Dropout inspires farmers to become e-commerce tycoons

When Sun Han worked as a courier and security guard after dropping out of university, he never dreamed that one day he would inspire hundreds of farmers to become millionaires.

The 33-year-old was born in Dongfeng, Suining county, in Jiangsu province. The village, which has 1,180 families, is home to more than 2,000 online stores.

In Dongfeng, piles of packed furniture are lined along the roads waiting to be delivered. Container trucks loaded with furniture set off across the country to make deliveries.

In 2014, the village's total furniture sales reached more than 1.3 billion yuan ($210 million). According to a report by Alibaba Research Institute in October 2013, the village topped all the 14 villages in eight provinces with large numbers of online stores. But nine years ago, it was just an ordinary agricultural village, like millions of others in China.

In 2006, after trying several jobs in Nanjing and Shanghai, Sun went back to his hometown and bought the first computer in the village for 2,800 yuan. He applied to set up an online shop on Taobao and sold his first batch of goods, 35 prepaid mobile phone cards, in one night.

"I realized that it was easy to sell goods on the Internet," Sun said. "I felt like a new world had opened for me."

Several months later, after visiting IKEA Shanghai with his wife, Sun decided to invest in the furniture business.

"The structures of the furniture there were not complicated," said Sun. "I told myself I could make similar products."

Sun bought a 400-yuan shelf and started to visit furniture makers in his hometown, asking them to reproduce the design. But starting a business turned out to be much more difficult than he had imagined. He took the sample to more than 30 carpenters, all of whom failed to accomplish the task at a reasonable price.

"I was startled when I visited carpenters. They chopped coffins out of pieces of wood directly with an ax. Due to the price of the raw material and the workers' salaries, the shelves they made cost much more than IKEA's."

After changing the specifications of the shelf, Sun and a carpenter finally managed to manufacture a copy that was cost-effective. It earned Sun almost 100,000 yuan in the first month it was on sale. In 2007, he invested 100,000 yuan to start a furniture factory. Sales in the first six months reached more than 1 million yuan.

Rumors spread among the farmers in the village that Sun was earning a fortune by running an illegal business. Many of them did not understand how a young man could earn money while spending all his time in front of a computer.

In 2008, after Sun helped a friend to start an online store to sell furniture, many of the farmers asked him to help them set up online businesses. By the end of the year, more than 200 online stores were operating in the village.

Now the village has 200 furniture factories, and 14 express delivery companies have established distribution centers for the villagers. It also has design companies and material suppliers.

More than 90 percent of the village's young people, including college graduates and migrant workers, chose to come back and start their own businesses.

Some of the online stores sell other goods such as shoes and mobile phones. Shaji township, which has jurisdiction of the village, now has more than 8,500 online stores.

Qiu Chaoliang, Shaji's Party chief, said the township's online sales reached 2.6 billion yuan last year.

"E-commerce has improved the local logistics industry greatly," said Qiu. "It has also improved the roads and Internet speeds and helped to establish an industrial park for the villagers. Dongfeng village and Shaji township now look totally different compared with nine years ago."

Sun has established an e-commerce association to regulate the market, provide training for villagers and negotiate with the material suppliers and express delivery companies.

"I hope that the sales of my store will reach 50 million yuan this year," said Sun. "I also hope that I can create a well-known brand for my furniture.

"One of my goals is to invent five new articles of furniture every month. I hope they will be of such value that their owners will be reluctant to throw them away when they move."

cangwei@chinadaily.com.cn

A monument at the entrance of Dongfeng village in Suining, Jiangsu province, says it is the No 1 village in China for ecommerce trading on Taobao. Provided To China Daily

(China Daily USA 05/04/2015 page8)