Planting "afternoon tea" in the office, Xiaohongshu is popular with the "fruit farmer" style

Office fruit farmers are a new profession for workers popular on Xiaohongshu. This article uses "office fruit farmers" as the entry point to explain the meaning of "office fruit farmers" in detail and derives the flower e-commerce business model of Xiaohongshu. It is recommended for people who want to understand Xiaohongshu's marketing and e-commerce model.

The so-called "office fruit farmers" refer to young people who are unwilling to decorate their workstations with only a few spider plants. They have begun to turn their attention to flowers and green plants, and try to cultivate various flowers and fruits at their workstations, and are committed to turning their offices into a new era of Huaguoshan paradise. The prevalence of "orchard-style" offices has made fresh-cut flowers and trees such as rice bananas, pineapples, five-year-old fruits, and cherry tomatoes the "top stream" of workstations. At the same time, the good meaning brought by the homophony of plants is also favored by young people. Under the popularity of "banana greens", Xiaohongshu has begun to promote hydroponic rice bananas; hydroponic pine in a pot at the workstation can "relax" every day.

Image source: Xiaohongshu hot content

This kind of care has even been given emotional value. Xiaohongshu blogger @养花小圆子 wrote in his notes: "On a certain day of a certain month of a certain year, I was diagnosed as a tomato on Xiaohongshu - a smooth head, not much hair, a soft persimmon, easy to be manipulated, and when faced with setbacks, I will only cry wildly and then wither."

As a form of "office transformation", "office fruit farmers" are popular among young people, largely due to the sense of novelty. Flower art bloggers have led the new trend, and users who want to copy the same style leave questions in the comment section, asking "how to buy". The stores marked by bloggers include Pinduoduo stores, and a large part of them point to Xiaohongshu flower shops.

In recent years, the slogan of "flower freedom" has been heard on various social platforms, and the consumption demand of young people has skyrocketed, and the categories of flowers have also begun to be segmented. On Xiaohongshu, I have observed that more and more flower shops have gradually settled in the platform, attracting users' attention through real flower photos and preferential prices. Can the flower industry "break through" on Xiaohongshu?

1. Desks, the "Flower and Fruit Mountain" of Workers

Before "office fruit farmers" became a hot topic on Xiaohongshu, "desk renovation" was already a hot topic among users of the platform. The topic #What's on the desk has been viewed 140 million times on Xiaohongshu, and #Desktop layout and #Office workstations have received hundreds of millions of views, which shows how popular it is.

As the scene where workers spend the most time in their daily lives, the office has naturally taken on the renovation enthusiasm of young people. To create a "fairy workstation", there are several indispensable steps. Arrange simple and elegant storage racks and perforated boards, replace desktop furnishings such as keyboards, mice, and water cups with a unified style of low-saturation colors, let the collected blind box dolls settle down on the desktop, and add exquisite vases in appropriate locations, and embellish with flowers.

From this perspective, "being a fruit farmer in the office" is essentially a variant of "office transformation". It's just that the "good things for the workstation" have changed from storage and blind boxes to green plants and fruits, and the workstation style has been unified into the new era's "paradise" of Huaguo Mountain. Young people who are keen on transforming their offices are no longer satisfied with just putting a few pots of spider plants as a sloppy decoration to purify the air, but have opened up the "pattern" and raised a very new type of office green plants.

The essence of creating a "fruit farmer" workstation is to select flowers and trees with "new, unique and special" styles, so that they can become the "eye-catching bag" of the entire office. Some people like the tropical rainforest style and place large plants such as Monstera, Spring Feathers and Bird's Nest Fern around their workstations; some people are obsessed with hydrangeas and change to a bunch of fresh bouquets every now and then. The clusters of flowers are placed on the specially set Liu Xing screensaver, and "Home with Kids" has become a large-scale "Qing Palace Top Wear Show".

Image source: Xiaohongshu blogger @养花小圆子

Recently, various types of fruit trees have become popular among users on Xiaohongshu. Hydroponic tomatoes, five-fruit trees, rice bananas, and pineapples have begun to occupy the desks of workers.

Since March last year, Xiaohongshu blogger @AJIMA has started updating her desk arrangement series of notes. Hydrangeas, bellflowers, and water lilies have appeared on her desk. Her neat and everyday desk often receives likes from users. By sharing desk items and flower unboxing VLOGs, @AJIMA has accumulated 21,000 followers on Xiaohongshu.

Last August, she posted a note about fresh cut branches in the office, recording the fruits she had grown in the office, including green tomatoes, pineapples, pomegranates, cherry tomatoes, and apples. This attracted a lot of traffic and received more than 16,000 likes. Since then, she has continued to update her notes about growing pineapples, bayberries, and other fruits. The data performance of many notes is very good, and one note about bayberries received 13,000 likes.

Image source: Xiaohongshu blogger @AJIMA

Similar to @AJIMA, @Poppo, a "senior fruit farmer" blogger on Xiaohongshu, has been updating the maintenance of various "green plants" in the office since June this year. From jasmine, gardenia to bayberry, banana, grapes, and even lychee, she and her colleagues enjoy the green while enjoying afternoon tea of ​​"eat and pick as you go".

Image source: Xiaohongshu blogger @Poppo

Many Xiaohongshu users asked her, "How tall is the vase?" "How big is the mouth of the bottle?" "Can it be eaten?" Or they posted photos of their own desks with small apples and tomatoes in a transparent vase.

The popularity of this type of content naturally has its own internal logic. First, office desk renovation is what young people are interested in, and the "novelty" encourages young people to give themselves a comfortable and interesting office environment. Second, this type of content also has its commercial value. At first glance, it even looks like an "open conspiracy" of online flower shops: the photos carefully taken by bloggers attract many users to buy the same ones . Behind this is the shortening of the purchase link between young people and fresh-cut flowers and trees, as well as the rising demand for flowers among young people.

