This is the modern version of the "Nuclear Boat Chronicle". A square inch of skill, offline market competition for decades, after the hustle and bustle and silence, and now committed to the Internet traffic war, in order to seek a new life.
Text/ Jiang Xuefen
Editor/ Chen Chen
Villagers in Zhoushan Village often go to Guangdong and Guangxi to purchase fruit cores of more than ten yuan and tens of yuan a catty, and even wrap up the entire olive tree. When these originally discarded fruit cores come to Zhoushan Village, they can be transformed into valuable nuclear carving treasures, ranging from hundreds of thousands of yuan to Luohan heads, to tens of thousands of yuan of fishermen's music, nuclear boats, and even hundreds of thousands of yuan of nuclear carving strings.
Suzhou Zhoushan Nuclear Sculpture Village
Nuclear carving is an intangible cultural product carved on the cores of olives, apricots, walnuts and other fruits. Zhoushan Nuclear Sculpture Village is located on the west side of The Dome Mountain in Suzhou City, on the east bank of Taihu Lake, where almost every household will be nuclear carving. The elderly nuclear carving master recalled that more than ten years ago, the nuclear carving industry developed rapidly, the price of works soared, two or three hundred people came to the door every day to buy, and the small village was like a market. In 2008, the nuclear sculpture was included in the national intangible cultural heritage list. It is said that at the peak of the village, there were 5,000 employees, and the annual output value exceeded 500 million yuan.
Tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of nuclear carving products are in short supply, and the works of famous teachers often have to wait for a year or even longer. At that time, Zhou Jianming, the representative inheritor of the nuclear sculpture of the intangible cultural heritage project, carved the beast Eighteen Arhats and auctioned a high price of 508,500 yuan.
The work was auctioned for 508,500 yuan
But the nuclear carving market took a sharp turn for the worse in 2016, and most of the village's craftsmen also went out to work.
Since the end of last year, an e-commerce company has entered the village and signed contracts with 40 carving masters to help them open shops on Taobao. Through Taobao live streaming, nuclear carving products heat up, some masters Taobao stores monthly sales of more than 1.2 million yuan, and some masters in a live broadcast sold a unit price of 40,000 yuan of works. While the income of the nuclear carvers doubled, about a hundred craftsmen who had left also returned to the village to resume their craftsmanship.
The Internet has brought another new life to the nuclear carving industry.
In the 1970s, Zhong Shanfu, Xu Yinsheng and others founded the Zhoushan Craft Carving Factory. After several changes, relying only on foreign trade order processing fees, the factory was difficult to maintain, and had to be dissolved in the early 1980s.
The workers in the factory made their own living, some became masons, and some guarded the products that could not be sold, and still insisted. Unlike their life trajectory, 19-year-old Zhou Jianming entered the factory, worked as an apprentice for more than two years, and was admitted to Nanjing Normal University in the second year after the college entrance examination was resumed. Because he could not put down the nuclear carving, he entered the school with the original core and the carving knife, and carved while reading. After graduation, he chose a teaching position with a relatively long vacation in order to do nuclear sculpture.
Zhou Jianming
After the reform and opening up, the coastal economy has entered a period of rapid development. In Tianjin and Beijing, he opened the market, and the price of the product rose all the way to two or three thousand yuan. It takes a craftsman a month to hand carve out a product with a complex pattern and beautiful shape. Receiving disciples became a top priority. He went to a state-level poor village in Anhui Province and subsidized each trainee by paying 10 yuan per month out of his own pocket before recruiting a trainee who was willing to follow him to Zhoushan Village to learn art.
Fortunately, with the improvement of people's living standards, the cultural and play market continues to heat up. Xu Zhongying, a master of nuclear carving craftsmen, recalled that at that time, craftsmen often brought their works to exhibitions, and media exposure further stimulated the market. In the early ten years of the 20th century, the price of nuclear carving products rose to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of yuan. Many people who came from other places to learn carving with their teachers made their homes in Suzhou, bought houses and cars, and people who changed careers have resumed their professions.
While inheriting the skills of the teachers and masters, young craftsmen try to integrate Internet fashion elements into the gods, monsters and mascots, such as someone changing the ancient lady's bun to two braids in line with modern aesthetics. Coupled with the support of the local government, the nuclear carving industry in Zhoushan Village attracted thousands of practitioners in 2014, with an annual output value of more than 200 million yuan.
Zhou Jianming hand-carved double-sided eighteen arhat olive core bracelet
In the nearly ten years of rapid development of the nuclear carving industry, there are also some hidden dangers. According to locals, a large number of machine carving products appeared, various levels of products flooded the market, coupled with the three public consumption supervision, old craftsmen are extremely unfamiliar with the lack of Internet channels and other reasons, the nuclear carving market began to cool down rapidly in 2015. Product sales have decreased, the income of engraving artists has decreased, and some masters who have sat and waited for buyers to come to the door have also been impatient and run to the cultural play market and exhibition to sell their works.
