1988: Back to the human world for a few years

Chapter 248 Hope (3)

Having worked as a VC in a GP-type institution for such a long time in his previous life, Yang Mo had naturally participated in many return investment projects. Among these return investment projects with the color of equal exchange, there were naturally some involving poverty alleviation and the construction of agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

According to his experience, from a business perspective, for a long time, the vast rural areas have been faced with numerous and huge obstacles, both from a "soft perspective" and from a hardware perspective.

To put it in a highly condensed sentence: the rural market is a vast market with huge potential, but it is a fragmented market composed of countless marginalized groups; whether it is capital flow, transportation logistics, information flow, or value flow, objectively speaking, it is in a state of severe blockage.

Therefore, this is the core reason why most of the non-localized agricultural commercial investment projects in later generations that targeted grassroots rural areas ultimately ended in failure.

There is a famous saying in the strategic investment community of later generations: Whoever can integrate China's rural areas into a relatively less fragmented market and open up three of the four core links of capital, logistics, information, and value will easily stand at the pinnacle of the business world.

So, this is the reason why Pinxixi can create miracles, why Kuaishou is even more favored by top capitals than Douyin in the local area, and why Alibaba planned to get involved in the underlying field of rural e-commerce a long time ago... Although from an objective point of view, the above institutions can only completely open up two of the four core links at most, but even so, it is enough to stand out from the crowd.

Of course, each era has its own words.

In this era when even computers are still a rare gadget and most rural areas do not have access to roads, the methods used in the e-commerce era are certainly not of much reference value.

But means are only things at the technical level. As long as one understands the core of some things, even in the late 1980s when the market economy was not well developed, it would not prevent Yang Mo from making a small intervention in the rural market and setting up a small layout.

That’s right, although the objective conditions are not mature, Yang Mo still plans to enter the rural market.

There is a famous saying in the VC world: Those who only know how to "benchmark successful cases" are mediocre; those who only know how to transplant the successful experience of their peers are hopeless fools.

Any qualified VC should be able to see that in the late 1980s when many things were “about to break”, although the three core links of capital, logistics, and information were difficult to achieve true unblocking and unification, the “value” link that caused the most headaches and even despair for future investors had ushered in the last looming capture window.

Therefore, out of some strange psychology, Yang Mo, who had no regrets about selling his father's land to his son, decided to give it a try.

………………

The reason why he dared to intervene in the rural market in this era when all kinds of infrastructure were not perfect was actually due to Yang Mo's later experience in operating a return investment project in 2014.

That year, a GP institution invested in a guidance fund in a city in southwestern Henan and made a small profit; therefore, according to the rules, it needed to reinvest 1.2 million yuan to the local area... and Yang Mo was one of the persons in charge of this reinvestment project.

At that time, Pinxixi, known as the "King of Suburban Counties", had not yet been established. However, this did not prevent the industry from shifting its attention to the vast rural market, and ambitiously wanted to open up commercial channels in this fragmented market and integrate it into the unified national market.

As a result, the 1.2 million yuan was all invested in a large county in southwestern Henan with a population of 150 million.

So the return investment project is roughly like this:
Step 40: After conducting a resource inventory and self-diagnosis and unifying operational ideas, it was decided to abandon the 24 people in the county seat and focus on the remaining 600 townships, more than 110 natural villages, and a total of 2 million people in rural areas; and adopt the "supply and marketing cooperative + OO e-commerce" model to occupy as many village-level markets as possible, which are regarded as capillaries.

It should be pointed out that people in the industry had already found out a few years ago that the failure rate of O2O projects may remain high in cities, but in rural areas, O2O is a more reliable and easier to implement model than the pure e-commerce that was popular at the time.

Step 32: Yang Mo and others set up a project company, diluted 1.5% of the shares, and then used "middlemen" to recruit more than a dozen people with certain social resources and influence in the local area as shareholders, and expanded the project capital to million... Although this operation will greatly lose the expected returns of the project, everyone on earth knows the purpose of doing so.

Step 1000: After setting up the commodity purchasing and dispatching center in the county town, we sent salesmen to various villages, using the village shops as a breakthrough point to seek cooperation. In just two months, we developed more than 300 project terminal outlets and successfully achieved -meter business coverage in various villages and towns.

In other words, even if you are in the countryside, you can find the project outlets by walking no more than 300 meters from your home... This distance demarcation is very important and is also the first execution node of the project.

