Text | Photon Planet
Walking on thin ice is the best summary of Zhang Xiao's (pseudonym) psychological state in recent times.
Zhang Xiao's studio is full of wood and hardware, which in his hands have been transformed into small ornaments of various shapes, some of which are made of delicate gears, which have a steampunk meaning; Others are modeled after DC's Superman, with fangs and claws glued together with screw caps under red shawls.
At first, Zhang Xiao just shared handicraft videos on station B, and his works were also sold to fans. But as more and more people were interested in his works, Zhang Xiao finally decided to rely on his craft to eat, opened a small workshop into a Taobao store, and started a large-scale business.
However, since Taobao and JD.com followed up with refunds only at the end of last year, both merchants who have been coerced by the return rate and Zhang Xiao, who has just entered the e-commerce field, have personally felt the changes in the ecology.
In this context, struggling sellers want to flee. In addition to new e-commerce players such as Video Account and Xiaohongshu, a familiar and unfamiliar name has also appeared in the list of refuge for merchants - Xianyu.
Merchants who were "forced to retreat" flocked to the "fringe zone"
After opening the store, Zhang Xiaocai really realized the warmth and coldness of people.
"Because they are all handmade, each piece inevitably has natural imperfections, such as small glue spills at the adhesive or slight scratches on the metal parts." Zhang Xiao told Photon Planet: "In the past at Station B, most of the customers were fan businesses, and everyone was very easy to communicate with if there were any problems, and they would not deliberately make it difficult for you." ”
In contrast, the different atmosphere of Taobao stores often makes him feel at a loss. "No matter where the customer's dissatisfaction comes from, and sometimes it has nothing to do with the product itself, customer service is always quick to step in and offer a full refund. These losses are ultimately borne by us small businesses. ”
He also remembers one time when a customer bought a DIY kit in the store. This was supposed to be assembled by the buyer and enjoyed the fun of DIY, but they asked for a refund only on the grounds that the style did not match the description. And in the end, in the case of nitpicking and messing around with the buyer, the platform returned the money to the buyer.
Ah Huan (pseudonym), who is engaged in the food business, hates the platform's refund policy even more. He mistakenly believes that many clauses that seem to put the interests of consumers first are the ploy of the e-commerce platform, aiming to "force back" customers, so as to take all the money into his own pocket and maximize the interests of the platform.
"The platform just uses the heat of local violence exerted on merchants to create a false warmth."
In his opinion, in addition to tilting towards buyers at the policy level, the platform will even encourage buyers to refund frequently, and the loss is always the merchant.
"For example, almost immediately after a customer makes a payment, the platform pushes a link to a product with a lower price and a small coupon to the customer, inducing the customer to cancel the original order and remake it, but the promotion fee and technical service fee that can be calculated on a per-order basis will not be deducted. And some customers inadvertently mention the word 'goods' in chat, and the system sometimes even automatically pops up the return option. ”
In addition, the increase in the return rate will not only increase the cost of inventory management, packaging costs, and human resources, but also reduce the weight of the store, which in turn will affect traffic recommendations. Sitting in a dimly lit office, staring at the high return rate, his heart felt like a needle had been pricked.
Economist Thomas Sowell said: "The inherent defects of human beings are the most basic problems, and civilization is only an imperfect way to overcome the problems of human nature." ”
Even if the platform lowers the refund limit on the surface for the sake of its own reputation and the enthusiasm of merchants to promote, the platform does not have an absolutely correct solution in the face of the black hole of desire and greed.
As merchants, they have almost zero control over orders, and even in the face of apparently malicious orders, they can only passively accept them weakly.
In the face of reality, merchants can only swallow their anger and hope for the change of platform policies, or flee to other platforms. Or because of this, in 2024, new e-commerce platforms such as Channels and Xiaohongshu will be able to kill halfway.
As the saying goes, "courtesy is lost and the wilderness is sought", and when Taoism is deserted and the system itself is flawed, it is a better choice to flee to the "marginal areas" to seek "fairness".
Xianyu's rule of survival: screen customers and disguise yourself
Compared with mainstream e-commerce platforms with strict door regulations, Xianyu is more "free" - the listing cost is low, the procedures are simple, there is no complex SKU management, and the platform supervision is relatively relaxed. The most important thing is the "dynamic fairness" inherited from the past C2C model of Xianyu, that is, the buyer and seller have equal rights, and the platform will not favor either side too much.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the thorny issue of returns.
Zhang Xiao once met a buyer in Xianyu, and after receiving the ornaments, he came to the door because of the slight difference between the physical color and the screen display. Although he agreed to return the goods and refund them, the buyer insisted on a partial refund, and in the face of malicious bargaining, Zhang Xiao did not accommodate the other party, and the matter finally went to a small court.
In the small court, Zhang Xiao submitted a number of product pictures under different light sources, successfully explained that the so-called color difference was caused by different lighting conditions, as well as the chat history of the buyer's "bargaining", and finally won 12:3. In his opinion, the Xianyu small court and the customer service accountability mechanism are relatively fair, as long as the evidence is sufficient and the position is reasonable, it can basically get a fair ruling.
Wen Jie (pseudonym), who is engaged in the tail order business of foreign trade, prefers to attribute it to the seller's "huddle for warmth".
In his view, the reason why the existence of the small court gives the seller group a great sense of security, in addition to other factors of platform imbalance, is largely due to the composition of the public reviewers of the small court.
