This article is from the WeChat public account: Leopard Change, Author: Mazda, Editor: Xing Yun, title picture source: Courtesy of the interviewee
Young people are getting a very new kind of pet again.
On social platforms, you may find that young people who are exhausted and need companionship, on the way to choosing pets, give up cats and dogs that want to feed food and shovel feces, take them to play with, and also give up fish, birds, rabbits and rats with a certain threshold or limited lifespan, etc., and open a new pet raising track - raising stones.
On Xiaohongshu, the topic of raising stones has been viewed more than 6 million times. More and more young people are buying or picking up, spending a small amount of money to buy companionship, and bring back a stone. A merchant who specializes in selling stones told Leopard Change that when he sold stones on Taobao last year, there were only two or three competitors. Now she's seen a 10-fold increase in the number of merchants selling similar products.
According to media reports, the sales of "pet stones" on Taobao in August increased by 246% month-on-month.
Raising stones is not an easy job. Searching for "pet stones", Xiaohongshu gives 15 key words including adoption, spirit pet, tutorial, novice, pebbles, ornaments, etc. Some users have a profile of "sharing my favorite stone pets", while some small stone bloggers will set up a "stone farming exchange group" to exchange stones and conservation experience.
As the number of people raising stones grew, a small market around the buying and selling of stones, and a young community with information on raising stones, was being established.
It's just that how did young people come to the step of raising stones?
Raise stones like pets
On the desk of Li Yan, a young mother, there is sometimes a mini beach with striped parasols and beach mats in a corner; Sometimes a green lawn dotted with cherry blossom trees and rocking chairs; Sometimes it's a super cabin with bunk beds and desks, and night lights.
These mini-accessories all belong to the same owner - an oval, grayish-white speckled stone. It is Li Yan's pet that has been raised for half a year, "Shi Xiaokui".
When picking up stones with her children on the beach in Sanya, Li Yan picked out this round pebble and raised it on her desk. With black eyebrows, eyes, and a small mouth, the stone looks well-behaved and serene.
Like most stone cultivators, what Li Yan enjoys most is the unchanging sense of companionship that stones bring. "It doesn't die like a small animal, it's very solid to put it on your desk every day and look at it."
Over time, Li Yan regarded the stone as a pet who could understand her. For colleagues who didn't understand her raising stones, Li Yan told the other party that this stone was spiritual.
In order not to leave the stone "alone", she has been updating the theme accessories for the stone, and when it comes to the holidays, she takes the stone home because "you can't let it be left alone".
"Stones are conscious, they are real pets." Many of the stone farmers expressed similar parenting philosophies. The fun of raising stones is also the anthropomorphism of stones, which runs through the process of raising stones.
It doesn't matter where the stone comes from, you can pick up a stone by the sea or roadside, or you can buy a "better-looking one" in the store. Unlike "Panshi", which emphasizes the smooth and transparent touch of the stone, the pet stone emphasizes roundness and natural texture, and the hot-selling appearance tends to be the stone image that appeared in the movie "Minions" and "Instant Metaverse" - dark color, big eyes, and a bit of a thick and cute feeling.
Once you have the stone, the most important step is to glue the eyes or draw the facial features. In this way, the stone is like a cute pet who can understand and understand everything.
Then give the stone a name that will awaken it. In the novice posts and comments, many people posted stones asking for names. Some adopters will also finalize the stone's gender, birthday, and even personality and mbti. A player has 8 stones with different personalities. One player has 4 different MBTI stones. This makes your stone more recognizable and personal.
A stone issued by the store, MBTI is ENTP
In order to enrich the sense of raising pets in Yangshi, "breeding manuals" and "training manuals" are circulating on social platforms. How to raise a stone? It's like having a dog. Make sure that the environment is clean and ventilated, the cushions are soft, and pets should not be abused, beaten or abandoned.
Secondly, you can also give it orders such as "come here", "don't move", "sit down", "lie down", "stand up", etc., but "pet stones learn slowly, and the owner needs to be calm and patient", the training manual wrote seriously.
Someone asked on social media, "If you don't want him after raising a stone, can you throw it away?" The reply with the highest number of likes in the comment area joked, "You take it to the amusement park and put it on a chair and say that your mother bought you marshmallows", and some people released photos of covering both sides of the stone with their hands to say "Good baby, we don't listen", everyone treats a pet with feelings, and interacts with the stone.
