The Shahe business district is full of traffic. Photo by Southern Weekly reporter Gao Yichen
After a long tug-and-go battle, most of the suppliers decided to compromise and settle with the boss who was rumored to have run away.
They are the parties to the Internet celebrity women's clothing store "Girl Kayla" thunderstorm, concentrated in the Shahe clothing wholesale market in Guangzhou, the online store it supplies is Taobao hardware crown store, with more than 55000000 fans, in mid-May was suddenly rumored to run away, about 300 suppliers were implicated, with a total capital of about 35 million yuan.
The news of running away is like a boulder thrown in the middle of a lake, causing ripples in the business district. The problems that are well known to the industry have gradually broken the circle in this hot discussion: in the traffic power pyramid built around Internet celebrity stores such as "Girl Kayla", large online stores have the right to speak in formulating rules, and in the involution vortex at the bottom of the chain, many suppliers have become groups whose interests are gradually gnawed away, with no contract, less protection, and difficult to hold accountable, and the price of the online store is even lower than the purchase price.
What is even more embarrassing is that many of the suppliers interviewed have been run away more than once, or even as many as seven or eight times. In the month since the incident, some suppliers have tried to cautiously try to change the rules, but they have almost lost their biggest customers.
Join the Bureau
"If you don't want to, someone will."
When he stepped into the online wholesale market, Chaoshan man Zhang Yuliang was full of thoughts about making money.
He said that around 2018, it was easy for the stall to make a hit, and friends who had entered the industry early bought houses and luxury cars, and most of them had been lying flat. In 2021, he also opened a stall, but he has missed the outlet.
On the assembly line of clothing online wholesale, suppliers like Zhang Yuliang thread the needle, go to the fabric market to buy all kinds of accessories and fabrics, and transport them to the "garment village" for production, and then the finished products are transported to the clothing wholesale market, selected and put on the shelves by the online store owner.
"Girl Kayla" is Zhang Yuliang's first big customer after changing careers. At that time, there were only seven or eight women's clothes in the stall, all of which were favored by "Girl Kayla". Since then, his business has grown significantly, and his daily sales have increased from two or three pieces to more than 100 pieces, one of which has become a "small hit", "at the beginning, I was happy to sell 200 pieces a day".
All the rules of the industry need to be explored by him step by step. The first rule is "deduction points", where an online store will unconditionally deduct a certain percentage when paying the supplier for the goods. "Girl Kayla" was "deducting 3 points" at the time, and she should have paid Zhang Yuliang 100,000 yuan, but only 97,000 yuan was received.
The rule seemed "unequal", but he had to follow it. One supplier who joined the industry in 2019 said: "At first, many people didn't accept it, but our industry is too volatile, if you don't want to, someone will." ”
Big online stores have absolute competitiveness in the clothing wholesale market. Supplier Yu Shati said: "'Girl Kayla' is equivalent to achieving TOP5 (top five) in the business district. The five Golden Crown's Taobao stores are all there in size and reputation, and everyone is doing business with his family, and the model has been finalized. ”
Shahe business district is one of the three major clothing wholesale distribution centers in Guangzhou, the supply of goods is concentrated in the low-end field, and the clothes are known for their low prices, large sales and many styles. This business district has more than 20 clothing wholesale markets and more than 20,000 stalls, and hundreds of thousands of people make a living from it.
Many stalls specialize in online wholesale and only supply for e-commerce. Yu Sha found that once an online store increases the proportion of "deduction points", other online stores will follow suit, and large online stores will jointly formulate rules and form a community of interests. "Those big Taobao stores will unite and say how many points will be deducted and when they will be settled." Yu Sha said, "It means that the rules of this market are set by them, and we must follow them when we come in." ”
According to Xu Chengxia, who has been in the industry for a long time, the loss of suppliers' right to speak began around 2016 at the earliest. E-commerce is booming, women's clothing online stores are booming, and the larger the market share, the greater the dominance.
The proportion of "deduction points" is increasing. "It's nine o'clock now." The supplier said that after compromising and backing down, he felt that he was caught in a vicious circle: "Originally, we had the right to speak, but as time went on, more and more people acquiesced to this model, so they became more and more passive." ”
Suppliers have to accept the insecure payment method and the continuous delay in the payment time.
