The market in front of us is located in the central town of Qidong County, Hengyang City, Hunan Province. There are various kinds of furniture in the dense door shops. Label papers printed with "factory direct sales" and "factory price" can be seen everywhere. Most rolling shutter doors are empty.
Local people's impression of this place mostly stays in the declining furniture market, but a bigger secret is hiding here.
On the second floor of one of the buildings, a company seemed out of place. There was no warehouse full of goods or even samples for people to choose from. There were only a few computers visible in the spacious space. But it is this small, unknown company that is doing a lot of "big business" - there are countless European and American customers on the other side of the computer screen.
In fact, this is a typical "no supply" cross-border e-commerce company. As the name implies, "no source of goods" means that such companies have neither stock warehouses nor manufacturers. Surprisingly, they can use this rare operation mode to Amazon Overseas sites have opened dozens or hundreds of stores, selling tens of thousands of Chinese goods to Europe, North America and other places, and reaping high profits.
However, Cross border e-commerce without supply While its huge profits attract the public, it also conceals many risks and disputes.
"The middlemen earn the price difference, and increase the price by 5 times"
Less than a week before Christmas, Liu Wen (a pseudonym), an employee of a cross-border e-commerce company with "no supply", was in a state of anxiety.
At present, she is busy collecting commodity information from major e-commerce platforms in China, such as Taobao and JD, through an ERP collection system, and then editing and adjusting it slightly, translating it into the language of the corresponding country with one click, and finally uploading the information to the company's Amazon store.
At the same time, she also needs to deal with new orders on the Amazon platform - after foreign customers place orders, she has to shoot the corresponding goods from the domestic e-commerce platform.
The goods photographed by Liu Wen and her colleagues will be sent to the international transit warehouses in Shenzhen, Quanzhou and other places, and the staff will pack and label them again according to Amazon's logistics regulations. Once the final packaging process is completed, these goods will appear on the other side of the ocean in the near future.
During this period, Liu Wen and her colleagues did not see or touch any commodities with their own eyes.
"What we need to do is actually to increase the price of goods on the domestic platform and sell them on Amazon." Liu Wen said, "more simply, the middlemen earn the price difference." According to the company's regulations, the price increases of goods generally start from 5 times, and also from 10 to 20 times.
Liu Wen's company currently has 40 such operators. Many of them only hold a high school or technical secondary school diploma, but they can operate 150 stores of this company on the Amazon platform.
In fact, the predecessor of Liu Wen's company is a network technology R&D and entrepreneurship team located in Qidong County, with single digit operators. Its main business is to operate "no source" stores on Taobao and Jingdong.
But in recent years, they have realized that, Taobao and Jingdong Dividend period It is coming to an end, and it is difficult to create new online dividends for small and medium-sized businesses 。 "At present, domestic e-commerce stores do not pay bills or burn money, and they can hardly do it. The competition is too fierce".
The data more intuitively shows that "going to sea" is becoming a new direction for Chinese e-commerce - Amazon's official data shows that as of November 30, 2017, 1001210 new sellers had settled in Amazon's 12 sites around the world, and nearly one third of them were from mainland China or Hong Kong. The share of Chinese sellers is about 25%.
It is against this background that in 2018, "no supply" e-commerce companies began to look overseas. At present, Liu Wen has three operation centers in Qidong County, all of which are in charge of Amazon's "no source" store group business.
Dark production industry chain, with a franchise fee of up to 300000 yuan
On December 25, the smell of Christmas drifted from the other side of the ocean to China as scheduled. Liu Wen and her colleagues had no time to feel the happy atmosphere of the festival. They were staring at the sales background in front of them.
At the same time, Tan Xing (not his real name), as a customer manager of another information technology company in Henan, which is about 900 kilometers away from Hunan, has no intention of celebrating the festival. He is sitting in front of the computer, trying to turn this potential customer into a franchisee, so that the company can earn high franchise fees.
An industrial chain is quietly forming - the first batch of "no supply" cross-border e-commerce companies that "get on the train" are no longer satisfied with the profits of the store cluster itself, but begin to focus on "developing lower level franchisees".
In fact, many people who intend to join the "no supply" cross-border e-commerce are the first time to contact cross-border e-commerce. Most of them were employees who had worked in "no source of goods" companies before, college and technical secondary school students who had just graduated, housewives and even junior and senior high school students who had dropped out of school.
