"Is there a Piao today? ”
Speaking of the good days in May this year, Zhuji people can talk excitedly for a long time. A necklace of 1 million will not attract onlookers, and many families have it on their shelves. Beads are stacked on the ground, and any small pile is worth millions. A small stall of a few square meters, with daily sales of more than 100,000 or 200,000 yuan, only a mobile phone, can earn so much by shaking a circle of live broadcast selection on the stall.
earning four or five hundred thousand a month can only be regarded as an ordinary anchor. Keiko's live broadcast room has a daily sales of one million yuan, and the first product sold more than 700 orders, which has set a record in the jewelry city. In winter, she still wears a thin V-neck sweater to show off her accessories. The air conditioner is not turned on indoors, so as not to lose moisture and affect the luster of the pearls. The team assistants all wore down jackets.
Before entering the industry, Keiko was the first batch of Kuaishou's skincare product anchors, assisting Chen Xiaoshuo, the anchor with tens of millions of fans at that time. The daily sales of the live broadcast were nearly one million, which gave her the confidence to switch careers to make pearls, and in less than a month, the number of fans rose to seven or eight thousand.
In front of the live camera, Keiko shows the pearl necklace in her hand.
The sales of the head anchor Meili have exceeded 100 million in eight months. She knows how to sell smartly. The white beads with a pink color showed flaws in the track where the cold white was high-quality, and Meili simply picked them out and named them "cherry blossom pink". At first, I was worried about picking skin tones, and the necklace was not easy to sell, so I changed it to a bracelet. As a result, 400 orders for necklaces came to the live broadcast room, and it became a hit.
In May, the daily sales in the live broadcast room were in the millions, and in her description, a necklace sold 2,000 pieces, which was not enough to sell, so she and her companions went to the market to sweep the goods until midnight and transported back 240 kilograms of beads in a sack.
Meili used to do a live broadcast of clothing, and she has been in the industry for almost three years. At first, she didn't understand pearls at all, and heard her colleague ask, "Is there a Piao today?" She thought it was a person's name, so she replied, "Ah Piao didn't go to work today", not knowing that this was another name for Baroque pearls. Later, she cooperated with a large company and signed a sales volume of 30 million a year, and the other party directly prepared an oxygen tank for her to prevent continuous live broadcast of hypoxia.
The non-standard characteristics of pearls are also non-standard in **. There are **200,000 beads bought, and 800,000 yuan have been sold, "as long as you can sell them, it's your ability." Li Xiaofei, the owner of the post-90s generation, said.
Hoarding is something that almost all shops do. Li Xiaofei once encountered a listed company from outside, investing tens of millions of dollars to buy out a certain type of goods, and pushing a large basket of beads to the appraisal center. She also followed the study, asked her sister to go to the Hong Kong Jewelry Show, stockpiled goods according to the ** over there, and waited for the market in Zhuji to react and re-check the price to be listed.
At the Hong Kong Jewelry Show in September this year, a single thread bead sold for twenty or thirty US dollars, while at that time it was only three or four US dollars in Zhuji Jewelry City. There may be a price increase, Li Xiaofei judged, she immediately collected 30,000 beads in Zhuji to make nearly a thousand necklaces, a 2,000 yuan, sold out in less than a week.
Zhuji Mountain Lake East China International Jewelry City, the owner of the pearl selection in the store.
The selected pearls are placed differently according to their quality.
When the market is good, customers who buy pearls will also keep raising their budgets. In July this year, someone originally wanted to spend 20,000 yuan to buy an Australian white necklace, but after hesitating for a while, it rose to 50,000. At that time, there were two main factors affecting the market: one was the live broadcast and the boost; The second is that the ratings of "Disappearing Her" have climbed, and Ni Ni has a variety of pearl necklaces, which has caused a fashion trend of "Pearl Girl". In Keiko's live broadcast room, Ni Ni sold five or six hundred white full-bead chains with the same style, and sold them until they were liquidated. She began to stock up on a steady basis, one or two million at a time.
There is also a live broadcast of opening a mussel, opening a mussel for 35 yuan, and merchants introduced that it is not uncommon for buyers to spend tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a night. There were so many beads that they couldn't fit at home, so customers simply bought punches and threads, and wore beads to make mats and slippers.
The supply of mussels is not available, and most mussel farmers sell out of mussels at the beginning of the year. In October 2021, the mussels he had raised for four years finally matured, bloomed for three days in a row, and produced more than 200 kilograms of beads. The epidemic is over, ** has doubled, and Zhou Bin hurriedly took action. But half a year later, the pearl** climbed several times and doubled again. "(At the time) I didn't understand this **, I knew that I would sell it in the second half of the year, right? Zhou Bin said.
