"high achiever" classmate "Blue Ocean" of Gold Mining Agriculture

If we hadn't met agriculture, I'm afraid Zhou Yan is shuttling through the forest of reinforced concrete buildings. in the eyes of many people, a top student like him should wear a suit and write about his youth in a first-tier city. Zhou Yan chose a different track.

Zhou Yan, an undergraduate from Harbin University of Technology and a master's degree from Zhejiang University, has an eye-catching academic resume. In the past few years, he has published more than 10 high-level papers. To everyone's surprise, as soon as he graduated in April 2013, Zhou Yan went to Yiwu, Zhejiang Province and started Taobao.

In the surging e-commerce circle, Yiwu, which started with a small commodity market, can be called the forefront. Small county-level cities attract entrepreneurs one after another, and the mighty team also includes Lu Weiwei. As Zhou Yan's high school classmate, Lu Weiwei is also a veritable "high achiever". In 2009, after graduating with the first major from East China University of Science and Technology, he could have been sent to Tsinghua University for a master's degree, but Lu Weiwei, who was interested in starting a business, chose to pack his backpack to Yiwu, his hometown.

During this period, Lu Weiwei sold many products and did not target home gardening until 2013, a business that has just started on Taobao and has a bright future. When Lu Weiwei told Zhou Yan about this business opportunity, he also pried his entrepreneurial passion. In this way, the two "high achiever" started from scratch and began to pursue their dreams.

After all, the store is an empty shelf. In order to find high-quality resources, Lu Weiwei and Zhou Yan often need to go out to inspect and do a good job of pre-sales and after-sales service. for a whole year, they never rest and have to work overtime until midnight almost every day.

Where there's a will, there's a way. In the second year, the store achieved the first sales of horticulture in the whole network, with sales of more than 6 million yuan. After the stability of the online store, the two conducted in-depth strategic thinking: if only selling goods, profits and prospects are very limited, especially with the intensification of competition, the store will gradually lose its advantage, if you want to develop for a long time, you must hold the core resources.

To put it simply, it is necessary to have industry. After full discussion, the two decided to focus on the two main businesses of fertilizer and succulent plants. The former is in great demand, and the two happen to be professional counterparts, and they are good at product research and development; but for the latter, if they want to grow in Yiwu, which is worth an inch of land, the cost is extremely high. Pulled strings by friends, Lin'an City entered their field of vision.

In recent years, e-commerce in Lin'an has also developed rapidly, compared with Yiwu, express delivery advantages have been comparable, but the operating cost can be greatly reduced, the key to take advantage of geographical advantages, the two people can also seek technical support from neighboring Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University. So, in September 2014, the family moved to Lin'an.

In order to find a base, the two founders cycled everywhere and finally found a piece of land of more than 50 mu in Taihuyuan Town, which is located at the junction of Zhejiang and Anhui provinces. A few months later, nine simple greenhouses sprang up, plus three multi-span greenhouses, and the two spent almost all they had, investing more than 2 million yuan.

When everything went smoothly, who knows, a heavy snow in the winter of 2015 crushed all the simple greenhouses. Due to the lack of experience in heat preservation, many plants were frozen to death. Overnight, the company lost more than 400,000 yuan. This defeat did not defeat the two young people, but became more and more brave, and the rebuilt greenhouse soon got back on track.

Because they have sales channels, most of the succulent plants can be sold online, plus independently developed fertilizers, nutritious soil, substrates, seeds, flowerpots, sprinklers, etc., landing in their stores, one-stop shop can easily buy all household gardening supplies.

Zhou Yan told reporters that because of seizing the main business, fertilizers and succulent plants brought huge flow, and through grafting rich products, increased the customer unit price, the profit is very high, and the repurchase rate is very high, nearly 20% are repeat customers, sales last year were close to 10 million yuan.

With the operation of the company, the two more found that with the increasing popularity of home gardening, fertilizer is a big market. Compared with foreign brands, because of the high performance-to-price ratio of their independently developed Xinnuo series nutrient solution and nutrient soil, it is very suitable for online and offline integrated sales. Now that these fertilizers have registered brands and are making rapid progress in offline distribution, the company is expanding its production capacity and preparing to dig deep into the market.

In the company, LV Weiwei serves as chairman and Zhou Yan serves as general manager. Of the 30 employees, 10 are college students. Far away from the city and coming to the countryside, both of them said they had no regrets. Although it is hard to start a business in agriculture, they always feel very down-to-earth in this land, and the old traditional industries also need fresh blood in order to find a new way, as long as they work hard. You can write life anywhere.

Our reporter Zhu Haiyang