Accompaniment, play and low consumption
It seems unreasonable to raise stones, but for "crispy" young people, pet stones are low-cost pets that can be obtained.
Ye Zi, a pet stone seller, observes that the main source of customers in the store is the girl group who likes the second yuan in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, and the number of orders will increase significantly on weekends, holidays and winter and summer vacations. There are also buyers who urge her to issue bills, "hoping to get the stones before going to college/work".
A merchant who has been selling pet stones since last year said that her sixth-grade daughter recommended her to sell them.
In Xiaohongshu, several persuasion posts with more than 10,000 likes are aimed at students - "high school students come to raise stones" and "college students raise a stone at the end of the semester".
The reason for the recommendation is that compared to live pets, "stones do not need to be cared for and fed", so they save the trouble of raising them. For Tingting, a stone cultivator, the stone will not pass away or leave, adding some stability to life.
Tingting is a post-98 generation who has left her job, and the opportunity to raise stones is that the hamster she raised for 126 days died. The hamster, who had been interacting with her the day before, suddenly turned into a cold corpse the next day. The hamster had brought her the comfort of companionship and the joy of interaction, she took it to play in Taihu Lake, and when she met her parents, "it is not just a hamster", and the death of the hamster once made her no longer want to feed her pet.
She started raising a stone called "Doudou". Doudou also brings a kind of companionship. Although it can't be interacted, "it's like wearing a bracelet", "When you have anxiety, just touch her, you can imagine in your heart to transfer anxiety, and your mood will improve," Tingting said.
Many stone cultivators share the joy of raising stones, which is mostly related to companionship, such as "I have a companion for evening self-study", "I can supervise myself when I write my homework", "I have a pet who listens to me talk about high school physics".
An engineering girl would take a stone to class, eat, sleep, and be in a daze, and when others asked her again, "Are you always alone?" she felt that she had company.
Another pleasure for stone farmers is to dress up the stones. Tingting would dress the stone with blue eyes and a small mouth, and wear a lace ribbon. For her, taking pictures of hats and clothes made of stones can not only focus on the things at hand, but also have more opportunities for communication.
On social platforms, conservationists will post different states of pet stones, such as bathing in the bathroom, dating in the wedding room, drinking milk bottles, and nesting in the villa cabin.
The most common accessories are a straw nest, a straw hat, and a broom. A merchant who sells pet stones said that young people who buy pet stones will buy this accessory in 4 percent.
These gadgets, the leaves are called the "luggage" of the stone. Among the leaf shops, the straw hat series luggage is the best-seller, and it is the main force that sells 4,000 orders. At the same time, she is also expanding themed luggage such as strollers, Christmas, Halloween, and Mid-Autumn Festival.
The price of stones with duffel bags does not exceed 28 yuan, and the price of a loose stone is about 10-20 yuan. If you pick up a stone, the cost is 0 yuan.
It's cheap and affordable, and it's also the reason why young people raise it. Even if it is an accessory, the villa nest that Li Yan bought is about 100 yuan, compared to raising pets, the cost of raising stones is a figure that can see the ceiling.
There is no trend that can leave the impetus of celebrities. The wind blows from Korea. In a variety show in Korea in 2021, actor Lim Won-hee, who lives alone, introduced pet stones to his companions and showed training methods. IDOLS SUCH AS SEVENTEEN JINGHAN AND TXT XIUNINGKAI ALSO RAISE PET STONES. Among them, a piece of "stone Xiaojing" maintained by Jinghan has become a net red stone.
On Taobao's pet stone sales page, more than seventy percent will be marked with "Shi Xiaojing with the same paragraph", Li Yan's opportunity to raise stones also comes from his favorite idol Jinghan raising stones, and named his own stone according to "Shi Xiaojing".
A pop-up shop selling stones even appeared on the top floor of the Gangnam muji store in Korea. Some Korea students began to do "stone Xiaojing" purchasing, a 1500 won (7.92 yuan) stone, will soar to 100 yuan and do not have free shipping, but still attract countless conservators to consult.
I made 100,000 yuan by selling stones, and I can make a little money with emotional value
Ye Zi didn't expect that a part-time job on a whim could make some money unexpectedly.