Early in the morning, workers open mussels in Shanxiahu Village, Shanxiahu Town, Zhuji. In pairs, one is responsible for peeling the shell of the mussel and the other is responsible for digging out the mussel meat and pearls. The mussel field smells of fish.
Mussel workers generally come to the mussel farm at 4 o'clock in the morning, get off work at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and have to work overtime at night. This year, their wages have risen from four hundred to five hundred. The price of shops in and around the jewelry city has also begun to rise, and the rent of 9 square meters of stalls has risen to 690,000 a year. Even the villagers' old houses are crowded with guests. But after May, the market suddenly returned to silence in June. "Is it just a fire and it's gone? Merchants began to doubt their judgment, but in July there was a lot of noise. Every time Ni Ni posts a ** on social platforms, the matching accessories quickly appear in various live broadcast rooms. The merchants couldn't say the reason, "Anyway, Ni Ni alone saved the entire pearl industry." ”
Immediately after August, the Japanese sea discharge incident caused a turmoil, and many people were worried that water pollution would affect the quality of pearls, resulting in pearls on the market that had not been affected by the sea discharge. Some Japanese high-end brands have raised prices for the second time, so that many customers turn their attention to the more affordable Zhuji pearl as an alternative.
Under these unpredictable external forces, the ** of Zhuji pearl is high again and again. Li Xiaofei, who opened a new store, began to feel weak, "Will such a high ** collapse tomorrow?" ”
In the East China International Jewelry City under Zhuji Mountain, the anchor took Ni Ni's ** to show the effect of jewelry.
The man who chases the wind
At 3 o'clock in the morning, Keiko woke up, washed lightly, put on makeup, cooked, and left the meal warm in a thermos box for her two children and in-laws. At 5:45, she sat in the live broadcast room. Take a deep breath, take off your down jacket, and click the live button. "Instead of rushing to the sunset, wait for the sky to be full of stars. "This is the introduction of a word called a starry necklace, Keiko has put a lot of effort into how to make people feel cordial, and add some chicken soup for female ** to listen to, it can't be long and annoying.
The assistant turns the lights on and off repeatedly to show the pearl luster of different light sources. Keiko in front of the camera was smiling and her voice was sincere, but there were only more than 100 people in the live broadcast room, so just look at it and leave. This is this year's "Double 11".
In fact, in the first half of the "Double Eleven", Keiko has already felt the fluctuation of traffic. The sales of seven or eight hundred thousand fell to twenty or thirty all of a sudden, "the same product, the same words, the same me, but the transaction is obviously very difficult", Keiko didn't know how to break through from **, the day before it sold very well, and the next day it suddenly didn't work.
Double Eleven" official event, Keiko did not dare to participate easily. The jewelry she sells is thin, and the full discount is almost borne by the merchant, and some peers have participated in the full reduction activity of the Mid-Autumn Festival, and several products have become popular products, but they have not made money at all.
Recently, the sales of the live broadcast room have been declining, and Keiko has also ushered in unprecedented pressure, dreaming of selling pearls.
Keiko is 32 years old this year, and used to sell skin care products online, and put ** into water with iodine volt, and the water color turned white, proving that ** has a whitening function. She learned "experimental" methods from friends and online to attract followers. Some companies took the initiative to discuss cooperation, hoping that she would assist the entertainment anchor and monetize traffic.
Keiko's husband is a native of Zhuji, and her in-laws raised mussels in their early years, and later moved to the town to open a stall selling pearls. My husband does not participate, and he does meat foreign trade in Ningbo all the year round.
A few years ago, I caught up with swine fever, and I couldn't sell my stockpiles, and my husband also joined Keiko's live broadcast business. However, in 2020, the anchor she assisted signed with the Simba family. Keiko started broadcasting on her own, no matter how hard she tried, the data just couldn't go up, and her monthly income decreased from 100,000 to 100,000 or 20,000. My husband suggested that it would be better to switch to pearls and seize the opportunity.
On the afternoon of November 14, in the jewelry city, Zhong Peidong started a day's live broadcast. The equipment is very simple, a mobile phone, a computer operating in the background. He introduced pearls, and his wife put them on the shelves.
