---
title: "The Consumer Ecosystem of a County Town"
description: "Lu Xucheng returns to his hometown Guiping in Guangxi for the first Spring Festival after the pandemic, observing the local consumer ecosystem. He finds that rural supermarkets are rising, Mixue Ice City sells 1,000 cups a day, and the leisure sportswear industry in Mule Town is transforming, while chain restaurants are rare due to local preference for fresh food."
author: "卢旭成"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2023-01-31"
language: "en"
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# The Consumer Ecosystem of a County Town

> Lu Xucheng returns to his hometown Guiping in Guangxi for the first Spring Festival after the pandemic, observing the local consumer ecosystem. He finds that rural supermarkets are rising, Mixue Ice City sells 1,000 cups a day, and the leisure sportswear industry in Mule Town is transforming, while chain restaurants are rare due to local preference for fresh food.

Lu Xucheng
On the first Spring Festival after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, I returned to my long-missed hometown—Guiping, Guangxi. From January 17 to January 25, I stayed home for a total of 9 days. During these 9 days, I bought New Year goods, met with middle and high school classmates, went hiking and shopping, and conducted in-depth observations of the consumer ecosystem in this small county town from various dimensions.

Guiping is a county-level city located in the southeast of Guangxi, at the confluence of the Qianjiang, Yujiang, and Xunjiang rivers. According to official statistics, in 2021, Guiping's population reached 2.0519 million, making it the most populous county in Guangxi. It is also a rare plain area in Guangxi and the largest grain production base. From the Tang Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, Guiping was the seat of Xunzhou Prefecture, Zhou, Lu, and Fu administrations. In 2021, Guiping's GDP was 39.029 billion yuan, and the per capita disposable income of urban residents was 36,172 yuan.

The above are official figures, which may not leave a deep impression. In fact, Guiping is the birthplace of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and was considered a "poor county," only being approved to exit the list of impoverished counties in 2020. It must be said that the state has invested heavily in "underdeveloped" areas like Guiping in recent years. Guiping now has high-speed rail directly to Nanning and Guangzhou, as well as expressways. Driving from Guangzhou to Guiping takes about 5-6 hours. My home is in a village on the outskirts of Guiping, where paved roads reach every household's doorstep, and there are streetlights. Internet and tap water are also available. Most farmers have built 2-5 story villas along the village roads, with single-floor areas ranging from 60-70 to several hundred square meters, costing 400,000 to 1 million yuan to build. Most rural families own a small car, usually entry-level models costing tens of thousands of yuan, such as Baojun. My home is located near a provincial road, and from the rooftop I can see long lines of traffic.

**Rise of Township (Village) Supermarkets**
This year, what surprised me most is that I no longer need to drive to the city center to buy New Year goods. A rural supermarket opened less than a kilometer from my home—similar in size to Beijing's Wumart (community store). The supermarket is newly opened and is called Fushan Chenming Supermarket. This supermarket has 5 chain stores in Guiping, 3 of which are in Fushan. According to my mother, as soon as the supermarket opened, the business of the village's small shops immediately declined. The supermarket's marketing methods are not advanced; it uses low prices on the most price-sensitive items to attract customers. For example, for pork, according to a salesperson, the boss gets up before dawn every day to go to the slaughterhouse to select 5 newly slaughtered pigs and bring them back to sell cheaply. Take pig trotters, which I like: frozen pig trotters in Beijing cost 30 yuan per jin, while fresh pig trotters at Chenming Supermarket are only 17.5 yuan per jin. Just on pork alone, Chenming Supermarket sells at least 2 more pigs per day than the pork stall at the village entrance. The supermarket also sells vegetables freshly picked from local farmers' fields that day, such as choy sum, Chinese cabbage, and bitter leaf lettuce, which are fresh and genuinely cheap—for example, choy sum is only 1.5 yuan per jin. The supermarket offers a mix of branded and generic, local and non-local products. It has old and big-name beverages like Wanglaoji, Coca-Cola, Yinlu, and Dongpeng Special Drink, as well as cheaper and larger generic drinks like Special Forces Coconut Juice (8 yuan per 1.25L). New brands like Genki Forest are nowhere to be seen (apparently not penetrating deep enough). It also has local Guangxi products like milk, Shatian pomelo, sugar oranges, and Orah mandarins, as well as non-local products like Yili and Red Fuji apples. Branded and local products are well supplied with transparent and cheap prices, while generic and non-local products are the main source of gross profit. The supermarket's layout resembles a collection of hot items from a local wholesale market, such as grains and candies, which are sold in bulk, with customers weighing what they need. I prefer shopping at Chenming Supermarket because it has 20-30 parking spaces. The local wholesale market has more items and is cheaper, but it's farther (about 5 kilometers away) and has no parking because it's in the old city. The rural supermarket has found a unique positioning—targeting the new generation of villagers (who have cars, houses, and convenient transportation). It offers a more complete and cheaper selection than small shops, and is closer to villagers with parking compared to the local wholesale market, meeting the aspirations of new villagers (many returning from working in Guangdong) for a better urban life. I visited the RT-Mart supermarket in Guiping city and found it larger and with a more complete selection than Chenming Supermarket, but it was far less popular. From my observation, Chenming Supermarket has become an important shopping destination for villagers from several nearby villages. They come either by car or electric bike to buy rice, flour, oil, braised meat, milk, snacks, pork, vegetables, drinks, and alcohol, enjoying a life no less than that in Beijing. In this sense, if the supply and marketing cooperatives across the country were to reopen their township-level stores following the logic of township (village) supermarkets, they might have great potential.

