2018-07-10 07:10 | Zhejiang News Client | Reporter Huang Tiantian
Editor's Note:
General Secretary Xi Jinping said that happiness is a struggle. In recent years, more and more talents at home and abroad have rushed into Hangzhou to become Hangzhou people who write the history of the city with "struggle", injecting new vitality into this beautiful and innovative city.
Zhejiang news client Hangzhou Channel launched the "Strivers Say" column, recording the story of Hangzhou people's entrepreneurship and struggle in the city, and also through their youth and dreams, recording the changes of the city and the imprint of the times.
【Character Business Card】
Li Ting, born in February 1992 in Yuhang Tangqi, Hangzhou, grew up in a family of pastries since childhood, after graduating from university in 2015, she chose to return to Tangqi to take over her father's business, and founded the Fagen e-commerce team, so that this long-established brand born in Tangqi Town successfully transformed into the whole country through the Internet.
"The education given to me by my parents is like a simple pastry, simple but with a long aftertaste." ——Li Ting
For many "old Hangzhou", the Fagen pastry standing at the north end of the Guangji Bridge in Yuhang Tangqi Ancient Town collects too many memories and feelings of Childhood Jiangnan pastries. Whether it is the pure taste and handicraft of Fagen pastries, or the struggle of the head li Fagen from the "basket sale" to the establishment of the "Zhejiang time-honored brand" pastry enterprise, it is enough to be called a legend in the traditional Chinese dim sum industry in Hangzhou.
And now, the legend of Fagan pastry continues. This long-established store has launched a lot of fashionable and innovative Chinese dim sum, which is not only the favorite of "old Hangzhou", but also the "new Internet celebrity" loved by young people. Behind this, it is precisely because Fagen Pastry has a new generation of successor Li Ting. The post-90s girl is using her way and creativity to make this traditional old shop glow with the brilliance of the new shop of the times.
I heard about my parents' entrepreneurial journey
After graduation, he took over the business and started a "pastry girl"
When she saw Li Ting, she was wearing a golden flower dress and was smiling and greeting business at the Fagen pastry shop. She especially likes to call herself "Pastry Girl". "I grew up smelling the smell of pastries, and I've been associating my feelings with my parents since the beginning of my fagan pastry." Li Ting said.
In 2001, when her father, Li Fagen, had just established a Fagen pastry shop, Li Ting was only 10 years old. In the small workshop of only four or five people, the parents were already greedy and drunk. The figure of him making pastries day and night is deeply engraved in Li Ting's mind.
"Hemp crisp candy" and "chestnut chongyang cake" in autumn and winter, "small peach crisp" and "mung bean sorbet" in spring and summer... Year after year, watching simple ingredients transform into a variety of wonderful pastries. In Li Ting's heart, the most memorable thing is that in addition to working hard, her father did not forget to cut the scraps of the crispy candy head and feed it to the warm moment of the hungry girl next to him.
Every year, when the business of Chongyang Festival is the busiest, the first thing Li Ting, who is still studying, comes home from school is to run all the way to the vegetable market, put the small school bag away and "start work" with her mother. When the sun set, the whole cart of Chongyang cakes was sold out, and Dad rode his shabby little tricycle to take Li Ting and her mother home.
"After so many years, fortunately, the Fagen family's pastries are recognized by more and more people, and my parents and I don't have to go to the street to sell Chongyang cakes, but we still miss the taste of the concerted efforts at that time." Li Ting said, "Starting from a small pastry, we gradually stepped out of a path with a vision, which also inspired us to move forward to a bigger dream together." ”
Inheriting her father's pastry business has become a complex in Li Ting's heart. After graduating from university, Li Ting, who majored in English at the eighth level, did not choose the corresponding work of translation and foreign trade. Without the slightest hesitation, she was determined to devote herself to the succession of Fagen Food, she was optimistic about the prospects of this traditional industry, and she was also full of responsibility and mission for the future inheritance of traditional food techniques.
Classic time-honored brand transformation "net red" explosive dim sum
The small peach crisp can sell 1.6 million per month
After graduating in 2015, Li Ting returned to Tangqi and slowly took over the business under the guidance of her father.
At that time, Li Ting thought to herself, Fagen pastry already has a considerable reputation in the Hangzhou area, but how to make it go to the whole country?
Li Ting first thought of doing e-commerce, and this is exactly what parents who are accustomed to the thinking of physical store management cannot do.
"Hangzhou is the capital of e-commerce, and Yuhang, where Tangqi is located, is also the birthplace of Alibaba, and there are also unique conditions for doing e-commerce." Therefore, Li Ting first started from the Taobao store and opened the sales channel of Fagen pastries on the Internet.
From developing marketing content and plans, customer service to product packaging and shipping... In order to establish the "Fagen Food Tmall Flagship Store", a series of work was started from scratch by Li Ting alone.
Although it is very hard, whenever new ideas and ideas burst out of Li Ting's mind, it seems that there is no end to it at once. After two months of hard work, Fagan Foods finally sold the first 2 orders online.
