Author/Mo Wenjian
In the past eight years, no matter where I go, I have insisted on promoting one of my views: first capture the area, and then sell the product. What's the meaning? It means to "sell" the countryside well first, promote the popularity and reputation of this place, and then market various local specialties. In the past few years of rapid development of rural e-commerce, whether it is the platform or the government, whether it is an institution or a farmer, everyone is thinking about getting results quickly, focusing on selling goods and making quick money. Few people can understand and support my point of view. At most, there was some accompanying applause. In fact, it doesn’t matter to me whether I understand or not. But I will never jump into the trap of simply selling goods. Time has also proven that those who rush to sell goods in a hurry will basically not end well. Most of the institutions that sell goods have now ceased operations, and many have even closed down.
For some time, several hot words have been popular across the country, namely "e-commerce helps farmers", "consumption poverty alleviation", "live streaming to deliver goods" and so on. As one of the "promoters" of rural e-commerce, I certainly highly agree with the positive role of e-commerce in promoting agricultural products into cities. However, we need to reflect and review what is the biggest dilemma facing more Chinese rural areas now. ? What is the more important support needed for development? From time to time, there are incidents on the Internet where grain (fruit) cannot be sold after a good harvest in a certain place, resulting in poor harvests for farmers. This type of "tragic marketing" continues to be staged, until this year the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a document calling for an end. I don’t deny that similar incidents exist objectively, but we need to ask more “why”——
Obviously “online sales” has added more sales channels, why is the phenomenon of “difficulty selling” still there? Happens from time to time?
Including micro-business, community group buying, live broadcast e-commerce, and traditional e-commerce, they are all scrambling for good supply of goods. Why is the "sense of benefit" among farmers still not obvious?
National policies encourage and platforms provide traffic. Why are there so few online merchants of agricultural products that are successful, and many institutions withdraw from business every year?
For some time, several hot words have been popular across the country, namely "e-commerce helps farmers", "consumption poverty alleviation", "live streaming to deliver goods" and so on. As one of the "promoters" of rural e-commerce, I certainly highly agree with the positive role of e-commerce in promoting agricultural products into cities. However, we need to reflect and review what is the biggest dilemma facing more Chinese rural areas now. ? What is the more important support needed for development? From time to time, there are incidents on the Internet where grain (fruit) cannot be sold after a good harvest in a certain place, resulting in poor harvests for farmers. This type of "tragic marketing" continues to be staged, until this year the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a document calling for an end. I don’t deny that similar incidents exist objectively, but we need to ask more “why”——
Obviously “online sales” has added more sales channels, why is the phenomenon of “difficulty selling” still there? Happens from time to time?
Including micro-business, community group buying, live e-commerce, and traditional e-commerce, they are all competing for good supply of goods. Why is the "sense of benefit" among farmers still not obvious?
National policies encourage and platforms provide traffic. Why are there so few online merchants of agricultural products that are successful, and many institutions withdraw from business every year?
……
……
This topic actually involves the “deep water area” of rural development. After eight or nine years of practice and exploration, I personally have the following understandings: For farmers, just selling the agricultural products they produce cannot solve the development problem; for rural areas, development and improvement are needed. , involving ecological and system construction, is far from what the production and marketing of agricultural products can satisfy. In fact, even without e-commerce, local agricultural products still have traditional circulation methods. Without the ability to command a premium, even if agricultural products are sold, it will not solve the problem of wealth accumulation for farmers and villages. Therefore, under the "lowest price on the entire network" online sales model and the "highly homogeneous" supply chain competition landscape, farmers and villages have always been weak and lack the right to speak in the era of traffic dividends from rural e-commerce. group.
Where is the way out for farmers and rural areas?
In fact, when Congxiang Cube was first established, Song Xiaochun and his co-founders designed a 6C path for rural revitalization: Capital, Commerce, and Culture. It solves the problems of rural development in an all-round and systematic way from six dimensions, including Community, Creation and Communication. This is in perfect harmony with the 20 words for rural revitalization issued by the country, which are "prosperous industries, livable ecology, civilized rural customs, effective governance, and prosperous life", which means to drive the development of rural areas by activating markets, entities, factors, policies, and organizations. Revitalization of rural industries, talents, culture, ecology and organizations. Having said this, we should be able to understand that in the current development of agriculture, rural areas, farmers and rural areas, the role of pure agricultural product e-commerce in promoting is limited, and stronger empowerment is needed. Perhaps this is the fundamental reason why the country quickly promoted the rural revitalization strategy after the end of poverty alleviation.