This is my uncle's beads, good quality. Zhong Peidong used words to try to retain the guests in the live broadcast room. The gold diggers who flocked to Zhuji have more or less eaten the dividends of the Internet. Mr. and Mrs. Zhong Peidong, from rural Anhui, used to do medical beauty sales and live streaming in Hangzhou. About ten years ago, when the medical aesthetic industry was just emerging, it was not a problem for them to cooperate with beauty salons and earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Later, the live broadcast began, and the couple earned some money, started a company, and bought a house in Zhuji, near Hangzhou. However, during the epidemic, it was difficult to meet with customers, and it was difficult to get out of the community, and all businesses were interrupted. The monthly family expenditure is 30,000 yuan, and they have their eye on the pearl.
For the first live broadcast, Zhong Peidong didn't have any preparation, he took his mobile phone and walked around the stalls, and if a guest saw it, he immediately put on a link. When it was broadcast that night, 300 people had gathered in the live broadcast room. "An era achieves an industry, and the choice of (to) the industry is greater than (its own) efforts. Zhong Peidong always felt so.
In front of the camera, the assistants show the pearls in various ways.
In Zhuji Mountain, Lake East China International Jewelry City, you can see people who have turned around from the ups and downs of various industries and want to continue to find a way out.
* Zhao Jiangyue introduced herself as a supervisor in a well-known real estate company, with an annual salary of nearly one million. In the years when the real estate was booming, she received ** from twenty or thirty banks and trust companies every day to fight for projects from her. Docking with corporate executives is one of her jobs, traveling an average of four times a week, going to six cities a week, and signing nearly 10 billion projects.
In her fifth year in the industry, she has a house of more than 130 square meters in a new first-tier city. After talking about a handsome boyfriend and breaking up again, she realizes that she is more eager for a strong partner who can bring practical support.
In 2021, work was suddenly idle, no need to travel, no need to stay up late to read information, Zhao Jiangyue said that she even walked slowly. She is not Xi to this rhythm, without bonuses, earns a basic salary of 30,000 or 40,000 per month, and most importantly, she can't see the future of the industry, and her colleagues can't sit still and start to change careers.
Zhao Jiangyue, who graduated from science and engineering, does not like luxury goods, but is interested in jewelry. She has bought pearls from Japan and Australia. Last year, she partnered with a friend and started ** in Zhuji, which started broadcasting in mid-October this year, earning 40,006 on the best day.
Zhao Jiangyue (right) selects a pearl necklace for buyers in the store. This market is also joined by young university graduates, who are reluctant to work and come here to start their own businesses. Li Xiaofei, a post-90s girl, worked in a financial company in Lujiazui for four months and decided to resign. At that time, she went to attend a friend's wedding in another place, and she couldn't buy a train ticket on the way back, so she had to buy a train for a midnight transfer. On the late-night train, Li Xiaofei felt so sad, 6,000 a month's salary, excluding rent, there was not much left, "The older generation feels very content to earn 100 yuan a day, but the young people feel that they have to make a lot of money a day."
In the first two years of entering the industry, Li Xiaofei tried to do live broadcast to open mussels, and there was a fishy smell every day, and she couldn't make much money, because the quality of the beads was difficult to control, and most of them were not good goods. Later, she did style processing, and every day when she went home and lay in bed, she brushed the same style as the red carpet star, and put it on the shelves in the store as soon as possible. After graduating with a master's degree in international ** major, Li Xiaofei bought a batch of seawater beads early, and when it became popular, the surrounding merchants asked her to get the goods. "She has goods at home", and slowly accumulated fame.
She bought a car in one year, a house in three years, and recently built a new house for her parents in her rural hometown, becoming a capable person in the family. In Li Xiaofei's memories, when she was most tired, she worked 16 hours a day alone, broadcast three live broadcasts, and looked for goods for a few hours in the middle. "I am reluctant to rest, and after resting for a while, I feel that I have not earned a few hundred yuan." However, there are still students who feel that selling pearls after graduating with a master's degree is equivalent to giving up the books she has read for so many years.
Li Xiaofei in the store.
Li Xiaofei makes earrings for guests.
Li Xiaofei's store is one of the last stores in the entire jewelry city to close. Yamashita Lake
Located in the central part of Zhuji City, Zhejiang Province, Shanxiahu Town is the world's largest freshwater pearl production and marketing center, and most of the surrounding villagers make a living from raising mussels and wholesale pearls.
37-year-old Zhou Bin, whose ancestors were mussel farmers, has dozens of acres of mussel ponds in the village. Catching shrimp and fish in the lake, rowing a small boat to a friend's house, Zhou Bin grew up by this lake. When I was a child, my family not only raised mussels, but also engaged in wholesale and made finished pearls.