"The checkout time is getting later and later, and the more it is delayed." Another supplier was impressed by the fact that what had been a cash settlement had been turned into a monthly payment had now been delayed by two months. Since the beginning of 2023, he has begun to connect with the financial staff of "Girl Kayla", and every time he collects money, he has to be careful with his words and a polite attitude. If the payment is too late, he can only play the emotional card, saying that he still has to settle the wages of the workers, and the factory is "urging very tightly".
In March 2024, he couldn't help but ask directly. Afterwards, it was the final stage of the "Girl Kayla" to cooperate with the settlement, and the payment for the goods for two and a half months after that could not be recovered.
A supplier's WeChat record of a dunning. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Run
"I'm also very conflicted, I think he's a temporary financial problem."
Zhang Yuliang felt that he was likely to be the last supplier of "Girl Kayla" before the thunder.
The preliminary docking between the two parties was completed online. The supplier will upload the clothing style to the "Soumoney" App for each online store to choose, and the selected style will be displayed on the online store page and sold directly to the outside world.
Every morning, the online store staff will come to the wholesale market with a stack of labels, indicating the stall, style number, price, and color. The warehouse of the stall that received the label will distribute the goods according to the label and deliver it to the truck of the online store, and the transaction will be completed on the same day.
On May 13, 2024, when the "Girl Kayla" employee placed an order to pick up the goods with the label as usual, Zhang Yuliang matched more than 50 pieces of clothes and sent them to the truck. At that time, the news that the boss of "Girl Kayla" had run away the day before had spread all over Shahe. Zhang Yuliang felt that other suppliers were laughing at him, "At that time, I was also very conflicted, I thought he was a temporary financial problem."
He heard that on the first night of the incident, many suppliers gathered in front of the "Girl Kayla" store, but the door was closed and no one was found.
What Zhang Yuliang didn't know at the time was that Guangzhou Gain E-commerce Co., Ltd., the company to which the trademark registration of "Girl Kaila" belongs, was cancelled in March 2024, and Guangzhou Yunding E-commerce Co., Ltd., another company of its legal representative Li Jiezhou, was executed for more than 20,000 yuan in 2021 and cancelled in 2023. Yu Sha decided that he was deliberately trying to run, "The company has been cancelled on March 4, but it has been signing with us for more than two months."
According to the enterprise investigation, the registered address of the store is located in Dayuan Street, Baiyun District, where the more well-known name is "10 billion e-commerce village", the country's first "Taobao Village" with sales of more than 10 billion, with 25 e-commerce industrial parks, more than 30,000 employees, and more than 2,700 household appliances.
The news of the runaway came quickly. The "Girl Kayla" store page disappeared on May 13, but the night before, its live broadcast room was still open as usual. Its anchor later recalled on social platforms that she was notified by fans that "the boss ran away" during the live broadcast, and she went from trying to maintain the company's image to gradually panicking and half-believing, and then directly "broke the defense". Some suppliers believe that letting employees go to work normally is a trick by the boss of "Girl Kayla" to cover up the abnormality.
Supplier Yang Zicheng also noticed an unusual sign that in the past two months, the price of his own products in his online store has fallen off a cliff, far below the purchase price. A gray knitted short-sleeved with a price of 29 yuan on the "search network", the promotional price of "Girl Kayla" at the end of March is 19 yuan, and in its live broadcast room, combined with discount coupons, it can even be as low as 13 yuan.
They gathered uneasily and counted the arrears. More than 190 suppliers participated in the Solitaire statistics, most of which owed between tens of thousands and more than 200,000 yuan, and more than a dozen owed more than 500,000 yuan, and the largest amount owed was as high as 1.58 million yuan.
According to a supplier, the police persuaded them to wait patiently in the rights protection group, and the people have been caught, and Li Jiehao, one of the three siblings, was released to raise funds. On May 16, Li Jiehao said in the group that due to the bad environment in the past two years, the original business model has gone wrong, and in the past two years, he has borrowed millions of yuan from banks and relatives and friends to maintain operation.
Li Jiehao said that the Li family did not run away with the money, but because the phone was blown up and the door of the company was blocked, "we have to avoid it." In the above information, he also promised that he would sort out all claims and debts as soon as possible and do his best to solve the existing problems.
