Xifeng's online retail sales exceeds 76 million yuan in first 9 months

From January to September, the total value of online retail sales in Xifeng county, Southwest China's Guizhou province, reached 76 million yuan ($11.38 million), including new sales from 48 poverty-stricken households in September worth 228,300 yuan, according to local media reports.

Since the beginning of this year, Xifeng county has vigorously carried out consumption-based poverty alleviation promotion activities, and conducted statistical analyses of the output, time to market, scale and sales channels of characteristic agricultural and sideline products, including kiwi fruits, grapes, honey, broiler chickens and pepper products, as well as conducting well-timed external publicity drives.

The county has opened more than 400 online stores on giant e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Suning.com and JD.com, with more than 400 types of products on the virtual shelves, and conducted multiple live advertising broadcasts by internet celebrities. On Sept 22, the third Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival, the sales volume of goods from live broadcasts exceeded 500,000 yuan.

Meanwhile, the towns and villages of Xifeng county are exploring diversified marketing models based on their own industrial characteristics.

Yongjing town has mobilized its cadres and employees to participate in consumption-based poverty alleviation activities, such as preferentially purchasing the town's agricultural products and extensively promoting them through personal circles. This has driven the sales of special agricultural products such as eggs in Lianfeng village, and chrysanthemums and holboellia latifolia in Pingshang village.

Xishan town has frequently used WeChat, Weibo and other social media platforms to carry out web promotions hosted by celebrities, and vigorously promoted local agricultural products such as tea, peaches, grapes and bayberries.

Going forward, Xifeng county will speed up the construction of flagship Tmall, JD, and Suning stores, specialty stores, special agricultural products exhibitions and sales network halls, and provide product sales services for the county's agricultural production bases, major agricultural product marketers, large supermarkets, large catering chain enterprises, and agricultural processing enterprises.

Che Weiwei contributed to this story.