Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1743
Asahi Vip is mostly known today for its dairy products. But its brand story had nothing to do with milk at first. The starting point of this brand was an experiment in organic circular farming. They spent 5 years just to “raise the soil”. In order to keep the soil more fertile, they used cow dung as a natural fertilizer, and for better cow dung, they started raising their own cattle. When the cows start to produce milk, the employees digest it internally or sell it to surrounding farmers. The more and more milk they produce, they start to consider selling dairy products.
It has been 74 years since the invention of the chemical insecticide DDT, and 61 years since the production of herbicides such as paraquat, but the farms of Asahi Vip.com have “almost no traces of modern industrial operations” and they do not use chemical fertilizers. , Do not use pesticides, workers squat in the field to catch insects with bare hands, and pull out weeds in clusters.
Zhaori Vipshop Farm is located in the northeast of Laiyang City, Shandong Province. On a 1,500-acre piece of brown land, several large white plastic tents were lying on the field, and a small hill was drilled out of the field, and there were a few cows screaming from the cowshed next to the hill.
Unlike large-scale farms, there are not too many large-scale machinery running at high speed, no feed bins as big as basketball courts, and no dairy farms with tens of thousands of square meters. nothing.
On that hill, several employees of the Ministry of Agriculture planted patches of cherry blossoms, crabapple, and Er Yuelan, and dug a lotus pond at the foot of the hill. In spring, crops of shepherd’s purse, Chinese toon and purslane grow in the gaps in the fields. The employees dig up these organic wild vegetables and take them home to make dumplings. In midsummer, the employees gather around the lotus pond, watching the lotus leaves lift high in the wind, and then throw the fishing rod into the pond, waiting for the red carp to take the bait.
The pile of hills in Asahi Vipshop Farm (top view), source interviewee.
It looks like an idyllic scene. Asahi Vipshop Ranch is a part of the farm. So far, there are only two departments, the production department and the technical department, and 73 employees look after more than 2,500 head of cattle. Several of the old employees have been here for more than ten years. To them, raising cattle is not a mechanical action on the assembly line, and cattle are by no means milk-producing machines on the production line. Their identities are not just a series of numbers.
Employees love to talk about cattle and show their own emotional connection with cattle, which shows that this job respects nature and has a human touch. A calf breeder who has been on the farm for almost 20 years said, “They are like our own calves.”
The little cow in the Asahi Vipshop Ranch, the source of the interviewee.
Liu Hong, who has been employed for 12 years, remembers that the smartest cow would use its long tongue to unlock the lock and escape by itself. In the ultra-high temperature summer, the smart cow would put its hoof into the water tank, flick it violently, and splash water all over its body to cool itself down. Li Xuefei, head of the milking department, remembers that the 860th cow that came to the ranch was closest to a breeder. Every time he heard his voice, he would walk to his side and follow him from the cowshed to the milking parlor. The veterinarian Chen Peng created a lot of photo albums of cattle in his mobile phone, showing a cow with a heart-shaped coat on its head, and a cow with a beret on its head that looks like a bulge. Another cow was sent to participate in a cow beauty contest. Before the competition, an employee took the cow to take a bath. The young man loved the cow so much that he did not hesitate to bathe it with his own shower gel.
The background of pastoral life comes from the history of this farm. Cattle raising was once only an extension of this farm – the original purpose here was only to “raise the soil”.
In 2003, the Shandong Provincial Government signed a cooperation agreement with Japan’s Asahi Brewery Group to carry out practical experiments on organic circular farming. This tentative project was only dedicated to cultivating soil at the beginning. The Japanese team built a “soil research institute” on the hill to detect soil microorganisms and heavy metal content every day. It was only in the fifth year that it met the requirements of circular farming. Criterion – That is, the land has been “idle” for 5 years.
In the past 5 years, the team tried to cultivate the soil through cow manure composting. After collecting cow manure from surrounding farmers, they found that none of the cow manure could meet the fertility standards. Starting in 2006, they decided to raise cattle themselves. After raising cattle, the model of circular farming finally took shape: the crops grown in the farmland can be used as feed for cattle, and after the cattle eat them, they digest and excrete feces, which are fermented and become organic fertilizer for crops again.
Schematic diagram of circular farming, source interviewee.
One morning in March, Zhang Lei, the brand manager of Asahi Vip.com, talked about the history of these farms. She is in her 40s, with short hair, and has been working in the marketing department of Shenandoah, a subsidiary of New Hope Group, since she graduated from university. In 2017, New Hope decided to acquire Asahi Vip.com for better ranches and farms. Three years later, she came to Asahi Vip.com with the goal of “being a good brand” issued by the group.
At first, Asahi Vipshop’s dairy products were only sold in Japanese supermarkets such as AEON and Jiuguang in Shanghai and Qingdao, and the consumer groups were mainly Japanese and Koreans in China.
Later, some boutique cafes discovered Asahi Vipshop in the process of looking for milk suitable for making lattes. “When Manner opened his first store, he used Asahi Vipshop’s milk.” Zhang Lei said.
