In the past few decades, many young people in small towns have decided to:
If you want to achieve first-class results, you should flock to the big cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, ......
But now, there is a reverse trend in many counties - more and more young people are returning from big cities, and they find that there seems to be a better balance between life and work in the county than in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
With low rents and lower start-up costs, the county economy can open up more possibilities.
According to the data of Future-free, the total number of job requirements for spring recruitment in 2023 by major Internet companies has decreased by 45% compared with 202245%。
The entire Internet, e-commerce retail, and new life service industries have seen a decline in new jobs for three consecutive years.
For many first- and second-tier cities, the job market has entered a cycle of talent saturation.
Intensified competition for talents, inflation of academic qualifications, and downgrading of employment have become the three major characteristics of this cycle.
In contrast, the county's service industry, fast-moving consumer goods, and automobile industries still grew by 10% to 15%.
Take FMCG as an example, in 2022, the market size of snacks will exceed 1.5 trillion yuan, and the compound annual growth rate has been maintained at more than 11%.
Jia Linqing, an investor, observed that a snack discount store in a small town began to queue up at 8 o'clock in the morning, and the queue was pulled out of the door, and the user crowd was very rich, including children, the elderly, young men and women.
Founded in 2017, Snacks is Busy, completed Series A 2 in 2021With 400 million yuan of financing, the total number of stores exceeded 4,000 in just two years.
At the beginning of 2022, the number of stores of "Zhao Yiming Snacks", which also focuses on snacks, was only 84, and just over a year later, the number of stores exceeded 2,500.
The growth of consumption is due to the increasingly abundant county economic formats.
In the past, first-tier cities developed "siphon" high consumption, but now, China's vast counties have attracted a large number of new business forms and well-known brands.
During this year's Spring Festival, more than 50% of the county's livehouses, flower shops, coffee shops and other new stores were added to Meituan. New professions such as bartenders, florists, and baristas have emerged, and the demand for related occupations has doubled in the past year.
How has the county changed?
Last year, CCTV published a report on Linquan, Anhui Province, China's most populous county.
It has a registered population of more than 2.3 million and a permanent population of about 1.6 million, with 7.8 million people working outside the home all year round.
But now, more and more people in Linquan County have discovered:
You don't have to leave your hometown, you can live a good life at home.
A street convenience store, through the online drainage of apps such as Meituan, has achieved consumption coverage within about 10 kilometers and connected thousands of consumers.
Online and offline operation is synchronized, and the rider receives the order and delivers it to the home ...... within 30 minutesThe store's orders have grown from a few orders a day to a steady few hundred.
From "I haven't heard that takeaway can order snacks" to the "conversion rate" of opening and closing your mouth, from only seeing the store by yourself to young people starting to return to their hometowns to support ......Liu Yanhong, the nearly 40-year-old shopkeeper, discovered a new business in the county, and Linquan's "takeaway street" began to take shape.
Today, the main body of the Linquan market of Meituan and Dianping services has exceeded 150,000 units, from small family stores to brand enjoyment, instant retail has reshaped county consumption.
Small stores are for consumption, and counties are for China, which is equivalent to the capillaries being opened up, gathering vigorous momentum.
Big cities used to have unique snack collection stores, Internet celebrity milk tea shops, and Internet marriage agencies, and now there are all in the county.
Big brands such as Haidilao and Uniqlo have also become the standard configuration of the county.
There are even some fireworks shops, coffee shops, and hanfu shops that rely on local specialty industries.
With more than 2,800 counties, it is becoming the second growth pole of China's consumption.
The key to the revitalization of the county lies in people.
When "capable people" begin to return to their hometowns, when "Gui Yan" leads the economy, what will be brought to the county is the leverage of economic vitality.
Attracting talented people to return to their hometowns is the dividend of the sinking of the Internet economy.
In the past ten years, with the improvement of infrastructure and the popularization of the Internet, more and more counties and rural areas have high-speed rail transportation and 5G base stations.
Smartphones have become the standard for residents, and digital economies such as e-commerce and logistics are booming.
This completely breaks the information blockage and shortens the distance between the "small town" and the "big city".
The border between the county seat and Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou is being smoothed out by cups of milk tea.
A few years ago, when I returned to the county for the New Year, many people would miss the unique blood glutinous rice, taro paste and other freshly made milk tea in the city.
In their impression, the inferior flavor milk tea in their hometown is only 2 yuan a cup, which is so sweet that it is difficult to eat.
But now, Starbucks, Heytea, KFC ......It's just seamless.
