On the morning of December 9, bathed in the warm winter sun, reporters came to a wogan orange planting base in Chikeng Village, Longhua Town, Longmen County. They saw that fruit trees across the mountains were covered with “golden fruits”, and the air was filled with a fresh and sweet fruity fragrance. Fruit farmers were seizing the fine weather to pick the fruits, and many customers also came attracted by the fragrance, presenting a busy harvest scene in the orchard. This orchard is affiliated to Longmen County Huifengyuan Planting Professional Cooperative. Talking about this year’s harvest, Zhong Juming, the business manager of the cooperative, was beaming with joy.
Zhong Juming, Business Manager of Longmen County Huifengyuan Planting Professional Cooperative: Our orchard covers an area of about 300 mu, among which about 50 mu is planted with wogan oranges. The output of wogan oranges this year is about 100,000 jin, which has increased compared with last year.
In the orchard, a computer and a printer attracted the reporters’ attention. Zhong Juming told the reporters that these were the equipment for his “online store”. Different from traditional farmers, Zhong Juming has his own ideas about the sales methods of fruits. In addition to offline channels such as ordinary door-to-door acquisition and on-site fruit picking, he is studying “selling goods” via mobile phones, and further expanding the online market through opening online stores and live-streaming sales, so as to better sell the fruits. The idea came from the problem of fruit unsalable a few years ago.
Zhong Juming: I majored in video directing at university and have been exposed to the shooting and promotion of e-commerce products. But the initial idea came from the dilemma that the oranges at home had a bumper harvest but were unsalable a few years ago. At that time, fruit merchants came to buy the fruits at a very low price. The fruits that we worked so hard to grow not only had no profit, but some even rotted in the orchard, which made me feel really bad. Later, I saw many people selling agricultural products through e-commerce on online platforms, so I thought I’d try to open an online store myself, which can not only directly connect with consumers, but also strive for better sales channels for my own fruits.
Taking advantage of his professional strengths, Zhong Juming learned e-commerce operation, studied logistics optimization, designed brand packaging, and gradually opened up the online market through emerging sales methods such as social platform promotion and online store direct sales. Compared with waiting for purchasers to come to the door in the past, online store direct sales not only guarantee the sales channels, but also increase profits.
Zhong Juming: Opening an online store and waiting for bosses to come to buy fruits are completely two different models. From the perspective of income, in the traditional way of waiting for fruit merchants to buy, the price is determined by them, we have no bargaining power, and the profit margin is very small. But opening an online store is to sell directly to consumers, removing the intermediate links, and the price for customers is lower. From the perspective of sales initiative, waiting for fruit merchants to buy depends on the weather, while online stores can control the rhythm by themselves, sell in batches, sell a batch when they are ripe, and pick according to the order quantity, which not only reduces losses, but also ensures the freshness of fruits, and there is no need to passively wait for acquisition anymore. It also increases customer stickiness. Many people will repurchase after they think the fruits are good, and we gradually have a stable customer base, which makes me feel more at ease.
Each wogan orange carries the joy of harvest, and is also a vivid portrayal of emerging models and young people returning to their hometowns to inject new vitality into traditional agriculture. They use e-commerce to build a “golden bridge”, enabling wogan oranges to leave the producing areas and be sold all over the country. This “sweet symphony” co-written by wogan oranges and youth is becoming more and more resounding. In the future, there are infinite vitality and possibilities…
Zhong Juming: For my own orchard, I hope this e-commerce attempt can bring long-term new changes to it. On the one hand, I want to completely stabilize and strengthen the online channels, and at the same time expand other e-commerce platforms to form a multi-channel sales pattern, so that the fruits in the orchard can be sold without worry. On the other hand, we should build our own “Huifengyuan” brand, carry out unified quality grading and packaging for the fruits, increase the added value, and change from simply selling fruits to selling “high-quality orchard-directly-supplied fruits”, so that our own orchard has higher recognition.
