Born in the 1980s - Li Ye
Print Edition
For 30-year-old Li Ye, life has been full of ups and downs, but he’s managed to turn himself into one of the legendary barbecue sellers in Shanghai, if not all of China.
Li established Shanghai Xianyouji E-Commerce Co in 2008, combining barbecue and the Internet in a one-stop service. Online, the company sells semi-finished barbecue product ingredients, including meat, seafood, vegetable and sauces. It also offers barbecue stoves and tools, charcoal, disposable dishware and beverages. It also provides suggestions for BBQ parties and events.
Born into a wealthy family in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, in 1983, Li had a cushy life in front of him. His family operated a famous club that included a restaurant and a spa center. Li got pocket money of at least 5,000 yuan (US$806) a month. However, in 2003, his parents went bankrupt and he was forced to drop out of school.
“It was like falling from a great height all of a sudden,” he says.
Li worked wherever a job was available. He carried drinking water containers to dormitories, sold tickets at cinemas. While he was eking out about 300 yuan a month, his parents went into crabs and fish farming, only to be devastated by the SARS epidemic and flooding.
“We managed to support ourselves,” he says. “The whole family was reduced to living on only 500 yuan during one stretch of the toughest time.”
Li says he always liked barbecued food and the idea of turning his taste into a business came one day when he happened to pass barbecue stalls on the street. He got a job with one of them, cleaning tables and learning the finer points of grilling meat.
In 2003, Li turned a second-hand tricycle into a barbecue vehicle and started selling barbecued meat from a stall named Zhuangyuan (No. 1 scholar) near a university campus.
It was his first bucket of gold, earning Li 1,700 yuan a month.
In 2005, he sat for the university entrance examination and was admitted to the Shanghai Publishing and Printing College; he worked part-time at an e-commerce company.
Li became a serious businessman in 2008, investing about 500,000 yuan in an online supermarket website. But he gave that up when business difficulties arose. He then registered the Yesbbq brand later that year and established a new firm.
Business was slow at the start. Li waited three months before receiving his first order, which came from the city of Kunshan in Jiangsu Province. It was worth only 220 yuan, but it was a start. By 2011, sales reached more than 1 million yuan, climbing to 2.8 million yuan last year.
At the time, his dream is to dispel the image of Chinese barbecue as unhealthy, unsanitary and down-market and to make Yesbbq the most famous brand of its kind in China. “Starting up my own business was always my dream,” Li says. He has a five-year plan to achieve those goals.
Li has hired female college students to cook barbecues in order to promote a cleaner image. He has also plans to start a three-month training course for those who want to learn to grill meat that is both tasty and nutritious. “Barbecue is like a lifestyle,” Li says.
He is now designing an app game related to barbecues, where players can convert virtual grilling meat into the real McCoy at one of his shops. His online platform also provides weather forecasts and pointers on ideal spots for barbecues, including GPS navigation to the sites.
Li describes himself as a typical person born after 1980. “I dare to dream wildly, and I keep creating fun ideas,” Li says. “The success of the post-1980s is based on continuous striving and struggling to create something from nothing.”
His goal is 5 billion yuan in sales in five years, with a well-honed distribution system backing up sales. He says he plans to open 10 stores in Shanghai and Beijing.
“Dreams are big, but you need to walk step by step,” he says.
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