Under the wave of fruit farmers, Kas discovered that some of the purchase links marked by flower art bloggers pointed to mini programs, Taobao, and Pinduoduo stores, but many also pointed to Xiaohongshu accounts.

2. The romantic flower business is growing on Xiaohongshu

According to iMedia Research, the scale of China's flower e-commerce market will be 108.68 billion yuan in 2022. Analysts believe that in recent years, the business of flower companies has been continuously expanding and the consumption scenarios of flowers have gradually become richer, attracting more potential consumers. In the next few years, the scale of the flower e-commerce market is expected to continue to expand.

Entering the new retail era, cold chain transportation has made online e-commerce in the flower industry more possible. In Douyin's flower live broadcast room, anchors from Yunnan or other flower producing areas shouted "9.9 yuan for 20 roses" and "17.9 yuan for ten gladioli", and sold a variety of bouquets in packages, allowing young people to instantly gain freedom from flowers.

On the "trend vane" Xiaohongshu, the content about flowers is also very rich, including flower sharing, flower awakening tutorials, store recommendations, etc. Last year, peony was the top flower in Xiaohongshu, and bloggers would also show off the different varieties of peonies they bought in their notes, the most popular of which were sunset coral, emerald, canary, Miss America, etc.

Searching for "flowers" on Xiaohongshu, we can see that there are 5.36 million notes and over 420,000 products under the keyword. The rich content of flowers has also prompted flower merchants to enter the market.

Bloggers’ popular notes are one of the sources of traffic for such businesses.

In a "Fruit Collection" note by @AJIMA, she organized the sources of her fresh cut flowers and fruits. Users only need to click on the merchants she mentioned to jump directly to the flower shop account.

Xiaohongshu's efforts to promote products are as strong as ever. After being attracted by the photos carefully taken by bloggers, many users went to the store to ask for the same products. Under the note "Tropical Rainforest Style Office" posted by @小钱的工位日记, the flower shop owner quickly claimed it and said that many users went to the store to ask how to sell pineapples, and advertised in time, "I got a batch of fresh banana flowers, SF Express for 89, and tropical style will be arranged for you."

For flower consumers, appearance and price are the two most important dimensions. For this reason, when operating notes, such accounts often keep up with the trend and present a strong sense of the Internet. If Xiaohongshu notes want to attract attention, carefully taken pictures are essential. In addition, merchants will also work hard on the title, such as "Flower CP sweeter than first love", "You can have a jellycat tomato substitute for 9.9 yuan", "13.9 a bunch of romance".

Of course, some of these accounts have not opened stores on Xiaohongshu, but rather regard the platform as a transit station for traffic. They guide users to their own mini-programs to place orders through pinned notes, but due to transaction diversion, they also face the risk of being banned by the platform.

In addition, among the merchants who have settled in Xiaohongshu, a small number have already formed a mature e-commerce model on other sites and regard Xiaohongshu as a new growth point for online channels , such as @海迪的花园. In the notes, the blogger will share his daily flower-growing life and show the flowers and trees with different personalities in the garden, allowing users to experience the fun of growing flowers and plants. The perspective of the direct shooting at the base gives users a sense of reality of "what you see is what you get", and coupled with the straightforward and cheerful personality of the person appearing on the camera, "海妈", the account has gained 1.2 million followers on Xiaohongshu.

From the perspective of store operation, @海迪的花园 can be regarded as a benchmark account with perfect operation in the flower market. The store has complete seller notes, order notes, and product reviews for flower and tree products, which increases users' confidence in placing orders. In the product tags, bloggers will also add labels such as "heat-resistant", "disease-resistant", and "easy to grow" that hit the pain points of young people to promote conversion. At present, the store has high sales of hydrangea temari, and the product page shows that 2,845 pieces have been sold.

One person who promoted the content on Xiaohongshu and achieved two-way traffic online and offline is @橙子店经理日记.

Chengzi is the owner and the only succulent employee of @真橙植物工作室. He opened a small plant studio in a hutong in Dongcheng District, Beijing. His daily notes are to record his experience of running a plant shop and introduce his original plant products. His cool photos and delicate green plants in glass cups are very popular with Xiaohongshu users who like independent design style.

In May this year, the studio welcomed two new stray kittens as employees. The broadcast of "cat videos" attracted more traffic to the note. Currently, the account has accumulated 30,000 followers. Since the offline stores have been opened, many local users in Beijing will go to his store to take photos and check in, and then post notes, attracting more people to interact, and the offline stores and online e-commerce have guided traffic in both directions.

Image source: Xiaohongshu blogger @橙子店经理日记

In addition, some canned seeds featuring "urban little farmers" and "lazy flower art" have also become popular on Xiaohongshu, with typical accounts including @超级植物.

The flower business seems to be booming, but overall, compared with Douyin's mature and large-scale live broadcast rooms, Xiaohongshu's flower e-commerce is still in its infancy.

The limitations of the track come from the overall lack of traffic on the one hand, and the particularity of flowers on the other hand. To a large extent, the success of the flower business depends on the reputation of the merchants, but the impact of long-distance transportation on the quality of flowers is uncontrollable, and a series of operations such as waking up the flowers and pruning them will affect the consumer's shopping experience. At the same time, the maintenance of word-of-mouth comes from real user reviews, and what Xiaohongshu lacks is a complete evaluation system, which also means that for merchants, relying solely on the traffic brought by the hot notes is far from enough.

On Xiaohongshu, the romantic flower selling track undoubtedly requires a better business model.

Author: Chu Cheng

Source: WeChat public account "Kas Data"