Text | City Boundary, author | Qi Minqian Huayu, editor| Liu Xiaoying
At the end of 2021, the last big melon "Flower Fall" Zhang Ting and her brand "TST Court Secret".
The Market Supervision Bureau of Yuhua District of Shijiazhuang City disclosed the progress of Shanghai Dalvy, the main company operating the "TST Court Secret", which was suspected of using the network to engage in pyramid schemes. It is understood that Dalway's funds frozen by property preservation this time are 600 million yuan.
In this regard, the "TST Court Secret" responded in the early morning of December 29 that "Dalway is a legally operated company", and the company's responsible actors Zhang Ting and Lin Ruiyang supported it by forwarding Weibo.
However, the fact is that the market supervision department responded to the media and said that the relevant MLM organizations have entered the financial audit stage since 2013, with many people involved in the case and a huge amount of money. The results of the investigation on the nature of the case and the determination of responsibility are pending. The attitude of the People's Daily is to "cut off the tumor of network pyramid schemes."
Interestingly, unlike the shock of eating melon before, many netizens called this incident "expected melon", and some netizens even said bluntly that "finally checked", and there was a sense of fatalism between words. In the past, pyramid schemes carried out in the name of micro-businesses were indeed not uncommon.
01, earned doubled
In 2016, Zhao Yang became an agent of "TST Court Secrets" under the introduction of his classmates.
There are three reasons that attract her to join: one is to make more money; the other is to operate simply; and the third is the platform of Zhang Ting and other stars. "Classmates told me who did this, can earn more than 100,000, 200,000 a year, I only earn 4,000 yuan a month, obviously we still have a few years more than them to go to school, why can't we?"
The classmate also told Zhao Yang that he only needs to share product links in the circle of friends to make money. When she first did it, someone did come to Zhao Yang through the circle of friends to buy goods, and after she told the news to the classmate, the other party encouraged her to make more money.
Handling cards, starting your own company, allowing more people to open cards, and rushing performance together are the "mysteries" of making money in the "TST court secret". "Only when you run your own company and be the chairman, the children and grandchildren (offline) who have fission have a relationship with you, and when they buy goods, you can get a commission." Zhao Yang said.
(Courtesy of the interviewee)
When she joined TST, the premise of starting her own company was to develop 100 people to "open cards", and the performance of herself and her direct agents reached 100,000 yuan per month for three consecutive months.
In order to rush the performance, Zhao Yang did not stock up on goods. She thought that after becoming the "chairman", she would make money, but what she did not expect was that the goods she hoarded would be difficult to sell.
The reason is that the agents in the market are selling at a discount, and if they want to sell, they can only sell at a low price. The more TST agents take, the lower the discount, and if they want to have a price advantage when selling, they can only take more goods from TST.
In order to encourage agents like Zhao Yang, TST will also promise that agents with good performance can take photos with Zhang Ting and his wife and add WeChat. "Later, I learned that WeChat was added, but behind WeChat was not themselves at all, it was an assistant." Zhao Yang said.
(Zhang Ting, Lin Ruiyang)
Zhao Yang worked as a TST agent for four years, but in the end he found that he could not earn money at all. Unlike her "bamboo basket to fetch water and empty", Zhang Ting and his wife earn a lot of money by TST.
TST was founded in 2013 by Lin Ruiyang and Zhang Ting. According to the official APP, its main products are TST skin care products, big health products, imported red wine and so on. At present, TST has nearly 13 million members, covering more than 100 million consumers, and 3368 TST founder companies.
TST's operating entity is Shanghai Darway Trading Co., Ltd., and according to the data of Tianyancha APP, Zhang Shuqin (Zhang Ting's real name) is the legal representative of Shanghai Guangpeng Investment Management Consulting Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Shengji Biotechnology Co., Ltd., and her husband Lin Ruiyang (formerly known as Lin Jirong) is the ultimate beneficiary of Shanghai Darway. Actor Tao Hong, who holds a total of 6.6% of the shares of Shanghai Dalway.
How profitable is this company? Zhao Yang gave an example to the market: TST brand a "gold long carbon" mask retail price of about 30 yuan / piece, the same mask, its foundry in Alibaba quotation of 4 yuan / piece.
Shandong Huapeng, a listed company, has previously released a set of data: from January to September 2017, Shanghai Darway Trading Co., Ltd. had revenue of 3.6 billion yuan, net profit of 1.14 billion yuan and net profit margin of 31.7%.