The workers are the seven aunts and eight aunts, and those who have kung fu come to the house to help for three days. When the helper is finished, take a duck or two fish as a thank you. Zhou Bin remembered that there was no jewelry city at that time, and everyone spontaneously gathered to set up stalls on the roadside. Later, ** invested and built a simple shelter market. Now the East China International Jewelry City is already the third generation. However, the more familiar he is, the more he wants to escape, after graduating from college, Zhou Bin followed his brother-in-law to do interior decoration, and he didn't want to get involved in the family's pearl business at all.
Zhou Bin inspects the growth of river mussels in the mussel pond.
In those years, the people of Shanxia Lake brought rich breeding experience to other provinces to open up the market, but chicken manure and duck manure fed the mussels, and the discarded mussel meat and mussel shells attracted flies all over the sky, and the extensive breeding method equated the raising of mussels with water pollution. In 2017, Zhuji City issued a "ban on the cultivation of pearl mussels", and all open rivers in the region were retired. The total area of pearl farming in the town of Yamashita Lake is from 2More than 50,000 acres plummeted to more than 9,000 acres. Nearby Zhejiang, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and other places have also issued regulations restricting mussel farming.
That year, Zhou Bin's father suffered from laryngeal cancer and had to undergo surgery, and his youngest daughter was just born, so his mother couldn't take care of it. His wife works as an office director in a company, and she can't share it. Zhou Bin decided to return to his hometown.
When he took over the family business, it was different from the family workshop model of his childhood, the pearl industry was subdivided, Zhou Bin's family was in charge of breeding, and after maturity, the pearls were taken out and sold to wholesalers, and the processing of semi-finished products was done by them, and then distributed to customers for finished product sales.
The breeding method has also been upgraded, standardized ecological farming, and mussel meat has a centralized processing point. Bengtang is managed by **, and the villagers bid for the lease, which is a phase of 4-5 years. In October last year, Zhou Bin successfully bid for 240 acres of Bengtang with a lease term of 4 years.
The live broadcast with his back to Bengtang is an advantage in Zhou Bin's opinion, and netizens can see that he is a mussel farmer in Shanxia Lake, and he can win the trust of netizens.
There are natural barriers in this industry, and the experience requirements are very high," Zhou Bin said. He gave an example of how to judge whether the water quality is qualified or not by looking at the viability of the mussel's water discharge and closing speed - "The intensity of the water spray requires a lot of experience, and novices may not be able to analyze it intuitively, or ignore it." "If the water quality is not treated in time, the mussels will die within a week. The cycle of mussel farming is usually three or four years, and the first few years are almost all inputs, accompanied by high risks.
The prosperity of the pearl industry has led to other industries in Yamashita Lake. Zhou Bin remembers that a few years ago there were almost no Didi taxis here, but now there are many cars, "maybe faster than the big cities." "There is a street for supper in the town, among which is the fresh beef hot pot restaurant opened by Zhou Bin's brother-in-law. Most of the twenty-six or seventeen-year-old young people in the village have stayed to make pearls after graduating from college. **Offer discounts to college students on rent relief and interest-free loans to encourage them to start their own businesses.
In July this year, Zhou Bin's nephew graduated from university and gave up the idea of going to Shanghai to join Zhou Bin's company. asked relatives and friends to intercede, and there were dozens of them who came to arrange jobs for their children this year. Zhou Bin said that this has never happened before. There are also classmates who work as doctors in public hospitals who took the initiative to contact him and wanted to join the live broadcast.
Customers who came to Shanxiahu Town from Nanjing selected pearls one by one.
When entering the pearl industry, the first hurdle is identification. In order to improve the professional quality and customer trust, a large number of outsiders will be admitted to professional appraisers before and after doing ** and live broadcasts. In fact, according to Zhou Bin, pearls are non-standard products, and the nuances in sight and touch are difficult to quantify.
It's hard to tell how to tell the difference, but it's a gut feeling. Like how much water to put in a rice cooker, my mom can easily pour it down and be more accurate, that's how it feels. Zhou Bin said.
In the ** report, consumer complaints about pearls are mainly based on the material, such as the product information deliberately does not write the material;Or the live broadcast room said that it was a natural pearl, and it was found that it was an artificial shell bead when it arrived. "Most consumers may not be able to distinguish that when natural pearls are made, those who understand a little will find the problem, saying that this live broadcast room is a lie. Zhou Bin explained that many anchors also know little about pearls, such as observing a necklace by themselves and thinking that it is not a dyed pearl, and they must be inclined to say when they introduce it, "It is a natural pearl without dyeing", which may actually be micro-dyed.
