Real-life story: The journey of a poor college student who started a business and built a wildly successful online store in three years.

 During his freshman year of college, that winter, he stood by his dorm window, looking out at the dark campus, with less than a hundred yuan in his pocket. His parents' phone calls contained both encouragement and helplessness: their family business was losing money, and they were still short on tuition fees. At that moment, he decided he would no longer simply wait for help, but would earn his own dignity. Thus, the story of a poor college student's entrepreneurial journey quietly began.

His initial idea was simple: to sell things online during his free time. Lacking capital, he selected small, practical items from stalls and wholesale markets around the school, taking pictures with his own phone, writing the product descriptions himself, and promoting them through QQ groups and WeChat Moments. He paid for the first order's shipping himself, using leftover foam and cardboard boxes from his dorm for packaging. Sales were meager, but every thank-you message from a customer gave him more confidence.

Failure came as often as hope. Out-of-stock products, negative reviews, shipping delays, returns and refunds... He repeatedly refreshed his store's backend in the early hours of the morning, analyzing the source and keywords of each order. During those days, he was like a detective, using data to find flaws and using communication to rebuild trust. To save money, he learned to create product detail pages himself, using free courses and online communities to acquire operational knowledge. Gradually, he shifted from simply attracting customers with low prices to focusing on product details: improving packaging quality, optimizing product descriptions, and adding usage scenario images.

In his second year, he encountered a turning point. An accidental live-streaming sales session, where he answered questions honestly and patiently, attracted a large number of students and mothers. That night, his store's traffic surged, and a low-priced but practical creative home furnishing item became a bestseller. This led not only to a surge in orders but also to pressure on the supply chain. He had to negotiate with multiple suppliers, learn about bulk purchasing and quality control, and move the goods temporarily stored in his dorm to a cheap warehouse outside the school. During that time, he attended classes during the day, shipped orders at night, and even worked on orders during holidays at home. He was physically and mentally exhausted, but every positive review and repeat purchase shone like a beacon, guiding him forward.

In his third year, his store gradually matured. He began to focus on data-driven operations: segmenting user profiles, testing different main images and titles, and running targeted small-scale advertisements. He shifted his focus from individual products to brand building, designing his own logo, creating a unified packaging style, and establishing standardized after-sales service procedures. His team also expanded from one person to three, with two senior students handling customer service and warehouse management, and another classmate responsible for short video content. He learned to let go and trust others, delegating some operational tasks and dedicating his time to product development and channel expansion.

True best-selling products don't just come from luck, but from a meticulous attention to detail. To improve conversion rates, he personally tested the usage scenarios of each product, even trying out thermos cups on cold winter nights and recording temperature changes; to optimize shipping efficiency, he developed a standardized picking process to reduce errors. These repetitive and tedious tasks ultimately built his reputation. Three years later, the small shop that once only had a few products saw its monthly sales increase dozens of times, becoming a well-known and trusted "conscientious shop" both on and off campus.

But the most important change was his inner growth. Initially, he started his business simply to pay tuition fees and alleviate his family's financial burden; later, he began to contemplate the meaning of business, how to create real value for customers, how to be responsible to the supply chain, and how to balance ideals and reality. During countless lonely nights, he learned resilience and compassion: patiently resolving customer complaints, learning to communicate with business partners during disagreements, and accepting and adjusting to failures.

On graduation day, he stood on the awards stage, not holding an academic award, but a record of shipping slips—over ten thousand shipments over three years. When asked about his most valuable gain, he said it wasn't money or fame, but "ability" and "confidence." Poverty wasn't a stumbling block, but a furnace that forged his will; the entrepreneurial process taught him how to transform uncertainty into opportunity.

His story isn't perfect, nor does it need to be idealized. Every entrepreneur falls and gets back up again. For young people, what's important is to maintain curiosity and action in adversity, learn from failures, and draw strength from the stories of others. The three-year journey of building a best-selling online store is a journey of haste, perseverance, compromise, and growth. It reminds us that starting is difficult, but continuing is even harder; and perseverance is not blind, but about finding your own path through continuous trial and error.