On October 14, 2016, Liu Yan Dong, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and the Vice Premier of the State Council, visited Huazhong University of Science and Technology to investigate the second China "Internet+" College Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. The competition was jointly sponsored by ten ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Education, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, and the Communist Youth League of China. The national final competition was held at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
Among the 118,800 participating projects and 545,800 college students, the "Mandian Life" project, led by Guo Juanmei and advised by teachers Tu Xingyong and Wang Fenyu, stood out and won the national silver award. The Mandian Life project had previously won the gold award in the second "China Innovation and Entrepreneurship" Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition in the service industry category and the "pending copper award" in the "Challenge Cup" competition. How could a student entrepreneurship project win gold, silver, and copper awards in the highest level of national entrepreneurship competitions within a mere half-year?
The realization of an elegant life is akin to Zen. Loving flowers comes naturally to women. Among the myriad forms of beauty in the world, only fresh flowers can interpret elegance and beauty in the most transparent and intuitive way. What Guo Juanmei and her team are doing is presenting each flower-loving woman with the most design-conscious, sentiment-conveying bouquets, delivering elegance.
On campus, Guo Juanmei is often seen with long hair and cotton linen clothing, or in a pair of black velvet high heels paired with a wine-red floor-length skirt. She is quiet and introverted yet not without a sense of vitality. She enjoys classical music and ethnic elements, and occasionally plays the flute and by the Yu Xiu Lake. Not usually verbose, she talks about entrepreneurship with the passion of a blazing flame.
Guo Juanmei notes, "In 2015, China’s urbanization rate exceeded 50%, reaching 56%. With the middle class beginning to emerge, more and more entrepreneurs are ‘capitalizing’ on this trend. From cross-border shopping to fashion and beauty, the list goes on. This trend will be led by women who have control over family finances and demand a higher quality of life."
"Mandian Life" is a flower e-commerce brand that focuses on the female flower consumption market. The project aims to build a ‘hive’ with bouquets that have emotion, warmth, and attitude, allowing all flower-loving, beauty-loving women with high standards of life to bask in fragrance and honey, and develop a self-awareness of an elegant life, living differently from others.
The Japanese art of flower arrangement, in fact, originated in China. In August 2015, Guo Juanmei, who first came into contact with Japanese flower arrangement, discovered that it originated from the floral offerings in the Buddhist temples during the Sui and Tang dynasties and has now become a traditional Japanese culture. It is well-preserved and thriving in Japan, while we have let it slip away. This slight touch eventually led to the birth of the "Mandian Life" project.
With such an initial heart and her own love for flowers, she wandered through the streets and alleys of Lanzhou, discovering that the flower market was dominated by gift flowers, with sales. She found that sales during festivals were 50-100 times those of non-festival periods. This led to a problem: offline flower shops struggled to make sales during most of the year, with some even experiencing significant profits during festivals and long-term losses during non-festival periods.
To address this, she founded the "One Person, One Flower" brand, advocating that everyone should have their own bouquet of flowers, hoping to "de-festivalize" flower consumption. In the three-month trial operation, the brand accumulated nearly 5,000 users. With recommendations from classmates, friends, and early users, an increasing number of users from other provinces began to contact them, although they were not yet able to provide inter-provincial services. This gave Guo Juanmei a glimpse of a huge business opportunity. In January of the following year, "One Person, One Flower" was officially renamed "Mandian Life," targeting urban middle-class women and young people who love flowers and have higher demands on life quality.
At the time, Dr. resigned to sell beef noodles online and became very popular. Seeing this, Guo Juanmei thought that for "Mandian Life" to serve nationwide flower lovers, it must also integrate the Internet gene and operate online.
Standardized production allows the flower product to embrace the Internet. "Since beef noodles can be ‘Internet plus,’ why can’t flower products be ‘Internet plus’?" Guo Juanmei thought. However, the first problem facing flower products going online is that flowers, as a traditional industry, rely on traditional artisans to package each bouquet individually, which is very inefficient. A bouquet with a bit of design takes at least 15 minutes to make from start to finish, meaning a florist can only produce about 30 bouquets a day. Such production capacity is naturally unable to embrace the Internet.
How to improve the production efficiency of flower products? She thought of Henry Ford, the "father of standardized assembly line production," whose world record for assembling a car was only about 8 seconds. She began to consider how to standardize the production of flower products like an assembly line. After numerous trials by the team, they broke down the process of making a bouquet into 15 standard steps and 79 standard actions, and through step-by-step, divided, and collaborative production, they successfully reduced the time to make a bouquet to just over a minute, greatly improving production efficiency. Thus, "Mandian Life" became the first brand in the country to adopt standardized and assembly line production for flowers, a process that took nearly a month of hard work.
