Phoenix Network "Storm Eye" produced
Author/Editor Li Qiuhan/Wen Hua
Complaint email address: all_cj@ifeng.com
Wang Yang is talking with a breath. Throughout April, he arrived at 500 Hongqiao Road in Shanghai early in the morning on time. His only purpose was to get back his "money" from Shanghai Guijiu - 10 million yuan.
Shanghai Guijiu, located at the center of the storm, has already broken its capital chain. But unlike the past "company thunder", Wang Yang is not a customer or a supplier, but the general manager in charge of sales business in a province in the middle of Shanghai Guijiu. Since he joined the company for more than two years, he has invested almost all his savings in his family and mortgaged his own and his brother's two suites, just to "advance money" for the company to obtain higher returns.
Like Wang Yang, more than 30 sales representatives of Shanghai Guijiu from all provinces in China want to get back the "advance payment" and salary from the company. The amount of money they claim to be "unpaid" ranges from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions. Wang Yang belongs to the latter and is one of the most "delinquent" people.
Such "employee advance" behavior may be the reason why Shanghai Guijiu's income soared 10 times in the four years since its establishment. Even in the 2023 annual report just released on April 26, Shanghai Guijiu still exceeded a large number of liquor dealers, achieving both revenue and net profit growth, despite the negative news.
According to the data disclosed in the annual report, the revenue in 2023 will be 1.629 billion yuan, up 49.3% year on year, and the net profit will be 87.07 million yuan, up 133% year on year. Four days after the report, the stock price rose 4.7%.
After verification by many people and relevant materials, Fenghuang.com's Storm Eye found that Shanghai Guijiu is different from traditional wine merchants. There are few dealers in Shanghai Guijiu, and most of the channel merchants are essentially employees recruited through external companies. These employees play a key role in the performance of Shanghai Guijiu. They are both "dealers" of Shanghai Guijiu and consumers of Shanghai Guijiu. They have become the actual buyers of the unsalable risks of Shanghai's expensive liquor products.
When the plate of Shanghai's expensive wine failed to work, they became the last "plate takers". The traders of Shanghai Guijiu are Han Hongwei and Han Xiao, the father and son of Haiyin Wealth. Haiyin Wealth, the third largest wealth company controlled by Han Hongwei, exploded in December last year, which may affect 46000 investors and the 60 billion yuan fund cannot be cashed. Shanghai Guijiu once put aside the relationship urgently and said, "Up to now, it has only alcohol sales business with Haiyin Holdings and its subsidiaries, with a transaction amount of 48800 yuan". However, in the Q1 annual report of 2024, it was related to Haiyin Wealth, explaining that "affected by the event of Haiyin Wealth, the related party, the company experienced temporary liquidity pressure due to the centralized repayment of loans to controlling shareholders".
Han's father and son want to do their utmost to rescue Shanghai Guijiu and repair its social impact. Han Xiao, the chairman of the board of directors, also served as the general manager, and went to the front of the stage to release various positive signals. In fact, the problems faced by Shanghai Guijiu are far from simple capital rupture, self repair, and then reconstruction of the future narrative system. More problems behind it may touch the legal red line. For example, can the authenticity of the data on the company's account books stand the test? If the company makes profits every year, why does it eventually leave billions of dollars in capital holes? Where are these funds going?
01 Cultivate tens of thousands of employees into customers
In 2019, when the liquor pattern is solidified and the competition is fierce, Han Hongwei entered the liquor market. But soon, Shanghai Guijiu, whose revenue was less than 100 million yuan in 2020, will have a revenue of nearly 1.1 billion yuan in 2022, with a revenue growth rate of 656% in 2021.
It was once a mystery in the liquor market that why Shanghai Guijiu could make its way quickly in a sea of blood. After contacting many old employees, Fenghuang.com's Storm Eye found that the upsurge of Shanghai Guijiu's performance could not be separated from Han Hongwei's new way of playing - getting rid of the traditional dealer model, recruiting employees, and then developing into customers in disguise.
Zhao Yu, a veteran employee, recalled that in 2019, Han Hongwei had just acquired the distillery, recruited employees with high salary but failed to show performance. He launched a strategy, that is, a sales manager who paid 5000 yuan would get 5000 yuan worth of wine from the company, and he would also get 4500 yuan of salary plus 1000 yuan of reward. The company would also pay social security accumulation fund.
