The most noteworthy scenery in May is the peony blossoms.
Through the twilight of spring, towards the beginning of summer, when the flowers withered, the life of peony has just begun to bloom, and with irresistible enthusiasm and brightness, it dilutes the melancholy of the rainy days.
In Heze, Shandong, peony has a gratifying growth of nearly one meter high. Its flowers are suffocating, the rhizomes are straight, the leaves are small and dense, and when the wind passes, it is stacked into the sea and swaying.
Standing in the endless flower field, you will deeply feel that the "vast and crazy fragrance" referred to by Han Yu, or the "beautiful and fruitful" mentioned by Su Shi, are not empty words. If your fingertips accidentally touch the petals, you can feel its small resistance through its delicate appearance, as well as its desperate and unrestrained vitality.
Our current life is scarce and necessary vitality.
Three years to grind a flower. Behind the vigorous vitality is the dormant years, one year to sleep, two years to wake up, three years long, each peony plant that comes to us needs to go through at least three years of wind and frost impregnation, years of precipitation.
Zooming out the camera, behind the prosperity and growth of each flower is the relay efforts of countless flower growers in years. They wrap the gifts precipitated by the years into bouquets and send them to everyone who lives seriously.
With perseverance, breakthrough and innovation, it has also promoted the traditional industry of flowers, which has a history of more than 2,000 years, to be reborn and open a new chapter in the fiercely competitive digital era.
The trek before dawn
The flower farmer's day starts at 6:30 a.m.
Or even earlier. When the morning light was faint and the sound was silent, more than 150 flower farmers had already set off from their homes, from 7 and 8 adjacent villages respectively, to the Heze Baiyi planting base.
Most of them are local middle-aged and elderly women, and the land where they have grown for generations has given them the confidence to survive and support their families, and they will re-feed the energy they get from this land on 700 acres of flower fields.
In the pre-machining center next to the flower field, everything is done in an orderly manner. The drifting of a peony plant must first go through various links such as sorting, bundling, cleaning, disinfection, soaking in nutrient solution, and cooling in cold storage.
If you will leave your hometown and drift to a distant place, you must ensure that the process from the base to the cold chain car, from the cold chain car to the city warehouse, and then from the city warehouse to the store, is absolutely smooth and cannot be taken off the cold.
The standardized and large-scale machine production line is running closely and orderly. In as fast as 20 hours, a peony plant can arrive in a city and meet consumers.
This would have been unthinkable more than 20 years ago.
Hao Hailei, general manager of Heze Baiyi Peony Horticulture Co., Ltd., recalled that in 2000, he had just graduated from university, because his ancestors had been engaged in flower planting, and he stepped into this industry.
"We sold domestic peony in the early stage, and there may be no pretreatment at that time, and cold chain logistics is also very scarce, so we can only simply pack boxes and take trains and cars to Beijing, Shanghai and other places to sell."
At that time, the demand for peony among domestic flower consumers was not as vigorous as it is now, and they sold more seedlings than fresh cut flowers, and valued the medicinal value of peony more than the ornamental value. In the fields, you can see traditional varieties such as red Fuji and blue Fuji, which are cheap, common, but you can't go wrong.
The other side of not making mistakes and not daring to try and make mistakes is that the development of the entire flower industry is sluggish and slow, and it is difficult to usher in new breakthroughs in both product selection and sales.
Hao Hailei still remembers a mistake in product selection 8 years ago: "When the sunset coral appeared, industry peers generally felt that although this gradient color variety was novel in color, there were too few petals and exposed stamens, which was not quite in line with the aesthetics of the Chinese people. When everyone looks back and wants to introduce it again, it is two years behind their foreign counterparts. ”
Sunset Coral / Source: Hema Intelligence Agency
The price of an imported seedling can reach 200, 20,000 or even 80,000, and if the minimum cultivation amount is 20, the planting cost will be tens of thousands. Hesitation is almost inevitable.
In 2004, Ren Fukun established Kunming Kunhai Planting Base and became the earliest hydrangea grower in Yunnan and even the country. But for a long time after that, he was also trapped in a fog and did not know where to go.