To this end, even if it will cause a certain amount of waste of resources, 3-5 outlets will be set up in those large natural villages; of course, one outlet is basically enough for small natural villages.

In fact, these stores rely on the village-level stores to exist, and cover more than a thousand outlets in the rural market of the entire county. Although it sounds exaggerated, in fact, with the assistance of a dozen shareholders, it is very easy to expand, and it basically does not cost any money... The stores are still the stores of those bosses, but the doorheads are replaced with the signs of the projects, and two large screens are set up for you in the store for free.

But correspondingly, the future purchase business of these shops can be handed over to the project party, and it is definitely cheaper than the boss buying the goods himself;

The most important thing is that the project party not only supplies goods, but also receives them... For example, wild vegetables picked by local villagers, local chickens, eggs, etc., as long as they are on the list, the project party will receive them and will give the store owner a certain amount of room to increase the price.

With this transaction, the store owner had two extra sources of income and could also renovate his store for free, so he naturally agreed to it happily.

Step 4: Relying on a third party, establish a logistics distribution team that travels frequently between villages.

How high is the business frequency of this logistics distribution team?

Basically, as long as there is feedback information from the terminal, it can be guaranteed that there will be a round trip to each village every day... No matter whether it is delivering goods or receiving goods, or even returning goods, as long as you have a demand, he will dare to go.

Although this will greatly increase the initial operating costs, it is the second key node of the project.

You know, Alibaba has already proposed the concept of rural e-commerce at this time, but the only thing that restricts this concept is actually village-level logistics and distribution... After all, Alibaba is a national e-commerce platform. Even as powerful as it is, it currently does not have the ability to cover all rural distribution in the country.

Therefore, the village-level logistics system is the key to whether this county-level O2O project can seize the initiative... Small projects have their own advantages.

Step 2: Comprehensively promote OO projects so that rural areas can also enjoy the convenience and efficient services of e-commerce.

Everyone on earth knows that in most rural areas, people go to town to buy things in batches, and even salt is carried home in boxes and bags... This is not because the rural areas are rich, but simply because there are too few things in the village stores, and transportation to town for shopping is inconvenient.

Although this large-scale purchasing model may seem very exciting on the surface, in fact, anyone with a little business knowledge knows that it is actually very detrimental to the expansion of product categories and the actual circulation of goods... There is no other reason. Large-scale purchasing means high unit prices, and high unit prices mean that rural consumers whose purchasing power is not very strong will have narrower choices when making purchasing decisions.

This has been a vicious cycle for a long time, and is one of the core reasons why the merchandise displayed in shops in rural markets is never very rich.

Therefore, without leaving the village, one can rely on the two large screens in the store to buy one or two rare commodities that they have never seen before at the cheapest price, and the goods can be delivered the next day. This is actually very attractive to most rural consumers, and it is also a rigid demand service that they could hardly realize before... Everyone has various desires, and everyone wants to make their lives more comfortable and exciting, but they did not have such conditions before, or the motivation cost was too high.

Although there were many pain points in rural areas at that time, such as low cultural level, inability to operate mobile phones, and ignorance of how to bind bank cards and shop on e-commerce platforms, these problems were not a problem as long as the project party was willing.

Look, have you seen the two big screens in the convenience store? They have big words and pictures, and the store owner is there to help you operate and make recommendations. He can pull out any product you want and explain it to you. If you are interested, he can place an order for you directly.

No smartphone, no bank card, and no account?

That's so easy. The shop owner will pay for you. You just register it in the notebook and give him the cash... Anyway, O2O is different from pure e-commerce. Not only does it strictly prevent "photo fraud", but the entire process is clearly marked with real prices, and there are no various price routines.

what?
Why do you think the shop owner is so busy helping out with the project?

Brother, the store owner gets a commission for every transaction, okay? Although the proportion is not high and the commission for each transaction is not much, for the rural areas in southwestern Henan where the economy can never be considered developed, this is already a considerable amount of income, okay?

Moreover, the further this business develops, the higher the quality of goods the villagers can enjoy and the lower the prices, and the more they like to go to the store owner to shop, no matter whether it is the products of the O2O platform or the products of the convenience store itself...there is no other reason but the scale effect of project procurement.

