Shenzhen Huaqiang North is not short of backpackers. During rush hour, on the steps at the entrance of tongtiandi feiyang market located in Huaqiang North business district, it is difficult to find a vacant seat. Young backpackers who stopped to rest their feet sat in rows, forming the most unique scenery in Huaqiang North.
Backpackers have a special referential significance in Huaqiang North. Some people boil down the definition of Huaqiang North backpacker to three sentences: carrying a bag to Huaqiang North, picking a machine with a difference, and looking for customers to shoot. They are typical middlemen.
Most of these people are active around the Tongtiandi Feiyang market, mainly engaged in second-hand iPhone purchasing services. Therefore, some people call them "Huaqiang North's purchasing agents". And because of the mixed fish in the circle, their online reputation is quite bad.
In Shenzhen, every backpacker who wants to change his fate is like other deep-drifting youths, with ideals, hard-working, and the same jokes - in this city that believes in hard work, every day they get up to face, "endless nights, endless rents, endless pig's feet rice."
According to anecdotal legend, many old backpackers have made their fortunes and become rich by relying on the dividends of "information asymmetry" in the past. For a long time, the background of Shenzhen is the electronic components industry, mastering the "core technology" of the fighters, relying on cottage machines and parallel goods to dominate the party. The crowding of people in the stalls of Huaqiang North Market confirms the prosperity of this market. However, the reform has also come rapidly, and Huaqiang North has already experienced several industrial changes.
Apple, which has obvious advantages in the high-end machine market, is still one of the protagonists of Huaqiang North. After experiencing the epidemic lockdown in March, the "restarted" Shenzhen Huaqiang North Market, the price of second-hand iPhones suffered a big plunge in the short term. The Huaqiang North backpackers, who exist like capillaries, are also facing an increasingly unoptimistic survival situation.
When the situation is very different, will this industry still carry people's wealth dreams?
Carrying a bag to Huaqiang North
Recently, there were two things that made Wu Kai, a college student in Jinan, have the impulse to go to Huaqiang North to be a backpacker after graduation.
One thing he heard from the WeChat group was that a 15-year-old student in Shenzhen occasionally helped his classmates go to Huaqiang North to find mobile phones and watches, with a maximum monthly income of 20,000 yuan.
Another thing was that before that, he had watched a movie that made him feel very enthusiastic. That was the "Miracle Stupid Child" released in this year's Spring Festival file. This inspirational film starring Yi Qianxi tells the story of a young man who is overwhelmed by life, starting from an upside-down second-hand mobile phone in Shenzhen Huaqiang North, and moving towards success in a desperate situation.
"Huaqiang North is such a place full of miracles and magic." Wu Kai felt.
In March of this year, Wu Kai added a backpacker newcomer mutual aid group, which was originally created to help and take care of each other. In the group, several people have agreed that they will go to Huaqiang North together in the second half of the year.
Wu Kai learned for the first time from the group that selling second-hand mobile phones, especially iPhones, in Huaqiang North, the profit of a single part can reach 200 yuan -400 yuan. "With an annual income of one million yuan, you only need to sell 14 iPhones a day." Some people say.
Selling two mobile phones a day can earn more than 10,000 yuan a month. For many people, this is a great temptation. Wu Kai also calculated that if he really went to Huaqiang North, how he should start and how to open the market. During this period, only a netizen who had been a backpacker gave Wu Kai a kind reminder that reality was more cruel than imagined. "Now the competition is fierce, it is not easy to make money", let him cautiously enter the industry.
"I'm a little hesitant right now." Wu Kai told the weekly magazine Caijing.
Tong Ji, from Zhejiang, had little hesitation when he bought a ticket to Shenzhen in 2019. At the beginning, it was because of brushing videos, and I accidentally saw a blogger of Huaqiang North Backpacker, and the work content displayed by the other party was "still very cool" in his opinion.
Tong Ji privately wrote to the blogger and asked a question that changed the direction of his life, "If I go, can I make money?" "You can try it." The other party replied. Tong Ji made up his mind shortly after, when he was 19 years old.
Tong Ji told Caijing Tianxia Weekly that because he dropped out of school early, he did not have a good choice to find a job. At the same time, backpackers give him a very free feeling, and the money earned should be quite a lot. "At that time, with the strength of youth, I didn't think too much about it and came over."
As a digital enthusiast himself, Tong Ji's start in Huaqiang North was relatively smooth. In 2019, he posted and sold Huaqiangbei's second-hand iPhones in a digital community called Ku'an, and soon his monthly income reached 20,000 yuan.