This abnormal pattern has attracted a large number of people to join the direct marketing line of Shanghai Guijiu, Zhao Yu is one of them. The company quickly established a large number of personnel, and in 2019, there were about 100 people in its provincial branch. By 2021, this number will have climbed to 1000.
Liu Yongqiang, the general manager from another province, believes that for Shanghai Guijiu, it is obviously losing money. This model has lasted for several months. In fact, in order to balance costs, the company has reduced the amount and proportion of refunds. In addition, in 2021, the company also launched the then standard of taking orders to work, which is based on 40% of the monthly assessment target. A city's general team's monthly assessment target is 300000, Then the general manager of the city will pay 120000 yuan to take the job with him. The monthly assessment of the city branch is 100000 yuan, that is, 40000 yuan is required for entry.
This means that the salary of employees is equivalent to their advance payment. Employees become dealers, and most of them have a lot of wine in their hands.
Although the company does not make money, for employees, this seems to be a "stable" business. The team is expanding crazily everywhere, because the more people there are, the more money they make, and the higher the amount of money they receive.
According to several salary materials provided by them, although the company has divided the remuneration and treatment of employees in a detailed way, mainly including salary+commission+quarterly rewards, in the eyes of many respondents, they use the words "subsidy" and "rebate". Here is an "invisible" simple standard to measure the relationship between their income and payment.
Illustration: The interviewees provided a schematic diagram of the employee income plan of Shanghai Guijiu Direct Line in September 2023. "Shiju" refers to Shanghai Shiju Trading Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Shanghai Guijiu, which has been renamed as Shanghai Tianqing Guijiu Trading Co., Ltd
According to the schematic diagram of a provincial branch of Shanghai Guijiu's direct marketing line obtained by Fenghuang.com "Storm Eye" according to the headquarters' plan, the company will give a team's detailed payment and income plan. For example, if a performance of 1 million yuan is paid by a team consisting of 3 city employees+10 sub employees+50 contract employees (part-time employees), the team can get 852000 yuan by "employee income" and "rebate". At the same time, they can also get some valuable wine. This program helps the team quickly understand and digest the complex compensation structure.
The revenue of the whole team of the division managed by Liu Yongqiang is basically more than 80% of the amount of the payment. In addition, the corresponding amount of wine and reward wine can be obtained after the payment. Even if the wine is sold at a discount of one or two, it can also make money.
It is normal for middle and senior managers of Shanghai Guijiu to earn 20000 to 30000 yuan a month. As the provincial general manager, Liu Yongqiang can earn up to 100000 yuan a month. According to his understanding, some provinces can earn 300000 yuan a month.
Illustration: The direct line organizational structure of Fenghuang.com Storm Eye is sorted out according to the company's PPT data and the information provided by the respondents
Shanghai Guijiu has also set up various ranks to encourage employees to increase the amount of payment. For example, from 2022, the higher the amount of employment with a single, the higher the rank and the higher the basic salary and commission. Liu Yongqiang, for example, paid 100000 yuan to become the general manager of the city and 400000 yuan to become the assistant general manager of the provincial company. Each provincial company has a corresponding recruitment director, specifically recruiting people with economic strength who can continue to pay.
In 2023, the company will launch a franchise store policy for employees - encourage "employees" to open exclusive stores of expensive wine in Shanghai, and give them more support, but at the same time, the requirement for the amount of payment is also higher. A store needs to make the first payment and pick up 400000 yuan, and an annual payment and pick up 3 million yuan.
This policy directly involved the heads of provinces and branches in the endless game of "making money". Li Gang, who will become the assistant general manager of the provincial company with an order of 400000 yuan in 2023, is one of the positive responders. As soon as the policy was issued, he accounted for it. When opening a franchise store, first of all, the performance can be the same as before. After paying for wine, there will be about 83% cash return+wine, and there are two additional concessions. One is that a store will have a decoration subsidy of 500000 yuan, and the other is that 5% of the amount of money will be paid each month as a rent subsidy. "It's not only the store that has no cost, but also the previous rebate of 83%, which is 5 points more".
He plans to open 8 stores, first one to test water, invested 700000 yuan in decoration, and paid 3 million yuan in total. However, all the decoration subsidies and rent subsidies promised by the company, as well as the rebate on wine money, have not been in place.
