Jin Guowei was born in a village in 2018; Yunnan was trying to pay off debts by selling fruit to tourists on the streets of Lijiang.
Guowei has now become an internet phenomenon with 7.3 million followers and 300 million Yuan ($46 million) sales. Guowei once sold 6 million Yuan worth of pomegranates in 20 minutes.
This is an indication of the growing trend of rural entrepreneurship in China. Farmers and agricultural intermediaries living in remote provinces sell products directly to urban consumers through effective live broadcasts and small-format videos. Rural creators ByteDance Ltd. reported that the Douyin app, which is TikTok's counterpart in China, increased its revenue from rural content videos by 15 times year over year.
Another farmer, Guo Chengcheng , is broadcasting live from his family farms to his 2.5 million followers on the Douyin app. During the broadcast, viewers buy products by clicking on the link on the screen.
In the past, Tencent Holdings Ltd. was receiving approximately one hundred orders per day from the merchant program in the WeChat app. Now he receives as many as 50,000 orders per live stream and earns at least 9 million Yuan per month.
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Jin Guowei, a fruit seller, said in an interview, “Even the most normal moments in villages contain interesting visual content. "These are things people living in the city don't have but want to see," he said.
The number of farmers broadcasting in China is huge and growing rapidly. More than 100,000 farmers posted 2.52 million sessions on Alibaba Group, Taobao Live, which ended in March. The number of agricultural content creators with more than 10,000 followers on the Douyin app, the number of people increased 6 times in 2019-20 compared to the previous year.
Farmers still have to rely on the logistics arms of big e-commerce companies like JD Logistics or Alibaba's Cainiao or use professionals like SF Express to move their crops. Direct selling exposes them to greater risk, especially from customers who demand refunds for damaged goods. In addition to increasing competition, the high costs paid for cold deliveries are also causing profit margins to decrease. But increased orders and gains from a loyal customer base more than make up for these problems.