Initially, because hydrangeas were too "new", many florists refused to buy them because they were worried that there would be no market. Even if it is not easy to sell, the flowers have to go through multiple middlemen such as fried flowers, shippers, wholesalers, retail florists, etc., and can go around a large circle in front of consumers, during which the loss rate is as high as 50%, and the price of nearly 30~50 yuan is easy to keep people out.
In order to increase sales and open up the market, Ren Fukun even transported hydrangeas to flower shops in Shanghai and gave them to consumers for free for half a year. The method was very "stupid", but it was one of the few directions he could work on at that time.
Because the hydrangea cultivation technology is not yet mature, and the sales channel is single, tortuous and unstable, it is the norm to make ends meet. Growers who started at the same time as Ren Fukun chose to give up one after another.
Only he insisted on doing a very "new" thing, with love and loneliness, gritted his teeth and survived, and trekked all the way, witnessing the ups and downs of China's flower industry in the past 20 years.
Make flowers into the fashion industry
For a long time, due to the traditional planting and sales model, flower growers did not know what they should plant, how much they planted, and who they sold their flowers to, and it was difficult to adjust their production rhythm according to market feedback.
The shadow of hesitation, lack of self-confidence, and fear that no one will pay for it has hindered the upward development of many growers, and also obscured the highlight of China's flower industry.
The turning point came in 2018, when Internet giants such as Meituan, Taobao, JD.com, Dingdong and Ele.me went online one after another, and began to lay out flower retail and distribution business.
In 2021, the entry of Hema has set off a hurricane, driving the long-dormant industry to new thinking and a new solution - making flowers into a fashion industry.
Through the directional planting method of fixed products, fixed colors and fixed payments, Hema grafted the production end and the consumer side, not only delivered large-scale production orders to more than 100 flower bases across the country, but also delivered consumption data to the hands of growers, supporting them to invest in seedlings, test new products and expand their scale with more confidence.
After connecting to the Internet, the first big step taken by the base is to "predict in advance": through the investigation of foreign markets such as the Netherlands, the United States, and France, it can predict the popular colors and varieties of flower consumption in the next three to five years.
The second step is "in-depth research": based on feedback from the domestic market and long-term insights, we will screen out flowers that are more likely to be accepted by Chinese consumers, conduct small-scale trial planting, and put them into the market on a small scale to solicit consumer experiences. Eventually, with the support of consumer feedback, market trends were identified and large-scale planting of new products was launched.
The "new" reversed from a disadvantage to an advantage. Chinese flower growers have done what they haven't done in the past 20 years in just three years, just like fashion week, and like fashion week, they have selected products in advance and launched new products every year.
In Heze, Shandong, Sunset Coral has become a hit with a sense of novelty in four colors. Subsequently, peony varieties such as etched salmon, imperial performances, cream bowls, and balcelas were also discovered and introduced.
In Kunming, Yunnan Province, hydrangea has overcome technical problems such as high dehydration rate and short bottle insertion period, with a parity of 9.9 yuan per branch and colorful and gorgeous colors, swiping the screen of social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin. No one cares about it and it's history.
Walking out of Foshan, Guangdong, the traditional New Year flowers represented by Phalaenopsis have broken the boundaries of time and space, no longer confined to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and the Spring Festival, but have become a popular fashion item across the country.
It turns out that it's not that there is little consumer demand for flowers, but that traditional markets have limited options to offer. Transforming from tradition to fashion, Hao Hailei admits that "the challenge is actually quite big".
Unlike tulips, lilies, roses, etc., peonies are perennial plants that take at least three years from the seedling of your choice to the final market. This year's sowing will determine the harvest in three years' time, which means that the peony planting base must be forward-looking and market-savvy when selecting products.
In the past, he may have hesitated, but now Hao Hailei is willing to wait.
According to the flower sales of Hema and the planning for the next year, the planting area of Heze Baiyi Base has gradually increased from more than 200 acres to more than 700 acres, and it is planned to increase another 500 acres this year and 700 acres next year, and finally reach a production scale of nearly 2,000 acres, so as to better match the procurement scale of Hema.
Ren Fukun finally waited for his "wish to come true".
