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RMB 200 Million Owed By E-Commerce Platform

2022/9/15 12:08:00 0

Ocean Terminal

Another cross-border e-commerce platform can't hold up.

Recently, a number of business buyers said that the payment for goods had been delayed by foreign dock platforms for a long time, ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

According to the news workshop, some buyers said that their accounts had not been operated in violation of regulations, but since July last year, they have been unable to withdraw more than 100000 loans from the foreign terminal platform.

According to the report, the office space of the foreign wharf headquarters in Shibei high tech Industrial Park, Jing'an District, Shanghai has been "empty", and the notice posted by the property owner shows that the foreign wharf has been in arrears for a long time.

In response to the report of "empty buildings and deserted people", on September 13, the foreign wharf side responded that Shibei high tech park is the headquarters office of the foreign terminal company. As a state-owned property, it did not grant rent exemption for six months to the foreign terminal in accordance with the Shanghai government's epidemic relief policy (because the local taxes paid by the company were too high to enjoy the treatment of small and micro enterprises). Therefore, at present, the company first adopts the mode of all employees working at home to reduce costs, which is not the so-called "empty house".

According to the foreign terminal, the so-called defaulted merchants in the report are the bad merchants found in the process of the standardized operation of the foreign terminal. There are "buying and selling accounts" (people purchase overseas accounts that are not their own in China), "selling fake goods" (judged as false by the third-party inspection agency), etc., including a series of serious illegal business activities, The store was frozen during the rectification process.

However, all sorts of signs show that the fund of foreign wharf is very critical.

The company is in arrears in payment for the sale of its 200 million wharf

Founded in 2010, the ocean terminal has carried out seven times of financing, with a total amount of 1.08 billion yuan. During the period of * *, it had more than 80000 certified buyers, covering 83 countries around the world, and the daily quantity of goods available for purchase exceeded 800000.

On August 23, Zeng Bibo, the founder of the ocean terminal, published an open letter with a length of 5000 words, in which he "told the whole story" of the difficulties faced by the foreign terminal.

In the letter, Zeng Bibo enumerated the company's difficulties and said that the continued decline in business has brought financial pressure to the company. Foreign terminal also faces a large number of buyers and staff loss. The remaining employees' salary was halved, and the workload doubled. Zeng Bibo himself was also restricted from leaving the country.

In terms of staff, the scale of foreign terminal has been reduced seriously. At present, only about 560 people are left in the team. Two thirds of the employees have left since the beginning of this year. In order to save money, the remaining employees have started remote office. Employees on the job can only get a minimum income of ¥ 8000, with a 50% discount on the salary of the company's management personnel above the level of director and 70% off the salary of the manager level.

It is understood that at present, the labor cost of foreign terminal is less than 1 million yuan per month, and the transaction volume is still billions of yuan. In order to save money, the company plans to quit the office at the end of the year and implement the normal remote office.

In terms of buyers (suppliers), there are about 1000 active buyers in the foreign terminal, compared with about 3000 previously.

It is worth noting that since last year, many buyers and users have reported that the daily difficulty in withdrawing cash from foreign terminals has always been a state of delay. On the black cat complaint platform, the cumulative number of complaints from foreign terminals has exceeded 3400, "merchants do not deliver goods, no refund", "customer service does not accept the purchase of fake goods" and "long-term non refund fraud" are all recent complaints in the disaster areas.

According to the public information, the registered capital of the ocean terminal is 5.8 million yuan, and the paid in capital is 5.8 million yuan. At present, the company is facing 55 lawsuits involving a total amount of 5.6834 million yuan.

It is reported that Zeng Bibo held an online meeting with some shareholders and buyers on August 31. It was revealed that the amount of arrears in payment of foreign terminal was 200 million yuan, and there was also $38 million yuan. However, under the current situation, all the existing funds of the company will be used by the buyers still in operation.

Zeng Bibo said in an interview: "our money is used to develop business, not to wipe the bottom". It is reported that the settlement of payment for old orders and historical orders on all sellers' platforms before May 1 of the foreign terminal platform has been suspended. Zeng Bibo said that the sellers in operation can bring the company to the foreign terminal, and the management can be found to inject capital.

In the open letter, Zeng Bibo said that the foreign terminal capital settlement has been all settled overseas, and there is enough security. As for the debt left over by history, the foreign terminal company will not default on the debt, and the individual will not run away at will. "Even if it is selling goods live, I will want to pay off the debt.".

After that, Biyang wharf made it clear that it would not be released. "The platform, the users and the traffic are the important factors that we don't want to give up."

But the latest change is that the ocean terminal is looking for a sale. It is reported that Zeng Bibo is looking for a merger and acquisition of the foreign terminal to see if there is any capital to pay off the debt.

Why can't it last?

The main reason why the foreign terminal can't survive is that the business development is hindered and the orders are declining.

The content of the open letter shows that due to uncontrollable factors, customers' waiting time is prolonged, which leads to the decline and cancellation of orders; In order to retain the buyer's resources, the foreign terminal used its own operating funds to settle and collect the buyer's order funds in time. However, this further worsened its cash flow situation and triggered a chain reaction of many external suppliers' creditor's rights litigation and bank's loan withdrawal, and even the creditor's side froze the bank's funds for preservation through the domestic court.

"The court's freezing and preservation of foreign wharf bank's funds does not mean bankruptcy and the company is still in normal operation.". Zeng Bibo said.