Most of the suppliers were not hopeful, and they did not sign a written contract with the "girl Kayla", which made it more difficult to defend their rights and pursue accountability after the fact.
The subsequent developments have also confirmed the concerns of suppliers.
When "Teenage Kayla" was rumored to have run away, the supplier found her warehouse and emptied it. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
circulate
"I'm doing it with the chain of funds in our stall."
The 12 suppliers interviewed have been injured at least two or three times by running away from their online stores.
Among the many suppliers, Xu Chengxia has been hit particularly hard - she joined the industry in 2008, claiming that she has been run by a total of seven or eight times, adding up to more than one million yuan in economic losses. Talking about the outstanding payment of 110,000 yuan for "Girl Kayla", her tone was much calmer than that of other suppliers: "I'm numb. ”
She is now doing business and watching from the sidelines. "Now we've been exploring to see if there's a chance to change careers." Xu Chengxia said that there is almost no money to be made in this business.
There are also suppliers who are reluctant to leave. A "post-90s" supplier called himself "Chuangxing", and after graduating from university, he used a credit card to scrape together 20,000 yuan to open a stall. She said that she had put in a lot of hard work, and with a group of workers behind her, it was difficult to put down the whole stall easily, "Everyone knows that there are risks, but it is difficult to ride a tiger."
For Xu Chengxia, the "process" of being run away every time is almost the same, and the supplier goes to defend his rights, tosses it, and it is over. So this time, she didn't pay much attention to the dynamics of rights protection at all, "I don't have confidence anymore, and I don't have a single time to ask for money back."
Her confidence collapsed two years ago. In July 2022, the women's clothing online stores "Fitting Room SYJ" and "Chaohuigou SuperMall" ran away, both of which are Taobao hardware crown stores, with a total of 20 million fans, and the store owners are two husband and wife. According to reports at the time, the incident involved an amount of more than 70 million yuan and more than 800 suppliers, which was more serious than the "Girl Kayla" incident.
At that time, in order to pay the 140,000 yuan in arrears, Xu Chengxia and other suppliers took turns to stay at the door of the boss's house and did not leave in the middle of the night. The boss negotiated with them, and he switched to cash to get the goods, so that the store could continue to operate, and he also made an IOU. But this plan only lasted for a short time, "and after doing it for about half a month or 20 days, he ran away after it was stable."
The store claimed that the closure was due to the company's poor management. In the "Girl Kayla" incident, Li Jiehao's explanation was also poor management. It said that the continuous rapid growth in the past few years has made them blindly confident and choose radical development, resulting in tight capital flow.
In the view of Chu Jun, the owner of Taobao women's clothing stores who has been in the business for 20 years, this kind of store has a completely different survival logic from traditional online stores, the former is to take other people's money to make money, so "the 30-day account period (that is, the payment after 30 days) in the industry is fundamental."
This made Yang Zicheng feel uneasy, behind "Girl Kayla" is a series of online stores that operate in the same mode, they do not have essential goods, no inventory pressure, and no financial pressure, "holding the capital chain of our stall is doing". When such an online store encounters a problem, it is easy to run away, and it is difficult for the supplier to get the payment back.
Chu Jun is not such an online store and is currently operating its own brand. She also paid attention to the "Girl Kayla" incident: "The core contradiction of this matter is that women's clothing can now attract investors through traffic and data, and get the most effective resource slots." With resource slots, there will be people who will invest in you, and there will be people who are willing to sell goods to you for free. ”
She said bluntly that stores that seem to sell well can't make much money by selling clothes. This kind of store sells at a low price in order to obtain better traffic and data and attract investors to invest money, "not to sell clothes at all".
"Doing data, doing traffic, and defrauding investors of money will always make much more money than if you work hard to make a brand." Chu Jun said that the rate of return on women's clothing is too low, but he likes such a thing in his life, so he doesn't plan to change careers, "do his own things well, the product is excellent, and time will tell everything."
In fact, the online store group that has been complained about by many suppliers is also living in fierce competition. In the closure notices of some online stores, the reason is pointed to the industry environment. The "retro explosion" of women's clothing online stores with more than one million followers said that platform policies and market environment make it difficult for original merchants to survive; The online store "Lola Code" also said that the main reasons for the withdrawal were cost control and market environment considerations.
