Stalls that seem to have nothing to do with tallness are becoming the "new favorite" of some young people.
During the day, they went in and out of various office buildings in suits and leather shoes, and discussed big orders in coffee shops; in the evening, some people stepped on small high heels and blended into the crowded night market, and their yelling mixed into this small street, one after another.
From a small point of view, this low-cost and low-threshold way of starting a business is associated with survival and a more free state of life.
From a large perspective, its boost to employment and consumption highlights the great energy behind the small stalls.
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Set up a stall, so that some young people living on the "two points and one line" have one more point - "inflection point".
Starting with 3,500 yuan, and earning millions of yuan a year through setting up stalls and its "derivative economy", this is the experience of Beijing's post-90s Lele.
Affected by factors such as the new crown epidemic, three chain restaurants run by Lele closed down and owed more than 2 million yuan. She had no choice but to open a "stall" with the lowest threshold for starting a business. Unexpectedly, this also brought a turning point in her life , turned upward from the "bottom of the valley", and now she is standing on the "mountainside".
One person, one car, one dog, traveling around China and setting up a stall at the same time, this is a portrayal of the life of Su Chenggong, the owner of Donkey Coffee, born in the 90s, since February last year.
During the day, he explored city after city in his RV, and in the evening, he parked the car at a local market, opened the trunk, and started selling coffee.
When the market is over and the trunk is closed, the RV is his second home.
Last year, he walked 53,000 kilometers, equivalent to driving 18 times from Beijing to Tibet.
The small trunk allows Su Chenggong's life radius to extend infinitely, and now he wants to spread his life trajectory all over China.
Ren Ke, a boy born in the 1980s, and his friends invested 3 million yuan to open a restaurant. On the first day of the trial operation, the epidemic hit. Before the restaurant opened, he owed money. Setting up a stall became his "roundabout" way to save himself.
He said that the start-up capital for setting up the stall was still borrowed, but he did not expect it to become a success later on. He and his friends built four stalls in Changsha's Internet celebrity night market within two years.
After the country implemented the "Class B and B Control" for the infection of the new crown virus, the fireworks of the past have returned, and there is a lot of people in front of various stalls again. What comes with the spring is the "spring" of the stall holders. Confidence in future life.
The first day of stall setting: mixed flavors
Recalling the first time I set up a stall, many people had mixed feelings. The anxiety, struggle and expectation at that time have been deeply imprinted in my heart...
On the last day of June 2021, which was also the first day Lele set up a stall, she tore off a bed sheet, packed a bag of more than 20 toys, and walked downstairs with her shoulders.
But when I reached the stairs, I couldn't move anymore. Although I have been doing psychological training, after all, I used to be a boss.
If you don't go, the creditors will chase after you, and the day will be wasted... In the end, there was a battle between heaven and man, and Lele bit the bullet and went downstairs.
When you arrive at the place, spread the sheets on the open space, place the toys, and within a minute, one toy is sold.
"I see that the money has come in, forget it, don't be nervous, come on!"
In fact, after getting in debt, Lele found a job, but the salary of more than 10,000 yuan was a drop in the bucket compared to the huge debt, so she came up with the idea of setting up a stall.
After winning the first battle, she sold more and more smoothly, and suddenly felt that she had found her direction.
Later, every evening when she got off work at 6 o'clock in the evening, she hurried back and showed up at the booth at 7 o'clock.
The busyness allowed her to temporarily escape from depression, because once she stopped, "-2 million yuan" was like a mountain, pressing heavily on her.
Setting up a stall gave her hope.
Of course, "setting up wild stalls" may be investigated at any time.
In September 2021, it was the most difficult time for her to repay her debts. As soon as the stall was set up, the urban management came and asked her to close the stall and impose a fine.
If the fine is paid, she will have no money to buy the goods.
After discussing with the urban management, the urban management asked her to close the stall and only gave her a warning.
Similarly, the first day of setting up a stall is equally unforgettable for Ren Ke.
On June 1, 2021, Ren Ke and his wife pushed mobile food trucks for sale in the night market for the first time.
At that time, he always felt that everyone on the road was staring at him strangely, and his trembling hands and body conveyed the word "shame" in his mind.
In his opinion, setting up a stall is shameful, and no one in the family supports him except his wife. His parents think this is the "most worthless" way of making a living.
Fortunately, the items on the first day were sold out, and the income was more than 3,000 yuan.
"My self-confidence exploded that day, and it felt like the world was mine," he said.
"It's better to be unrestrained in the system than to rely on yourself"
Most of the people in the previous generation set up stalls purely to make a living, but now many young people have more pursuits in setting up stalls.
"Being unrestrained in the system, it is better to rely on yourself." Ren Ke worked in the system for 8 years, because he was not satisfied with the "nine to five" life, he "naked resignation" and started his own business.