“To a certain extent, in the process of building regional public brands for more than 200 agricultural products, we discovered the pain points and rigid needs of current rural development. Brand thinking cannot just stop at At the agricultural product level, it needs to be integrated throughout the entire rural work, and it is necessary to build a branded countryside." Xu Dawei, co-founder of Xiangcube, said frankly that these years have not been easy, "Our entire team is familiar with the work and service of regional public brands of agricultural products. It’s easy to do, but it’s obviously not enough to meet the needs of revitalizing rural areas. Therefore, we have been forcing ourselves to use brand thinking to build rural areas since 2015. “Branded countryside is actually a market-oriented thinking. , not only agricultural products, but also all rural resources can be transformed into development factors and comprehensively enhance rural commercial value.”
In this way, from Firestone to Rural Cube, Song Xiaochun and Xu Dawei have led the way in the past six years. The team has created more than 300 "brand villages". The recent speech by Liu Huanxin, the newly appointed director of the National Rural Revitalization Bureau, affirmed the path that Xiang Li Fang has taken. He said at the 2021 China Brand Forum: "In the new stage of development, to promote rural revitalization with high quality, we need to deepen the brand concept and transform brand awareness into work requirements for high-quality development, throughout the entire process of rural revitalization." "From From Longquan Village in Ningxia to Dongfang City in Hainan, from Xiajiang Village in Zhejiang to Yuechi Farm in Sichuan, we have dozens of projects that have become regional and even national models for fully embedding brand thinking in rural construction and development. Now it seems that our choice is ours. That's right." Looking back on this experience, Song Xiaochun's face was filled with confidence and pride.
Think about a question: How did the barren mountains and wilderness become the road to gold and silver?
So, what is the core experience of Xiangcube’s “branded countryside”?
"Find a good soul, shape it, and sell it at a good price." At the recent creative meeting of "County Promotion" for rural revitalization in Nanxiong, Guangdong, Chen Cai, a partner of Xianglifang, repeatedly told the team, "We must To accurately express the "soul" of Nanxiong City, that is, the uniqueness and difference of the local area in Guangdong, especially in northern Guangdong, on this basis, we need to create it into a "shape" with super symbols and unique propositions The empowerment is demonstrated through the value realization and premium capabilities of the products.” For Xia Di, another partner of Xianglifang, she also has enough capital to be proud of in 2021. She led the creation of Xiaoshan Future Dadi and Jiande Qian. Hecun has become a new model for domestic rural revitalization. She told me: "Xiaoshan Hengyi Village is an ordinary Jiangnan village. It encountered the same problem as non-grain remediation. It transformed 1,700 acres of seedlings into rice fields. If you only think about products, you will hit a dead end. . When we proposed the "Future Land", we actually found the "soul" of urban-rural integration and prosperity, making it a beautiful rural place that urban people like to visit, and cultivating new business formats that urban people are willing to consume when going to the countryside. "In just two months, it is said that there were as many as 300,000 tourists visiting Hengyi Village.
When people come, it is the biggest business, and the future of the future has been seen by the earth!
Xiang Cube’s core experience of “branded countryside” is also supported by the results of rural revitalization in Lishui, Zhejiang. As the birthplace of domestic rural e-commerce, Lishui is not satisfied with the "good sales" of agricultural products brought about by "Lishui Mountain Farming" in its exploration of promoting the theoretical value transformation of the two mountains. Instead, it continues to launch the "Lishui Mountain Road" regional public park. ***brand. "We just want to use Lishui Mountain Road to connect Lishui Mountain Residences, so that tourists can enjoy the Lishui mountain scenery and enjoy Lishui mountain farming." Zhou Gongbin, the helmsman of Ant Explorer, said. He is the "star" helmsman of Xiangcubi Ecological Company. He and the "Lishui Mountain Road" he built are often featured on CCTV's news broadcast. In the past few years, he has created a classic rural tourism route for each county in Lishui. As a farmer's boy in the mountains of Lishui, Zhou Gongbin believes that "Lishui's greatest resource is the mountains and rivers. This is the soul. If we work around this soul, everything is possible." In recent years, with the "Western Zhejiang Sichuan-Tibet Line", With the popularity of rural routes such as "Jiangnan Bingchacha" and "East China Sky Road", Lishui is becoming one of the favorite destinations for outdoor sports such as cross-country driving, river tracing, hiking, and cycling in Zhejiang.
More wonderful things are happening accelerating.