"Many of the reviewers are composed of professional sellers, after all, most ordinary users just use Xianyu as a tool for idle transactions, and rarely pay attention to the trial of small courts, while sellers are always online, with a high usage rate, and they are more willing to participate in these disputes." Wen Jie said frankly: "It's not to completely reverse black and white, but those reviews that say that the public is justified and the mother-in-law is reasonable, in fact, more convey the seller's will." ”
However, as a veteran Xianyu seller, Wenjie is well aware of the complexity of the platform's rules - from the very beginning, the screening of buyers has been carried out, and there is no chance for buyers to maliciously refund money.
Wenjie told Photon Planet that as long as the buyer gets involved in a refund dispute or goes to a small court, regardless of whether he finally agrees to the refund or wins the review, the account will be invisibly demoted. "I have an account and agreed to return and refund once, but the exposure instantly fell from tens of thousands to hundreds."
Over time, he learned to screen customers while disguising them.
Under the crooked trend of malicious refunds, merchants on mainstream e-commerce platforms often share information about "white prostitutes" and suspicious post stations and regions in the merchant group in order to protect themselves, so as to take precautions. And in Xianyu, everything is more transparent.
Xianyu's mutual evaluation mechanism enables sellers to understand the buyer's evaluation and credit rating in advance; Compared with mainstream e-commerce platforms, Xianyu allows sellers to take the initiative to cancel orders. This allows merchants to proactively screen out low-quality buyers and stifle malicious chargebacks in their infancy.
Wenjie once encountered a suspicious buyer - three no account, no direct payment without any communication, and the delivery address was a certain vocational and technical college. When I tried to communicate with him, the other party didn't care about the details of the product, tags, etc., and just urged it to be shipped as soon as possible. Faced with the buyer, Wenjie finally took the initiative to close the order on the grounds that it was out of stock, instead of risking the delivery.
Hiding your business's identity is just as important as picking customers.
Wen Jie told Photon Planet that Xianyu buyers have an instinctive rejection of merchants and dealers, and they tend to buy things from individual sellers. To this end, in addition to setting the gender to female, Wenjie will also delete the transaction records immediately after selling the product to ensure the "uniqueness" of the product, so as to avoid potential buyers doubting its identity.
In addition, in the last year or two, Xianyu's friendliness towards sellers has decreased. According to Wenjie, now Xianyu's monthly transaction volume exceeds 10,000, and a 1% service fee is required, and the operating seller also has to bear the obligation to return some goods for no reason within seven days. But even so, Xianyu is still much more tolerant than many e-commerce platforms.
Can scale and profit be both?
People are familiar with the story of the Trojan Horse, but few people know that it was only an apple that triggered the Trojan War.
At that time, Hera, the queen of heaven, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and Venus, the goddess of love, asked Prince Paris, near the city of Troy, to judge who could get the golden apple, which symbolized the most beautiful goddess. In the face of the promise of power, wisdom, and love of the three goddesses, Paris chose to obtain a love that was beyond the reach of mortals, but finally ignited the flames of the Trojan War.
This means that adding a touch of weight to one end of the balance inevitably makes the other end so light that it is almost invisible. The same is true for merchants who have fled from the mainstream platform and turned to Xianyu.
Shunzi (pseudonym), a small household appliance merchant who switched to Xianyu from a certain platform, told Photon Planet that although Xianyu has a low transaction rate and a relatively loose policy, there is a ceiling on the income of a single account, and it is difficult to grow bigger. In other words, it is difficult to achieve both scale and profit.
Although social media is always full of advertisements for selling classes with "0 cost to be Xianyu, one drop shipping, and tens of thousands of monthly income", in fact, compared with mainstream e-commerce platforms, Xianyu, whether it is an individual seller or a business business, has relatively limited output from a single account.
"Xianyu seems to have a traffic bottleneck, once each account passes the peak period, or the number of orders issued in a single day reaches a certain number, the traffic will drop sharply. And Xianyu's paid promotion and drainage are very immature, so even if the platform operation is proficient, it is difficult for the monthly profit of an account to exceed 5,000 yuan, and the income of tens of thousands of dollars in a single account in a single month is even rarer. Junko said frankly.
In order to avoid the bottleneck of a single account, Shunzi has built a store matrix to expand the scale of business through multiple disguised "individual seller accounts".
In this process, Shunzi has gradually explored its own methodology, such as avoiding batch listing and removing products, appropriately purchasing low-priced products to complete platform tasks, strengthening interaction such as likes and comments, or replying to messages in a timely manner.
Among them, the most important is to avoid platform risk control. Shunzi told Photon Planet that switching back and forth between multiple accounts, or using the same WiFi on multiple devices, may be recognized by the system and lead to batch account bans. To this end, Shunzi has prepared an independent mobile phone and data card for each account, and simulates real users through "one machine and one number".
However, the matrix of dozens of accounts wants to disguise itself as a real person in all aspects, and the operational pressure can be imagined. Even though the Shunzi team has achieved batch operations on the computer through screen projection software, the employees' personal energy is always limited, "sometimes like a machine like a mechanical like, after chatting with buyers all day, I feel a little nostalgic for the days when I didn't have to pretend in the past." ”
"There is no absolute right or wrong, and I have not been forced to go to Liangshan, the two options are just their respective expressions of the law of the jungle."
But in any case, merchants flock to Xianyu, just like tracking down people who only refund money, piercing the fragile dark side of the current e-commerce ecosystem.
As Nathaniel · Peffer said in The Far East: "The imitation of the United States polity established in China in 1912 is ridiculous." This form of government ended tragically. However, it is not this form of government that has failed, but a generation. "Taobao and Jingdong, who were beaten by Pinduoduo, and Dongshi Xiaoqin, only refunded the increase, but it was this group of merchants who suffered.