According to the "Daily Economic News", in the cumulative sales of Meituan and Ele.me, the two major takeaway platforms in a county, in February, the orders of Gu Ming and Tea Baidao in February exceeded 3,000 orders, Bawang Tea Ji exceeded 5,000 orders, Mixue Bingcheng 5 stores accumulated more than 4,000 orders, Hey Tea exceeded 2,000 orders, Patrol Tea and Shanghai Auntie were more than 1,500 orders, and Coco could exceed 900 orders.
Luo Yixuan, a post-95 franchisee, runs a bubble tea shop in a county in central Hubei, and through online promotion, he has placed three times the number of coupons in the platform's fan base.
During this Spring Festival holiday, from Xiao Nian to the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, his daily takeaway and dine-in cups doubled to 400-500 cups.
According to the brand data of Geoq Data, a third-party organization, from January to early December last year, more than 9,000 new chain tea stores were opened in counties across the country, and the overall store opening rate was about 36%.
A tea shop can create a turnover of thousands of yuan every day, driving the employment of many young people in the county.
Moreover, the process of cultivating practitioners is also very easy, and the stores can achieve rapid expansion and impact thousands of stores.
Last year, the prospectus of Mixue Bingcheng was disclosed, which attracted great attention from the market.
The core element of the future growth of Mixue Bingcheng is to grasp the county market.
It is optimistically estimated that the growth rate of the number of tea and juice shops in county-level cities will be 39% in the future, which is higher than the total growth rate of 22%.
From a structural point of view, the county market will be a battleground for big-name tea chains in the future.
In line with Mixue Bingcheng, brands such as Shanghai Auntie, Tea Baidao, and Ancient Tea at a price of 10-20 yuan have also begun to sink to cities below the third tier by reducing prices and opening up franchises.
Although the consumption power of the sinking market is not as good as that of the big cities, there is still considerable room for profit due to the low rent and labor costs.
Before returning to his hometown to open a bubble tea shop, Luo Yixuan worked as a copywriter in a media company in Wuhan, with a monthly salary of about 6,000 yuan.
Later, he found that there were more and more milk tea and fried chicken restaurants in the county, and the business continued to be booming, and the fried chicken restaurants opened by himself and his old classmates had a net profit of more than 50,000 yuan a year.
And the work is easy, and there is a lot of time to play.
This made Luo Yixuan feel "really fragrant".
Later, Luo Yixuan joined a local specialty milk tea brand, excluding raw materials, the gross profit margin of the small store can reach about 60%.
In the off-season of tea sales, the average number of cups per day is about 200, and in the peak season, it can be **30% to 50%.
Among them, takeaway orders accounted for 40% of total sales.
Because takeaway has high requirements for stores, Luo Yixuan can choose to open a store on the corner of the alley, and the rent is half of that of the bottom merchant in the mall.
Achieve profitability in a year and work for yourself.
In their hometown county, more and more young people in small towns see another possibility in life.
Why choose to come back?
Because we want quality of life. ”
With the return of young people, more and more counties are connected to big cities, and the help of the digital economy has also allowed more consumption and entrepreneurship opportunities to be discovered by young people.
fled from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and ended up in Hegang. ”
In April last year, Hegang City ranked first in the province in the ranking of the main economic indicators in the first quarter, and the growth rate of the three economic indicators of regional GDP, total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, and total actual utilization of domestic capital ranked first in the province.
Isn't it hard to sell houses?
Why is the economy still rising so fast?
The story of Fu Xiangbin, a young man born in the 90s, who returned to Hegang to open a store, may be a footnote.
After working outside the country for ** years, Fu Xiangbin took the initiative to apply for transfer back to his hometown Hegang, and opened an online convenience store as a side business, with a total monthly income of about 20,000 yuan.
The reason why I want to come back is because the life in Beijing is too hard.
Originally, Fu Xiangbin was engaged in R&D work in electric power in Beijing, commuting for nearly 4 hours a day, and living in a rental house with a space of about 10 square meters.
Compared with the snail dwelling in the big city, the big house in my hometown is empty.
This made Fu Xiangbin reflect, why can't he go back?
People should find a way of living and working that suits them better. Playing ball and playing a string after work is what I want, and having my own career is also what I want. ”
After returning to Hegang, Fu Xiangbin opened a convenience store, named "Tomorrow", with more than 40 square meters, and soon after the store opened, it was launched on the takeaway platform, with hundreds of takeaway orders every month.
The reason why he chose convenience stores is because Fu Xiangbin observed that there are not many convenience stores in Hegang that have launched a takeaway platform, and the largest local supermarket, Biute, has at least two or three thousand online monthly sales per store.
Residents of small cities also like a convenient and fast life, but there were too few choices before. ”
After some research, Fu Xiangbin found that consumers have a great demand for daily necessities through takeaway, from alcohol, snacks and beverages to oil, salt, sauce and vinegar, toothpaste, towels, etc., the goods purchased through takeaway cover almost all the necessities in life.
