Lu Xiaohua: start his own business and let employees be bosses

For Lu Xiaohua, the "post-70s", there were two "unexpected" people in half of his life. The first was a farmer of his ancestors who wanted to jump out of the farm, but he finally went back to the field. The second was that after planting the land for a few years, he did not expect to be able to catch the tuyere of "Internet +" and grow vegetables on the Internet. "not to mention farmers and farming are linked to the words' rustic 'and' sunset'. Last year, our sales exceeded 100 million, 20% of which were sold online." Standing in front of the vegetable base of more than 2000 mu of Nanjing Lishui Huacheng vegetable Professional Cooperative, watching the logistics vehicles coming and going in front of the door, Lu Xiaohua calmly and confidently told reporters, "in the future, we should not only seize the tuyere, but also create the wind." fly with more people. "

In 1998, Lu Xiaohua worked in a township enterprise in front of his home. at that time, the overall economic situation was not good, the enterprise could not receive payment, and he took a lot of chemical fertilizer to pay off his debts. in order to "cash in", he had to sell chemical fertilizer everywhere. As a result, with this run, there is a business opportunity. Lishui has many fellow villagers in Wuxi contracted land to grow vegetables, as the sale of agricultural materials has not been liberalized, their biggest difficulty is to buy chemical fertilizer. In this way, Lu Xiaohua not only sold all the chemical fertilizer on his hand, but also thought of a good way out. After returning to Lishui, he decided to resign and go to Wuxi to grow vegetables with his fellow villagers, and opened a supply point for agricultural materials. With the right supply and marketing, coupled with the trust of fellow villagers, Lu Xiaohua soon opened up the situation.

But the road to entrepreneurship is not bound to be smooth. After a few years, the process of urbanization accelerated, many vegetable plots were requisitioned, and Lu Xiaohua's business became more and more difficult. Lishui happened to encourage migrant workers to return to their hometown to start a business. Lu Xiaohua felt that he had broadened his horizons and accumulated experience in the past few years. You can try to be your own boss. So, in 2009, Lu Xiaohua resolutely "went home to farm."

At first, the family did not understand the choice. In their view, "how successful can farming be?" Lu Xiaohua brought back 3.8 million yuan of working capital. Isn't it ridiculed that there is so much money for farming? Lu Xiaohua doesn't think so. "growing vegetables sounds corny, but there is a lot to be done." First of all, people are inseparable from industries related to eating. In addition, now making 'vegetable baskets' is generally relatively extensive, as long as we play the 'local food' card well, we will certainly be able to find the market. "

Quality and price directly determine whether this "vegetable basket" can be valued or not. In order to ensure quality and safety, Lu Xiaohua's dishes have to go through four tests. As for the price, most of the food eaten by Nanjing people is transported from other places, and Lu Xiaohua's local food transportation cost is relatively low, so there is no worry about the market.

After all, "I have seen the world", Lu Xiaohua is really different from others in growing vegetables. Apart from the two "mud legs", he can always straighten up and look at the distance. "you can't just bury your head in growing vegetables, and you should also have a sense of management in farming." Soon after Lu Xiaohua returned to his hometown to start a business, he set up a cooperative and incorporated the concept of land shares into it. After farmers join the cooperative, they will buy shares at a discount of the land contracted by the household, and they can get a dividend of 1200 yuan per mu per year, while the surrounding farmers who do not participate in the cooperative generally have a land transfer rent of 700 yuan per mu. In addition, farmers who join the co-operatives can also give priority to working nearby cooperatives, and they can also get 20,000 to 30,000 yuan a year.

The purpose of establishing a cooperative is to form a joint force and build a brand. Lu Xiaohua told reporters that cooperatives uniformly grow, manage, and sell vegetables, first of all, from the source to provide farmers with varieties of vegetables with market competitiveness; secondly, to provide technical guidance in the process of planting, to purchase organic fertilizers and biological pesticides in a unified manner to ensure the quality and safety of agricultural products; and thirdly, to purchase vegetables produced by farmers at a unified price and sell them under a unified brand. At first, the cooperative had 13 members, but now it has more than 130. the planting area of vegetables has also grown from more than 300mu to more than 2000 mu. At present, the main business of cooperatives are canteen distribution, gift vegetable sales, vegetable house distribution, tourist field picking and wholesale sales in surrounding markets, etc., diversified sales models reduce market risk and ensure that vegetables sell well all the year round.

Despite the background of migrant workers, Lu Xiaohua's business philosophy is more advanced than many urban entrepreneurs: take the initiative to train employees to be bosses. "the people who come to me work for a fixed salary in the first year, and from the second year, they can contract the land and manage it themselves as long as they like." Lu Xiaohua said, "70% of the profit earned goes to the leader of the production team, and workers can receive 30% of the profit as a bonus in addition to their basic salary every month." In this way, employees are not only more motivated, but also more responsible for product quality.

At the beginning, Lu Xiaohua's company was still a "family business", and many positions were "in charge" by relatives. As the enterprise grew bigger, he decided to "change his blood": introduce college students majoring in agriculture and eliminate "their own people" who did not know how to manage. For this reason, his wife quarreled with him for a long time.

There is no need to say much about the benefits of introducing talents, but Lu Xiaohua himself did not expect that this group of college students unexpectedly let enterprises unwittingly seize the tuyere of "Internet +." During the period of time when college students first arrived, Lu Xiaohua occasionally found that express delivery came very frequently. Only after asking, did he know that it was something that college students bought online. The e-commerce "buy the world, sell the world" suddenly let Lu Xiaohua find a business opportunity. "if you connect to the Internet, won't you be able to sell vegetables online?"

Network e-commerce, on-demand distribution. In 2014, the cooperative e-commerce platform was launched, mainly engaged in online vegetable shopping, customers can order what they want to buy online. In order to meet the needs of different families, the website adopts the method of "house distribution". It delivers goods twice a week, and the food is delivered to the table on the same day of harvest. After more than a year of operation, the annual sales of the e-commerce platform has exceeded 20 million yuan.

Following the e-commerce platform, the cooperative has opened a mobile WeChat terminal, the products are presented synchronously with the online mall, and a series of preferential activities such as group buying, buy-and-send, base experience are launched, which greatly broadens the platform and channels of network sales. "the combination of virtual and real", while doing a good job in e-commerce, the cooperative also launched a farm music project, allowing customers to experience field work such as planting and picking in vegetable bases, and taste farm dishes on the spot.

Although he is the boss, in the field of the Internet, Lu Xiaohua, who claims to be "not good at playing with mobile phones", does not have "monopoly of power". Instead, he chooses to "let professional people do professional things," and Internet companies let college students be bosses. In 2013, an online company with eight college students as shareholders recruited by Lu Xiaohua was officially established to take charge of vegetable sales in the online mall. "when it comes to online sales, they have the final say, and I work for them." Lu Xiaohua said, "starting a business sounds passionate, but it's not easy to do it. Just standing on the shore and watching, you'll never learn. If you go into the water yourself, even if you choke on it, it's all right." With this experience, the road will become wider and wider, and my enterprise will become stronger and stronger. "