A pearl necklace on display at the merchant's counter. Infinite does not loop
On November 24, Keiko had another day of poor live streaming traffic. At the review meeting after the broadcast, everyone was silent. It seems that the discussion and improvement have been done, adjusting the goods according to the changes in traffic, giving gifts, and fine words, they have just updated the background of the live broadcast recently, Chinese-style carved furniture and European-style gorgeous table lamps, in Keiko's words, "appear more high-end", have not worked.
She didn't spend money on paid live broadcasts to get more accurate customer traffic like the big anchor Meili, and still relied on natural growth. Buying traffic is at least 100,000, which is also a lot of pressure for her. In order to avoid competition with paid live broadcast rooms, she chose to live at 5:45 in the morning and 9:45 in the evening, two unpleasant time slots. There is a review meeting after the next broadcast.,The one at night.,It's usually in the morning.,Keiko is going to send the children to school next.,It's 9 o'clock in the morning when I come back.。 One day she slept for two hours and woke up at 11 o'clock, and she thought hard, is it 11 o'clock in the morning or 11 o'clock in the evening?
Keiko puts on makeup in the live broadcast room.
The pressure on sales comes from many aspects, Keiko is most worried about the Douyin assessment - according to the average sales, Douyin will assess the average daily order volume of the merchant, in order to complete the daily average of 2000 orders, Keiko put some low-priced products at the beginning, 99 yuan, 299 yuan, 99 yuan. But as a result, only a few hundred dollars a day can be sold.
Traffic accumulation is not easy. When Keiko first started, there were only more than 100 people in the live broadcast room for two months. And when it accumulated to tens of millions of people**, she began to worry that if she didn't broadcast it, she would lose data. At the end of August, she was unable to broadcast live because of vocal cord surgery, but she was reluctant to traffic, so she asked her husband and second sister to help. The two of them broadcast for three days in a row, and sales plummeted, Keiko quickly stopped and restarted the broadcast after only a week off, and could only make a small sound, and the data finally came back.
These pressures make Keiko not only afraid of live broadcasts, afraid that she won't be able to catch up with the traffic, but also can't stop live broadcasts, "if you don't broadcast, you won't have income". She was so nervous that she had diarrhea and vomiting before the broadcast, and was afraid, "If you can't catch it, it will be wasted, and the number will be wasted."
Keiko casually eats a bite of fast food and prepares for the live broadcast.
In addition to traffic, the high return rate is another dilemma for pearl live broadcasts. An 80% return rate is common. Customers choose from many and cannot accept defects, which are all reasons for returning, and there are just a formal occasion to bring it and return it within the return period.
The phenomenon of high return rate is an endless whirlpool that merchants may be involved in. The long necklace that was brought on fire by Ni Ni, Keiko once sold 800 pieces, and after the shipment, there were hundreds of new orders. In the middle of the 15-day cycle, the return of the first batch of orders has not yet been generated, and the second batch of goods needs to be entered. Coming and going, hoarding millions of goods.
She also hoarded more than 5 million of the "sea pearls" that caught fire in the Japanese sea discharge incident, and now she can't sell them anymore. Keiko had to wait for the right moment, looking forward to selling out in two days after the link was suddenly re-linked this year, like a bracelet that couldn't sell last year.
The backlash of the explosive product is not only the risk of stockpiling, but also the forced expansion of the team - to increase the number of people to pack and ship, and also need someone to handle the returns, their team has now grown to forty or fifty people. These are all pressures for Keiko, but she hasn't thought about other ways out, "At present, the fastest way to make money is the Internet."
Meili is also reluctant to change industries, she is currently live streaming for a month, according to her, she can have an income of hundreds of thousands of yuan, and the work of office workers is no longer worth it, "After becoming an anchor, it is equivalent to losing a leg and losing the ability to step into society again." ”
In Keiko's live broadcast room, there was a time when 5,000 people suddenly fell to 3,000, and she felt uncomfortable and felt that it was a denial of herself. Fans say that the things sold are not good, they are all lies. Keiko's tears rolled in her eyes, and some fans said that she was acting. Keiko couldn't help but reply, and the number continued to decline, falling to triple digits. She couldn't help crying loudly, and fans said that she had poor emotional control.
The husband on the side had long wanted to turn off the live broadcast and didn't want her to be so embarrassed. But Keiko was reluctant to traffic and never turned it off. In the eyes of businessmen, black fans are also "black babies", and she always believes that she can eventually convert them all into fans. Keiko's money is now all invested, and she hung a wooden sign at the door of her house - "Please take off your troubles before entering", reminding herself to get off the air, tidy up your mood and face her children and family.
At the request of the narrator, Zhong Peidong, Zhao Jiangyue, Keiko, and Meili are pseudonyms in the article).