Wang Yang's situation is even worse. He opened two stores in partnership with his relatives and six stores with his customers and friends. He paid 4 million yuan for the decoration of eight stores in advance and 6 million yuan for Shanghai Guijiu as the annual wine payment for his two stores.
This directly increased the scale of Wang Yang's debt, for which he was burdened with tens of millions of debts, and the monthly interest was up to 300000 yuan.
02 Many "employees" are fake
It is hard for the outside world to imagine what kind of atmosphere such a marketing model will form in the company. But soon, another business fraud model emerged from the inside, that is, local teams used fake identities to brush off water and earn higher returns.
In the report materials provided by the employees, under the monitoring camera, an employee wearing black clothes, holding a pen, is signing a labor contract, from signing on behalf to pressing the handprint on behalf, in one go.
Illustration: Screenshots of some materials reported by a provincial branch of Shanghai Guijiu's direct marketing line
"This is a part of fake employees. The team will buy a large number of ID cards from the village in bulk, pretending to be 'new employees', and return them to handle social security and sign labor contracts." Liu Yongqiang told Fenghuang.com "Storm Eye" that it is not easy to find, and needs to meet the two conditions of "no social security is in progress" and "under 60 years old". If it is really not found, They use their relatives' identity information.
They also disguise the daily attendance for these non-existent employees, and some office workers are responsible for punching "them". Even the resignation process is envisaged. In order to ensure the consistency of handwriting, the same person will sign the resignation application as early as the signing of the labor contract.
In a word, a complete chain has been formed from applying for mailboxes, receiving offers, signing labor contracts, to daily pin punching and signing resignation applications, and manufacturing "fake employees" in Shanghai Guijiu's direct marketing line.
This kind of behavior is very popular among all branches of the Shanghai Precious Wine Direct Line. Liu Yongqiang revealed that many teams "may be dummies below the rank of deputy general manager, and the so-called 20 or 30 employees of the department do not exist".
Even higher management will cheat. When Li Gang, a vice president of the Group from a southern province, invited him to join the company in 2023, he was introduced to the other side of the group about the way of making fake payments. Li Gang's team has more than 10 names. In fact, many names are borrowed from the identity information of relatives and friends. He is the only one who really does business.
At least 4 of the 7 sales staff recently contacted by Phoenix. com's Storm Eye admitted to leading this fraud.
The reason for such a spectacle is related to the mode of Shanghai Guijiu's direct sales line returning to the present by relying on the head of people to build up the performance.
In the composition of the payment collection of Shanghai expensive liquor, there are basic salary+commission+bonus+liquor, of which basic salary+commission is the big head. The more people, the more money will be returned.
Illustration: Part of the organizational structure of the PPT provided by the interviewees about your Shanghai wine company
Zhao Yu gave a detailed explanation: if the general manager of a city company paid 300 thousand yuan and took 300 thousand yuan worth of wine, the normal salary plus commission was only 40 thousand yuan, which was equivalent to spending 250 thousand yuan and buying wine at a 20% discount. The wine was sold in the market at a 20% discount. However, if the general managers of three branches add up to 300000 yuan, and more than 10 sales are under their hands to complete the payment, then the returned salary+commission+recommended new person award, monthly award, etc. can have more than 200000 yuan in cash, which is equivalent to buying more than 300000 yuan worth of wine with tens of thousands of dollars, taking the wine at a discount of 1, and selling it at a discount of 2 or 3, then there will be room to make money.
"Otherwise, no one would play with them," said Zhao Yu.
03 Hidden capital channel
The way of playing Shanghai expensive wine has broken through the conventional cognition of many people. In order to ensure the compliance of the payment method, Shanghai Guijiu established a shell company based on its employees before the confirmation of income and cost, as a secret fund channel.
Many interviewees said that from the beginning of taking orders to work, employees began to use third-party companies to pay for Shanghai expensive liquor. Many employees register companies by borrowing information from relatives and friends, then buy wine in this name, and pay for Shanghai Guijiu.
According to the payment records presented by the employees, Fenghuang.com Storm Eye collected 4 payment companies.
In the Love Enterprise search, these companies are all owned by individuals. Most of them were founded in 2022 and 2023. The number of people shown in the enterprise social security information is 0, and the paid in capital is 0. Some of them are engaged in wholesale business, and some are engaged in alcohol and beverage business.