The standardization of flower production needs to rely on the standardization of final consumption to be realized. If everyone’s needs are different, then standardized production loses its meaning. Therefore, Guo Juanmei and her team began to consider how to ensure that users have a consistent demand for flowers over a certain period, so that combined with "Mandian Life’s" strong production capacity, they could form a "competitive advantage" over other brands.
Birthday flowers for the popular culture of young people. Guo Juanmei began to think from the perspective of the "big troubles" she encountered in her life. She finally thought of buying birthday gifts for female classmates as the "most troublesome," usually ending up with a cup, a scarf, or a zodiac-themed piece of clothing, and it was always difficult to decide. When the team heard about this "trouble," they were overjoyed.
After extensive market research, they finally identified the first market that could be standardized—birthday flowers. With 365,000 people celebrating their birthdays every day in China, the combination of "flowers + cake" is becoming the standard for birthday celebrations. If they could capture this market, their entrepreneurship would be half-successful.
But how to turn the diverse needs of birthday flowers into standardized demands? They finally came up with the concept of "zodiac signs," turning the various birthday flowers into a standardized need for one bouquet per zodiac sign per month. Targeting young birthday groups, using the lucky flower, lucky color, favorite color, zodiac temperament, and zodiac fortune for that year and month as design elements. The implantation of the "zodiac" concept not only turned the product into one that could be standardized for production and sales but also infused it with "youth, fashion, cool, and zodiac" elements, which are the most popular in modern youth culture. "Mandian Life" became the first to advocate this concept, and while other flower brands have since started doing zodiac flowers, "Mandian Life" still leads the pack with birthday flower sales accounting for over 31% of total revenue.
Weekly theme flowers make flower products "talk." For some people, flowers are just a gift. But for middle-class women, flowers are no longer just a gift; they are the "divine hand" that elevates the quality and spirit of life. By this token, "Mandian Life" found the second market that could be standardized—providing a weekly bouquet of theme flowers for middle-class women. The project uses the format of "a flower, a story" each week, with each story conveying a life attitude, resonating with the product and attitude, always in sync with the user. For example, they launched products like "If There Were Flowers on Women’s Day, Would She Be Proud?" "Poetry and the Field of Distance, for the Diligent You," "A Little Pride, for the Aspiring Self," "I Will Spoil You to the End," "Actually, You’re a Light," "After the National Day, Hard Work in Overtime, My Big Star." Always standing with the user, making flowers "talk," making everyone who receives the flowers love life and themselves more.
For example, targeting the fact that every girl "loves flowers, beauty, photography, and social media," "Mandian Life" launched a flower model contest where anyone could sign up to be a flower model, with photographers taking beautiful photos for them to remember the moments with flowers. For example, for those dealing with negative energy in daily life, "Mandian Life" launched an "Energy Card" on their WeChat account (mandianlife) every day, with popular writers like Sanmao, Jiazhen, Xirongrong, Zhangxiaoxian, Wangguozhen, and Zhangjiajia providing motivation and, saying "good morning" every day.
"Mandian Life" doesn’t just sell flowers; it also conveys an attitude and value of refined living. It’s a starting point for paying attention to the spirit and soul, a way to achieve an elegant and warm life. They hope to connect users with flowers, beauty, and "Mandian Life" to make flowers "talk."
"Mandian Life," a flower brand by the side of flower lovers. Liang Sicheng once said to Lin Huiyin before their marriage, "There’s a question I’ll ask only once, and I won’t ask again. Why is it me?" Lin Huiyin replied, "The answer is long; I’ll need a lifetime to answer it. Are you ready to listen?" "Mandian Life" also has a long story, with every step of the flower materials, packaging, water retention, shaping, preservation, logistics, and after-sales service all. One choice after another, a bit of innovation here and there, story after story, all their growth. Currently, "Mandian Life" can provide a full range of flower products including festival flowers, birthday flowers, theme flowers, and custom flowers, and offer matching services such as vases, scissors, and cards. Logistics can deliver nationwide, with some areas achieving 20-minute delivery. Next, "Mandian Life" will continue to expand its own logistics construction, and perhaps soon, nationwide flower lovers will be able to receive elegance from "Mandian Life" in just 20 minutes, completely integrating online and offline to form an effective O2O business loop, becoming a flower brand that every flower lover can reach out and touch.
On the "Mandian Life" WeChat account (mandianlife), there’s an "Energy Card" waiting for you to claim every day; a story and a bouquet of flowers every week, and a zodiac-themed birthday flower every month. The story of "Mandian Life" is long, with chapters yet to be written. Please join in and witness the continuation.