A person in charge of Manner said: “Most Chinese people like to drink latte (not American style). Asahi Vipshop’s milk will not steal the taste of coffee, and it is also in line with the Chinese people’s preference for milk with a hint of sweetness.”
The unexpected favor of new coffee brands has led Asahi Vipshop to embark on a new path of “not introverted”: the milk that goes best with coffee. Today it is a partner of brands such as Manner, Seesaw, and M stand, and it also supplies many niche boutique cafes.
In 2020, when Zhang Lei first came to Asahi Vip.com, besides the two giants Mengniu and Yili, there were also established dairy companies such as Sanyuan, Guangming, and Junlebao on the shelves of domestic milk, while Lechun, Jane Eyre, and Adopt a Cow These new consumer brands have also made their differences deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. How to make Asahi Vipshop stand out from other dairy brands? This was the first problem she tried to solve.
With more than ten years of marketing experience, Zhang Lei decided to change the packaging and make it different from the outside.
“Only when something is different and makes people curious will people pay attention.” Zhang Lei said. She asked the marketing team not to learn from existing milk brands, “It’s really too crowded, there is no need to get involved.”
She invited Guang Yu, a designer who has designed new consumer brands such as Ramen Shuo and Daily Heiqiao, to create new packaging for Asahi Vip. She hopes to retain the original elements of the four cows of Asahi Vipshop. Guangyu’s team invited a European painter of ancient coins to draw four cows looking quietly and solemnly in front of them stroke by stroke.
The new packaging must also reflect a sustainable brand concept. All packaging materials are made of degradable materials, and the use of large areas of ink is avoided as much as possible. There are only three or four colors, and only necessary product information and brand concepts are retained.
Part of the pattern on the new packaging of Asahi Vip.com, the source of the picture is the interviewee.
Asahi Vipshop also tried to tell the story of circular farming to consumers, and printed the portrait of Mr. Shinji Iwase, the Japanese expert who first led the team to raise cattle, on the milk carton.
This kind of traceability is inspired by a French fries brand in Japan. They once printed a string of codes on the outer packaging of each box of potato chips, which can trace the production line and even the land where the potato chips came from.
16 years ago, 20-year-old Li Xuefei came to Asahi Vip.com and applied for a milker for a ranch in the name of a “Japanese-funded enterprise”. At that time, the ranch had just introduced the first batch of cows, 650 in number, all of which were selected and imported from Australia and New Zealand by the famous Japanese dairy cow expert Shinji Iwase.
When the cows first arrived at the pasture, there were only single-digit cows in the lactation period. Li Xuefei followed the Japanese teacher to wrap his fingers around the cow’s teats and learn to milk the cows manually. It was not until later that the ranch introduced a side-by-side milking machine. The milking machine, which looks like two rows of silver steel fish bones, can milk 48 cows at the same time-this is one of the few large machines on the ranch. On large farms that focus on productivity, the most common, expensive, silver disc-style DeLaval milker can milk 80 cows at a time in eight minutes.
The milker Li Xuefei stayed in the company in the end, along with Shinji Iwase’s concept of “slow cow raising”.
The cows are housed in different stalls according to their age, and the range of activities for each cow will not be less than 5 square meters. There is no longer a bed and a sewage ditch in the cowshed. They sleep, walk, and defecate on the forage. The forage covered with rice husk and sawdust is soft when stepped on. This is done to restore the picture of the life of cattle in nature – on the prairie with swaying green grass, the herd of cattle strolls leisurely and lowers their heads to graze.
However, there is no way to create more “grassland” in the pasture, and the bedding material of the cowshed can only be rotary tilled three times a day to ensure the looseness and ventilation of the artificial grassland. The standard of looseness and breathability is not a certain value-human feeling is the standard here.
The old employees of the ranch remember that Mr. Iwase went into the cattle pen by himself every day, and found an empty “grassland” to lie down for a while. “He thinks that when people sleep comfortably, cows can sleep comfortably.” Li Xuefei said.
Zhang Ruifeng, the person in charge of the Ministry of Agriculture, was also in the breeding department in his early years. He talked about Mr. Iwase going through every cow pen every morning and before going to bed. “After milking every day, he would drink directly to see the taste of the milk. Has there been any change?”
Over the past 10 years, this place has relied a little bit on modern technology. Like every large-scale ranch, it uses TMR mixing technology to feed, sprays and fans to ventilate and dissipate heat, and uses smart rings to monitor the health of cattle. However, human perception is such a subjective standard. Always be valued.
Veterinarian Chen Peng patrols the circle 6 times a day, “seeing” the mental state of the cows and the fullness of their stomachs. Squad leader Yang, a calf breeder, goes to the calf pen every half an hour. He believes in a set of simple principles that “if the calves are raised well, they will produce good milk when they grow up”. Liu Hong, who is in charge of feed nutrition, not only patrols the circle every day, but also regularly collects feces, cleans them and tests them, paying attention to the degree of digestion of cattle.