The market has both purchasing power and consumption potential, so convenience stores have been launched on the food delivery platform.
In Fu Xiangbin's view, compared with large cities, small cities still have a lot of room for development, and for individuals, this means that there are many things that can be done.
Hegang is not the only small town that can do things.
In the Northeast, there is also Yanji, which is known as the "City of Coffee".
Winters are cold and get dark early, and northern beverage shops are often considered "only half the business".
But in Yanji, this phenomenon does not exist.
It has its own small town entertainment culture.
The highest demand for coffee in first-tier cities is during the daytime on weekdays, while in Yanji, there is another peak between 4pm and 8pm, with nearly 20% of coffee orders at night.
When night fell, all the light signs on the Internet celebrity barrage wall near Yanbian University were lit up, and this street also ushered in its own peak period.
Jinli's coffee shop is located on this street.
Relying on the buy-and-go small store model, her coffee shop was launched on the takeaway platform for two months, and she won the first place in the coffee category order in her business district.
Today, the store accounts for 80% of takeaway orders, and has become an online coffee station for college students.
When I entered the market at the beginning of 2021, a coffee shop with the highest order volume in Yanji had a monthly sales of 2,000+, and now it is not uncommon for a store to sell 5,000+ per month. ”
As one of the first young makers to return to her hometown, she is now thinking not about how to make money, but about how to seek new changes and make more money.
9 to 10, subway commute.
Returning to their hometowns after ten years of drifting north, young people are easily "backstabbed" by the middle class in the county.
However, the contrast in consumption in the county actually stems from survivor bias and the self-deprecation of the group in the north.
The real situation is that the population of China's counties as a whole is still decreasing, but some of the "top students" in the counties have escaped.
Debang data shows that in 2020 there were 1500 million people have migrated from nearly 1,900 counties across the country.
In general, in the county seat, 1 out of every 5 people goes out of the county; In county-level cities, about 1 in 10 people will leave the country.
However, this kind of population flow has also begun to appear in a two-way cycle.
According to statistics, more than 80 counties have achieved a net inflow of population.
There are three types of counties with large population inflows: county-level cities on the eastern coast such as Yiwu City and Kunshan City, counties in the central and western regions such as Changsha County in Hunan Province, which are closely connected with the central urban area, and traditional counties with large populations such as Linquan County in Anhui Province.
The latest data shows that the Northeast is no longer the "old and difficult" area of population loss.
In February this year, various provinces began to publish population data one after another: Liaoning Province will have a net population inflow of 8 in 202360,000 people, reversing the situation of 11 consecutive years of net outflow. Jilin Province has also done a good job, with a net inflow of 4340,000 people, the first net inflow in nearly 13 years.
It must be admitted that the first choice for young people to return to the Northeast is still the provincial capital.
But there are also cases of Fu Xiangbin and Jin Li who went back to the small county town directly to create "doorstep employment".
10 years ago, Beijing's 3W cafes were full of friends, and a brick fell from the sky, and an Internet maker could be smashed.
Now Zhongguancun is not as prosperous as in the past, more than 2,000 counties across the country, but more and more local "entrepreneurial streets" have emerged.
E-commerce villages, takeaway villages, live broadcast villages, and new ** villages have been frequently reported, and new occupations such as tea masters, baristas, and script killing DM are in strong demand in the sinking market, and 3D printing shops and Internet matchmaker groups with county characteristics are also common.
According to data from the retail platform Meituan, among the instant retail-related orders in Hegang, the monthly growth rate of orders for small supermarkets, beauty stores, pet stores, and fruit stores once exceeded 100%.
Yanji, with a permanent population of less than 700,000, has more than 900 cafes. According to data from the Meituan takeaway platform, at the beginning of 2023, Yanji ranked first in the popularity of coffee consumption in counties (including county-level cities) in the country.
New business formats such as instant retail have taken root in the county, making the development of urban physical retail vibrant, the supply of local retail more diversified, and the quality of supply is also improving, bringing more development opportunities to young people.
Today's young people know the outlets of consumption, and they are also well aware of the capabilities of the Internet, and they can play e-commerce, logistics, customer service and other games.
They are not alone, and they are not alone.
When I think of small towns, I tend to be full of goodness because that's where we were born and raised.
Later, we left our hometown and began to chase more of our existence, trying to make our lives flow.
Now, more and more people are discovering that their hometown is different from before, and they have their own place.
Behind this is the changes brought by the digital economy to the county economy, the diligence and wisdom of the young people in the new town, and the tenacity of China's county economy itself.
Passing on the torch from generation to generation, China's county towns are giving birth to infinite hope for the future.