Gao Wei, founder of Xinjiang Aiyouwei Food Co. Ltd.

Having dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur throughout university, Xinjiang Agricultural University alumnus Gao Wei launched an e-business in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region’s capital city of Urumqi, where the school is located, after he graduated in 2007 with RMB3,000 he had saved and a second-hand computer that he borrowed from a classmate.

“I didn't have much money at the time and thought that launching an online store might be my best bet," the northwest China-based entrepreneur recalled in 2022.

The concern that his parents and the other farmers that live in the village he was born in Xinjiang's Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, showed with regard to agricultural produce sales during harvest season over the years had left a deep impression on him, so he decided to help them sell their local specialities.

Gao's business received few orders during its first six months of operation, however. His parents often called him and urged him to find a regular job, but he did not want to give up his dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

The merchant began learning more about e-retail management and improving everything from product selection to design and packaging to logistics. Business gradually picked up, and sales exceeded RMB800,000 in 2010.

"I felt more hopeful after persevering for three years," Gao stated. "I strengthened my resolve and was determined to expand my business and make it more professional."

In 2011, he formed a three-person team and registered Xinjiang Aiyouwei Food Co. Ltd. but lacked start-up capital. The businessman wrote a digital guidebook describing his experience with e-commerce around that time, which unexpectedly sold thousands of copies online in just two weeks, generating more than RMB30,000. The company started receiving more business by the day, and its payroll soon grew to more than a dozen employees.

Quality and innovation key to success

Staff sort nuts at a Xinjiang Aiyouwei Food Co. Ltd. factory.

A factory and a logistics centre were built at the beginning of 2012 in order to accommodate Aiyouwei’s growing size and scope. Quality control was loosened at this time in order to reduce costs, however, which led to more than a dozen orders being returned in March of that year and more than half of Gao's customers unexpectedly returning their products in the following two months.

“The ass returns that we experienced restricted the development of our company, but the situation functioned as a serious wakeup call with regard to the importance of product quality," he recounted. "The diminished value of our offerings at the time disappointed our existing customers and discouraged new ones."

Having learned from its missteps, Aiyouwei started signing contracts with farmers that produce high-quality produce, engaging in stricter quality control, and putting the interests of its customers first and has been continuing with these practices ever since.

The company has also developed many new products, such as dried fruit balls and date and walnut squares, and packs them in visually appealing packaging, such as small bags that are placed inside transparent boxes, many of which have been inspired by feedback that has been received from customers. For example, a large portion of Aiyouwei's products are sold in south China, where residents tend to be more concerned with outward appearances than in the north, where people tend to be more utilitarian. The company's southern Chinese customers often joked that its original date and walnut products "led to unsightly proceedings when people ate them because they were too big for people's mouths." The company, therefore, began dividing the products into smaller, cube-shaped pieces. It also began creating different products for different age groups at this time. One of its gift baskets features badam, walnuts, hazelnuts, cashews, cranberries, blackcurrant raisins, dried mangoes, and pumpkin seeds packaged in small bags that are designed to promote healthy lifestyles and meet people's daily nutritional requirements and has become very popular.

Aiyouwei and other major Xinjiang-based e-commerce companies have built front-end logistics centres in cities located outside of the autonomous region in order to help ensure that its products reach customers in east China's Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region the day after they place an order and that customers in other parts of China receive them in two to three days as well. In 2021, the company increased its stock of a type of raisin nut bread from Xinjiang known as Lieba, daily nuts, red dates, and walnuts to five-to-six times their usual quantities at these centres based on sales records associated with its ten-plus flagship stores on the Tmall business-to-consumer (B2C) online retail platform and its Taobao consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and B2C e-commerce marketplace store, which boasted four golden crowns at the time – the second highest rating in a system used to indicate the overall grade of a seller

– in order to ensure sufficient supply for the 2021 Double 11 event, which is a major online shopping festival that takes place on and around November 11 every year. The stores also started shipping a large quantity of dried fruit and other Xinjiang specialities to sub-warehouses in Urumqi as well as a 10,000-plus-sq. m facility in Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, capable of storing more than 1 million orders in September of that year.

The innovation and quality control efforts that have been made have resulted in Aiyouwei obtaining utility models for six technical solutions that the company has developed, which grant exclusive rights that prevent other parties from using its inventions commercially without authorisation for a period of time, and helped its turnover reach RMB120 million in 2018.

Urumqi's Renminzhuangzi Village leverages digital economy

Xinjiang Aiyouwei Food Co. Ltd. staff at one of its factories

Local farmers account for two-thirds of Aiyouwei's 200-plus staff members. Some of the nearly 50 people who select, produce, and package products at its main production facility are part of households located in villages situated near the company’s headquarters in Renminzhuangzi Village, Lucaogou Township, Midong District, Urumqi City, that were impoverished before they began working there. They now earn nearly RMB3,000 a month, however, which has made it possible for the households that they are part of to escape from poverty.

Gao works closely with Renminzhuangzi's government and has assisted with the establishment of more than 30 Taobao stores in the village, which has helped it become more connected to the digital economy and achieve Taobao Village status, which refers to a village in which residents got started in e-commerce primarily via the Taobao Marketplace, at least 10% of families are actively engaged in e-commerce or where there are at least 100 active online stores, and total online sales exceed RMB10 million per year, in 2020.

Gao established village-level e-commerce service stations and processing factories that produce Lieba and other speciality products in Hotan and Kashgar, two important cities in the region, which has helped residents of southern Xinjiang escape from poverty as well. The factories provide farmers with stable jobs near their homes and have eased the worries that they used to have with regard to agricultural product sales.

Vehicles packed full of Xinjiang specialities that will make their way to destinations all over China after receiving further packaging, especially fresh and dried fruit from southern Xinjiang, are now a common sight in Renminzhuangzi.

Village official Guo Yonggang noted that Renminzhuangzi started incorporating more platforms into its e-commerce endeavours in 2019 and that the sector has become a pillar of its economy.

In the future, Gao plans to create more processed Xinjiang specialities, sell them online, and help train more e-commerce professionals.

"I can only do so much, but I believe that Xinjiang specialities will become popular throughout China as more people get involved," the entrepreneur concluded.