Many people are looking for rural money-making projects, but they often ignore the small businesses in front of them. For example, the Spring Festival is coming soon, and to add a festive atmosphere to the Spring Festival, it is inseparable from lanterns. Lantern processing is a processing project with small investment, low risk and sustainable development.
From a horizontal point of view, there is a large market demand for lanterns. As a traditional cultural symbol, lanterns have far exceeded the application scope of the Spring Festival, forming a large market, such as National Day, New Year's Day, May Day and other traditional festivals, the city's streets and restaurants, teahouses and other business places need a large number of lanterns; Weddings, openings, and other celebrations also require lanterns. In addition, in addition to traditional festivals, homestays, farm stays, rural hotels, rural night scenes and other business establishments are inseparable from the atmosphere of lanterns and decoration.
From a longitudinal point of view, festivals are held every year, celebrations are everywhere, and as a consumable product, lanterns have a strong ability to recur and sustain consumption. As a result, the lantern is a sustainable project that has made many decades-old shops.
Business was very good during this time, and more than 4,000 lanterns were walked every day. On December 29, 2023, the "Zhumadian Network" reported on a company that has been doing lantern processing for more than ten years, which is the Senwei Lantern Factory in Miaodong Village, Zhanglou Town, Runan County, Henan Province. Cui Xiaowei, the person in charge, has been processing lanterns for more than 10 years, and when talking about the current benefits of the enterprise, he said.
Cui Xiaowei was in 2010 when he helped his cousin who was doing business to buy goods in Zhumadian City, and found that the red lanterns were profitable. So, I learned about the origin of the lanterns from the wholesaler, and went to the manufacturer to study in the spring of the following year.
After investigation, he found that the lantern is not only simple to make, low cost, small investment, and the work intensity is not large, and the working hours are also flexible, which is very suitable for employment at the doorstep of the villagers.
In 2013, he started trying his hand at making red lanterns in his own home, which attracted many villagers to come and work. In 2019, with the increase in sales orders and the increase in migrant villagers, small workshops can no longer meet the demand. With the support of the Party Committee and the town of Zhanglou Town, Cui Xiaowei founded the Zhanglou Town Senwei Lantern Factory, which has an annual output value of 3 million yuan in less than 5 years, and has driven more than 60 people around to achieve employment, "illuminating" the way for the masses to increase their income.
Similarly, 31 years ago, Ma Hailong of Yangzhao Village, Jishan County, Shanxi Province, a decades-old red lantern processing base, planted his own five acres of land, producing only enough wheat and corn to fill his stomach. At that time, people in the village had already started to make red lanterns to make money.
Ma Hailong found that the locally made red lanterns were not as beautiful as those processed in Hebei, so he began to sell red lanterns from Hebei to make money locally, and a lantern could also earn three or four yuan, and the profit was quite good. However, later found that there was a profit of 8 yuan to make a red lantern, so he learned the new style of red lantern making in Hebei, improved the local red lantern technology, and started his own business.
I process many varieties of red lanterns every year, with novel styles, and I don't worry about sales at all. Ma Hailong said that his red lanterns are mainly sold to Chengdu, Sichuan, Luoyang, Henan and local, mainly in physical stores, rarely do online sales, because of online sales plus increased packaging costs, but also troublesome, now the annual sales of various red lanterns are about 200,000 pairs, and the annual net profit is more than 100,000 yuan.
In fact, there are many successful cases of lantern processing in various places. Due to the culture and inheritance of various places, the processing technology has its own characteristics, and the processing technology is not complicated to learn and operate, mainly for skeleton production and external decoration.
The tools required for traditional lantern making are mainly pliers, scissors, and knives, and the materials are bamboo, paper, and satin. This investment is really small. However, with the development of modern science and technology, in contrast, the labor cost of traditional way of processing lanterns is relatively high, the efficiency is relatively low, and the profit is also reduced due to the increase of material and labor costs. On the contrary, in the case of the introduction of automated machining, the investment in equipment will increase and the efficiency will be improved, but as long as the sales channel is opened, the efficiency will also be generally improved.
Lantern processing equipment mainly includes gas shielded welding machine, cutting machine, plasma cutting machine, air compressor, the investment amount is not very large, if combined with color, lighting, sound and image and other modern art characteristics and fashion needs, the introduction of digital printing technology, laser cutting and other process facilities, combined with intelligent technology, will make the paper lantern more "bright" and more exciting.
If the comprehensive cost of a pair of lantern processing is controlled at about 10 yuan, according to the current market wholesale between 19 yuan and 22 yuan, the profit of a pair of lanterns is 9 yuan to 12 yuan. According to the average profit of 10 yuan, the amount will go up, and the benefits will be very good.
The biggest advantage of lantern processing is that the risk is small, even if it can't be sold out this year, it can continue to be sold next year.