From Gate 2 of Yuyuan Mall, cross two roads and walk for a few minutes to reach the Shanghai City God's Temple Fuyoumen Small Commodities Market. Just after Christmas, the shops in the market have changed their "new clothes" overnight, and every festive jewelry store is filled with decorations with Chinese New Year elements.
In a street-facing store, two customers negotiated an order worth more than 5,000 yuan with the clerk. During this period, there has been a steady stream of people coming in to pick up plush dolls, red lantern ornaments, blessing stickers and floor ornaments.
This is an old store that has been operated by Boss Qian for more than 20 years, mainly doing wholesale of festival jewelry. Due to the strong correlation between business prosperity and festival dates, from Halloween, Christmas, to Lunar New Year, Boss Qian's store has been in full swing.
On the eve of New Year's Day, the market ushered in the first wave of small shopping peaks. After January 10, the number of shoppers will gradually climb, and the store staff said that business is the hottest about 20 days before Chinese New Year's Eve.
A business owner in a race against time
Boss Qian told reporters that New Year's decorations need to contact the factory two months in advance to stock up for production to ensure that the supply is in time for New Year's Day and the Chinese New Year. The store is visited by both local customers in Shanghai and wholesalers in surrounding areas such as Taicang and Kunshan.
The products in the store cover the differentiated needs of customers. Some individual visitors will choose Spring Festival couplets and small ornaments to put at home, while property companies, enterprises and star-rated hotels tend to buy large floor decorations.
"This decoration was very festive in the company lobby, and more than a dozen pieces were sold in one day. Boss Qian pointed to the golden flower tree at the door and said. The hand-tied flower trees are lit with golden lights, and the flowers are decorated with red mounds printed with the words "Fu" or "Happy New Year", and the price of a set ranges from 2,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan.
Boss Qian said that the business is mainly wholesale, with small profits and quick turnover, "A person buys two or three hundred yuan of things, and the profit is less than a few dozen yuan, mainly because of the volume." ”
In the off-season when it is not a holiday, Boss Qian will also do wedding business, wholesale candy, happy characters and birthday gifts, but what he attaches the most importance to has always been the Lunar New Year. In the past three years, Boss Qian's stocking strategy for the New Year has been very stable, "the first purchase is about 700,000 to 800,000 yuan, and then adjusted according to the daily sales. ”
According to a clerk in the store, the small plush pendants used for hanging are usually 200 to 300 pieces at a time, and then contact the factory to purchase them after they are sold out to avoid overstocking. The mounds placed in the mall are not too many for the first time because of their large size. The pile is almost sold out, and the factory is notified to produce urgently, and it will take ten days to arrive. "This is a factory that has a good relationship for many years, and it can be made up in ten or eight days, otherwise it will take longer. ”
And those decorations with obvious elements of the Year of the Dragon belong to the annual seasonal goods, it is impossible to hoard until 12 years later Another Year of the Dragon, Boss Qian will only make up some regular decorations on the eve of the New Year, such as Spring Festival couplets. In Layueli, the factory stopped production, and he also stopped buying, "At that time, someone came to sweep the goods, all the goods were here, and if they wanted new ones, they would be gone." ”
It's all backed by regular customer support
Boss Qian is from Zhejiang. In the 90s of the last century, he dug the first pot of gold in Hanzheng Street, a small commodity wholesale market in Wuhan. In 1999, Boss Qian decided to come to Shanghai to work hard, "Shanghai's consumption level is better than other places, and people who buy goods pay more attention to the quality of goods." ”
In 2001, the Fuyoumen Small Commodities Market in Shanghai Chenghuang Temple was built, attracting businessmen from all over the country who wanted to make money. It is not an exaggeration to say that the small commodity market was a prime location at that time, the location is close to the crowded City God Temple and Yu Garden, and it takes about 15 minutes to take a taxi from Shanghai Railway Station to the market, and it only takes 10 minutes to walk from the Bund to here.
After several investigations, Boss Qian decided to open a store in the Fuyoumen Small Commodity Market of Chenghuang Temple, and has been doing it for more than 20 years. At the beginning, the husband and wife supported a series of links such as purchase, inventory management, sales copying, and delivery. So far, Boss Qian has owned three companies and recruited eight employees, each performing his own duties. The daily sales data has a special person to count, out of stock on the warehouse to notify the warehouse keeper, the warehouse keeper can drive the battery car for a few minutes to the store to replenish the stock.
