Photo credit: Spinningspark
On a weekend in late November, Chinese video game and internet giant Netease made more than US$75,000 by selling just three items. But it wasn’t selling in-game gear, or cloud solutions, or any of its other usual products. It was selling pigs.
Specifically, Netease was selling Jeju Black Pigs raised on its pig farm. Black pigs are said to have a unique flavor, and Netease says it uses environmentally-friendly, healthy methods to raise the pigs, but it’s still not entirely clear why the three animals sold for so much. Three successive auctions resulted in shockingly high sale prices: the first pig sold for US$15,900, the second went for US$23,150, and the third sold for a whopping US$40,000.
Strange as it may seem, this wasn’t just a marketing stunt. Netease has actually been working on becoming a pork producer for years now. After rumors began to spread in 2012, the company officially confirmed that it had established a pork farm. At the time, none of its pigs were ready for sale, and seems the company has taken a few years to work out all the kinks.
How big can Netease’s pork business get?
But last month’s remarkable auction is proof that Netease has, at the very least, reached the point of being able to offer some pigs for commercial sale. Average consumers aren’t going to pay US$15,000 for pork, of course, but Netease plans to scale the farm to offer affordable, safe, and environmentally-friendly meats to consumers in the long run. Its pork will be priced at US$8-12 per kilogram – more expensive than regular pork but cheaper than “boutique” pork. Netease CEO Ding Lei is also planning to establish a gourmet pork restaurant next year that will – one assumes – be supplied by Netease’s pork farm.
How big can Netease’s pork business get? That’s an open question. Currently, most of the pork China consumes comes from regular “white” pigs, which can be raised faster than black pigs. And while the unique flavor of “black pork” and the novelty factor of pork being sold by an internet company could be selling points, Netease is hoping that safety-conscious consumers will be willing to pay higher prices for pork that comes from a high-tech “smart” farm where the pigs are fed only healthy food and monitored with cameras and sensors. In fact, Ding Lei told Sina Tech that he hopes to set up a 24-7 live stream for the farm so that consumers can see for themselves how safe and clean the rearing process is.
Even so, though, this is probably more of a PR play – a gesture at Netease’s corporate conscience – than a real attempt to significantly expand revenues. The company would have to raise hundreds of times as many pigs as its current farm can handle before revenues from pork would approach the revenue the company makes from its gaming and internet businesses.
This is a news piece but it contains opinion-based analytical elements.
This post https://www.techinasia.com/chinas-biggest-game-companies-bundle-selling-pork appeared first on Tech in Asia.
from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/chinas-biggest-game-companies-bundle-selling-pork
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