**Mixue Ice City Sells 1,000 Cups a Day**
Another major discovery this year is that Mixue Ice City has opened in Guiping. I hadn't seen it before the pandemic. Clearly, during the three years of the pandemic, Mixue Ice City expanded aggressively through franchising. The Mixue Ice City store is not large (estimated less than 100 square meters), located at the intersection of Guinan Road and Guangming Street. It's a corner store with a prominent Snow King logo on the sign. That area is one of the busiest streets in Guiping, surrounded by various restaurants and commercial storefronts. I specially invited my mother, my sister, and her two kids to Mixue Ice City for milk tea and ice cream. It cost 8-10 yuan per cup, and it tasted no different from the stores in Beijing. The Mixue Ice City store only has 3 tables and 9 chairs, clearly not encouraging customers to sit down. Since I had arranged to meet a classmate to chat, I sat there drinking and waiting.

During that time, I noticed that many customers were young people, and some were like me, bringing their families to experience the consumption. Many arrived by car or electric bike, bought their drinks, and left; very few sat down. There was no queue, and customers came in twos and threes, so I thought business was average. The store had 2 employees. I asked one of them how business was and how many cups they sold per day. She told me around 1,000 cups. This data surprised me. With an average price of 8 yuan per cup, 1,000 cups a day would mean daily revenue exceeding 8,000 yuan, or even 10,000 yuan? The employee modestly said it wasn't that much, but didn't reveal the exact figure. At the entrance of Mixue Ice City, there was a prominent flyer introducing how to order through Douyin local life. This penetration rate shows Douyin's ambition in local life. Interestingly, opposite the Mixue Ice City store, there is a brand that looks similar at first glance called Xueli Lecheng, but its business is sluggish. Above this store, there is a huge franchise advertisement. I thought this was a former Mixue Ice City franchisee who had a falling out and deliberately set up shop opposite to compete. When I asked the Mixue Ice City employee, they were tight-lipped. This is the consumer ecosystem of a small county town—counterfeits are everywhere. However, I walked around the county town several times and didn't find any other famous tea drink brands; local herbal tea shops were everywhere.

**Branded Growth of Leisure Sportswear**
Back home, I chatted with a classmate from Mule Town, Guiping, and learned that Mule Town has become a major hub for leisure sportswear in China, developing rapidly in recent years. Guiping has been developing various industries in different towns, such as rice noodles in Luoxiu Town and yuba in Shepo Town... However, many of these are more like specialty agricultural products rather than industries, such as rice noodles and yuba. The real industrial town is Mule Town. In 1980, a few skilled tailors from Mule Town bought raw materials from Foshan and other places, used home sewing machines to make leather jackets and windbreakers, and sold them to Guangzhou and other places. Gradually, it became a famous town for leisure sportswear with front shops and back factories (workshops). Now, Mule Town is the largest production base for leisure sportswear in Guangxi, with over a thousand manufacturers of various sizes, including above-scale enterprises like Zhongjian, Shanying, and Duike. The production and sales of leisure sportswear account for more than 40% of the national total. During my middle school years, I went to Mule Town with classmates. There, you could produce "counterfeit" sportswear like Nike and Adidas at very low prices. Many of our school's sports uniforms, such as those for football and basketball teams, were commissioned through those classmates, with custom designs that looked good and weren't expensive. Many classmates, after graduating from middle or high school, followed their parents to clothing wholesale markets in Guangzhou or Beijing to sell counterfeit clothing produced in this town. Later, as the state emphasized intellectual property rights, these "counterfeit" businesses were hit, and enterprises in the town gradually transformed into OEM, white-label, or own-brand production. According to my classmate, those still making counterfeits should account for no more than 30%. In recent years, with the popularity of short videos and live streaming, some short video teams and live streamers have entered Mule Town, hoping to leverage the town's industrial advantages to do well in live-stream e-commerce. However, it hasn't yet become a live-stream e-commerce capital like Linyi in Shandong or Yiwu in Zhejiang. In the past, enterprises in Mule Town mainly focused on wholesale, with relatively low profits. In 2022, with the sporadic outbreak of COVID-19, national sports events and team activities were suspended, leading to a sharp decline in orders for factories in Mule Town. For example, Shanying's factory staff was once cut from 300 to only 100. On one hand, these enterprises began to take more OEM orders to keep factories running; on the other hand, they expanded into live-stream e-commerce for retail, trying to change their passive situation.