In addition, the internal platform compliance transformation of the ocean terminal also faces major challenges. After the red chip (Overseas) structure was dismantled last year, in order to meet the compliance requirements of domestic capital market on cross-border business funds, tax and other aspects, the foreign terminal actively adjusted and rectified the violations. On May 1, the foreign terminal reconstructed and cut the fund settlement system of the platform, entrusted all of them to qualified Payment institutions, and all of them settled overseas.

"Due to this continuous compliance transformation, the fund settlement of the old orders in the history of the platform can not be settled in time, and the reconciliation information and data after the cutting of the fund settlement system of the new platform are not transparent enough. Many merchants and buyers on our platform have lost business confidence in the platform, so they choose to give up and leave." Zeng Bibo said.

It is reported that the foreign terminal is the first cross-border e-commerce platform to settle in tremon. In the cooperative live broadcast with Luo Yonghao, it has created a sales volume of 44.58 million yuan for a single live broadcast. In 2021, the sales volume of the cross-border flagship store of the foreign wharf is about 200 million yuan, ranking among the sales volume of the cross-border e-commerce of the shaking sound.

On the offline side, in 2020, foreign terminal announced that it planned to open 1000 offline stores in 100 cities within three years, covering 200-300 million new consumers in the third tier cities in the mode of self operation and franchise. As of June this year, six offline duty-free direct purchase shops have been opened in foreign wharf, which are distributed in Shanghai, Chongqing and other places.

The ocean terminal was once known as the first independent cross-border e-commerce enterprise in the whole cross-border e-commerce industry to obtain the annual total. But judging from the current difficulties, there is still a long way to go.

In the first quarter of 2017, aiyang's market share of Independent E-commerce terminal was 3.26%. However, in 2021, the market share of foreign terminal fell to 10.5% after tmall global, koala Haitao, Jingdong international, Suning international and vipshop international.

From the perspective of the development of overseas e-commerce platforms, they are in the process of continuous shutdown and contraction.

In July this year, China's early online shopping platform, eBay, announced its closure. Baby tree, as the "first stock of mother infant Internet", has been listed for three years and has been trapped in negative rumors such as false propaganda and layoffs, making it difficult to transform. Koala's team has shrunk from more than 400 in 2021 to less than 20. It is reported that the dau of Koala shopping in 2021 is less than 1 million yuan, and the annual transaction volume is less than 3 billion yuan, which is long gone. Miya app has also announced that it has stopped taking service. Last year, higo, a fashion shopping platform named "running brothers Season 3", announced that it was suspended.

However, in the actual experience of consumers, such as fake goods, lack of after-sales, slow logistics, high threshold of package delivery, lack of variety of goods and other issues have been repeatedly mentioned and complained. For overseas e-commerce, uncontrollable quality of goods source, unstable source of goods and insufficient commodity richness are all obstacles in the development process.

In the opinion of Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian consulting, the customer acquisition cost and operation efficiency of vertical e-commerce are too low to compete with the comprehensive e-commerce platform.

From the perspective of development mode, the vertical e-commerce's attracting customers, supply chain construction and operating costs are far higher than the comprehensive e-commerce platform, while the development mode with buyers as the core is difficult to compete with the comprehensive e-commerce platform in meeting consumer demand, experience and efficiency. As for the platform, the buyer system is the core to realize the expansion of business scale, but the platform is difficult to control the source of goods, which also makes the problem of fake goods frequently seen in the eyes of consumers. Between consumers and buyers, the platform often plays a balancing role, and it is difficult to completely solve the problem of counterfeit goods.

In the view of industry insiders, unstable supply is the main problem faced by vertical e-commerce, and the lack of brand resources, logistics capacity and settlement capacity will affect the stability of supply.

As far as the overseas shopping market is concerned, the scale has been expanding.

According to the 2021 China cross border e-commerce market data report of China e-commerce research center, last year, the number of overseas users in China was 155 million, and the scale of import cross-border e-commerce market was 3.2 trillion yuan, an increase of 14.28% compared with 2.8 trillion yuan in 2020. With the upgrading of consumption and the continuous optimization of cross-border e-commerce policies, the scale of overseas users will continue to rise.

According to Zhang Zhouping, director and senior analyst of B2B and cross border e-commerce Department of e-commerce research center, the penetration rate of cross-border e-commerce industry is related to the development of the industry and the growth of traditional foreign trade. Generally speaking, the penetration rate has been steadily increased in recent years. "At present, the emergence of independent stations and other modes will give cross-border e-commerce enterprises more channel choices, and will also drive the development of the industry scale."

Some people in the industry said that the key to the development of cross-border business lies in commodity quality, logistics performance and supply chain capabilities. The key is to solve the problem of counterfeit goods from the source and provide excellent and reliable after-sales ability. "In the long run, cross-border import business is an important territory that may eventually become an integrated e-commerce platform.".

Cross border e-commerce is worth noting in the overseas market. According to the data released by the General Administration of customs, the total value of China's import and export of goods trade in 2021 is 39.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 21.4% over 2020. Among them, China's cross-border e-commerce exports increased by 24.5% year-on-year.

The growth trend of overseas consumer market has become the basis for the development of China's cross-border e-commerce. Consumers' online consumption habits have gradually developed, supporting the continuous growth of cross-border e-commerce.

For the overseas shopping platforms, if they want to get a turnaround in the crisis, they should constantly force themselves to upgrade, jump out of the shackles of industry development, reshape consumer trust, and meet the real needs of consumers.


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