From raw fruit to New Year’s popular products: The "hit product formula" of a red date on Pinduoduo

Dajiang Finance Cube Reporter Chen Wei

As the Spring Festival approaches, the company known as the “Number One Red Date Stock” Hao Xiang Ni (002582) is especially busy in the e-commerce team’s office.

This company, with over 30 years of deep cultivation in the red date industry, has always centered around a single date: through innovations in cleaning, peeling, steaming, and other processes, it has transformed red dates from “dirty, dull raw materials” into “black gold health supplements,” and under Pinduoduo’s empowerment, it has precisely met the holiday needs of thousands of households.

Hao Xiang Ni Pinduoduo E-commerce Operations Team

New Processes Solve the “Pain Points” of Eating Dates

Ms. Cheng, who grew up in Henan, used to be “insulated” from red dates.

“When I was a kid, my parents bought red dates from the big market, and they were always covered with a layer of dust, so I had to wash them several times; dried dates were dry and tough, with pits that hurt my teeth and skins that irritated my throat. Kids were afraid of choking on them,” Ms. Cheng’s complaints reveal many people’s pain points when eating dates.

But this year, when preparing for the New Year, Hao Xiang Ni’s “Red Date Family Feast” completely changed her view—red bag peeled and pitted dates, solving the skin and pit issues, ready to eat straight from the bag without any burden; dark brown bag steamed and processed dates, soft and sweet, became a healthy alternative to candy for children; green bag nine-times steamed and processed black gold dates, with low GI properties, broke the dilemma of elderly family members wanting to eat dates but fearing blood sugar spikes.

This set of targeted “combination punches” that precisely meet different groups’ needs embodies Hao Xiang Ni’s over 30 years of craftsmanship.

“Hao Xiang Ni’s first change to red dates was giving them a ‘bath,’” said Cao Longwei, head of Hao Xiang Ni’s e-commerce team. The brand pioneered a six-step meticulous cleaning process, enabling the dates to meet the “ready-to-eat” no-wash standard, balancing soft and chewy textures, fundamentally solving the problems of dirt and dryness in traditional dates.

Building on this, the team further developed peeling and pitting technology, launching products like “Little Fresh Meat” pitted dates, which gained a good reputation through extreme convenience in traditional channels.

Data-Driven Creation of “Black Gold” Bestsellers

As early as 2020, Hao Xiang Ni officially began its channel layout on Pinduoduo. A brand official said that compared to traditional channels, new e-commerce platforms demand higher innovation and iteration of products. Pinduoduo’s “Xiao Er” (platform support staff) used platform sales data insights to support Hao Xiang Ni’s new product development, leading to several flagship products like sesame balls and date kernel pies becoming annual bestsellers after launching on Pinduoduo, confirming the value of platform data empowerment.

By 2025, Pinduoduo’s “Xiao Er” keenly observed that many white-label merchants on the platform promoted “three-steam, three-sun” processed date products, but there was a scarcity of related products from leading brands, which sent a market signal to Hao Xiang Ni.

After receiving feedback from Pinduoduo’s support staff about market consumption trends, Hao Xiang Ni’s e-commerce team quickly activated cross-department collaboration, engaging in in-depth discussions with R&D. They found that this market demand aligned closely with Chairman Shi Jubin’s concept of “three-steam, three-process” dates, creating a strategic and market resonance. Inspired by ancient wisdom from the “Qimin Yaoshu,” combined with modern production standards, Hao Xiang Ni launched two upgraded products: “Three-Steam, Three-Process” and “Nine-Steam, Nine-Process” dates, avoiding the traditional “sun-dried” shortcoming that causes dust contamination, using a curing process that triggers the Maillard reaction in the date flesh. The “Nine-Steam, Nine-Process” version undergoes 72 hours of curing, turning the date’s color from red to black, becoming “Black Gold Dates,” with a soft, glue-like texture, mildly bitter sweetness, and both flavor and nourishing properties.

This “Black Gold Date” unexpectedly broke the stereotype of dates being “female-exclusive,” gaining popularity among male consumers and becoming a hot gift choice for the Spring Festival.

The Transformation of a Single Red Date

“Pinduoduo users pursue extreme cost performance, but we absolutely cannot compromise quality, so we made more adaptations for product forms,” said Hao Xiang Ni’s Pinduoduo channel manager. The brand tailored a special “transformation” plan for platform consumption characteristics. For example, the core peeled and pitted dates are packaged in 318-gram paper boxes on other platforms for gift needs, but on Pinduoduo, they are upgraded to 320-gram bagged packaging, simplifying the packaging to reduce costs and lower unit prices, better fitting platform user habits.

To cater to the main consumer scenario of family stocking on Pinduoduo, Hao Xiang Ni also made many detailed adjustments: changing gift boxes to more affordable family packs, upgrading single-piece packaging to multi-piece packs for easy grabbing and pairing with Laba porridge or steamed date flower buns.

“The dates are still the same well-crafted dates, just dressed in a ‘clothing’ suitable for the channel,” said the official. This precise adaptation helped the product quickly take root on the platform. During this year’s New Year’s Festival, Hao Xiang Ni’s reunion gift sets and health gifts sold rapidly, with group orders exceeding 20,000 jin.

The product’s popularity also drove Hao Xiang Ni’s service and layout upgrades on Pinduoduo. To address industry pain points like courier shutdowns and offline store closures during the Spring Festival, Hao Xiang Ni was the first to activate at least 10 AI live broadcast rooms on Pinduoduo, creating a 24-hour “digital watchman” to ensure continuous consumer demand.

“Even at midnight on the 29th of the lunar month, if consumers want to place orders for New Year’s supplies, AI hosts will explain the benefits of ‘Nine-Steam, Nine-Process Dates’ and the product combinations in real-time,” the official said.

In addition to round-the-clock AI hosts, Hao Xiang Ni plans to open a store matrix on Pinduoduo this year to reach more consumers, combined with platform activities like billion-yuan subsidies and group buying, to make red dates cross regional and flavor boundaries, reaching more tables and snack shelves.