Shanghai Guijiu seldom discloses the specific names of the top five customers, but in the inquiry reply letter of Shanghai Guijiu, it discloses the top ten customers according to the data of the 2021 semi annual report. Among them, three of the top five customers are related parties of the company, and Jinhua Wine, Guiniang Wine and Guizhou Guiniang Wine are all related enterprises, which together contribute 21% of the income of Shanghai Guiniang Wine.
It's hard to say that Shanghai Guijiu has no knowledge of this. According to Liu Yongqiang, the group purchase department of Shanghai Guijiu, which is responsible for sales management, will regularly review the payment records, and query the information of the payment company according to the employee's name and ID card number recorded in the internal system. However, the specific punishment is not severe. For example, if the legal person or shareholder of the registered company is found to have the same name as the employee, part of the reward will be deducted. After the strict investigation, the employee will also be refunded and returned, and no punishment will be imposed on the employee.
The financial system of Shanghai Guijiu is too complicated. Not only are most customers owned by insiders, but also Shanghai Guijiu has set up a large number of external companies to control costs, so as to improve the profitability of Shanghai Guijiu.
Shanghai Guijiu will acquiesce in the two terms of "internal" and "external". The former refers to companies that have a direct relationship with Shanghai Guijiu in terms of equity, while the latter is the opposite. For the contracts that need to confirm the wine revenue, the signing parties are mostly internal companies. For the contracts that need to confirm the expenditure and risk, most of the contracting parties are external companies.
Illustration: The dealer contract signed between the registered third-party company and the subsidiary of Shanghai Guijiu provided by the respondent
Illustration: Payment receipt provided by respondents
For example, the direct line team in charge of marketing, and most of the labor contract signing companies, have nothing to do with Shanghai Guijiu. Even if the position of provincial sales director has been achieved, the labor contracts signed by Liu Yongqiang, Zhao Gang and Wang Yang include Shanghai Xunjiang Trading Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Penglai Trading Co., Ltd., and the main body of the company signing the contract will change from time to time, allowing them to sign again. These companies are in vitro companies. According to Aiqicha, Shanghai Penglai Trade Co., Ltd. is engaged in the wholesale industry, but the number of enterprises paying social security is 0.
Illustration: Information on signed labor contracts provided by respondents
Shanghai Xunjiang Trading Co., Ltd. was mentioned in the recent regulatory inquiry of Shanghai Stock Exchange on Shanghai Guijiu. It was mentioned in the inquiry that Shanghai Guijiu recommended the headhunting company to the employees of the company, and signed labor contracts with Shanghai Xunjiang Trading Co., Ltd., Shanghai Shiju Trading Co., Ltd., Huawang Wine Co., Ltd., Henan Shen'an Wine Co., Ltd., and Shanghai Wudian Human Resources Service Co., Ltd. The company did not disclose the above companies as related parties, And increase its sales and net profit through its hoarding.
In the reply, Shanghai Xunjiang admitted that the original legal person of Shanghai Xunjiang Trading Co., Ltd. was Wang Jun, who once worked in the related party Guijiu Liquor Industry, but said that Wang Jun was not a related natural person of the company. Shanghai Xunjiang had no related relationship with the company, and only had several million business contacts in 2021 and 2022.
Not only sales, but also marketing HR、 Most of the labor contracts of employees in administrative departments are also signed outside the body.
Lv Qiu, a marketing employee, told Phoenix. com's Eye of the Storm that when he joined in 2022, HR told her that in order to control the labor cost of listed companies, about 90% of people signed labor contracts with third-party companies. She counted the labor contracts signed by her colleagues around her. The main signing parties were Shanghai Mattel Human Resources Management Co., Ltd., Shanghai Danning Human Resources Co., Ltd., Shanghai Xunhe Human Resources Management Co., Ltd., etc.
It is not only to avoid costs in signing labor contracts, but also to isolate Shanghai Guijiu from finance in actual operation.
For example, when signing contracts with suppliers in marketing promotion, most of them use third-party companies. Lv Qiu revealed that in the contracts she has contacted, if the amount of expenditure exceeds 500000 yuan, it will be split. The main body of the contracting company is divided into internal and external.
In the advertising contracts she has handled before, only about 700000 of them are signed by Shanghai Guijiu Co., Ltd., and 1.3 million of them are signed by Shanghai Shida Industrial Co., Ltd. Fenghuang.com Storm Eye found that Tao Lei and Jin Xiarong, shareholders of Shanghai Shida Industrial Co., Ltd., had served as supervisors or executive directors under Hanxiao Holding Company or Wuniu Fund.