In July last year, touched by the scene of Otto showing off pet stones to friends in the movie "Minions", Ye Zi wanted to buy a similar pet stone, but found that there was no such business, she opened her own pet stone shop, selling an average of about 300 orders per month.
At the beginning of September, with the fermentation of the stone craze and the promotion of the media, the sales of leaves in the store skyrocketed, and the volume was sold for nearly half a month on the same day. She spends her days replying to back-office inquiries.
There are more and more young people buying stones, and a Taobao merchant who sells feng shui stones can detect it. In the second half of last year, she launched "Pet Stone" in the store, and now this item ranks second in the store in terms of sales. This year's sales accounted for two-thirds of the total sales.
The number of merchants of the same type has also increased. Previously, she had only seen two or three pet stone links, but now there were twenty or thirty. Product homogeneity can only compete with price. The unit price of pet stones in her store has also dropped by nearly half.
The cost of stones is negligible, and in the early days, Leaf and friends went to the beach to pick up stones. After the order volume increased, she regularly purchased from a stone supply and marketing platform. The factory is screened, desilted and shaken to make the flat pebbles more rounded and smooth. After the second selection, the leaves are selected for the appropriate stone to put on the shelf. As the order volume increases, the profitability becomes considerable.
Operating for 14 months and priced at 28.8 yuan, she sold more than 4,000 stones on Taobao and Pinduoduo. Although the price of the two platforms is the same, Pinduoduo accounts for 3/4 of the sales. Leaves are also draining on Xiaohongshu, but sales are minimal.
Ye Zi felt that what he was selling was not a stone, but an emotional value. What she paid was mental and physical costs.
On the shopping platform, most of the sales links of pet stones come from the pet stone categories expanded by doll stores and feng shui stone stores. Ye Zi is one of the few shops specializing in pet stones, and she pays attention to the packaging of stone pets.
For example, drawing inspiration from cartoons, name each stone on the shelves, similar to "big-headed fish, sweet potato rice ball"; Finalize the "ID card" for each stone, including the origin, date, MBTI; The most troublesome step is to pack the stones. Find the right nest/stroller for each stone and make sure the stone stands up.
Before departure, she will take a departure photo of each "pet stone" and send it to the buyer, saying that "the small stone luggage has departed" and the adoption process begins.
The stones sold in the leaf shop are all stones with duffel bags, including breeding manuals, ID cards, small eyes, and dress-up bags. After getting your hands on it, there is a sense of ritual of opening the pet box. The author bought a bare stone with only an eye patch and a pet stone from a leaf shop for my 6-year-old niece. She quickly cried when she received the first stone. When she received the second one, she said happily that the little stone also had a broom and would keep it on the table.
Making money by packing stones, this business model first appeared in the 70s of the 19th century. United States an advertising practitioner, Gary wraps the stone with the idea of marketing promotion. The marketing model is to personify the stone, launch the stone care manual, and design the packaging box with hay and cages, and dress the stone like a newborn baby.
This low-cost stone costs $3.95. In the 70s, the United States experienced three rounds of stagflation, slowing economic growth, inflation reached 15%, and the unemployment rate rose from no more than 4% to nearly 9%. Young people, who are under financial pressure, are tired of social events and turn their attention to themselves. In bookstores, there are also a large number of psychological books. The young people who grew up during this period are called the "self-generation".
In this context, people complained that Gary was very when he sold stones, and on the other hand, he honestly placed an order. In just 6 months, Gray sold 1.5 million pet stones and made $6 million.
Looking back, it is not surprising that young people have become a trend to raise stones, and it is not surprising that buying stones has become a consumer trend.
In a tense state of mind, young people are more willing to consume for their emotions. According to the 2024 China Consumer Trends Survey, 64% of consumers value spiritual consumption. The more emotionally satisfying people get, the higher the business value. For example, the cute pet economy is rising year by year, and it is expected to reach 361.3 billion yuan by 2026.
Raising stones and dolls can be said to have stepped on the companionship economy, healing economy, cute pet economy, and single economy. For young people, raising stones is low-cost and effective. For the leaves, providing emotional value, I didn't expect to make a little money.
In the sea of emotions of young people, even a small stone can stir up big waves.
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