After encountering obstacles in starting a business, he and his wife planned to set up a stall to start a business in another way.
His life credo is: "As long as you can do it, you will never lie down."
On the night he and his wife decided to set up a stall to sell Qingbuliang (a snack in Hainan), they booked a plane ticket to Hainan to learn technology, and started business when they came back.
Setting up a stall is to watch the sky and eat, and I am most afraid of wind and rain.
Once, when they set up their stall, it rained heavily, and their daily income was only a few hundred yuan.
Later, after closing the stall every night, he would check the weather forecast, prepare more goods when it was sunny, and prepare less when it rained.
The online celebrity night market has a high flow of people, so the booth fee is naturally "Internet celebrity price". A two-meter-long booth has to pay a fixed rent of 2,000 yuan per month and 15% of the daily sales.
Fortunately, their sales have been stable since then, and after word-of-mouth has developed, the rate of return has also been high.
Sometimes a stall can earn around 7,000 yuan a day.
And driving a RV to various places to set up stalls is not only work for Su Chenggong, but also life. In his words, it is "living up to love".
On the evening of February 10, at the Sunset Market in the east of Beijing, the donkey coffee stall was full of people, and multiple customers placed orders within one minute.
This year, with the addition of Su Chenggong's cousin, there are more milk teas on the stall.
Many times, there must always be a "on the road" between making money and pursuing happiness.
In February last year, due to the impact of the epidemic, the operation of the mall was significantly affected. As a manager of the mall, Su Chenggong's salary was also cut in half.
Su Chenggong has always liked to travel and camp everywhere, but now that the shopping mall is not doing well, he wants to go out for a walk.
So he set off in the RV. When he was tired, he stopped, opened the trunk, and made a cup of coffee for a nap.
Many passers-by came forward and asked, "Do you sell it?" Many people asked, so he started selling coffee part-time, but he didn't expect the profit to be good.
In March last year, Su Chenggong simply resigned and set up a stall while traveling.
Taiyuan in Shanxi, Chengdu in Sichuan, Tibet... Along the way, he has seen many scenery that he has never seen before, met many new friends, and learned more new things.
This model has also attracted many young people to buy coffee.
In one month in Tibet, he set up a stall for 10 days and sold more than 40,000 yuan.
He said, "Driving it out was not affected by the epidemic at all, and I earned a lot, without constraints, and was much happier than working."
Liu Ning (pseudonym), a boy born in the 1980s, also wants to change his life. Under the tide of Internet optimization, Liu Ning's company laid off employees. He lost his job and did not look for a job again.
He said, "To be honest, I'm tired of going to work, and I don't want to be too busy, and I don't want to serve the boss anymore."
Under the influence of Lele, Liu Ning started to set up a stall to sell toys.
February 10 was the first time he set up a stall. At 2 p.m., he went to the market to put up toys. At that time, there were not many people.
It only started to increase at night, and every time someone passed by, he yelled: "Come and see the toys, 39.9 yuan each." He said that he has a cheerful personality and is easy to let go.
On the same day, he sold more than 20 toys, earning more than 800 yuan.
"Sales were higher than expected."
At present, the "night economy" is lighting up the "night capital", and Liu Ning wants to seize this wave of dividends and earn more pocket money.
Xu Bin, a post-95 boy, is a "quasi-newcomer" in the stall circle. On February 10, he was learning how to sell toys at Liu Ning's booth. That was the third day after he flew from Chongqing to Beijing to help others sell toys.
After graduating from college, he found an administrative job, which did not pay much.
He said that like many young people, he was like a "walking dead" when he went to work, and he would "lay flat" and play with his mobile phone after work. In fact, he was very anxious, but he couldn't find a good way to make money.
By chance, he came across Lele's video and came up with the idea of setting up a stall, but he didn't start work because of face.
"If I set up a stall a few years ago, it would definitely sell well. If I didn't do it, I regret it!"
After the Chinese New Year, Xu Bin flew from Chongqing to Beijing to learn how to set up a stall.
In Beijing, he has no acquaintances, and for him, this is also a way to challenge himself.
"I've already taken the first step."
Zhang Min (pseudonym), a post-95 girl, and her husband wanted a richer spare time life. Since October last year, they started a "three-day fishing and two-day drying net" style stall.
After get off work, they come to the night market to sell snacks. On summer evenings, they can sometimes earn 2,000 yuan a day.
She said that although it was hard work, it was very happy.
Young people "swarm" in: to improve the "street circle" and "tonality"
More young people are "flocking" to the "stall circle", and are setting off a new "wave" of stalls.
Ren Ke feels that both the people who set up the stalls and the products on the stalls are getting younger and younger. These young people have improved the "tonality" of the stalls, especially in the Internet celebrity night market where he is located. The post-00s who set up the stalls more and more.