In the shopping process, which is most likely to be stepped on by novices, many new backpackers will buy machines with "dark wounds" because of their lack of experience in on-site inspection. Disputes and denunciations are essential, and some backpackers who have suffered losses will quarrel with the stall owner in the process of returning to the stall to seek justice, and even fight with the stall owner.
"You can make money by working hard alone, but if you are willing to master some more machine inspection experience, you will earn more." Tong Ji's first year as a backpacker only stepped on the pit once, that is, to help customers choose the mobile phone found that the screen will be broken (generally pointing to the mobile phone screen does not respond), and finally he can only pay out of his own pocket, spending more than 500 yuan to help customers repair and replace.
"If you have an experimental machine, you can only check the fuselage and the screen, but there are many details in it, all of which require experience accumulation, and you can only feel the difference if you get it in your hand." Tong Ji told the Weekly Magazine of Finance and Economics.
What he did not expect was that the year he started was almost the peak of his income. In the next two years, most of his monthly income from selling second-hand Apple mobile phones could only be maintained at more than 10,000 yuan, and less than 6,000 yuan when he was small.
"In the past, because of the opaque profits and asymmetric information, they could earn 800 yuan, 1,000 yuan, or even 2,000 yuan by selling a mobile phone." Tong Ji said, "Now is different from the past. Now the price is too transparent, each profit is only about 200 yuan, coupled with fierce competition, less may only be 100 yuan. ”
The rapid compression of profits always reminds the backpackers of Huaqiang North that the era of huge profits has long gone.
Price plunge fastest in a year
At the beginning of 2022, the mobile phone industry has entered a trough period. According to data released by market research firm Counterpoint Research, China's smartphone sales in the first quarter of this year fell 14% year-on-year to 74.2 million units, which has fallen to the level of the first quarter of 2020. People's willingness to change their phones has become significantly lower.
This year's mobile phone business is not easy to do has also become the consensus of the whole industry, of course, including those backpackers wandering in Huaqiang North.
"Not only Apple's iPhone, but also the entire second-hand mobile phone market in Android, the price plunge is relatively large this year." Backpacker Shangqi told Caijing Weekly.
In his view, Android mobile phones have been impacted by the overall high-end in the past two years, and the actual experience cannot support the high price, resulting in a serious dive in second-hand prices. The iPhone, on the other hand, is more because of the impact of the epidemic.
"More than 95% of Huaqiang North's second-hand apples are American versions, and these American versions of the machines are bid by large recycling companies for collection, and then shipped to the duty-free port of Hong Kong, China, and then distributed from Hong Kong to Shenzhen Huaqiang North." Shang Qi said that this year because of the epidemic in Hong Kong, resulting in a lot of goods stranded in Hong Kong, at the end of March, Huaqiang North many iPhone second-hand models are still in a state of shortage, but with the recovery of logistics, before the stranded goods into the market, the market supply side is a concentrated outbreak, "a lot of goods, the price naturally fell." ”
According to Shang Qi, taking the iPhone 13 as an example, the price of the beautiful machine (close to the new) has fallen from more than 5,000 yuan to more than 4,000 yuan in just one month. The second-hand price of the iPhone 13 Pro Max also fell by about 1,000 yuan.
The mobile phone market of the Q1 transfer platform in 2022 also shows that the iPhone13 series has reduced the price by 100 yuan to 500 yuan in the second-hand market. Among them, the iPhone 13 Pro is the most price-reduced model in the series, with the second-hand price falling by about 470 yuan in late March compared with the beginning of January, a drop of 6.45%.
Although the decline in the price of second-hand mobile phones is more attractive to consumers, for "middlemen", the situation is not optimistic.
Compared with individual backpackers, some corporatized teams have been hit hard in this wave of diving markets. A market source told the "Finance world" weekly that a team he contacted took over a batch of iPhones two months ago (the specific model is unknown), about 300 or so, originally assessed a profit margin of at least 100 yuan, but due to the epidemic logistics delay of more than half a month, when the time came, the market price of the model has fallen below the purchase price, and finally the team not only did not make money, but also lost seventy or eighty yuan per shot.
In fact, even stall owners in many wholesale markets are losing money. "The reasons are all the same," Shang Qi told caijing weekly, "because the stall procurement orders have an advance volume, but by the time the goods arrive, the market price is already lower than the purchase price at that time." Shanky has also recently reduced the number of times he runs the market. During the May Day holiday, the market did not have a holiday, but many stall owners closed their stores. "Nothing new." Shanky said.
One popular saying is that there are 100,000 backpackers in Huaqiang North. In this increasingly competitive and increasingly transparent market, there is almost only one way to make the business bigger, that is, to set up a team to operate in a corporatized operation. But the disadvantages of team operation are because of the need to hoard goods, the capital occupation is much higher, and the risk is naturally much greater.