Compared with peer companies, the net profit margin of Marumei shares, Polaria, Shanghai Jahwa and even Bloomage Bio in 2017 is far inferior to that of Shanghai Dalvy. For example, the hyaluronic acid produced by Bloomage Biotech is known as "a woman's Moutai", but its net profit margin in 2017 was 4.5 percentage points lower than that of Shanghai Dalvy.
The amount of tax paid can also show the strength of Shanghai Dalway. According to Shangguan News, shanghai Dalway paid 1.26 billion yuan in taxes in 2018, making it the tax champion in Qingpu District of Shanghai, leaving behind the three companies of Zhongtong, Shentong and Yunda in the same region.
Sitting on such a lucrative business, Zhang Ting and his wife are also full of "trenches", and their mansion in Shanghai is adjacent to the Huangpu River, which is not only large in area but also has a hanging garden. Zhang Ting once said on the show: "People who come to my house for the first time will get lost. ”
02. Suspected pyramid schemes
Careful analysis will find that TST's business experience and the pyramid scheme company Quan Jian, which exploded in 2019, have "the same magic".
Shu Yuhui, the founder of Quanjian, once drove a helicopter back to his hometown to visit relatives and a high-priced football team, showing his financial resources everywhere. TST not only relies on many celebrity platforms to "support the field", but also has been publicizing how many people rely on TST agents to "get rich overnight".
(Zhang Ting, Ming Dao, Tao Hong)
In fact, they do this in order to package themselves and attract more people to join. "TST is just moving the original offline model of quanjian to online." "Li Xu anti-MLM fraud team" li xu, head of the city.
In fact, long before it was reported this time, TST was suspected of pyramid schemes many times, but it was denied. The person in charge of "TST Court Secrets" once told the media that "court secrets are B2B2C models".
Specifically, on the one hand, the company directly sells products to consumers, on the other hand, it sells through agents, and emphasizes that "all the income of agents is obtained by product sales, and all models do not have to pull people's heads to obtain benefits, let alone suspected pyramid schemes."
On the official platform, TST defines itself as a micro-business. To a certain extent, micro-business and MLM models seem to be easily confused.
Li Xu believes that there are three main characteristics of MLM: one is that the "entry fee", that is, it is necessary to pay a certain fee, or pay money to join in the form of purchasing products; the second is to "pull people's heads", forming an obvious relationship between the upper and lower lines; the third is "team remuneration", that is, through direct or indirect forms, through the number or performance of pulling people's heads to give certain rewards.
"If there is no multi-level incentive mechanism, no one will play this thing, to put it bluntly, they all want to make money." Li Xu added. In his view, TST's business model is almost exactly the same as the characteristics of MLM.
Wang Gengxin, a veteran anti-MLM person and volunteer, believes that Shanghai Darway Trading Co., Ltd. relies on the inflated price of the product series, adopts the team remuneration model, and wears the shell of micro-business, which is essentially a typical MLM behavior.
Li Xu said that to distinguish between real micro-business, social e-commerce and MLM, there are two main points: one is whether there are three no products, whether the product has cost-effectiveness; the other is whether there is a multi-level rebate, "layer by layer".
"Products with low production costs such as red wine, tea and cosmetics are the most likely to be used by MLM companies. High profits can support layers of profit sharing. And the income of the participants is not the profit of the product, but the head fee of the development of the downline. Wang Gengxin added.
03, micro-business has already passed the grassy stage
If there is no pyramid scheme smear, micro-business actually has a legendary experience.
At first, there were Weibo "Big V" who used their popularity to carry out commercial marketing among fans and gained a lot of benefits. This operation also provided many people with new ideas for making money, and some people began to display and promote products on Weibo, Renren, forums, QQ, etc. This is the prototype of micro-business.
The change occurred in 2011, when WeChat went online and played the slogan of "connecting everything". People found that on WeChat, they can not only publish the graphic introduction of the product, but also communicate quickly, and the promotion has no other promotion costs except for typing time. As a result, the main battlefield of weChat marketing soon shifted to WeChat.
The first to smell the business opportunities is a group of people who do overseas purchasing. They sent photos of the goods purchased on behalf of the group of friends, attracting many people to leave messages for consultation. During this period, the products sold by micro-merchants were mostly luxury goods represented by bags, maternal and infant products represented by milk powder and diapers, and some cosmetics and electronic products.