According to Boss Qian's recollection, when the small commodity market first opened, "there were so many people that they couldn't squeeze in", and at that time, there was no new format of online shopping, and the only purchase channel for wholesalers and individual customers was the offline market. However, the situation changed around 2015, and merchants experienced the impact of e-commerce on physical stores.
It's not that Boss Qian hasn't tried to make an online store. In 2008, Boss Qian tried to open a Taobao store, when online shopping and express logistics were far less popular than they are now. After a long wait, the customer will return the product if they are not satisfied with the goods. After a short test of the waters, Boss Qian decided to return to offline business.
Nowadays, the e-commerce business is becoming more and more developed, and customers can complete their shopping without leaving home, saving time and energy from running around, and online shopping has long become a part of people's living habits. At the same time, brick-and-mortar store owners are also finding ways to give full play to their offline advantages, emphasizing the purchase experience and emphasizing that products are "visible, touchable, and worth every price." ”
In order to reduce costs and do a good job in quality control, Boss Qian directly went to factories in Changshu, Yangzhou and other places to get first-hand supplies. "Although Yiwu small commodities are developed, but belong to the second-hand source, if the ex-factory price of a doll is 10 yuan, to Yiwu will always add 10% to 15% of the profit, as well as shipping fees, labor costs and warehouse costs. "Long-term operation of the physical store, Boss Qian has accumulated a lot of loyal customers, his store will supply to a fixed star hotel, if the goods you want to buy are not available in his store, the hotel will directly entrust Boss Qian to buy the goods back.
It is these old customers who have supported him through the three-year depression of the epidemic.
Recover slowly and keep your confidence up
The pandemic in 2020 caught merchants in the small commodities market off guard. Boss Qian recalled that the goods of the Year of the Rat were unsalable, "scrapped goods with 70,000 yuan or 80,000 yuan." But Boss Qian is very open-minded about this, business is going on as usual, and the store is still open.
The reporter learned from the interview that the rent in the market has different prices according to the regional location, the inner ones are 100,000 yuan and 200,000 yuan a year, and the prime location near the street is as high as 480,000 yuan a year four or five years ago. Affected by the epidemic, the rent of shops has indeed decreased in the past two years, and some high-priced shops have even dropped to more than 200,000, but the rent has begun to increase this year, and the rent of some shops has increased by 15%-20%. In addition, merchants also have to pay a monthly property fee, if you want to open a 20-square-meter store, the annual property fee is more than 10,000 yuan.
2024 is the first New Year to completely get rid of the impact of the epidemic, and the market business of New Year's jewelry is recovering this year, but if you want to return to the market in 2019 before the epidemic, many merchants told reporters that they need more patience.
"Now there are 10,000 yuan for large orders, and hundreds or thousands of yuan for small orders. It will take at least three to four years for the market to recover. Boss Qian said.
The reporter noticed that as the New Year approached, the number of people who came to the small commodity market to buy New Year's goods gradually increased. Sister Wang, a Shanghai native, returned to China last month to visit relatives and immigrated to the United States with her family more than a decade ago. She told Yicai that when she was young, she and her mother would come here every year to buy some trinkets during the New Year's holidays, "and the business here was still very good back then." Later, she immigrated to the United States, and every time she returned to China, Sister Wang would still habitually come to visit, because "there are many things here, and there are so many things to choose from." She recalls buying all kinds of Chinese-style refrigerator magnets, small screens and folding fans in the Commodity City, and later gave them as souvenirs to colleagues and neighbors, and they all liked them.
"For those of us who are older, it's like a mall, where you can see, touch, see what you like, and you can buy it on the spot, and you don't have to wait like it. If you buy more, you can bargain, and there are not many places to negotiate now. She said.
Customers like Sister Wang who "miss the old" will still visit one after another, and the merchants who have experienced the twists and turns of the epidemic still maintain their confidence.
Many shopkeepers told First Finance that the Year of the Dragon is a year that Chinese attach great importance to, and almost every unit will buy decorations. "The Year of the Dragon is a big year, and the last time the Year of the Dragon was very hot, this year will not be bad. Boss Qian said.