Start-up Journey of a Rural Entrepreneur in Shandong's Linqu County

Liu Xingwei was born in a remote village surrounded by lush mountains and clear waters in southwest Jiangyu Township, Linqu County, Weifang City, Shandong Province, near China's east coast known as Zhaojiayu in 1981.

Part of a lineage that has farmed for generations, her parents grow crops such as wheat, corn, peanuts, millet, and sweet potatoes in their terraced fields. The family used to experience difficulties selling their surplus produce in spite of the fact that their annual output was limited, however.

Liu moved to Qingdao – a major city in eastern Shandong – in order to attend university when she graduated from high school and felt obligated to help her parents and two younger brothers.

“My parents gave me RMB5,000 when I went to university, which was almost all of their savings,” she mentioned in 2021, “so I swore I would do something [to help them]!”

Liu worked as a waitress at a hotel, a salesperson, and a seamstress at a garment factory while going to school and started sending money home as soon as she received her first check, which greatly eased her family’s burdens.

After more than ten years of hard work, the woman was running her own clothing store in Qingdao's Shibei District, which is home to part of the Qingdao Port, the world's seventh busiest trade port, and had also gotten married and had a son.

Liu felt sorry for her parents due to the fact that their crops commanded low prices, which made it difficult for them to make ends meet, especially when she visited. She began helping them with sales on the WeChat social media platform, where she had accumulated a wide network of Qingdao residents as contacts. Liu also started producing packages of millet and flour in the 1 to 2.5-kg range, which urban residents tend to prefer, and shared photos and videos of the milling process in WeChat groups that she is part of and on her moments, which is a section of the app where pictures, text, and websites can be shared in a timeline-style format. She was surprised to discover that the products sold quickly, so she decided to help her parents' neighbours with sales as well.

Noticing rising demand for green agricultural products among middle-class and high-end urban consumers, Liu closed her Qingdao store in March 2015, moved back to her hometown, and established Linqu County Fengwei Agricultural Products Co. Ltd.

Her husband was very supportive, but her parents strongly opposed her decision. They did not understand why their daughter decided to give up a stable, comfortable urban life that people in her hometown admired and part with her husband and 10-year-old son for extended periods of time.

“They were afraid that I would suffer from hardships associated with agriculture,” explained Liu, reflecting on their views of her second entrepreneurial adventure.

Her parents’ fears proved to be true in some ways at first. Liu settled in an unremarkable old house near Provincial Highway 227 – a road that runs from Shandong's Dongying Port in the north through Linqu County that is also part of a larger stretch of road that runs into Jiangsu Province to the south – and transformed it into a bright, spacious factory that meets all relevant standards after looking for a location with convenient transportation in Jiangyu's villages. She also travelled all over China locating the right equipment, studied processing at many factories, brought a variety of samples back home with her, conducted further research, and spent a lot of effort training staff that she hired, most of whom were women with low levels of education from nearby villages. The businesswoman spent a lot of time negotiating cooperation agreements with large growers and village committees as well and eventually found suitable suppliers.

“I even invested money I had set aside for my son's education into the business during the most difficult times,” Liu stated, also noting that she had nearly given up.

Her company was on the right track after almost a year of hard work, but other challenges had emerged. None of her employees were good with computers, sales, or certain other core skills, and no applicants wanted to work in remote mountain villages. Liu was able to persuade her brother's wife, a recent university graduate, to work with her, eventually filled good-paying sales and marketing positions, and gradually continued to improve and expand her team.

The Linqu County Fengwei Agricultural Products Co. has expanded greatly and even received various awards over the years. The other story elucidates Liu's entrepreneurial journey, the cooperative model she has employed with her partners, and sales and marketing strategies that she has used.

For more information, please contact WFP China COE (wfpcn.coe@wfp.org)

Click on the following link to read the story E-commerce and Speciality Product Development Boost Agricultural Sales.