“We are not chasing trends; we are installing a digital engine into the land.” In his office in Enshi, Hubei, Chen Guodong, founder and CEO of Youyoucao Eyu, pointed to a large data screen on the wall displaying real-time transaction maps stretching from the Wuling Mountains to the Three Gorges Reservoir area. This traditional agricultural and cultural tourism enterprise, deeply rooted in the Hubei-Chongqing region, is undergoing a profound transformation from “relying on the heavens for food” to “relying on the internet for food.”
Over the past three years, the internet development trajectory of Youyoucao Eyu can be seen as a microcosm of digital breakthroughs for enterprises in China's third- and fourth-tier cities. While the outside world was still discussing the “sinking market,” Youyoucao Eyu had already deployed a combination strategy of “online traffic generation + offline experience + local supply chain,” sending wild medicinal herbs, selenium-rich tea, and Tujia intangible cultural heritage handicrafts from western Hubei to dining tables and studies in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.
“The biggest pain points are trust and logistics,” recalled Zhang Min, vice president in charge of the enterprise's internet transformation. When the company first built its own e-commerce platform in 2021, users were skeptical about agricultural products from the “deep mountains of Hubei and Chongqing.” To break the deadlock, Youyoucao Eyu did something “simple”: on Douyin and WeChat Channels, it had local farmers and artisans appear on camera to livestream the entire process, from harvesting to processing. There were no polished filters—only morning mists in the mountains and the smoke of kitchen fires. This “earthy livestreaming” turned out to be the most powerful trust builder.
Technological iteration was equally critical. Instead of blindly pursuing a large, all-encompassing SaaS system, Youyoucao Eyu partnered with Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications to develop a lightweight “integrated production-supply-sales” digital middle platform. This system solved two core problems: first, it enabled cooperatives deep in the mountains to respond to orders in real time, just like large factories; second, through blockchain traceability, every bag of “Youyoucao” products could be traced back to the specific mountain slope and the farmer who handled it.
In May of this year, Youyoucao Eyu's internet business underwent a “stress test.” A sudden rainstorm cut off roads in some production areas, but the company swiftly activated its “cloud warehouse + emergency logistics” model, leveraging community forward warehouses previously established in Yichang and Wanzhou to improve inventory allocation efficiency by 40%. During an internal review meeting, Chen Guodong said, “The internet is not a cure-all, but it can help us shed one less tear in the face of disaster.”
More notably, Youyoucao Eyu's internet development has not been a one-off breakthrough but has driven the “migration to the cloud” of the entire regional industrial chain. Currently, more than 200 small-scale farmers and cooperatives in the Hubei-Chongqing border area have connected to its digital platform, sharing resources for quality inspection, packaging, and logistics. An official from the Enshi Prefecture Commerce Bureau commented, “Youyoucao Eyu has proven that in the internet world, remoteness is not a disadvantage; originality is the greatest scarcity.”
Looking ahead, Chen Guodong's plans are pragmatic: “We don't talk about disruption; we talk about connection. The next step is to turn ‘Youyoucao’ into a regional public brand, so that the good products of Hubei and Chongqing can reach farther places through the internet.” In an era when major tech companies are scaling back and returning to their core businesses, the counter-trend growth of Youyoucao Eyu may offer the most straightforward answer for all regional enterprises trying to find their place in the internet wave: first take root, then grow.