Take a popular mineral water at that time, for example. In 2014, the selling price in towns and villages was 1 yuan per bottle, while its actual distribution price was about 6 yuan, and the minimum purchase was 10 bottles. But in 2015, when Yang Mo and others took the purchasing team to negotiate with the manufacturer, they finally negotiated the price to 30 yuan per bottle based on their monthly sales performance of more than 2 bottles.
That is to say, even if Yang Mo set the supply price of the outlets at 4 per bottle, Yang Mo and his team could still make 9 per bottle after deducting various costs; and even if those store owners set the price of mineral water at 1 at the suggestion of Yang Mo and others, their actual profit would be higher than before... Well, this is a classic win-win situation for manufacturers, distributors, terminals and consumers.

For example, after the wheat is harvested, the local rural areas basically plant a season of peanuts. If farmers buy this kind of peanut fertilizer themselves, a bag costs about 150 yuan.

But in fact, there is a fertilizer factory in the local area. As long as you have the quantity, you can buy it directly from the factory at about half the price. After Yang Mo and his team negotiated it, even if the terminal freight was included, they could make at least a 90% gross profit by selling it in the village for 10 yuan... The only difference is that Yang Mo and others cannot buy on credit, while ordinary farmers can buy it on credit at agricultural supply stores in towns and villages, although the price will be much higher.

Although due to some safety considerations, Yang Mo did not take the risk himself and open up the credit sales business for such materials to those farmers, but no matter what, for some farmers, this is still a business that can be regarded as a blessing and can make money.

The above two are just relatively representative cases.

With scale, multiple parties benefit.

The same is true for the rest of the products on display in the store, as well as the products on the O2O platform that have been screened and optimized and retained.

Step 6: Start building a business value circulation system, relying on county B/C data and opening up acquisition business.

Anyone with foresight knows that exhausting the pond to catch all the fish is a very foolish thing to do.

The vast rural areas represented by southwestern Henan are not wealthy. Even if they have seized the initiative and were the first to launch O2O businesses in these areas, this is a consumer business after all. Given the financial situation of consumers in these areas, even if they want to make impulse purchases, they can only do so a few times a year.

Therefore, the long-term solution is to provide them with opportunities to recover, build platform viscosity, and ultimately achieve a positive cycle of mutual support.

Therefore, as the project leader, Yang Mo immediately began to screen internal and external data after obtaining the basic data of each village, and began to rely on those terminal outlets in a targeted manner to open up the acquisition business.

For example, the wild vegetables mentioned earlier.

Unlike what people from other provinces think, there are actually mountains and hills in southwestern Henan. Therefore, there are quite a lot of wild vegetables such as bracken, shepherd's purse, wild amaranth, gray-gray vegetable, noodle vegetable, and locust flower. On weekdays, farmers pick some to eat at home, or sell them on the street when they go to market.

But in fact, Yang Mo's salesmen went to food processing factories in various places to ask, and found out that many factories have both the ability and interest in processing wild vegetables... Whether it is for export or domestic sales, the market potential in this area is much greater than most people think.

The problem is that since the 1980s and 1990s, some people have noticed the business opportunities, but after all these years, no one has really been able to develop this business.

why?
The reason is simple...the cost of the acquisition process is too high.

Whether you send people to the countryside to collect or set up a centralized collection point in town, you cannot reach the quantity required for large-scale production, and this decentralized purchasing method cannot reduce costs at all.

But this is not a problem for the project team that Yang Mo has been working on since 2015. With the most basic trust, as long as Yang Mo and others count the demand information of the B side within the scope of resources, once they find that they can achieve the most basic scale effect, they can immediately release the purchase information through the owners of more than outlets. As long as they post the photos of these wild vegetables and the purchase price at the door of the store, and then shout on the iron loudspeaker in the village, the villagers will naturally run to the mountains to dig some wild vegetables to sell after their farm work... There are even families who go up the mountain before dawn.

Although a pound of fresh wild vegetables can only be sold for two or three yuan, and some types can only be sold for a few cents, for underdeveloped rural areas represented by southwestern Henan, this is already a very good income;

The tens or even dozens of yuan that the store owner earned after the project party took dehydration losses into account and actively increased the purchase price appropriately was enough for him to spare no effort to go door to door and chat with the farmers in the same village.

Again, the level of poverty in rural areas of some parts of the Central Plains can sometimes even exceed your imagination.

what?
You can't see what's so good about this method? Isn't it the same as the previous rural acquisitions?
Please, as I said before, the project team that Yang Mo is in has a fleet that travels back and forth between the villages at a high frequency. Basically, they have to complete the task of cargo delivery and purchase and return to each village every day... This is the biggest difference and the greatest value.