E-commerce platforms are also involuting. Yang Zicheng opened an online store for 3 years, and switched to online wholesale in 2019. The third-party platform he was working on at the time was defeated in the fierce competition of e-commerce platforms and is now on the verge of collapse. Some of the online store owners who entered the same group as him changed platforms, and some also changed careers and opened stalls.
The busy corner of the Shahe business district is full of packed clothes. Photo by Southern Weekly reporter Gao Yichen
Turbulence
"What I'm worried about is not the 100,000 yuan, but how I should go in the future."
Those people who "took the initiative to post and supply" in Chu Jun's mouth are worried about the chaos in front of them.
In the game with online stores, the supplier is the weaker party. If the platform engages in a full reduction activity and consumers return goods without reason, according to the requirements of the online store, the supplier will share the loss. Therefore, one of the rules that was born is called "store-wide reduction", that is, all wholesale styles need to be reduced in price, which is counted as the supplier's support for the online store to participate in platform activities.
The amount of reduction depends on the activity of the platform. When Yang Zicheng first cooperated with "Girl Kayla", he accepted the rule of "3 minus the whole store". When the store participates in the promotion of "300 minus 30", "200 minus 20" or live broadcast room, the loss of the online store increases, and the supplier takes a step back and "minus 6 for the whole store". Then, when it comes to the "activity impulse" stage of the store, it becomes "minus 8" and "minus 9".
Suppliers are also frustrated by returns. Yang Zicheng sighed: "The return rate is particularly high now. It's so convenient to return goods, we have to accept customer returns, and this part of the workload also accounts for a large proportion. Xu Chengxia was also overwhelmed by the excessively high return rate, she said that a piece of clothing only earns 5 yuan, and the return loses one or two yuan. Originally, the returned clothes need to be reorganized, disinfected, sterilized, and repackaged for sale, but in order to reduce the loss of returns, many of them are "folded and sold".
The "Teenage Kayla" incident is an opportunity for the industry to re-examine its own problems. "After this incident, the first thing I was worried about was not the 100,000 yuan, but how I should go in the future." The above-mentioned "post-90s" supplier bluntly said that the disadvantages of the industry have become clear, and there may be more incidents such as online stores running away in the future.
"We don't want that to happen, but it happens every year." Wan Jinshan, secretary general of the Hubei Chamber of Commerce in Guangdong Province, told Southern Weekend, "As our industry association, it is very powerless to say what is in my heart. ”
Different links in the whole chain are fiercely competitive, and the involution is serious. "If [the online store] can't afford it and feels like it's not making any money, they'll choose to go bankrupt and run away, and eventually let these suppliers pay." Wan Jinshan lamented that every party in the chain wants to minimize the risk, and finally the risk is pressed on the supplier.
According to his observations, it is often difficult for suppliers to defend their rights after being run away. "In the end, it will be handled as an economic dispute and let the two parties negotiate on their own. This also leads to this phenomenon becoming more and more serious in the future. ”
After many days of stalemate, it seems that the "Girl Kayla" incident will also go to the end according to this development.
The "Girl Kayla" side gave the final plan in early June: only settle 20% of the arrears. Li Jiehao sent a message to the supplier, saying: "It is unrealistic for the store to pay all the money today. Based on the fact that we have raised funds under government supervision, we are now able to deal with 20% of the total amount owed. We've been working together for so long, and we've helped you make money. It's really out of my control when this happened now. ”
After hesitation, most suppliers still chose to sign this plan. Zhang Yuliang met Li Jiehao in the mediation room, and he noticed that the other party looked tired, his eyes were sunken, and his eyelids were almost open. Li Jiehao explained that in recent days, he has been busy explaining to suppliers, sometimes talking about two or three o'clock in the middle of the night.
Zhang Yuliang turned the matter over. He said that he originally thought that he would not get back a penny, but now he has recovered 20% of the arrears, which can be regarded as reducing losses.
There are also a few suppliers who have not yet signed. The proprietress of a stall with an arrears of more than 500,000 yuan still believes that the behavior of "Girl Kayla" is malicious, "If he is like others, he has a tendency to get worse little by little, we all know it in our hearts." If we owe tens of thousands of dollars, we don't have to worry about him. But he has no trend in this one. ”
She does not consider this incident to be a simple economic dispute and is unwilling to reconcile, "I hope that the government and the police will characterize him as a fraud, just such a demand." Even if I don't want the money, I'll call him a fraud and let him in."
