"Gymboree has run away!"
Well-known early education institutions thundered again, all stores of Nanjing Gymboree announced the closure of stores at the same time, the incident happened suddenly, and many parents were caught off guard, causing great concern from many parties.
At the same time, the mysterious profession "professional shopkeeper" was also exposed, and it rushed to the hot search in one fell swoop.
On March 19th, the parents of Nanjing Gymboree suddenly received a "Letter to Parents" from Gymboree, and the content of the letter surprised them.
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There are three contents in the letter: one is that the teaching service will be suspended due to the rupture of the capital chain, the second is that the follow-up will actively look for new investors to settle in, that is, it is seeking transfer, and the third is that the follow-up problem will establish a WeChat group to facilitate communication and resolution.
After reading the letter, the parents went to add the communication group as soon as possible, but many people couldn't add it, and the group was full, which was really angry and anxious.
The most pitiful thing is that some parents have just paid the money on the first day, and they haven't attended a single class, and they receive a shutdown notice the next day, which makes them feel cheated.
"As soon as I paid the money, it suddenly closed, and there was no sign of it!"
"The day before it was still on sale, and the next day it was closed? What should I do if I just paid nearly 40,000 yuan in tuition?"
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In fact, Gymboree's thunder was not without warning.
According to statistics, Gymboree will close 17 stores in 2022 and 43 stores in 2023.
The most infuriating thing is that it is opening a store and closing it at the same time, as mentioned above, it is still encouraging parents to pay fees on the first day, and the store is closed the next day, which makes people think that they are deliberately cheating money.
Although the franchise stores in Guangzhou, Changsha and other places have been dissociating themselves from each other, they have still aroused the worries and concerns of parents.
"Notice of class suspension?
Some netizens said that their baby's grandparents bought 36 classes for their children in Gymboree and paid more than 9,000 yuan, and she felt a little unreliable at that time, because she heard that many Gymborees from other places were shutting down.
Now, after receiving the notice, there is a feeling of "it really is", netizens said that after only 6 classes, Gymboree ran away, which is really tricky.
The netizen also said that after Gymboree closed, many parents gathered at the door of Gymboree, and the worst one was paid yesterday, and the store was closed today, and not a single class was completed!
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The day after the notice was issued, the staff of the Gymboree in charge of the aftermath in the communication group sent a "solution" in the group, but the parents who saw the "solution" were like being poured cold water.
In the "Solution", three solutions were proposed, and each of them was angry.
The first option is: the refund plan. Parents who agree to this plan need to sign a "refund agreement", and the agreement reads: "A minimum of 30 years is required for a 100% refund. ”
This is "full of sincerity", claiming to be 100% refunded, but at least 30 years, the children's children have grown up, and it is still 30 years to start, the longest time can not be said, maybe it is far away.
I'm afraid that no parent would agree to such an overlord repayment agreement.
The second option is to divert classes. This is even more ridiculous, transferring students to other institutions in the vicinity, but parents need to pay additional fees.
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This is equivalent to the parents' money being paid in vain, and Gymboree will resell the students in his hands again, and I don't know if the agency that took over will give Gymboree some more kickbacks.
The third option is even better, which is to resume classes at the same location. It looks good, but the condition is that the expenses incurred after the resumption of classes, such as teachers' salaries, venue rent, etc., are jointly raised by parents, which means that the previous money will be paid in vain.
These three plans seem to be one sentence: "The money paid is all in vain!"
Parents want to cry without tears, there is no way to refund the fee, and they want to ask for an explanation, and it is not only the parents who want to ask for an explanation, but also the teachers of Gymboree.
You read that right, Gymboree not only cheats parents, but also its own employees, teachers have not received their salaries for several months, and even social security has been cut off.
In fact, this closure is actually a long sign, last year Nanjing Gymboree still had more than a dozen stores, but at the end of the year a lot of closures, the students were transferred to the only three remaining stores.
Now, these 3 stores are also closed, and everything looks like it was premeditated.
Gymboree is a foreign brand, founded in 1974, it is said that a mother had to quit her job in order to take care of her children, looking for a way out that can take care of her children and make money to support her family.
In 2003, Gymboree crossed the ocean to China and opened her first store in Shanghai.