Young people are subverting traditional stalls with different business ideas.
Ren Ke observed that when young people set up a stall, everything from the dining car to the food to the packing bag is carefully designed.
For example, because the food is full of color, fragrance, and color, the lighting of the dining car must use warm colors and look for the best lighting angle. It is full, changing people's previous perception of stalls and improving the grade."
In the sunset market, most of the stalls are young people.
During the day, these young people in suits and leather shoes went in and out of various office buildings, discussing big orders in coffee shops; in the evening, some people stepped on small high heels and blended into the crowded night market, and their yelling mixed into this small street, one after another .
In the past two years, Lele has been in various business districts and markets in Beijing, and her concept of stalls has also changed a lot.
In the past, she felt that some people who lacked the means of livelihood set up stalls and earned very little; in fact, they may earn much more than young people who go to work.
Especially those "old rivers and lakes" who set up stalls on Daji, they know marketing better.
For Su Chenggong, setting up a stall to sell coffee is a casual thing to do after playing. He also said that setting up a stall is actually a "conscience job". First of all, we must use good raw materials to ensure good quality.
According to him, the coffee machine and grinder equipment he uses cost more than 80,000 yuan, and the cost of beans for a cup of coffee is 8 yuan.
He said that after working in the hotel management industry for many years, he can make the cost of a cup of coffee 0.3 yuan, but he can't do that, "the taste will be different."
At the same time, it is also an essential quality for stall owners to know enough about their products.
For example, what kind of beans are paired with milk to make coffee taste better?
Su Chenggong is well aware of this, and the secret is "actually doing more".
Therefore, 90% of his stalls are repeat customers.
On the first day of the Lunar New Year this year, his turnover at the sunset market was less than 2,000 yuan, but on the second day, repeat customers came, and some people came every day. Until the sixth day of the first month, his daily turnover did not exceed 2,000 yuan. .
"Move the stall online"
Compared with the "old rivers and lakes" of stalls, young people know better about "fancy stalls". Among them, the online + offline stall mode has become the "standard configuration" for many young people.
Ren Ke is also a member of "Fancy Stall Setting". He cooperates with his wife, who is more responsible for setting up the stall. He shares his experience of setting up a stall through short videos or live broadcasts and popularizes some dry goods, such as "Dry Goods!"
Some Advice for Novices" and so on.
He observed that young people pay more attention to maintaining online channels such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat groups. On the one hand, they attract consumers from the C-end to buy products; on the other hand, they attract B-end customers to come Cooperation, joining, etc.
It also differentiates them from the previous generation of stallholders, who earn more as a result, he said.
At first, Ren Ke made videos more alone, but now he has a professional video team.
In addition, he also sells some course stalls online.
He said that recently, people's enthusiasm for setting up a stall has been high, and at most a few hundred people a day come to ask him how to set up a stall.
It is Lele's normal state to set up a stall, broadcast live, and make short videos at the same time.
At first, Lele started self-media because she wanted to leave a way out for herself.
Her idea is that when the number of fans reaches 1 million, she will go live to bring goods.
But she soon discovered that the income from self-media was far lower than she expected. She only got more than 400 yuan in commission for a short video with 300,000 views.
With more and more fans, her way is getting wider and wider. Some people introduce her to free booths, and some people introduce her to customers.
Many fans also want to set up a stall, asking her how to do it, where to set it up, how high the profit margin is, and how to sell it, and many people want to get her goods directly.
At first, she pushed these people directly to her previous family, but the quality of the goods received by the fans was uneven, and the sales were not good, so they came to her again.
She knew the difficulty of setting up a stall and saw the profit of being a source of goods by herself, so she set about starting a source of goods.
"Anyway, I will do whatever can make money."
At present, more than 10,000 people have taken goods from her successively, and these people are distributed all over the country.
Among them, some people's turnover can reach 10,000 yuan a day.
Lele's warehouse is also getting bigger and bigger, expanding from more than 200 square meters to 500 square meters.
In addition, Lele also pays great attention to community operations. Every time she goes to a place to set up a stall, she creates a group.
Basically, a group is built every 5 kilometers, and each business district also has a separate group. In the group, everyone is notified where to set up a stall. Sometimes, door-to-door service can also be provided.
There are also customers who buy and buy, and become toy agents.
As her toy "landscape" is getting bigger and bigger, her income is getting higher and higher. Last year, her net profit has exceeded one million yuan.
Among them, the net profit from setting up a stall is about 350,000 yuan, and the income from being a source of goods is about 700,000 yuan.
Lele said that she is very grateful for the toys, "I paid off the debt last August."
The lowest cost of entrepreneurship keeps young people from "lying flat"
"Setting up a stall is the lowest-cost entrepreneurial model." Ren Ke is very optimistic about the prospect of setting up a stall. This method is especially friendly to some young people who have relatively few resources but want to do things.