It is often the case that when they see someone around them doing cross-border e-commerce to become rich, they want to follow them. However, according to Amazon's requirements, businesses must first have their own brands to settle in. If they want to do well, they must also have FBA （ Overseas warehouse ）This is too high a threshold for cross-border e-commerce businesses at the initial stage.
So, Many "no source of goods" cross-border e-commerce companies seize the opportunity to open another business - selling the right to use the EPR collection system, or opening a training program to attract customers to join and pay a joining fee ranging from 2000 yuan to 300000 yuan.
Liu Wen's company is no exception. In November 2018, Liu Wen set up its headquarters in Hengyang and started formal foreign investment and training.
Liu Wen introduced to Zinc Scale that they have four franchised packages with prices of 2000 yuan, 16800 yuan, 39800 yuan and 150000 yuan respectively. The package mainly includes giving away ERP store group management system, registering Amazon seller account, providing practical teaching, providing transit warehouse services, etc. Franchisees only need to provide ID card, property card and other documents.
Among them, the franchise package with a value of 150000 yuan will provide 1:1 replication, so that the franchisee can become a branch of the company and have the qualification to attract investment, and can continue to develop lower level franchisees. Someone in the industry once described this process as "fission".
Different from Liu Wen's company, Tan Xing's information technology company is not a player dedicated to cross-border e-commerce platforms. "No supply" cross-border e-commerce training and investment promotion is only a project of the company. "Henan headquarters is engaged in cross-border business, and Beijing companies have other businesses," Tan said.
However, after checking the information of many "no supply" cross-border e-commerce companies, Zinc Scale found that most of these companies started in central and western counties.
Taking Tan Xing's company as an example, Xiangcheng, located in the southeast of Henan Province, was once famous for "Lotus MSG", but in recent years, hundreds of "cross-border e-commerce companies without supply" have emerged. It even attracted franchisees from Zhengzhou, Kunming, Changsha and other places to learn from it.
Business starts from the family, but it is a fraud?
With the intensive and rapid keyboard sound, Tan Xing, who was staring at the dialog box, was expressionless, but his words were not lack of excitement. He frequently threw out the attractions of the "no supply" mode, and used to end with an exclamation mark. "This mode is more flexible! The risk is small! Every order is pure profit!"
This conversation has lasted for nearly three hours. Seeing that the other side is still full of doubts, Tan Xing put forward a killer idea, "Many relatives of our employees are doing it."
This is their common script in attracting investment.
This is not entirely a cover. Zinc Scale learned that most of the joining businesses of "no supply" e-commerce companies started from their families. Soon after joining the company, Liu Wen persuaded her sister and brother-in-law to join her.
However, for Liu Wen's colleagues, this case seems to have become insignificant. Their favorite example is that an employee of the company resigned a year ago, paid 150000 joining fees and set up a branch.
Such "dream of making wealth" has been copied and pasted in their circle of friends, and the style of "self congratulation" is like the criticized WeChat business. In a word, the focus is to draw a big cake that is enough to make money for potential cross-border e-commerce "white people".
In addition, they also emphasized the opportunity of "getting on the bus" and often reminded potential customers eager to make a fortune in their circle of friends, "Don't hesitate, the golden period will pass".
At this time, franchisees eager to make a fortune often ignore the reality: if cross-border e-commerce with "no supply" does make huge profits, why did the investment promotion staff not join in personally?
A former employee of a cross-border e-commerce company with "no supply" said, "This is to earn a wave of IQ tax. The background data is basically fake or swipe the order for students to see. Members who have studied in the past six months have not made any money in any operation, lost a lot of money, and lost confidence in cross-border (e-commerce)..."
Behind the virtual prosperity, the joining mode of "no source of goods" companies has long been controversial due to similar pyramid schemes, and some people directly pointed out that "this is a fraud".
"I am a living example
In 2018, Liu Anyi contacted a cross-border e-commerce company with "no source of goods", which once assured her that "we are responsible for the registration and opening of stores, and the follow-up operation will always teach you." However, once the franchise fee was paid, the other party changed its face, "we are only providing services, mainly relying on you."
Every step after that seems to be a "pit".
