Author丨Ruthless
Editor丨Nuts
Cover source丨Unsplash
The annual 6.18 online shopping festival is coming, but for many clothing stall owners in Shahe, Guangzhou, they are not in the mood to prepare for this year's e-commerce promotion.
Most of the reasons for the depression of these bosses are the same, and recently, the hardware crown Taobao store "Girl Kayla", which they have been cooperating with, is suspected of running away, leaving a large number of arrears that cannot be settled.
It is understood that in this incident, more than 300 clothing suppliers were implicated, and the total amount of funds involved was as high as 35 million yuan.
According to public information, "Girl Kayla" is a star online store in the Taobao clothing category, with 5.5 million fans and monthly sales of more than 900,000 pieces, ranking among the top three in the Taobao sexy women's clothing store list.
After the "Girl Kayla" ran away incident, the official account of Taobao Apparel released the "Follow-up Service Measures for the "Girl Kayla" store, stating that users can apply for "refund only", and the after-sales service will be guaranteed by the platform.
With the intervention of the platform, the rights and interests of consumers have been effectively protected, but for those suppliers who have no way to collect hundreds of thousands of payments, their rights and interests may need to be recovered for a longer time.
1
Hardware crown Taobao store backstabbing supplier
As a large e-commerce seller, "Girl Kayla" has an extremely strong position in front of suppliers, which is especially reflected in its ability to take goods from suppliers on credit, and then settle with suppliers after the goods are sold.
Even the relationship between the two parties can be agreed on verbally, rather than a formal supply contract.
Of course, suppliers also have the right to choose not to cooperate with "Girl Kayla", but this means that they may have to lose a long-term stable large customer, after all, in the highly competitive clothing wholesale market, such a head online store does not lack suppliers who take the initiative to seek cooperation.
However, this deformed relationship between supply and demand has also laid the groundwork for the difficulty of protecting the rights of suppliers. The two parties did not sign a formal contract, and even the supplier's delivery credentials were not fully retained, making it difficult to obtain evidence and make the road to rights protection even longer.
Some suppliers reported that before running away, the settlement speed of "Girl Kayla" was already very slow, and the industry normally settled once a month, but "Girl Kayla" can only be settled once every 3-4 months, which directly led to a high payment of hundreds of thousands of yuan owed to some suppliers.
In order to be able to sell the clothes on credit from the supplier quickly, many of the goods in its store are lower than the price of the goods, such as the clothes with a price of 30 yuan, which are only sold at 20 yuan in the store, and they also offer free shipping and free shipping insurance.
It is understood that the "Girl Kayla" store itself focuses on affordable women's clothing, so the low price has not aroused the alarm of consumers, but the suppliers who know the profit margin of the product see that the selling price is lower than the purchase price, and they obviously feel that something is wrong.
And it can also be seen from the industrial and commercial information that the escape of "Girl Kayla" should have been premeditated.
According to Tianyancha information, the registered company of the trademark "Girl Kaila" is Guangzhou Gain E-commerce Co., Ltd., the company's legal person is Li Jiezhou, and its main business is the textile and garment industry, which was registered in September 2022, but suddenly announced its cancellation in March this year.
In addition, some suppliers who were owed money found the warehouse of "Girl Kayla", only to find that the goods inside had already been vacated.
2
Big online stores have long had a history of running away
In 2022, the two Taobao hardware crown stores of "Fitting Room SYJ" and "Chaohuigou SuperMall" ran away, and it is rumored that more than 70 million suppliers have nowhere to pay.
And what makes people laugh and cry is that it was also the clothing suppliers of Shahe, Guangzhou who were pitted back then, and when the business of "Fitting Room SYJ" and "Super Club Shopping SuperMall" was booming, more than half of the stall owners in Shahe had supplied goods to these two.
From the point of view of store attributes, "Girl Kayla" also has many similarities with the two big online stores that ran away before, in addition to being hardware crown Taobao stores, the main stores are also affordable women's clothing, and even the purchase channels are highly similar.
The only difference is that "Fitting Room SYJ" and "Super Club Shopping SuperMall" closed after the end of the 6.18 event, and "Girl Kayla" didn't even plan to take advantage of the big promotion to make another profit.
The reason why these big online stores that ran away can grow into hardware crown stores is inseparable from the huge service supply chain of Guangzhou Shahe, but when these online stores decided to run away, they mercilessly backstabbed their former partners.
On Taobao, if you want to become a Golden Crown store, you need 500,000 to 1 million sellers' praises, and sellers can only have five Golden Crowns if they reach more than 10 million reviews, and Taobao members can only make a credit evaluation every time they use Alipay to successfully trade.
During the peak period, the transfer price of a hardware crown Taobao store may reach tens of millions of levels.
Therefore, the hard-won identity of the hardware crown Taobao store has also become a bargaining chip for these large online stores to ask suppliers for "goods before payment".
From another point of view, since the hardware crown Taobao store is so precious, why is the operator behind it still running away frequently?
If the "fitting room SYJ" and "Super Club Shopping SuperMall" run away because of uncontrollable factors such as the epidemic, the industry prosperity is not high, but the situation faced by "Girl Kayla" is about to usher in the annual promotion, plus this year's Ali's strategy is also to focus on supporting Taobao, there will be a large number of consumers returning from Tmall, and the business opportunities for the head store will be significantly improved.
There may be only one answer, for today's e-commerce sellers, confidence in the future is gradually decreasing, even the top sellers are no exception.
3
What happened to the women's clothing sellers?
A detail worth paying attention to is that among the e-commerce sellers who have run away in recent years, the vast majority of them are women's clothing stores.
Women's clothing used to be the trump card category of Taobao, and the Taobao women's clothing represented by Qigege, Cracked Silk, Inman, Handu Yishe, MG Little Elephant, etc., is also the first batch of trendsetters in the wave of e-commerce.
However, as the golden age of clothing e-commerce has completely passed, today's women's clothing sellers are becoming more and more difficult.
The most intuitive embodiment is the rise in the return rate, some women's clothing sellers said that the return rate in the industry has been as high as seventy percent, many women's clothing sellers' GMV data may be very beautiful, but there are very few real profits, and merchants basically lose money on freight and damage.
And as Pinduoduo swept the industry with low-price killer moves, women's clothing sellers were also involved without exception.
In the past, women's clothing sellers such as "Girl Kayla" were essentially a trader, not responsible for design and processing, but only buying from clothing stalls and selling them in online stores, so as to earn part of the price difference.
However, as the price of the e-commerce industry becomes more and more volatile, this part of the reasonable profit has been infinitely squeezed.
On the one hand, there is a super high after-sales rate, and on the other hand, there is an infinitely low price, and for women's clothing stores, the probability of accidents has been greatly improved.
In addition, the changes in the rules of the platform have also made many sellers worried.
Since last year, JD.com and Taobao have successively followed up on Pinduoduo's "refund only" policy, and they are closer to the interests of consumers in terms of after-sales, such as Taobao has included Xinjiang in the free shipping area, and JD.com has launched a "free door-to-door return" service.
The meaning of the new rules of each platform is self-evident, that is, to try their best to keep consumers in the station, but for some sellers with limited strength, there is no capital to survive between the platform and consumers.
With 5.5 million store fans, Kayla the Girl may not be the last online store seller to run away, but for those suppliers, they still dare not refuse the request of other sellers to take credit, because there may be a return on credit, and if they refuse, they may not even have to do business.
From the perspective of consumers, it is nice to be able to buy goods at a low price and enjoy convenient and low-cost return and exchange services, but from the perspective of the entire industry, can this kind of infinite competition really give birth to a healthier e-commerce environment?