You should know that many food processing factories have requirements for the freshness and quality of wild vegetables. Once the procurement of wild vegetables takes too long and causes dehydration, aging or even corruption, they cannot be used, and at the very least their value will be greatly reduced.

This is another important reason why those food factories have never been able to make a success in the wild vegetable business in the past… The comprehensive procurement cost of qualified raw materials is too high, the loss is too serious, and it is too uneconomical to specially build such a large logistics fleet.

In addition to wild vegetables, products such as native chickens, eggs, geese, native pigs, and toon can almost all adopt the same operating model. Relying on the derivative value of this O2O platform and the dozen or so shareholders of the project company, Yang Mo and others are fully capable of connecting with various relevant channels within and outside the province to achieve economies of scale.

It can be said that although the "procurement + resource allocation" business was only opened for less than 2015 months in 7, the results are extremely gratifying.

The project team that Yang Mo worked for earned more than 800 million yuan in brokerage fees from this type of business... This is just a small amount of money;

The key point is that among the more than 600 natural villages in that populous county in southwestern Henan, more than half of them saw an average household income increase of 710 yuan because of this business, and the average household income growth of the remaining villages was close to 500 yuan... Don't think that this number is low. Students who have participated in poverty alleviation work in extremely poor areas know that this is already a very encouraging result.

Just as Yang Mo and others were inspired by the project summary meeting, they were planning to use this opportunity to expand their business scope, deepen the resource connection between B/C in the three provinces of the Central Plains, further connect with the city-village cooperation business, and fatten up these fish in a populous county in southwestern Henan...

The project was halted.

There are two reasons for the suspension:

1. The initial 1.5 million yuan of funds for the project have been burned out.

2. Based on certain considerations, as a reinvestment project, a certain GP institution does not intend to continue to add funds, and will not even intervene in this kind of rural grassroots platform project in the future.

The first point is easy to understand. O2O is a project that burns more money than e-commerce. Whether it is warehousing, logistics, purchase of terminal channel equipment, or even business docking and negotiation, the cost is higher than that of pure e-commerce. The use of capital flow is also more rigid. It is difficult to make any effective maneuvers in the early stage of the project. Naturally, the money will be used less and less. There is no such thing as robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The second one is very meaningful.

Although a certain GP institution stated that the project management was chaotic and that there were a large number of violations by internal personnel, it was not optimistic about the future of the project and therefore did not make additional investments.

It is true that in the early stages of the project, there were many people who exploited loopholes in the mechanism, reported losses inaccurately, took empty salaries, and used their positions to enrich themselves. Even the shareholders were not clean.

But the problem is...

This has almost become a routine, so is this not the case with other projects? Why hasn't the company stopped adding funds to other projects?
At the beginning, Yang Mo had a lot of unpleasantness with the company because of this matter, but he was powerless. This project, which was about to run smoothly and would see the light of day in at most half a year, finally came to an end.

For the next six months, Yang Mo couldn't figure out the key reason why this project was stopped.

Until one day, when he saw the list of all the company's project shareholders at the year-end meeting, he suddenly realized...

The project was stopped in September 2015. The secret at this time is very meaningful.

………………

Although the project in southwestern Henan in his previous life eventually came to an end, Yang Mo never considered that project a failure;

Therefore, after his rebirth, he, who was somewhat sensitive in this young body, decided to practice the project again... Of course, the specific situations in the two eras were completely different, so he naturally couldn't completely copy the experience of his previous life.

But it doesn’t matter. As for something like a model, as long as the underlying logic can work, the specific execution and details are nothing more than tailor-made according to the actual situation and the appropriate response.

It wasn't that he was unwilling to accept the defeat in his previous life that was not a sin of war, but...

Somehow, he suddenly wanted to give the old man Zhao in front of him, and the thousands of people like him who had rushed to help on foot, a hope that there might be a way out.

........................

"What?"

"Young man, you plan to build a small shop next to each Hope Primary School to sell and receive goods. Your company will provide the products and orders... and then let me be the owner of the shop?"

Old man Zhao looked at Yang Mo in front of him with some trembling, as if he couldn't believe that such a great thing would happen to him.

Yang Mo smiled and shook his head, looking a bit silly. "Uncle, I'm not the store owner, I'm the project transfer person... In addition to selling goods, the things like receiving goods and placing orders have to go through your hands, and you also have to take on the responsibility of doing ideological work for other people in the village."