"Just registering an Amazon store is not as simple as they fooled me. I applied twice a month, and both times were quickly blocked. Finally, I could only spend 3000 yuan to buy a store. It was not easy to have a store, and there was no order in ten days and a half months. It was not easy to wait for an order, and the logistics involved more than 10 days. The goods were still floating on the sea, so the buyer would not want to buy one. And if you accidentally sell the goods of a big brand, the Amazon platform will quickly close the store. " Liu felt that she spent 10000 yuan on the routine one by one, and finally learned nothing more than how to use the ERP system. "Just send a teaching video, and I can buy it for 10 yuan if I search online."
"Once the title was granted, the money would be lost and I would have to start again from scratch. If I looked for that company again, others would have pulled me black," Liu said.
The zinc scale understands that this is not an individual case. On the social platform, many people once talked about their experiences of being cheated. "After paying the money, they found that the thoughtful staff replied more and more slowly. They gave you a set of software and another set of data, and then lost contact" "In the early stage, I will teach you some knowledge that can be found easily. When you open the store, you will find that those things do not work at all. The so-called high sales and high profits have become bubbles"
Under the inquiry of the zinc scale, Liu Wen also said frankly, "Our company really made money by the store group, but it was really not easy. When I first arrived at the company, it took a long time to make a commodity data, and it was good for a quick person to make 20 items a day. I had worked hard to make 50 items of data before selling three."
In addition, due to the lack of supervision, many "no supply" cross-border e-commerce companies are empty shell companies that make money by recruiting franchisees and collecting franchise fees. Even some companies simply earn a wave of franchise fees to change places, and even the company name has changed several times.
Suspected infringement becomes the biggest problem
It is easy to overlook that Tan Xing, who is responsible for investment promotion, always talks about the advantages of cross-border e-commerce with "no supply". But they often take the risks behind it.
However, "no supply" cross-border e-commerce companies have started investment attraction or training business, precisely because it is increasingly difficult to earn money only by "no supply" stores.
In recent years, Amazon, which has targeted its sales target at the middle class, has paid more attention to "sophisticated" and "brand" stores, and relied on the "no supply" model to conduct a large number of Distribution , more like a "gamble" based on luck.
Then the suspected infringement naturally becomes the biggest obstacle - because a large number of goods are distributed, and the product information of others is collected by clicking the software without permission, it is impossible for "no source of goods" e-commerce companies to modify and adjust the information of every product, and some even copy it completely. It is common for the platform to judge infringement and close the store.
Wang Guohua, a partner lawyer of Zhongwen Law Firm, told Zinc Scale, "These 'no source' sellers are mainly involved in picture infringement and text copyright infringement. Use without the permission of the obligee constitutes an infringement, and bear legal liabilities for stopping the infringement and compensating for losses."
This problem is also arousing the awareness of domestic e-commerce platform sellers and many international well-known manufacturers. They have taken up the weapon of intellectual property rights and started to attack these "no supply" sellers.
With the increase of infringement complaints from Chinese sellers, the Amazon platform naturally cannot sit still - although the share of Chinese goods in the Amazon platform is gradually increasing, Amazon has begun to consciously control the number of Chinese merchants.
At the same time, Amazon has developed a robot scanning program specifically for bad sellers, constantly scanning the images, logos, even titles, and content descriptions of goods on the platform. Once it is determined that your goods are more than 60% similar to the plaintiff's goods, it is likely to be judged as infringement, and then impose a penalty of closing the store.
This makes "no supply" cross-border e-commerce companies constantly remind employees and franchisees to avoid well-known brands and use pictures with trademarks.
Not long ago, Liu Wen's company was closed several stores due to suspected infringement. They have obviously raised their vigilance and issued infringement reminders in the circle of friends for many times. Among them, the most recent one is, "Toy sellers should pay attention to the fact that the popular toy" Snow flakes "are once again protecting their rights. In addition to avoiding the use of Brain Flakes, they should also pay attention to avoiding trademark infringement, and should also pay attention (not) to directly stealing brand pictures".
Despite the hidden risks, more people believe that "those who are brave will die and those who are cowardly will die of hunger."
The day after Christmas, Tan Xing finally talked about the new franchisee. He released information in the circle of friends, "The era of cross-border e-commerce has come, give yourself a chance to understand, maybe you are the next Ma Yun."
With one software, it is really easy to copy tens of millions of pieces of commodity information. However, it is far from simple to recreate the cross-border e-commerce myth. I'm afraid that behind the "dream of making wealth", it may not be true profits, but an illusion. (Source: Titanium Media)