"It got me excited, and I wrote a long thank-you note to the customer and stuffed a lot of small gifts." Li Ting recalled.
Unlike physical stores, e-commerce operations face many new challenges. "Since most of the snack food consumers on the e-commerce platform are young people, but in the past, the products that sold well in physical stores such as crisp candy and pepper peach slices are in line with the preferences of the middle-aged and elderly people, and it is urgent to use Internet thinking to find new selling points and improve products."
As a result, Li Ting set a strategy for "Fagen Pastry": to create a "net red" explosive dim sum with the old brand and quickly establish online popularity.
According to the existing market feedback, Li Ting selected the "palace peach crisp" in the Fagen pastry as the main explosive product. "A small peach crisp can eat one bite, 40 for less than 10 yuan, is a very suitable snack to eat in the office or afternoon tea, I am also looking at its potential to explode in the market of young people."
Unexpectedly, after the launch of the "Palace Peach Crisp" as a "net red" explosive snack, the rapidly rising sales volume suddenly overwhelmed Li Ting. Peach crisps soon sold more than 1.6 million a month, a figure that was unimaginable for previous small-town pastry shops.
This strategy also brought the fire to fagan pastries and other kinds of pastries. The pastry repurchase rate is very high, many food retailers from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities, refreshment suppliers and other bulk orders of large customers have come to the door, every day to deal with pastry orders are piled up in a whole room.
In the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2016, an employee of an electronic technology company in Inner Mongolia placed an order for Fagen mooncakes, felt that they had eaten the taste of childhood, and specially applied to the leaders for the distribution of mid-autumn mooncakes. So A truckload of Fagen mooncakes went to Inner Mongolia, bringing with it the taste of our Jiangnan pastries. ”
From a few hundred yuan per day in the early days to tens of thousands of yuan per day now, the sales of the e-commerce platform operated by Li Ting have been rising. After the establishment of the e-commerce team, the online sales of Fagen Pastry in the second year have reached 4 million yuan, and the daughter Li Ting has brought quite good online business after joining, which also makes his father Li Fagen feel very happy.
Let Tangqi specialties have new life
Retain the spirit of the old shop to create the "new shop of the times"
In addition to taking care of the family business, Li Ting did not forget to pass on the experience of e-commerce to the villagers in the town.
Tangqi is the homeland of loquat, but the extremely short shelf life is the fatal wound of loquat. In order to solve this problem, in June this year, Li Ting pulled the growers to set up an e-commerce training camp to teach everyone to do loquat business through e-commerce. Now, EMS, SF and other logistics companies have settled in Tangqi, which can not only help fruit farmers to send loquat to all parts of the country in the shortest possible time, even if they want to send it abroad.
In the process of Internet e-commerce operation, Li Ting also captured a lot of valuable information, which also inspired her to transform and upgrade the traditional pastry of Fagen and develop new specialty products.
"Under the current trend of consumption upgrading, the previous extensive product model no longer meets the needs of new consumers, improving quality and product form, and producing 'small but fine' products with rich cultural value are the new growth points of long-established products."
Summer is the best time to eat "mung bean sorbet". According to the experience of e-commerce and customer feedback, Li Ting has made mung bean sorbets to improve the quality of raw materials and the transformation of packaging, and the mung bean sorbets that improve the formula and appearance are very popular on the Internet.
In addition, she has combined her family's steamed pastry making skills with loquat, inspired by Japanese dim sum water shingen cake, and developed new products such as "crystal loquat cake" and "loquat jelly", which has a history of more than 1,400 years, and has also been given a new life form.
"Loquat is the characteristic of Tangqi, if you can develop a loquat cake produced by Fagen, it will not only solve the problem of loquat harvest season storage, but also become a representative souvenir of Tangqi tourism culture, so that the time-honored pastry and Tangqi culture can also be spread to more people through a small pastry."
In addition to products and business methods, in order to preserve the traditional Chinese dim sum culture, Li Ting also re-established the "Fagen Pastry Experience Hall" for the external display of traditional food cultural sources. Children can experience DIY traditional cuisine under the guidance of parents and teachers. 24 Solar Terms Traditional Dim Sum Eat, Why Eat Mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival... These will be displayed one by one in the experience hall. Li Ting and her father will prepare materials very carefully every time, personally explain, demonstrate, and guide the production of dim sum, so that children can feel the charm of Chinese dim sum culture.
"The ingenious old shop is a kind of cultural nostalgia and mission, just like my childhood memories, an old shop stands quietly there, becoming people's habits and memories, and it is a warm and beautiful thing to think about." Li Ting said, "The teaching method is natural and fundamentally pure, and it is our vision to be 'the dim sum of the people'. I will adhere to the ancestral precept of 'remembering the practice, not forgetting the root', realizing the mining of the value of the old brand by a young person, and making a new shop of the era full of innovation. ”