And this point in time is the golden age of China's education and training industry, the first generation of only children have children, the economy is also developing rapidly, and parents have money in their hands.
At the same time, parents are also facing educational anxiety, as long as they feel that it is beneficial to their children's development, it is at all costs.
Gymboree is also very smart, knows how to adapt measures to local conditions, and has developed a curriculum with Chinese characteristics and suitable for Chinese babies for the Chinese market.
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Since then, the foreign brand of Gymboree has not been adapted, but has flourished, and has branches and franchise stores in various key cities across the country.
During this period, Gymboree was once well received by parents, had a good social reputation and popularity, and even had a glorious period of "hard to find a lesson".
It is worth mentioning that Gymboree's operation is also very flexible, and the launch of the "Private Enjoyment" not only allows parents to share their children's growth process and in-depth communication on this platform, but also a means to increase parental stickiness.
In addition, it also puts forward the "3S" development concept (self-confidence and optimism, health and flexibility, intelligence and wisdom), and every point has stepped on the hearts of parents.
When the Internet developed rapidly, Gymboree was the first to launch the Gymboree APP, proposing family companionship education and developing online business.
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According to insiders, Gymboree once occupied more than 150 cities, with more than 400 stores and millions of customers.
A few years ago, there was a saying: children's money is the best pinch, and early education institutions and mother and child stores and other businesses that make money for babies and young children can make money with their eyes closed.
However, business has cycles, feng shui rotates, and the days of the early education industry in recent years have long been much worse than before.
Because the domestic birth rate is too low, the closure of kindergartens has become a major trend, not to mention the early education industry.
Intuitively: in 2013, there were 17.76 million newborns in the country, and last year this number has dropped to 9.02 million, nearly halved.
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At the same time, in recent years, the public's consumption concept has also begun to return to rationality, and the choice of early education has become more rational, and it has also returned from spending money to cultivating and returning to family companionship.
It is a fact that business is not good, but it is also a fact that Gymboree is not authentic, after all, it has been preparing to run away since last year.
In recent years, Gymboree has gradually changed from "earning hemp" to "guanguanguan", but there are two points in it, which are not authentic.
The first point is that it is obviously not doing well, and a large number of stores are closed, but they are still fooling franchisees to open new stores.
The second point is that it is obviously ready to shut down, even the day before the closure, it is still fooling parents to pay money to buy classes, and it is suspected of fraud if it causes others to suffer losses based on "deliberately concealing facts".
What's even more infuriating is that last year, Gymboree began to close stores in a planned manner, and thousands of rights protection complaints across the country involved Gymboree.
In January this year, Gymboree made a big move, and many branches in Beijing, Shanghai and other places changed their "legal persons" at the same time.
This is not an ordinary transfer of companies or changes of legal person, but there is a way to do this.
The people who took over were called "professional shopkeepers", and they had a group of "professional debtors" in their hands.
They have a complete set of store closure procedures, which can allow the "professional debtor" to legally become a new legal person, and help companies like Gymboree that have received advance fees to "get out of the shell" and deal with the follow-up unfinished matters.
The "professional debtors" are people who will not affect their lives even if they are on the blacklist, such as the elderly, the seriously ill and dying, and the elderly in poor areas.
At present, the third party who took over the store in the Gymboree incident is suspected of being a professional store closer.
According to insiders, the charging standard for professional store closures is about 10-200,000 yuan for a store service fee, and there are also fees according to the proportion of debt, such as about 5% of the total debt.
This group of "professional shopkeepers" specializes in dealing with the "sequelae of running away" for those company operators who are ready to run away.
After receiving the commission, they collect the money to accept the mess left by the customer's runaway, and the customer can take the money, sing songs, and drink wine to live a worry-free life.
In order to maximize profits, they began to "knock on the bones", and carried out another wave of activities before the store closed, collecting as many advance payments as possible.
Gymboree's current practice is an example, the staff salary is not paid, the existing stores are closed, and at the same time, the tempting activity is used to fool the franchisee and the parents to pre-deposit a class fee.
Grasp the timing of store closing, and use strategies to deal with follow-up problems and sell the company's assets.