"In addition, you have to take care of the items of material output in our village, the statistics of special products and special skills, the selection of workers for the construction of the Hope Primary School in the village, and the bidding for the ingredients and consumables needed for the meals of the 100 schools in the future!"

Thanks to the policy that was obtained, all the expenses incurred by these 100 Hope Primary Schools must be "internally absorbed" as much as possible at Yang Mo's request. Therefore, the supplies for food, clothing, housing and education in the future of the schools alone is a cake that cannot be underestimated... There are many people in Qi and Lu, and even more children in rural areas. The 100 Hope Primary Schools have at least 40,000 to 50,000 students in total.

Moreover, in this era when everyone could hardly get enough food, Yang Mo not only required these students to have four sets of school uniforms a year, but also required two eggs and a bottle of milk for three meals a day. Can you believe it?
As for why I opened a small shop next to the Hope Primary School...

You just need to know that for a public welfare school like this that does not charge any fees and has good conditions, people from all over the country will send their children here, even if they have to crawl... Of course, the world is not stable, so those villages that are quite far away will most likely form an escort team to send their children here every day.

When it was delivered, the possibility of purchasing it in a small shop was not very high...

But that’s not important. What’s important is that they can see what’s written on the blackboard outside the small shop.

Yang Mo believes that as long as the operation is done properly, it will only take two or three months at most for the villages where Hope Primary Schools are built to become another distribution center that is no less than the rural streets.

………………

Looking at the messy old man Zhao who was doubting his life, Yang Mo smiled and turned to look at the village director beside him: "Director, since we have talked about it today, why not let me tell you my request as well."

The village director, who was also in a daze, immediately cheered up after hearing this and nodded vigorously: "Chief Yang, if you have any requests, just tell me!"

Yang Mo's eyes were somewhat serious: "Since we have designated Uncle Zhao as the project transfer person, I hope you must respect his identity... Whether it is project acceptance or personnel selection, it is based on Uncle Zhao's wishes, and you are not allowed to interfere!"

The village director's expression suddenly turned bitter. He looked at Yang Mo with some embarrassment and scratched his head: "But Chief Yang, although Old Man Zhao is a very honest person, he has little education. I'm afraid..."

Yang Mo glanced at him: "I don't care, I only recognize Uncle Zhao... In fact, it's not just your Sanguanmiao Village, but all the villages that want to build Hope Primary Schools, our unit only recognizes the project transfer person!"

The village director smacked his lips and said, "But, just like Section Chief Yang said before, there are so many things involved. Wouldn't it be more appropriate for the village committee to help share some of the burden?"

At this time, Old Man Zhao also came to his senses and quickly persuaded: "Yes, young man, you have so many things to do, and I can't handle them all. Let the villagers take the lead, and I will just help."

Yang Mo shook his head, his tone unquestionable: "No! Either agree to my conditions, or don't build this primary school!"

Looking at the two people who were somewhat intimidated by him, Yang Mo glanced at the village director calmly: "Don't blame me for speaking bluntly... Don't say that this is my first time in Sanguanmiao Village. Even if I come here every day in the future, I only recognize Uncle Zhao among these more than 700 people... I don't trust the rest!"

Old Man Zhao glanced at the embarrassed look on the village director's face, and moved his lips, wanting to say something to help, but when he saw Yang Mo's unconscious authority, he suddenly didn't dare to say anything.

Seeing this, Yang Mo quickly changed his expression, laughed, and then clinked glasses with Old Man Zhao: "Uncle, my words may not sound nice, but this is our bottom line."

"Remember what I told you before? If you can't do this within your ability, then why did our company come all the way here? Do you really think our company has money but nowhere to spend it?"

As he spoke, Yang Mo took a sip of wine with a smile: "Besides, if such a small thing is not given to you, a big project manager, then this primary school will really be too shameless to build... You know, the name of this Hope Primary School in the record submitted by our unit to the relevant departments is called [Zhao Laonian Hope Primary School]!"

!!!

What, what! ?

This Hope Primary School is named after you?

Old man Zhao, who encountered such a thing for the first time, was at a loss what to do. He stared blankly at Yang Mo, who looked like a real junior with a respectful and sincere face.

I am Old Man Zhao...

Are you qualified to let others know your name?
I don't know why, but he, who is already over fifty, suddenly felt like crying...

(End of this chapter)