SUCCESS BELONGS TO THE NIMBLE

It will go down as the year of disruption and dislocation, one in which, because of the pandemic, planning ahead often seemed to be a pointless exercise.

For proof of that you need to go no further than small business owners, who this year have needed to abandon old ways and be innovative and nimble enough to adapt in a flash to changing conditions.

One of those owners is Zhou Yiyan, who at the start of the year ran a studio in Shanghai specializing in decluttering and better home organization, but which by November had gone through a couple of reorganizations and reincarnations of its own.

The first of those came in early March, a few weeks after the pandemic broke out and lockdowns and social distancing measures were imposed throughout China. At a time when other companies were still running on idle, the studio received a lucrative order from the property developer Vanke, which was looking to reorganize the allocation of apartment space to take account of customers' health-related concerns, including allowing more room for storing items related to epidemic prevention.

This kind of work looked like delivering Zhou a healthy profit stream as she secured contracts from other property developers.

However, that turned out to be illusory because some of these companies have been in tough financial straits themselves, and were extremely slow in paying money due to her. In addition, the number of those paying membership fees to the studio for online training courses slumped, and Zhou said that so far this year, the studio's profits had fallen 20 percent compared with the same period last year.

"When we tried to expand our better home organization services from property developers to more individuals, we found it difficult. Most people are more willing to pay for interior designers or interior decorators."

As November and Singles Day on the 11th loomed, Zhou had a flash of inspiration, thinking about the origins of what has become an occasion for hundreds of millions of people to go bargain-hunting on the internet.

In fact, well before the world of commercialism caught up with Nov 11 in a big way about 10 years ago, it used to be a kind of Valentine's Day, the date's digits representing those who are unattached and supposedly lonely－or possibly not.

Zhou's idea was essentially a marketing one, to tailor her online courses on decluttering to middle-aged single women and to do so through her WeChat Channels as Nov 11 loomed.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs said that in 2018 there were 240 million Chinese of marriageable age who were either single or divorced. Considered as a market, that figure is all the more tantalizing when you consider it is greater than the combined population of France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Zhou, 36, herself single, said those who belong to this group are strongly motivated to please themselves whether by making themselves look more beautiful, making themselves feel better－or possibly even relieving any anxiety some may have about being single.

"We used to help people better organize their homes, but we've been shifting our focus from decluttering the outside to decluttering the inside, the latter being something single women will increasingly want," Zhou said, "the inside "referring to matters psychological as much as physical.

"So we're trying once again to change our focus, and the emergence of WeChat Channels has provided us a good chance in doing that."

WeChat's owner Tencent launched the new video platform in March, looking to it as a powerful tool that could help the content publisher reach 1.2 billion WeChat users. And with WeChat's huge user base, its influence may eventually surpass that of Douyin, the original, domestic version of the video platform TikTok.

Another small business owner who has had to quickly adapt to changing conditions as he navigated the difficult shoals of the pandemic is Sun Mingzhe, 41, who worked in IT in Beijing for 20 years before opening, with several other investors, three medium-sized restaurants named Daddy Shrimp last year.

As the restaurant industry felt the full brunt of the pandemic in the first half of this year, the three restaurants were forced to close, and investment of more than 3 million yuan ($456,660) was washed down the drain.

In March Sun took a fresh look at his approach to business and set up a community catering service. This involved delivering popular fast foods such as spicy crayfish and lamb spine to neighbors, in tune with the lockdown zeitgeist of reducing personal contacts and dining at home rather than out. Sun later also set up a kitchen to offer family packages and healthy meals, in addition to the existing fast-food products.

"I rented a kiosk near my community for about 15,000 yuan a month," he said. "I've had gross profit of about 30,000 yuan a month, and if everything goes smoothly, I'll be breaking even in two to three months," Sun said in an interview in May.

However, again reflecting the unpredictable times, the pandemic in China ebbed just as Sun's business was about to break even, and demand for community catering services slumped.

"Nevertheless, I built up a customer base for the several months I ran the catering delivery services. I then switched from fast food to special local products, such as lamb slices from the Xiliin Gol grassland in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and potatoes from Zhangjiakou in Hebei province."

Sun has now taken on the mantle of "Delicious Food Mover for Communities", managing 16 WeChat groups that cover 11 communities in Wangjing area of Beijing, with an average of about 300 people in each group.

Therein lies the trick, for group purchasing power is not to be sniffed at, Sun said. For example, he sold his full inventory of more than 100 free-range chickens from Inner Mongolia within two weeks.

"The online group purchase mode gives small concerns from second－and third-tier cities a chance to enter big markets at low cost, and is also a win-win deal for group purchase managers, customers and local special producers," Sun said.

His WeChat groups helped farmers in Zhangjiakou sell more than 1,000 kilograms of potatoes in the first 10 days or so of November, and by the end of the month that figure is expected to be 3,000 kg.

"Local wholesalers usually pay farmers 0.4 yuan to 0.6 yuan for half a kilogram, and we pay them about 1.2 yuan," Sun said. "They retail at 3 yuan for half a kilogram, compared with the average market price of 7 yuan."

For WeChat group purchase managers, the most attractive thing about the business model is the very low cost, important especially in times such as these.

Sun said he usually opens the group purchase program on work days, with the program counting the number of people who have placed orders. Customers have enough trust in him to pay for goods in advance, and Sun buys the local specialties with those funds and delivers on weekends, meaning there is no capital outlay.

The biggest challenge, Sun said, is to find suppliers of local specialties of very good quality and that are strongly competitive.

In addition to expanding the quality products he offers to group customers, Sun is cultivating his personal account on Douyin, hoping to try livestreaming e-commerce, thus he can combine the offline mode with the online one.

"It's been extremely difficult for me this year, but you have to keep on trying and seizing every opportunity that comes along and go for it. Otherwise the chances for success will drift away."

In these straitened times, livestreaming is a marketing avenue small business owners have latched onto, a method that a recent report by Nielsen said is supported by innovative online channels and the accelerated shift toward online consumption.

The annual value of livestreaming e-commerce is likely to be 961 billion yuan this year, or about 10 percent of all e-commerce in China, the report said, with 265 million users, accounting for 47.3 percent of livestreaming users.

Zhang Chenggang, an associate professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing, said that the number of people engaged in new occupations, such as online shop planner and digitization service provider, has rocketed. With a flexible mode, new professions are playing an increasingly important role in creating jobs.

From January to September, 8.98 million new urban jobs were created, almost reaching the annual target of 9 million in this year's Government Work Report. The surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas was 5.4 percent in September, compared with the year's target of about 6 percent, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said.

Meng Qingwei, deputy director of China Talent Research, said market demand based on technological innovation and social changes are leading to new occupations. Sixteen new occupations have been identified by the China Employment Training Technical Instruction Center, part of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, this year.

Zeng Xiangquan, director of the China Institute for Employment Research at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, said flexible employment, in which employees are not bonded with a particular employer but are free to earn income from multiple employers as matched by a public platform, has great potential.

The internet company Alibaba, for instance, has 110,000 employees but has spawned more than 40 million jobs including online retail vendors and couriers, according to industry figures. The digital cultural platform China Literature has only 1,300 workers but has 8.9 million literature creators.