The Jersey cattle in Asahi Vipshop Ranch, the interviewee in the picture source.
After Zhang Lei took over, the ranch, as a part of business, also had to pay attention to the return on investment. The ranch will feed different feeds to different herds. For example, 98% of the feed that organic cattle eat is organic, part of which comes from free organic farms, and part of which is imported from abroad, stored separately, and changes according to the standards given by the nutritionist at the headquarters according to the seasons.
Soon, the turnover of Asahi Vipshop rose from tens of millions to more than 500 million yuan. For this manager, this is just the beginning. Zhang Lei has always been thinking about how to improve the brand awareness of Asahi Vipshop among the target consumer groups. “Of course we care about benefits, but we must adhere to the brand concept. There are many businesses that need to be traded off.”
She counted with her fingers: the high-quality style should be kept, and Asahi Vipshop is different from those milks that only focus on the “mother label”. The positioning is refined to “all high-quality people”, and the offline channels are always stable in Sam, ole and other membership-only supermarkets; benefits are also required, the company’s internal management process is simplified, and all departments are carrying new performance indicators; and the sustainable concept of the brand must also be adhered to. Thrifty slogans were posted in conference rooms.
Stories with an organic, sustainable halo do appeal to some. In “The Dilemma of the Omnivore”, the American food writer Michael Pollen compared the organic products in the United States to “the idyll in the supermarket”, “satisfying the deepest and oldest human desires, not just the demand for safe food, There is also a connection to the earth and the livestock you have long relied on.
It is this kind of connection that Asahi Vipshop wants to provide. Industrialized production lines sometimes bury the relationship between humans and various species, forgetting the habits of cows, the growth of plants, and the nourishment of the soil. Zhang Lei remembers that when organizing consumers to visit the farm, a woman was surprised and said: “The cow is actually one breed, and there are male and female.”
But it is not easy to evoke this connection. Zhang Lei said: “Asahi Vipshop’s user portraits are ‘people who pay attention to the quality of life’. They often have high incomes, high education, and are willing to care about the environment and whether the food they eat is organic.”
Asahi Vipshop once tried to put a “seed card” with lavender flower seeds in the pulp box of buttermilk series products, teaching users how to use cheese cartons to grow flowers, to reflect the brand’s sustainable concept. There are indeed a few users who are obsessed with balcony planting and share their lavender, cherry tomatoes, and violets on social platforms.
On the short video platform, Asahi Vipshop opened an exclusive ranch account, using cows to show the current living conditions of people through anthropomorphic methods. Here, cows are old employees in the workplace, workers who catch the subway, and hand-choppers who pay deposits. , connecting cattle and people on distant pastures.
In 2022, Asahi Vipshop and Qingdao Agricultural University released the first “Soil White Paper” in the industry, “I hope consumers will be curious about why a dairy company would do this.” Zhang Lei said. Although it is difficult to prove whether the soil story has finally reached the consumers at the end of the chain and brought new purchasing power.
“From cow to milk, from cow feed to cow to milk, consumers will accept such a story. But starting from the soil where cow feed is planted, the chain of this ESG story is too long.” Zhang Lei said.
An employee in the Vipshop Asahi Farm is picking vegetable leaves, the source of the picture is the interviewee.
Zhang Ruifeng, the head of the Ministry of Agriculture, is also distressed. With a dark brown face on his face, this old farm employee talked about the “meaning” of organic agriculture in his understanding, “It is nature’s own farming mode, which must protect the integrity of the ecological chain and allow weeds to grow. Let the natural enemy exist.”
When talking about profitability, he looked at the white vegetable sheds with some confusion, “This is actually a painful thing. Agriculture depends on the sky. Our department only earns 1,000 yuan a year, and it loses money the rest of the time. .” Few people know that Asahi Vip.com also sells organic vegetable products.
In a lettuce shed, an elderly peasant woman is squatting next to the tender green lettuce, using a sickle to chop off the dense weeds. Zhang Ruifeng said that it is difficult to recruit people on the farm. During the harvest season, they even hire peasant women in their 80s to work as temporary workers to pull weeds and catch insects. He worries about inefficiency. A few months ago, he saw a news that a weeding robot with a laser was under development, “I really hope it will be available soon.”
He looked at the lettuce field, and he heard a few cow calls in his ears. This unique farm is like an unfinished idyllic, from soil to milk, and now extends to organic vegetables. Zhang Lei, the manager, hopes that in the future, Asahi Vipshop can “enclose the entire dining table, and even cover everyone’s kitchen”.
“LatePost” launched a weekend edition, hoping to expand its sights to all kinds of creators. To put it simply, we want to know who is creating and using it to influence the surroundings; we not only look at the present, but also look back at the past, looking for the source of shaping today’s world; we pay attention to technology, business, history, humanities, and look at the Emergence of the Interchange.
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“What has been created is insignificant compared with what is yet to be created.” Those were the words of Victor Hugo – and we hope Late’s coverage over the weekend bears that out.
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