"About ten years ago, when I had in-depth exchanges with foreign counterparts, I talked about the future development trend of Chinese flowers when I had in-depth exchanges with foreign counterparts. At that time, I was very much looking forward to the day when I could step through the middleman and connect with consumers. I believe that as long as the method is right, this thing will definitely be done. ”
The entry of fresh e-commerce platforms represented by Hema has not only shortened the chain of flower sales, but also matured the development of order agriculture.
Under the premise of stable orders, Ren Fukun, Hao Hailei and other growers from all over the world finally have stronger confidence to expand their bases, develop new products, and introduce intelligent greenhouses to ensure the stable supply of flowers; At the same time, we began to explore another long-awaited thing, the brand development of Chinese flowers.
At this moment, the direction that is open in front of their eyes is becoming clearer: "We don't grow flowers through the eyes of growers, but through the eyes of consumers." ”
Make a festival for yourself
"Mrs. Dalloway said she was going to buy the flowers herself."
One hundred years ago, Virginia Woolf connected "buying flowers" with a gesture of freedom and independence, creating an immortal opening in the history of literature.
Today, a hundred years later, the emergence of Internet giants and fresh food e-commerce platforms has made buying flowers as simple, everyday, anytime, anywhere, and one step closer to freedom.
According to Hema research, the biggest scene for buying flowers is to buy them for yourself regularly. An even more interesting insight is that on Monday, the cost of flowers in the office will be 70% higher than in the home scenario.
We don't have to wait for a big festival or another person to send us off, but we can seize every moment that needs to be healed, every moment worth celebrating, and buy flowers for ourselves.
If life is not ironed, make a festival for yourself.
What's more, we don't have to compromise on price.
Corresponding to the large-scale, standardized and high-quality development of the flower industry, the consumption of flowers is daily, popular and affordable, and high-quality flowers are more available and more cost-effective.
Taking "Sunset Coral" as an example, because of the high cultivation cost and cold chain logistics and transportation cost, it can generally be sold for 100 yuan 5 sticks at the retail end of first- and second-tier cities. But in Freshippo, the price of 5 is currently 69.9 yuan. In addition, the price of classic flowers such as Sarah, Double Petal, and Yang Fei Bathing has also been reduced by 15%-20% compared with last year.
Buying flowers is as simple as buying vegetables, and buying flowers is as frequent as buying vegetables, and domestic flower consumers can realize the "freedom of flowers" step by step.
Although the flowers are becoming more and more diverse and the prices are getting cheaper and cheaper, Ren Fukun has a deep insight into the huge potential of China's flower industry, just like countless predictions in the past.
"The fresh e-commerce platform is actually a middleman, but we have higher requirements for the middleman, it must not only understand the thinking of consumers, but also be familiar with the actual situation of the base. It is certainly not enough to sell the flowers of the base, and it is necessary to develop customized services in the future to meet the different needs of different consumers, so as to get better and better. ”
He knows very well that he is not only selling flowers, but also the perception of a better life. Only by constantly exploring the real needs of consumers and actively creating diversified choices can we continue to update the life experience of the public.
This insight into demand and the pursuit of innovation are ultimately fed back into planting and production.
Today, there are two or three hundred hydrangea planting bases in Yunnan Province, with a total area of nearly 10,000 acres. The Kunming Kunhai planting base founded by Ren Fukun has become the largest and most complete hydrangea planting base in the country.
Entering the industry at the age of 23 and starting a business at the age of 30, Ren Fukun dedicated nearly half of his life to flowers. At the age of fifty, he felt that he still had a lot to learn.
He plans to go to the Netherlands in June this year to discuss cooperation; Work with the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences to polish the cultivation technology of hydrangea, and share the scientific research results with the industry; Hearing that the peony in Shandong was blooming just right, he suddenly became interested and prepared to communicate with other flower practitioners.
At the other end of China, Hao Hailei is now thinking like a scientist and immersing himself in the research and development of new varieties. According to him, the Heze Baiyi base has introduced more than 260 varieties of peony, more than 50 kinds of large-scale and commercial production, and will continue to introduce two or three hundred varieties this year, and independent research and development is also being carried out simultaneously.
"From R&D to market, it takes at least 8 years, half of which is technology, and half is luck."
It can be said that our encounter with each flower is an encounter with good luck.
Author | Rough noodles
Edit | Wood and soil
Editor-in-Chief on Duty | Huang Mingting
Typography | Get up