An article called Why I Left Tencent to Sell Chaoshan Specialities received over 100,000 views within 6 hours since published on WeChat.
Xu Ruifeng, sitting in front of reporters, talked about the WeChat marketing and calmly said, “We expect more than 10 thousand (views)”. As a former marketing & PR senior manager at Tencent Group, Xu Ruifeng undoubtedly makes a quite successful PR for his own pioneering work. As he says, the current cumulative amount of reading is over 400 thousand.
The soaring amount of article views directly drove the in-store visits. Within two weeks after its opening, the customers cram into the store and occupy the only six tables and the number of the customers doubled at the weekend. Last weekend, the store issued 50 numbers for seats waiting.
WeChat brings massive customers.
“I am from Chaoshan, and particularly looking for the store to have a try after reading the article in WeChat Moments.” Miss Liu who works in a foreign company in New City, Pearl River told the reporters that many fellow townsmen shared this article in Moments a few days ago and some Chaoshan townsmen also continued to shared in their own WeChat Moments. “Many Chaoshan people work hard in Guangzhou. The snacks that they usually eat are beef balls and rice noodles at most. When they find out a special Chaoshan local speciality store, they just want to have a look.”
At 11am on Friday, “Wuyi” store has been packed with the customers attracted by its reputation. Due to insufficient manpower within the only two weeks after the opening, “Wuyi” temporarily does business from 11:30am to 9:30pm. The reporters have found in the interview that most of the customers are from Guangdong, and include people of different ages, covering white-collar workers who just participate in the work, college students and the whole family.
Currently online “Wuyi” products only have four types, and respectively include Mother Duck Twist (similar to dumplings), glutinous rice sausage, fresh shrimp/abalone dumpling and hammered beef balls with the price ranging from RMB 15 to RMB25. The freshman Ma from South China Agricultural University ordered a shrimp dumpling and hammered beef ball. Before eating, he took a few photos and hastened to post them in WeChat Moments. “Last time, I came here; however, many people ate here, so that I did not eat the snack here. So this morning I came, and share them on WeChat to show off.”
Nowadays, it almost becomes a standard for a lot of people to send the photos of delicious food into WeChat Moments before eating the food. The hot opening of “Wuyi” just proves follow-up fermentation of viral spread in WeChat Moments. On 27th May, Xu Ruifeng published an article called Why I Left Tencent to Sell Chaoshan Specialities. At that time, the public number only had 27 fans, however, after 6 hours, the article was read for more than 100 thousand times. The soaring number of views pulled up the flow volume of the passengers. “That afternoon, the number of people obviously increased, so we were very busy until 12pm, after all, the customers know that they have to line up the next morning.”
Xu Ruifeng said that the spread in WeChat Moments has positive impact beyond expectation. They felt some flattering for 100 thousands views. “Wuyi” data shows that the cumulative amount of views was close to 400 thousand, and the store has 12 thousand fans. “The article tells that Xu Ruifeng gave up Tencent senior manager position to see Chaoshan local specialities; and it shows Xu’s dramatic life of ups and downs. So people are interested in the article. But I think the reason why the later spread can be so wide is that nostalgia resonance moves the customers, whether they are the Chaoshan people, the Hunan people or the northeastern people.”
Now, “Wuyi” has 150-200 customers every day and it doubles at the weekends. All customers have to wait for the seats. In order to solve the problem of waiting for seats, “Wuyi” has cooperated with the surrounding stores and ease the pressure of waiting for seats. For example, the customers can drink free drinks in the opposite convenience store and repair nails or shape eyebrow free of charge in the next manicure store. At present, Xu Ruifeng and Lin Danyu have prepared to open another store near Tianhe City.
Do high-quality Chaoshan Speciality O2O
“Even if you do your marketing very well, you do fruitless labour if you have no good product. We think that the marketing aims to serve the product, which comes first.” When the reporters questioned that after WeChat marketing speculation, the customers would lose the fresh feeling and then the flow volume of passengers might reduce. And Xu Ruifeng gave the above answer.
A Chinese Gourmet Cai Lan once said: “You eat in Guangzhou, but the great food are in Chaoshan.” In Xu Ruifeng’s opinion, there is not so much Chaoshan delicious food, and they are just the Chaoshan delicious food porter. In Guangzhou, reporters visited various Chaoshan restaurants. Whether the taste is authentic or not, they always feel that it is lack of something. So all materials of “Wuyi” are from local Chaoshan and are transported back and forth.
“The Chaoshan people are very traditional and homesick. Most of food master are from the local, which is one reason why we insist on local supply.” Xu Ruifeng told the reporters. There is a lot of Chaoshan delicious food. At present, four online products are widely accepted in the market. They will develop new types to meet the needs of the customers later.
According to the plan of Xu Ruifeng and Lin Danyu, the physical store is offline experience store, which can test the market demand. From the perspective of two-week operating situation of the opening, they find that Chaoshan local snacks have very large market demand, which also gives them huge business confidence. Xu Ruifeng believes that offline experience store is the most direct channel by which the customers can experience the products. In addition, “Wuyi” physical store also bears the function of gathering the fellow fans. “Momo introduced a hot advertising video A Bowl of Hot Noodles, which describes the scene that one person eats home snacks and a group of fellows eat home snack together, and reflects the completely different experiences.”
“Wuyi” micro-shop has launched on WeChat. At present, online “Wuyi” sells two products, Chanshan fresh shrimp dumpling and hammered beef ball, and the sales volume has exceeded one thousand. Within two weeks of the opening, “Wuyi” has accumulated 12 thousand fans, who are all target customers. Xu Ruifeng said that O2O mode of offline experience and online sales is the developmental direction of “Wuyi”. In the future, more new products will appear online. “We plan to build an online monopoly platform of specialty in order to let more people taste Chaoshan local snacks.”