sweet and delicious, and they are full of juice.
Dong Chenxu started his business by watching his parents do fruit. At that time, there was no e-commerce, and parents needed to go offline to find sources of goods and find buyers. As soon as the frost had fallen, my parents would pack the apples they had collected in trucks and wholesale them to retailers, fruit shop owners or supermarkets.
Dong Chenxu followed his parents to Tianshui, Gansu Province to harvest apples, stayed in the mountains for three months, and ate slurry water almost every day. In 2019, he went to Beijing to work as an e-commerce company, and half a year later returned to his hometown and started a fruit business like his parents. He was 20 years old.
At the beginning, Dong Chenxu only shouted in the WeChat circle of friends and did "micro-business". When the market is good, he can ship three or four hundred boxes a day, and in the same cold storage, he sees that someone can deliver ten times more than him in a day, and finds that others are doing the supply chain. He transformed into a supply chain and supplied major merchants, and was able to ship seven or eight thousand boxes a day.
Dong Chenxu is willing to do it. I got up at 4 o'clock in the morning to go to the market to collect fruits, and after receiving the goods, I began to make orders, adjust cartons, contact couriers, and load cars, all of which were done by one person, and sometimes only slept for about 4 hours a day.
Because of this, Dong Chenxu's reputation began to resound in Linyi County, "a little doll, loaded with several cars every day".
However, the supply chain is subject to merchants, and the less the order, the less the shipment. In 2020, Dong Chenxu began to open his own online store and be the boss. After a period of exploration and comparison, he found that Pinduoduo stores are the platform with the largest flow and shipment volume of agricultural and sideline products. Starting from 2022, Dong Chenxu began to gradually shift the focus of energy and management to Pinduoduo.
At that time, he had about 13,000 orders a day in Pinduoduo, and there would be 30,000 or 40,000 orders at most, and at most they participated in the platform's traffic activities, reaching a peak of 60,000 orders a day.
The truck is waiting to be filled in the cold storage of Linyi County, photo by Liu Hao
In October last year, Song Yiyuan asked Dong Chenxu for help. Song Yiyuan is a supplier in Jiaobei Town, Linyi County, which is responsible for purchasing crisp persimmons. According to the rough statistics of Song Yiyuan, 90% of the more than 100,000 acres of land in Jiaobei Town are planted with crisp persimmons.
Crisp persimmons ripen in October, but for various reasons, a large number of farmers in the whole township are unsalable. Crisp persimmons are different from apples, they cannot be stored in cold storage, and they can be stored for up to 10 to 15 days after picking. "I forgot how much production there was, but I remember that at that time, everyone was worried about what to do with their persimmons, and they came to ask me every day. Song Yiyuan said.
He finally found Dong Chenxu and sold these unsalable crisp persimmons through the Pinduoduo platform. "Last year, Xiao Dong collected the farmers' crisp persimmons at a price of 7.8 cents per catty, although it was lower than in previous years, it was already very good for farmers to be able to sell. Song Yiyuan said that every day last year, Dong Chenxu contacted the logistics and express delivery company, and sent out the crisp persimmons after being busy.
The "Agricultural Cloud Action" helps local farmers increase their income
Dong Chenxu's average annual sales volume in Pinduoduo is about 20 million kilograms. Just when Dong Chenxu focused his main energy on the platform of Pinduoduo, he encountered the important opportunity of "Agricultural Cloud Action".
Starting in February 2023, Pinduoduo officially launched the "Agricultural Cloud Action", a characteristic agricultural assistance project. The Agricultural Cloud Action is a long-term action of Pinduoduo to help the upward movement of agricultural products, including five important measures:
Maintain "zero commission" to benefit farmers and consumers;
Concentrate on investing advantageous resources, focusing on helping 100 agricultural belts to build "new digital supply";
Batch docking of local high-quality supply chains "on the cloud", holding special investment training, small-scale targeted counseling for outstanding new farmers, and nurturing 1,000 successful models;
Docking special agricultural goods flow systems such as warehousing and cold chain for agricultural belt businesses;
Through the continuous centralized exposure of the platform, it helps to build 100 regional and national brands of agricultural specialties.
Taking the second quarter of this year as an example, the number of agriculture-related businesses subsidized by Pinduoduo increased by 60% year-on-year, and the sales of agricultural products increased by 80% year-on-year.