Moreover, the biggest constraint to setting up a stall in the past two years was the epidemic. Now that the epidemic prevention policy has been adjusted and optimized, the probability of success has increased again.
However, setting up a stall is not buying a lottery ticket, so don't think about it overnight.
Ren Ke believes that young people should not blindly set up stalls.
Once you decide to set up a stall, you must have a strong heart, be able to let go of your face, go out, and start working.
In addition, it is necessary to combine online and offline, and don't think that you are not handsome or beautiful enough, so give up the "stall + self-media" model.
"To be honest, setting up a stall can't make people rich." Lele reminded, don't just follow her blindly by thinking that a stallholder can earn millions of dollars a year just because you watched her video. Young people should not be impulsive, even if it is just If you invest one or two thousand yuan, you must be cautious. It cannot be "you only see me eating meat, but you don't see me being beaten".
Only you know the hard work behind setting up a stall.
At the Sunset Market, after the tourists have left at 10 pm, the work of the vendors has just begun.
Some people need to clean up for an hour, and it takes another hour on the way home, and they have to prepare for the next day's stall...
When setting up a stall in Shahe Daji, Lele finished setting up the stall, packed the goods, and it was almost 2 o'clock in the morning when she fell asleep.
Sleeping for two hours, I drove Iveco to Shahe Daji at 4:00 a.m. with nearly 250 toys. It was late, and the stalls on the Daji were all covered, so she couldn't get in the car.
"Once you see it, you will lose it if you do it" is the portrayal of many novices who set up stalls.
Lele introduced that before, two toy agents set up stalls at the same location with the same source of goods, and one agent could only sell three or four hundred yuan a day. He felt that there was no prospect, so he left.
The next day, another agent sold more than 2,000 yuan in the same position.
Many agents who get goods from Lele are "fishing for three days and drying the net for two days". After working for a few days, they don't seem to make much money, so they quit.
"Closed down." In June last year, a girl and her girlfriends set up a stall in Fuzhou for 4 months, and announced that their stall was officially over, because this time the stall not only failed to make them make money, but lost money.
In 4 months, they were enthusiastic about setting up stalls to exhausted physically and mentally.
Among them, a girl said that she used to be tempted when she saw other people making thousands of dollars a day by setting up stalls, or mentioning that things were easy to sell, but now she "gives up."
Setting up a stall depends on the weather. There are not many customers when it rains or it is too hot. There are also fewer customers from Monday to Thursday. Although the number of customers is large on weekends, the average profit is not satisfactory.
For stall owners, it involves multiple links such as product selection, site selection, and sales, and each link is very important.
In terms of product selection, Lele suggested that novices can focus more on women and children, choose products that are not easy to wear out, and choose products that must be of high quality.
Take selling toys as an example, the larger the quantity, the easier it is to sell, but you need to prepare a car.
In addition to mentally preparing for hardships, novices also need to open themselves up, maintain self-confidence, and have confidence in their products.
For this reason, she has persuaded many people to leave, especially those who have serious "social fear". These people may not be so suitable.
She will also stop those who want to resign and set up a stall, telling them that having a job is actually the confidence to "set up a stall".
In Lele's view, the prospect of setting up stalls is still bright in the future, and will continue to be upgraded and linked to physical stores.
She is concerned that some people are still "setting up wild stalls". In the future, relevant departments will plan more and more special markets, etc., so that these stall owners will become more formalized, especially some night markets as a night economy. One, it will make the city "bright".
As these stall owners get bigger and bigger, they may choose to open physical stores.
She said that if the toys sold reach a certain scale in the future, she would like to open a warehouse toy store.
The stall holders are ushering in the first "spring" of the "post-epidemic era".
This year, Su Chenggong intends to set up a stall as "a career". Some markets in Beijing are inviting him to be a resident, and he is selecting. He plans to work until October this year, earn some money, and continue to travel around.
Xu Bin has returned to Chongqing, and after a while, he will officially become a member of the "stall circle".
He and his girlfriend are about to get married, and he hopes that by setting up a stall to make more money, "give his wife a better life." Liu Ning wants to accumulate more entrepreneurial experience through setting up a stall, and looks forward to becoming bigger and stronger in the future and creating more Multiple job opportunities.
The number of people who come to Lele to get goods every day is 2-3 times that of the same period last year.
This year, in addition to being a source of toys, she also invested in an amusement park and a ski resort.
During the Chinese New Year, the one-day turnover of the ski resort alone was nearly 200,000 yuan, and the seven-day turnover exceeded one million yuan.
Talking about this year's profit target, she said, "It must be doubled no matter what!"
Zhao Limei, trainee reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily Source: China Youth Daily