Kunming:
Boxes of roses, lilies and carnations pile up as influencer Caicai speaks into her smartphone from a small studio in Asia’s largest flower market – with thousands of customers eagerly awaiting her opinion on the best deals.
E-commerce is big business in China and influencers and live streamers have made their fortunes showcasing products for luxury brands and cosmetics companies.
Now the country’s horticultural industry, valued at 160 billion yuan ($25.1 billion), is springing into action. And where people used to visit markets and florists themselves, they increasingly buy flowers via their smartphone.
Online retail now accounts for more than half of the industry’s revenue.
“Five bouquets, just 39.8 yuan ($6.25) for those who order right away,” says the 23-year-old — a sales pitch she sharpens eight hours a day and delivers lightning-fast.
“If you sell something for a long time, the words come naturally,” she tells AFP.
However, the earnings can be unreliable.
“Flower sales vary in busy and quiet seasons, so a live streamer’s daily income is very variable. All I can say is that the more you work, the luckier you will be,” she explains, as colleagues next to her stack the bouquets. cardboard boxes ready to be shipped.
The demand for cut flowers has skyrocketed in China as living standards have risen, with the southern province of Yunnan at the epicenter of that boom thanks to its mild year-round climate.
The provincial capital Kunming has the largest flower market in Asia – the second largest in the world after Aalsmeer in the Netherlands.
‘Flowers are vital’
Every day at 3 pm, a rose auction starts in a huge space where more than 600 buyers share the daily stock behind their scenes.
“Yunnan represents about 80 percent of the flower production in China and 70-80 percent of the flowers sold go through our auction room,” said Zhang Tao, responsible for the market’s logistics – a crucial role when the goods are so perishable .
“That equates to an average of more than four million flowers sold per day. For Chinese Valentine’s Day, we sold 9.3 million in one day.”
They ship all over China within 48 hours.
On the retail side of the market, another influencer, Bi Xixi, presents flowers and bouquets from stalls to resell to her own online subscribers.
Dressed in a traditional Chinese dress known as a hanfu, the 32-year-old walks from one booth to another with her phone on the end of a walking stick and has amassed about 60,000 subscribers.
She grabs flowers, displays them on her screen as followers rush to place their orders.
Bi Xixi began live streaming early last year when China was paralyzed by the Covid pandemic. Then she realized that people wanted to see the flowers online that they couldn’t buy outside anymore.
Now, one day, she says she manages to sell 150,000 yuan ($23,500) worth of flowers in three hours of live streaming.
She gets about ten percent commission and is optimistic about the future of the trade.
“People are appreciating rituals more and more. Flowers make them feel happy and young people are starting to like buying flowers,” she says.
The market is far from saturated, said Qian Chongjun, head of the Dounan Flower Corporation, one of the largest entities in the market.
“Buying flowers every week has become a habit in many families,” says Qian. “I think one day they will become a vital need, just like air and water.”
(This story was not edited by NewsMadura staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