"Our company has thousands of subjects, and insiders basically know that each contract subject is different," said Lv Qiu.
Although most of the costs are shared by companies outside the body, the money paid by employees to buy wine is accounted for by companies inside the body. According to the performance payment records provided by the employees, the collection account is Shanghai Guijiu and its subsidiaries. Several payment receipts were received from Shanghai Tianqing Guiniang Trade Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Rock Wine Co., Ltd., both subsidiaries of Shanghai Guijiu.
This mode of operation means that revenue recognition is in the system of listed companies, and more costs are placed outside, which guarantees the "bright" performance of listed companies on the bright side.
04 Han's father and son's dilemma is difficult to solve
Regardless of the cost, the performance improvement figures all point to the share prices of listed companies. In a series of operations, Han's father and son also got what they wanted. Shanghai Guijiu (A share is still called Rock Share), a "monster share" famous for its name change, has indeed experienced a soaring share price.
At the end of 2018, before the wine business, the share price of Shanghai Guijiu was about 5 yuan/share, rising slightly in 2019, rising to 13 yuan/share in 2020 and 42 yuan/share in 2021.
Judging from the financial report data, the growth is also eye-catching. From 2020 to 2023, the performance will jump from 79 million yuan to 1.629 billion yuan in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 113%. The net profit will also increase from 8 million yuan in 2020 to 87 million yuan in 2023.
However, in December 2023, Haiyin Wealth exploded, and the capital chain of Han's father and son had been broken.
Fenghuang.com Storm Eye once reported False over raising of more than 10 billion yuan in the name of Evergrande? Insiders Disclose the Inside Story of the Extended Redemption of Bank of Hainan Wealth As a third-party wealth management company, it should have been an independent intermediary financial institution, but Haiyin Wealth has a deeply intertwined relationship with its distribution of non-standard fixed income products, which is suspected of false fund-raising.
Since the beginning of this quarter, Shanghai Guijiu's performance has plummeted. It will experience a rare loss in Q4 2023 and Q1 2024. This year, Q1's operating revenue has shrunk by 71%.
The group companies under the management of Han's father and son, whether Haiyin Wealth or Shanghai Guijiu, have similar background. Even though this company apparently makes a living by selling wine, Fenghuang.com Storm Eye found that its essence is still like a financial company.
Many of the employees contacted by Fenghuang.com Storm Eye were engaged in the financial and insurance industries.
More intuitively, Xu Yong, Vice President of Shanghai Guijiu Co., Ltd. and former direct line principal, was previously engaged in the insurance industry and served as the General Manager of Shanghai Branch of Qianhai Life Insurance. After Xu Yong left in 2022, Ding Yin took over and was responsible for direct line business. Ding Yin was previously engaged in the P2P industry and worked in e-Leaseball. According to the judge's document network, she was sentenced to two years and nine months in 2017 for being suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits.
The group's genes are also reflected in its business. At least two insiders at the core told Fenghuang.com "Eye of Storm" that Han's father and son played the left hand to right hand capital game, and the capital flow among Haiyin Wealth, Wuniu Fund and Shanghai Guijiu was frequent.
Han Hongwei was generous before the explosion of Haiyin's wealth and the emergency of Shanghai's expensive liquor capital chain.
One thing that impressed Liu Yongqiang deeply is that when he first joined the company in 2019, in the conference room of Lujiazui Haiyin Building, there were white leather chairs. Han Hongwei said in a meeting that one would cost 8000 yuan.
Illustration: Shanghai Guijiu Experience Center
In his impression, Han Hongwei has a sense of pride in spending money on expensive products. Later, Shanghai Guijiu specialty stores and experience centers opened all over the country. A single sofa cost 10000 yuan, and an experience center only spent three or four million yuan on decoration, "showing a very rich and generous appearance".
According to a civil ruling, on February 9, 2023, more than half a year before the explosion of Haiyin Wealth, Han Hongwei purchased a luxury house in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, with a transfer price of 125 million yuan.
Now, the capital stock of Han's father and son is unsustainable, and tens of thousands of investors and his employees are involved in the capital vortex. The negative Han's father and son are still trying to maintain the apparent order, but how far they can go may be a question mark.
(At the request of the interviewee, all the employees in the article are pseudonyms.)