**Chain Restaurants Hard to Find**
During this holiday, I had at least three gatherings with classmates and friends: one at a farmhouse restaurant and two at night snack stalls. Back in my hometown, I realized that chain restaurants common in first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are almost nowhere to be seen here; only a few like Dicos are in the city center. The local eating habits in Guiping emphasize freshness—if you buy mutton, there must be a pen of goats nearby, and customers watch the boss catch a goat from the pen and slaughter it on the spot. The same goes for chicken, pork, and fish. If you sell frozen or overnight meat, your reputation quickly suffers. Good restaurants here focus on fresh ingredients, while chain restaurants mostly use "pre-made dishes," making it hard for them to survive. The farmhouse restaurant we went to, according to the classmate who recommended it, is known for fresh meat—for example, river shrimp in a basin are still jumping when put into the pot, making a delicious hot pot. Guangxi's luosifen (river snail rice noodles) is famous, and many people think only Liuzhou eats it, but Guiping also loves rice noodles or soup made with river snails. The two night snack stalls I went to were bustling, specializing in river snail stewed duck feet and other river snail hot pots. The most distinctive feature is that the soup is made by boiling river snails, giving it a sour and fresh flavor. You can add various ingredients while it cooks, eating, drinking, and chatting. Many people who work outside return to Guiping and their first act is to have a bowl of river snail noodles or hot pot to satisfy their cravings. According to people from other places who have eaten there, it has a taste of Liuzhou luosifen. In these shops, you often see the boss greeting customers while personally handling fresh ingredients like field snails bought from the market. Guiping's local eating habits make it difficult for restaurants to chain and scale, but it's easy to become an old-established shop. The ones I went to are all old shops with thriving business, often open until after midnight. With the popularity of Liuzhou luosifen nationwide, can Guiping's river snail soup-based noodles or hot pot form be chained? As far as I know, there are chain brands specializing in luosifen in China, such as Wumingyuan, but whether river snail hot pot will be as popular as Sichuan or Chongqing hot pot remains to be tested by the market.

**Summary:**
In addition to the above observations, I also found it interesting that there don't seem to be many people raising cats or dogs in Guiping. Yulin, Guangxi, is famous for eating dog meat, and in Guiping, you can also buy processed dog meat in the market. In a place where dog meat is freely eaten, people probably don't keep cats and dogs as pets, and indeed, Guiping's pet market is not large. I also chatted with a classmate who returned from Vietnam and learned about many cross-border opportunities, but unfortunately they are not much related to Guiping, so I won't elaborate here.

Finally, let me summarize the consumer market in China's county towns, represented by Guiping:

**1. The market is huge.** Counties like Guiping now almost all have trains or expressways, with paved roads reaching every household's doorstep (thanks to the government). Of course, they also have internet, tap water, gas, etc. Express delivery is available everywhere, mobile payment is ubiquitous, and everyone scrolls through Douyin (even my mother watches Douyin to learn cooking) instead of watching TV. Rural people are already highly urbanized, and this will only increase. The income of county residents may seem low (per capita disposable income of 36,000 yuan per year), but it's based on having completed major purchases like cars, houses, and appliances, so its purchasing power is not low (Guiping's total retail sales of consumer goods in 2021 was nearly 12 billion yuan). Formats like township (village) supermarkets still have opportunities to grow.

**2. New brands have opportunities.** The county market is dominated by old and big brands, but there is also ample space for white-label and counterfeit brands, indicating that new brands (like Special Forces Coconut Juice) have a chance to enter, but they need to focus on refined operations and high cost-performance.

**3. Branding is the trend.** Whether it's the leisure sportswear from Mule Town going out or Mixue Ice City coming in, the value of brands in the county market has been fully proven. Only brands can command higher profit margins.

**4. Short video platforms have great potential in the county market.** Although I often buy things on JD.com and have them delivered to my mother, the initiative for online consumption among county residents is enormous. Due to knowledge and ability constraints, county residents have not been "brainwashed" by Taobao, JD, or Tmall on a large scale, nor have they developed e-commerce shopping habits. In terms of influence in the county market, Douyin is definitely number one. More and more people are getting used to entertainment and shopping through short videos. Douyin local life should follow the path of "rural areas surrounding cities," starting from markets below the county level, and then compete head-on with Meituan, which dominates in prefecture-level and above cities.

**Recommended Reading**


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