Live e-commerce boosts agricultural product sales in Suzhou

Suzhou is promoting the thorough integration of live e-commerce and agriculture. The city is home to the largest agricultural e-commerce industry in Jiangsu province, with online retail sales of agricultural products consistently ranking first in the province for several years.

Suzhou has set up several live e-commerce bases for agriculture, benefited enterprises invovled in the Jiangsu Live-streaming E-commerce Festival, improved rural delivery networks for sales, and established the Suzhou Live E-commerce Development Alliance for communication among agricultural enterprises.

Yangcheng Lake crab, the most popular delicacy of its kind in China, is a renowned specialty of Suzhou. Using the "enterprise + live-streaming team + breeding base + farmers" model, Jiangsu Yangchenghu Crab Company promotes the sales of the crab and other agricultural products from Suzhou on various e-commerce platforms through live-streaming, helping increase farmers' incomes.

Fenghuang peaches are a nationally-recognized geographical indication product of Zhangjiagang, a county-level city of Suzhou. Leveraging the live e-commerce base jointly established by the Suzhou Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau and the Suzhou Post, Zhangjiagang has been conducting special live-streaming for Fenghuang peaches for several years. This year, e-commerce sales of Fenghuang peaches are expected to reach 20 million yuan ($2.79 million).

Taihu Snow Silk is an early e-commerce player in the silk industry which conducts live e-commerce domestically and uses e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and its overseas website for international business. In the first quarter of 2024, the company generated over 18 million yuan on Tmall and 9.28 million yuan on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, marking year-on-year increases of 8.56 percent and 159.61 percent, respectively. Additionally, it also saw a 42.07 percent growth rate in revenue on Amazon, reaching 9.73 million yuan.