In 2016, life in Zhoushan Village was even more difficult. In local media reports, the village-level collective income of Zhoushan Village fell to 11 million yuan this year. The annual income of some craftsmen has dropped from hundreds of thousands and nearly one million yuan to more than one hundred thousand yuan.
At this time, Chen Tao and the team entered the nuclear sculpture market with o2o experience and a number of e-sports anchors who made snacks. In an antique building next to the Zhoushan Village Nuclear Sculpture Museum, a nuclear sculpture e-commerce team of more than 60 people was formed to sell goods by live broadcast, with monthly sales of several million yuan.
For the cross-border sale of nuclear carvings, Chen Tao feels that the water is natural.
Born in 1990, he is a serial entrepreneur who has sold vegetables and fruits, but has not made a profit, and then laid out campus snacks o2o. He found that many of the campus food users are e-sports anchors, who have hundreds to tens of thousands of fans, but face the problem of monetization. Therefore, Chen Tao's team signed a contract with the anchor and built a platform to help them open a store with one click. In the process of playing the game, insert store ads to achieve shopping guide conversion.
It is said that an average anchor can have an average income of more than 20,000 yuan per month. Some star e-sports anchors sell up to more than 2 million yuan a month, and can even get more than 400,000 yuan in income. In one breath, they signed 180 e-sports anchors, and the annual sales reached about 300 million yuan a year.
Later, the company was acquired by the listed company, Chen Tao and the original campus snack team came out, united with 8 other people, and founded the Little Spirit Cat Company, which mainly engaged in entertainment live broadcasting business. They found that most of the entertainment live broadcast users were middle-aged men, and their interest in low-priced food was not high, so they switched to high-priced, high-profit antique products.
Due to the gradual tightening of supervision by the regulatory authorities over the live broadcast platform of the show, they closed the entertainment live broadcast project and established Suzhou Star Image Intangible Cultural Media Co., Ltd. Since the end of last year, they have signed contracts with 40 nuclear carving masters to obtain exclusive online sales rights for their works; a carving master and a Taobao shop, named after them to strengthen the brand impression; recruit student anchors to conduct a series of nuclear carving culture training, supplemented by engravers participating in live lectures or on-site carving every week, attracting traffic.
Graver
Offline, they cooperate with star hotels and scenic spots to place QR codes in stores to drain traffic.
Over the past few months, the number of live broadcast viewers in a single store has exceeded 5,000 at the highest, and the number of people watching new stores on the day has also reached nearly 1,000. The monthly sales of a single engraver's store contracted increased from the initial few tens of thousands of yuan to hundreds of thousands of yuan, and the highest exceeded 1.2 million yuan. Last month, Xu Zhongying's work with a unit price of more than 40,000 yuan was sold through live broadcasting.
Xu Zhongying
According to the incomplete statistics of Chen Tao's team, about 100 craftsmen returned to Zhoushan Village within half a year. When the benefits were not good, the monthly income of the post-90s girl He Li doing nuclear carving was only more than 1,000 yuan. But after she joined the e-commerce company as an anchor, her income not only increased but also became more stable. In front of the camera, she will communicate with buyers about techniques such as "Shimizu Flow Knife" and occasionally show off the carving process herself.
The significance of professional operation is far more than the increase in revenue. Through live broadcasting, the Nuclear Sculpture Association and nuclear carving masters can release real information and voices to the outside world in a timely manner. In the face of the rumors in the market that "Zhou Jianming is old, and his eyes are no longer engraved", Zhou Jianming looks forward to broadcasting each of his works live through Internet channels and telling nuclear carving enthusiasts that "I will continue to go down this road." Not long ago, there were many fans of the store who came to visit and ask for advice.
Taobao live broadcast sells nuclear sculptures
Chen Tao saw from the background data that most of the buyers of high-end nuclear sculptures are middle-aged people over the age of 35. In order to attract more young consumers, the team tried to balance between machine carving and master hand carving, and launched a low-priced half-machine carving product in the live broadcast room. They look forward to doing a good job of content marketing and service by attracting mass buyers. In addition, they plan to enhance the added value of the brand and launch cultural and creative products, such as combining nuclear carving with mobile phone pendants, which not only retains traditional elements, but also loses the sense of fashion.
The team also included Su embroidery and purple sand pots in the agenda. Their branch in Binjiang, Hangzhou, has launched the Purple Sand Pot project, which sells more than 200,000 yuan per month. At the same time, the company also launched the City Partner Project, and three cities, Jinhua, Wuxi and Nanjing, began to broadcast intangible cultural heritage products live.
Chen Tao said that his and his team's dream is to achieve a win-win situation in terms of commercial operation and cultural inheritance in different regions and industries.