Taobao's latest data provides the answer — quite a few consumers are beginning to turn to purchasing organic food. Over the past month, the organic agricultural products on Taobao's Ecological Agriculture Channel (http://ny.taobao.com)日have seen average transaction amounts exceed 500,000, with more than 20,000 households across the country on average each day using this “organic agricultural products market” to solve their family's grocery needs.
Organic red dates, milk, and rice sell the best
Henan's “Haoxiangni” red dates, Xinjiang's apples, raisins, and flat peaches, Yangcheng Lake's hairy crabs, Yantai's Red Fuji apples, and other nationally renowned organic foods and local specialties were previously associated with specialty stores that could only be seen along bustling streets. Now, through Taobao's Ecological Agriculture Channel, with a click of the mouse to place an order, express delivery brings them right to your door.
Taobao's Ecological Agriculture Channel currently focuses primarily on organic agricultural product transactions, including vegetables and fruits, meat, poultry and eggs, and grain, oil, and side products. Although it has only been “open” for just over 2 months, it already has more than 300,000 loyal consumers.
Data shows that the best-selling organic agricultural products are currently organic red dates, organic milk, organic tea, organic rice, and organic cooking oil, because these products are suitable for long-distance transportation and have no geographical restrictions. Among them, organic red dates produced in Xinjiang have topped the sales list for two consecutive weeks. Buyer Ms. Ma stated that she used to buy fruit at fruit supermarkets, but the prices and quality she got varied widely and were not always satisfactory. Some looked nice on the outside, but she worried there might be problems. When buying online, however, she can clearly see the merchant's qualification information, the fruit's place of origin, and other consumers' experiences and feedback, which actually makes her feel more reassured, and the prices are also significantly cheaper.
In addition to fruit, over the past month, transaction amounts and search growth for rice from Heilongjiang in Northeast China have risen the fastest. In store messages, the reporter found that many consumers buying rice are repeat customers, gradually increasing from buying a few kilograms the first time to 20 kilograms or even more. “I used to buy organic rice at the supermarket for about 50 yuan per kilogram. I bought the same brand of organic rice from Taobao at about 30% off, and it tastes exactly the same when cooked, especially for porridge — it tastes excellent.” “Fast shipping, great rice, I'll come back to buy again.” And other consumer messages fill the page.
In addition, relevant Taobao staff introduced that as organic food is gradually recognized by consumers and the Spring Festival and日other holidays are approaching, some organic nuts have recently日also shown an upward trend in transaction amounts.
文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11395/
文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11395/
Organic farm owners are racing to open stores online
Although selling organic agricultural products online is still a new phenomenon, it has already become a trend in agriculture. Merchant Mr. Tang told the reporter: “After joining Taobao at the end of August this year, since I had no prior online sales experience, I didn't receive a single order in the first week. Later, under the guidance of Taobao's operations staff, we retook photos of the red dates, revised all the descriptions, and by September, orders from all over the country came in continuously. In the few days before Mid-Autumn Festival, transaction amounts exceeded 30,000 yuan almost every day. Previously, with my offline physical store, my customers were at most within about ten kilometers around me, but through Taobao, more than 70% of my customers come from cities like Beijing, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Shanghai.”
By comparison, Ms. Fan is much more experienced. In fact, as early as last year, they began exploring how to use e-commerce to sell food produced on their own farm. After Taobao's Ecological Agriculture Channel opened, they seized the opportunity and quickly became one of the leaders.
“In fact, we have always supplied high-end offline supermarkets, and demand exceeded supply. But even so, we still wanted to open a store on Taobao. Because we believe online sales are an inevitable trend, and opening an online store allows us to face consumers directly, eliminating many intermediate links. Although the final selling price is much lower than in supermarkets, our profits have actually increased.”
According to Chen Qingtan from Taobao's New Agriculture Development Department, over the past six months or more, Taobao's Ecological Agriculture Channel has made multiple visits to Xinjiang, Guizhou, Guangxi, Heilongjiang, and other provinces and cities rich in agricultural products for inspections and research, hoping to use the internet to bring organic specialty agricultural products from all over the country to the whole nation, and to let consumers nationwide know about, understand, and accept them. Judging from the operations and sales over the past two months, it has completely exceeded initial expectations. Currently, this channel brings together organic agricultural products from正规 farms with corporate status in more than a dozen provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions including Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Beijing, and Xinjiang, as well as organic agricultural products from the United States, Australia, Europe, Israel, and other regions. Among them, nearly 300 organic farms have already joined, and another nearly 700 are in the consultation, inspection, and onboarding stage. Categories cover grain, oil, and beverages, vegetables and fruits, meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy, nuts and dried goods, tea, and milk powder, enough to meet a family's日daily living needs.
Public information shows that the onboarding standards for organic farms may be the strictest across all of Taobao. Not only must corporate qualifications and organic certification qualifications be reviewed, but farm environmental testing reports (water, soil, air), production standards must also be reviewed, and production commitments must be signed. At the same time, they also need to understand whether each farm has had any negative news before, listen to industry peers“ reputations, and have staff conduct on-site inspections. All agricultural product packaging must also bear an anti-counterfeiting ”organic code," and only then can it pass the review. Such a complex onboarding review process is designed to ensure that the farms that join are trustworthy and capable of providing high-quality organic agricultural products.
Regarding this, Director Hu Shan of Zhejiang University's Organic Culture Research Office, hailed as China's “first person in organics,” feels deeply about it. For more than ten years, she has been promoting organic food and organic living through various offline methods. She believes that the significance of “organic living” can not only promote physical health but also promote environmental protection and sustainable development. In response to the current sales situation of domestic organic farms and consumers' level of awareness, Teacher Hu Shan believes that only by expanding sales channels on a larger online platform can more consumers know the benefits of organic food and buy more organic food, thereby bringing more people into the organic industry, reducing the cost of organic food, and promoting the development of the organic industry.
Consumers can “trace” the source of food online
Compared with traditional channels, Taobao's Ecological Agriculture Channel solves the hardest problem in food safety — “trust.” Previously, because there were too many intermediate links, consumers could not see the real producers, and producers could not see consumers, resulting in severe information asymmetry.
Now, Taobao Ecological Agriculture lists all farm owners' information in their stores and requires public disclosure of information such as production location, production process, and agricultural product safety standards. Data such as farm certificates and organic codes are directly connected with the data center of the China Certification and Accreditation Information Network. In every product listing on Taobao's Ecological Agriculture Channel, consumers can learn where the agricultural product's production base is, what the production environment is like, the production standards, valid certification qualifications, and more, and can verify authenticity through the organic code on the product packaging, thereby consuming and eating with confidence.
In early September, when Taobao Ecological Agriculture's organic channel officially launched,日the transaction amount reached more than 300,000.日Before Mid-Autumn Festival, pre-orders for organic red dates alone
reached 10,000 units.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11395/
From the data provided by Taobao Ecological Agriculture, consumers are currently concentrated in the Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou areas, with the majority being female users from Zhejiang, Guangdong, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Beijing.文章源自FOFCC-http://fofcc.org.cn/en/11395/