(We-commerce to buy full luggage)
Especially in 2013, the WeChat public platform was upgraded to two types of subscription accounts and service accounts, superimposed on the birth of WeChat Pay, social attributes and commercial marketing attributes, in this context, micro-business began to grow barbarically.
During this period, micro-businesses have two ways to sell goods, one is to get an entrance through the WeChat public account, and the other is to take the circle of friends as the main position, especially the low-wage migrant workers, college students and full-time mothers, who are the first batch of practitioners.
Many people were deeply impressed by the WeChat circle of friends that year, Wang Li used "smorgasbord" to describe her WeChat and circle of friends, sometimes she will be advertised by friends in groups, sometimes go offline will be enthusiastic about WeChat by the owner, turn around and see the shopkeeper selling goods in the circle of friends, sometimes she will also be tempted by some gifts, joined in some product promotion group chats.
"The most magical thing is that one second this person may still leave a message to buy something under someone else's circle of friends, and the next second he will start to sell goods in his own circle of friends." Wang Li described micro-business as "simple, crude and direct".
The real detonation of micro-business was in 2014. That year, many micro-businessmen began to believe that "annual revenue of 1 billion is not a dream", relying on the mask as a single product. For example, the mask brand is ten years old, with micro-business sales directly over 100 million, micro-business development to two or three million people.
Even the ten-year-old founder Wu Bin did not expect to explode into such a situation. Tempted by wealth, the scale of micro-business has rapidly expanded, and various hierarchical agent models have frequently emerged. By the end of 2014, the number of micro-business practitioners had reached tens of millions.
A large number of micro-business brands have emerged, some relying on the goods of the foundry, pasting their own brands, and traditional brands have entered the micro-business field, shifting the sales channels from offline to micro-business. Brands such as Han Shu, Sibu, Sancao Liangmu, and Kaile Dele all belong to this list.
Many stars joined in, in addition to Zhang Ting, the "beauty god" Yi Nengjing created the mask micro-business brand "Membrane Fayi People"; Liu Jialing created the "Jialing Mask"; even Guo Degang also sold micro-business masks.
On one side is the rendering of star platforms and grassroots wealth stories, and on the other side, chaos is flying everywhere.
Due to the mix of individual sellers, true and false goods are difficult to distinguish, shoddy, the price is opaque, and some brands have quality problems, such as bad faces after using masks, and even some micro-merchants in order to make quick money, lust for profit, turned into pyramid schemes to obtain ill-gotten gains.
Micro-business has become synonymous with negativity. After 2015, micro-business gradually changed from the original "we are friends, so I believe in you" to "doing micro-business since then friends are passers-by". Affected by this, since May 2015, the sales of most micro-business enterprises have fallen by 80%-90%.
At the same time, the supervision of micro-businesses in all aspects has also begun to accelerate. In 2015, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce for the first time clearly proposed to include micro-businessmen in supervision; WeChat's official policy on micro-business also changed from encouragement to serious supervision, from "anti-counterfeiting activities" and restrictions on violent screen brushing to later limiting the number of friends per day, shutting down the three-level distribution micro-mall, closing WeChat marketing numbers, etc.; in 2017, the draft of weChat business legal norms was released.
Micro-business gradually from barbaric growth to the stage of standardized development, at the same time, Alibaba, NetEase Koala, Jingdong and other traditional e-commerce companies have been involved in micro-business, many large brands have also intervened in the field, so that some products forced to leave, some also switched to Xiaohongshu, Douyin and other platforms.
In addition, with the upgrading of consumption, users have also begun to change, and they are very vigilant about the "three no products", and the money is no longer so easy to earn.
Many people who started out on micro-businesses no longer flaunt their wealth in a high profile, but began to pour bitter water. For example, Gong Wenxiang, the godfather of micro-business, was reported by the media in the past to "send tens of thousands of red envelopes", but the most recent time was because of "debt, selling houses and cars, ruining the family, and having no money".
The mixed micro-businessmen experienced a wave of reshuffle and began to walk in the direction of the regular army. If the micro-business in the past followed the trend, single-mindedly sought quality, and built excellent brands, it was naturally a way out.
Unfortunately, some people are unwilling to give up the interests in hand, and can't help but move their crooked minds, from micro-business to pyramid schemes, hanging sheep's heads to sell dog meat, this kind of rubbing the edge of the ball, and finally being pecked.
(Zhao Yang and Wang Li are pseudonyms)
Resources
"On the Development Process and Future Direction of Micro-Business", Journal of the Party School of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China
(Except for the separately marked source, the above picture is from Visual China)