试探
After trying to offer a contract, I almost lost my biggest customer.
At the end of the chain, the consequences of the explosion of the online store are gradually revealed.
Most of the garment factories that undertake the business of Shahe suppliers are concentrated in the area of Kangle Village, Haizhu District, Guangzhou, where many garment factories are gathered. Zhang Yuliang walked into a narrow alley in the village, although it was daytime, the "handshake building" in the alley was also lit up, it had just rained, the air was hot and humid, the ceiling fan sent a few cool breezes, the original fabric and unfinished clothes and pants were stacked at will, the space was cramped, and the sewing machines were running, making a noisy sizzling sound.
A woman in her fifties from Guizhou pulled a pair of white wide-legged trousers with her hands and feet, sewing an elastic band to the waistband of the pants at a rate of a few seconds. This work is calculated by piece, March and April are the peak season, and you can earn four or five hundred yuan a day. From 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., she had to work for more than ten hours a day before she could return to a rented room for a few hundred yuan nearby.
The "big news" that shook Shahe did not reach her ears. Unbeknownst to her, an online store called "Teenage Kayla" was closed, and the clothes she made were supplied to the store.
Many suppliers are in a hurry, and the arrears of "Girl Kayla" cannot be recovered, and the downstream garment factories and fabric factories cannot settle the payments. In the garment factory where the above-mentioned garment workers worked, the proprietress from Hubei was a little calm, and Zhang Yuliang still paid the garment making fees as scheduled in the month when the online store ran away. "I don't have any money, and I won't owe them money." Zhang Yuliang asked her to just ship normally, without having to consider the upstream online store problem, and he would settle the money.
Buying raw materials, making ready-to-wear garments, and selling them in bulk are all intertwined at each other in the chain, and if the degree of involution and risk level intensifies in one of them, it will soon be transmitted to the others. According to industry rules, the payment of garment factories is also monthly, and there is only an oral agreement with the supplier, and there is no paper contract. The proprietress said that the garment factory in the village sometimes runs away quietly and without restraint.
Zhang Yu's conscience was worried, and according to today's rules, he continued to compete viciously and sold clothes cheaply. He feels that the industry needs someone to take the lead and change the rules. A few eager suppliers gathered a small group to explore ways to reform.
At the beginning of June, a stall issued a statement saying that since July 1, its own goods will not be returned for non-quality problems, reminding the boss to "choose to take the goods carefully". The news spread among suppliers, and some people called it "the first shot of online batch non-return".
Many suppliers are eager to adjust the power structure, but most of them are on the sidelines. Some people deliberately told the Southern Weekly reporter to hide his real name and store information in the report, fearing that some online store owners would be dissatisfied.
For suppliers, two or three big online stores are almost all there is to business. For Zhang Yuliang, "Girl Kayla" accounts for a quarter of the total number of stalls, and his biggest customer is another online store, which buys half of his women's clothing, and is very important in the whole of Shahe.
Zhang Yuliang often buys cigarettes for the operation director of this online store during the New Year's holidays, and often "pats the horse". "When the customer coughs two or three times, he has to figure out what they are thinking. Because without their words, you are over. ”
But he still took a cautious step. A few days after the "Girl Kayla" incident, Zhang Yuliang mentioned to the operation supervisor as if chatting that there were too many incidents of online stores running away, and now the stalls are panicking, and they are also afraid, "Maybe those stalls want to sign a contract behind them."
The reply of the operation supervisor was tough, whoever ran away asked for money, his own store has always been in good faith, if he is still scared, then don't do it.
"Yes, your family will definitely not." Zhang Yuliang hurriedly made amends, "Your family's reputation is very good, I am absolutely assured." He didn't dare to continue to probe and said a few kind words, but the other party didn't reply.
The day after the conversation, he discovered that his family's style had disappeared from the online store.
Zhang Yuliang almost lost his biggest customer, and the crisis was lifted two days later - he came to the door and told the customer: if he doesn't sign the contract, everything will be business as usual.
(Zhang Yuliang, Yu Sha, Yang Zicheng, Xu Chengxia, Chu Jun are pseudonyms)
Southern Weekly reporter Gao Yichen
Editor-in-charge: He Haining