After the operation of the "professional store closer", the difficulty of customer rights protection has directly escalated, because the "original legal person" is no longer the operator, and the current legal person is not afraid of enforcement.
Consumers are also reminded that if a company suddenly changes its legal person, it should be careful and careful, especially if its internal personnel frequently appear new faces, then the possibility of running away is very large.
In fact, there is more than one Gymboree in the early education institutions that have exploded in China, and the early education industry can be described as chaotic.
As early as 2017, when the early education industry was still a hot business, the central radio network put forward a discussion on the chaos of early education.
At that time, the scale of the domestic early education market exceeded 200 billion yuan, but there were frequent problems.
First of all, some small-scale private early education institutions will use consulting, culture and other companies to carry out industrial and commercial registration, and carry out early education training after obtaining the license, becoming the existence of "three regardless".
At that time, the shortcomings of early education institutions had been exposed, not only the quality of teaching was unsupervised, but also the fees, internal management, etc., were also a mess.
Some institutions are like fraud, first pay the fee, wait for you to pay the fee, and then increase the price for various reasons, and then collect money and run away, many parents pay tens of thousands of course fees, and after a few sessions, the institution is gone.
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At that time, there was a calligraphy and painting training institution called Miao Bi Han Yong, which was such an operation, and it was quite difficult to protect rights in the later stage.
And large chain early education institutions like Gymboree, when they are profitable, can still develop normally, and now the business is not good, and they have also started the practice of those small institutions earlier:
"First try to take out as much money as possible from the parents' pockets, and then close the store and run away. ”
This time, there is also a large early education institution that ran away at the same time as Gymboree, that is, Meijim, which is known as the "first stock of early education".
Its timing coincided with Gymboree, which began to gradually close a large number of stores last year.
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On April 1, a "Letter to Parents" was issued, and all five stores in Beijing were closed at one time.
Unlike Gymboree, Meijim only said that there would be staff to deal with the follow-up, but did not give a solution, nor did he mention the matter of refund.
Some parents expressed their happiness: "I just went to try it out last week, and there were still many people who bought the class at that time, but fortunately I didn't buy it." ”
The same people still think about charging at the last moment, the same don't want to refund, and the same employee wages are still owed......
Unlike Gymboree's change of legal person, Ma Hongying, the chairman of Meijim, lost contact after submitting a written "resignation report".
But no matter what kind of operation, the difficulty of rights protection is quite high.
On April 2nd, Nanjing Gymboree Huacai Tiandi store began to be crowded again, and 7 classrooms were teaching in an orderly manner.
However, this resumption of classes is not good, and with the coordination of relevant departments, some parents have accepted the solution of "resuming classes in situ".
During the resumption of classes, the fee of 23 yuan per class hour may seem much lower than the current market price of early education institutions, but this is a supplementary fee after paying the fee, which is not cheap together.
But this is already the best solution that the relevant departments can get for parents, is it difficult to register for another class and wait for Gymboree to refund after 30 years?
It's just that this will only last until June 30, and I won't finish it, and I'll talk about it later.
As a result, everyone rushed to come to class and finish their class hours before the end.
At present, there are 517 parents who have agreed to the resumption of classes, and 12 teachers have been arranged.
Among them, there are "self-help" crowdfunded by parents, "free venues" coordinated by relevant departments, and teachers who volunteer part-time and only receive class fees.
Because it is difficult for many parents to protect their rights, they have also resumed classes, so they have given up continuing to defend their rights, and some parents have said that they will not give up their rights protection and will continue to follow up on the progress of refunds.
Some experts said that Gymboree deliberately concealed objective facts and fooled parents to pay fees in advance knowing that its business was not in good condition, which was already suspected of violating the law and was a fraud.
At present, many early education institutions have the dilemma of not doing good business and tight capital chain, and it is easy to run away like Gymboree.
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Resources:
Southern Metropolis Daily: "Another store in Guangzhou, suddenly closed! It was once an industry giant"
New Retail: "Well-known Brands Suddenly Close, Will It Take 30 Years for Refunds?"
Brand Observer: "28 Million in Debt! Stores in Many Places Suddenly Closed, All Refunds Have to Wait 30 Years"
Author: Sun Nier
Editor: Ichiyigi