"It may be fine for a person to go it alone to meet the basic life, but it will not make a lot of money." Shangqi is preparing to form a small team of his own, but in the current market environment, the plan may be delayed.
After several years of operation, Tong Ji's two WeChat friends have added up to more than 10,000 people, in addition to two QQ groups with a scale of 1,000 people. The vast majority of them are his customers and potential customers. He had a certain customer base and thought about setting up a studio, but quickly gave up.
"If you set up a studio, it's no different from going to work." Tong Ji told Caijing Weekly that a person is freer and more comfortable, and setting up a studio is inconsistent with his initial pursuit.
Huaqiang North's traffic password
In late April, some fans asked Ge Jia in a private message through social platforms why she rarely saw old backpackers on the Internet.
Ge Jia repeated to the "Finance and Economics" weekly magazine, he replied to the fans for two reasons: one is that many old backpackers have made a fortune or changed careers, and the other is that many old backpackers do not understand the shooting of short videos. Now for backpackers, if they want to survive, they must adapt to new means.
Ge Jia has been a backpacker for many years, but only began to join the ranks of video self-media in August 2021. The reason is that at that time, he looked at tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of fans on video platforms such as Douyin and Station B, and felt that "if he doesn't do video again, he will be eliminated."
So far, he has released nearly 300 short videos, involving Huaqiang North's attempts to reveal secrets, take goods records, market analysis and other directions. However, its video traffic is generally not high, with only a few hundred views and a maximum of only 20,000 hits.
"In today's self-media era, it is not enough to rely on the circle of friends." Ge Jia told the "Finance and Economics" weekly that the development of the times forced you to keep up with the pace, "You have to know how to shoot videos, edit videos, and copywriting." ”
And it's not enough to just learn that. In so many peers, how to make video content different, give the audience something to see and new, this is a bigger challenge.
"After I started making videos, I realized that not only would I be eliminated if I didn't make videos, but I might also be eliminated if I didn't shoot a video." Ge Jia said.
When he first arrived in HuaqiangBei many years ago, he asked for advice everywhere, and he was still impressed by the moment when an old backpacker showed him the keys to the BMW X5 car. "Don't you say I'm showing off," Ge Jia recalled the old backpacker at the time, "besides, the money I earned by myself, so what about showing off?" ”
Now, similar plots, he found that he had long been filmed by other backpackers into a paragraph posted on the Internet.
"Primary school culture annual income million", "monthly income of 100,000 + goods skills", the wealth story of Huaqiang North backpackers, initially only spread in the streets of Huaqiang North, and some hidden corners of the Internet that only electronic product lovers will gather. Nowadays, their figure and the secret of getting rich are likely to appear on the home page of your short video app.
If you dig deeper, you will also see, for example, "the real situation of Backpackers in Huaqiang North" and "70,000 monthly losses, backpackers running away with buckets", more cruel portrayals behind these glamorous features.
Ge Jia told the "Finance world" weekly, about 2008, the earliest batch of backpackers are indeed making money, people have a strong demand for the main high-end Apple mobile phone, backpackers to find second-hand apples are often more fragrant, but also more favored by consumers.
But now the market environment is different, people's desire to buy mobile phones is not as good as before, manufacturers are equally innovative, Apple conference began to become more and more unattractive, in order to make money "everyone is involved in short videos."
"A lot of backpacker videos now have heavy filters." In 2019, Tong Ji, who had just arrived in Huaqiang North, began to create videos. At that time, shooting videos was not too popular among backpackers, and the content of everyone's shooting was still based on sweeping the market and recording machines. "It's real, but boring." It's like a backpacker's day, ordinary and ordinary.
The epidemic in 2020 has led to the increasing difficulty of offline business, and backpackers have begun to flock to video platforms to seek online diversion. It was also at that time that Tong Ji noticed that some backpacker teams and studios began to recruit videographers, editors and beauty anchors.
"The most common operation is when backpackers and stall owners collude to perform various situational small theaters." Ge Jia complained. "Sometimes I also think, or I can find a beautiful woman to appear on camera and change into a cool outfit."
Tong Ji feels that he is in a long trough period, in the face of a large number of eye-catching content in the short video era, he feels that his accumulation and so-called experience are vulnerable. "If there is no stable accumulation of customers, it is too difficult to be a backpacker now." Tong Ji said that if someone now asks the backpacker at that time, like the backpacker he asked in 2019, he will also come to find an answer to whether a backpacker can make money.
His answer today would be, "You can come, but I don't recommend it." ”
(The interviewees in this article are pseudonyms)
Written by | Author of "Finance and Economics" Weekly Ma Ce
Edit | Dong Yuqing
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.
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