These ideas coincide with the ideas of Wei Rongping, president of the Linyi County E-commerce Chamber of Commerce. In 2023, Linyi County will start to build its own brand "Yidun Agricultural Products", and let Dong Chenxu manage the store, "He is young, understands the Internet, and is down-to-earth and hardworking." In order to familiarize local farmers with the Internet as soon as possible, Wei Rongping will also give lectures to farmers. "A lot of them are elderly, but they also play with their mobile phones, and even if they don't know how to open a store on the platform, they can at least know what's going on on the Internet now. Wei Rongping said that the older farmers were told stories in the form of stories, and they at least understood it.
In August this year, the "Agricultural Cloud Action" came to Linyi County, Dong Chenxu, as the vice president of the Linyi County E-commerce Chamber of Commerce, invited the "Agricultural Cloud Action" to give a lecture, and after the end, he wrote a letter of thanks to the Pinduoduo platform, which said:
"The Pinduoduo e-commerce platform is our most reliable partner and our closest friend. Since entering Pinduoduo, the platform has provided us with unparalleled platform resources, technical guidance, operation planning, marketing activities, etc., so that our fresh products have been more widely displayed and sold, our brand image has been better shaped and improved, and our corporate benefits have been greater growth and protection. ”
Linyi E-commerce Chamber of Commerce's letter of thanks to Pinduoduo Photo provided by the interviewee
This year is the "apple year" in Linyi County, every household has a bumper harvest, and the frost season is the best time for apples, and farmers basically sell apples to head merchants like Dong Chenxu.
Wu Jiaojiao is a farmer in Tanzi Village, Tanzi Town, Linyi County, her family has 20 acres of orchards, and after the apple harvest, she sold the apples at a price of eight cents and a catty, and finally earned 170,000 yuan.
Wu Jiaojiao said that there are many varieties of apples, some apples only cover a layer of plastic film on the outside when they grow, and some apples begin to put a paper bag on the outside when they are the size of a fingernail, and remove the paper bag when the apples are colored. Such apples are collectively known as "paper plus film", the color is uniform and good-looking, offline stores like such apples, and the planting process is very laborious, and the selling price is correspondingly high.
Because of the weather, the apple harvest in Linyi County was not good in the past few years. Wu Jiaojiao recalled that three or four years ago, when hail fell in Linyi, the apples were beaten into potholes and in poor condition, so they were either sold at a low price or sold to a juice factory at a low price. Last year, there was another frost, and the flowers were frozen, and the wheat straw could not be burned for warmth. Every morning, the people of the village gather at the head of the village, worrying about the frozen flowers, relying on the sky to eat, and no one knows what to do.
This year, Wu Jiaojiao sold her more than 100,000 kilograms of apples early. But some farmers are still waiting, putting apples in rented cold storage and selling them when the price of an apple is the highest.
Now, Wu Jiaojiao had nothing to do during the day, so she came to Dong Chenxu's warehouse to help pack boxes. In Taotang Village, Tanzi Town, Linyi County, Dong Chenxu's Pinduoduo store "Yidun Agricultural Products" has a warehouse here. There is a truck waiting at the door of the warehouse, and the workers keep carrying the boxes of apples and orders to the truck, and leave after a full truck, and after a while, another truck stops at the door, repeating the action just now.
Inside the warehouse, apples are piled up in film bags. The female workers skillfully propped up the box, put it on the scale, took the apples from the "apple mountain" around them and put them in the box, looked at the numbers on the scale while loading, and stopped when they reached 10 catties. Usually there will be 18 apples in a box and 9 in a layer.
After selling out of their apples, local farmers make money by packing apples for e-commerce Photo by Liu Hao
Wu Jiaojiao has been here to help pack. These female workers are all apple farmers in the village, and as soon as the apples are sold, they will be liberated and come to Dong Chenxu's warehouse to work and earn more money. There are 8 cents for packing a box, and if you are fast, you can even earn 200-300 yuan a day.
Wu Jiaojiao said: "If you can't sell apples, your heart won't be pure." While thinking about selling your own apples, I thought about packing them, and in the end, I couldn't do anything. But with a platform like Pinduoduo, now we sell apples very quickly, just wait in our own homes. (Promotion)