Wang Youxin, an Internet worker who left his job in Yiwu without leaving, | Yiwu | Entrepreneurship
On the day Wang Zhixin arrived in Yiwu, it was a scorching afternoon. Outside the International Trade City, a continuous stream of cars queue up towards the parking lot.
When taking a taxi, Wang Zhixin heard from a Didi driver that there have been more outsiders appearing in Yiwu this year.
"Yiwu fever" has also appeared on the recent Internet: on the social networking platform, groups of young people are investigating, starting businesses in Yiwu, or on their way to Yiwu.
They wrote down various strategies after the investigation of Yiwu. In their notes, phrases like "visiting Yiwu, values collapsed" and "it seems like there are business opportunities everywhere" are frequently seen. After leaving the Internet industry actively or passively, many of them turned their life goals to starting their own businesses or seeking sidelines. As a paradise for low-cost entrepreneurship, Yiwu easily caught the attention of these young people.
Yiwu is not the end of these people, but this place full of wealth dreams may become a section of their choice. When they brought their past experience to Yiwu, they found that the story here was also full of opportunities, hesitation and disappointment.
Yiwu International Trade City.
To Yiwu
When asking for goods at the stall of Yiwu International Trade City, Wang Zhixin is sometimes a seller who strives for more, and sometimes a shopkeeper who is doing Tiktok to try cross-border e-commerce.
She wants to look sophisticated enough, but occasionally comes up with some Internet words. "How many SKUs do you have in total at the stall?" The shopkeeper fell silent for a few seconds, obviously not understanding. She asked in a different way, "How many styles are there?"
In the first district of Yiwu Commercial City, almost every stall has a banner reading "Business is thriving" hanging on its door. Not every store would stop, Wang Zhixin usually targets merchants with popular products in the store to inquire. Shop owners will raise a few questions, whether to do domestic or foreign trade? On which platform is it sold?
After several inquiries, she roughly understood that the minimum quantity of accessories here varies, but many require thousands, and most merchants do not support single item shipping. Some merchants have in stock, some need to place orders before production, or they can customize, with a cycle usually ranging from 5 to 10 days.
After consulting with the vendor, Wang Zhixin will proactively request a business card or add the owner's WeChat account. Afraid of not matching her account, she would pick up her business card and take a photo of the store.
Subsequently, she sent the inquired goods and prices to a WeChat group. Many people in the group are business novices who want to come to Yiwu for inspection. Not long ago, Wang Zhixin posted a post about his investigation in Yiwu on social media. The post has become popular. Private messages flooded in like a tide, and many young people contacted her to go to Yiwu for investigation together. Wang Zhixin took the opportunity to start his own media business. This is almost the professional inertia that most Internet practitioners have. They used to serve the Internet, but now they also want to seek more possibilities for their own entrepreneurship and sidelines through the Internet.
Wang Zhixin's post has attracted a group of young people who want to go to Yiwu to explore entrepreneurship.
This is not Wang Zhixin's first time coming to Yiwu. A few years ago, Wang Zhixin also walked through these checkpoints. At that time, she was still working in a large factory, doing white label business for factory goods. When taking inventory, Wang Zhixin saw that the prices of the goods were very low, and with curiosity, he decided to go to Yiwu for a look. At that time, she strolled around, but didn't see anything significant. In addition to verifying that luxury cars can be seen everywhere like online legends, she, like a group of curious tourists, took a look and left.
This is almost the feeling of those who don't know how to come to Yiwu. Even local Li Shasha was only shocked for the first time when she visited the commercial city with the purpose of investigation after leaving her job. She almost got lost wandering.
When it comes to the Yiwu International Trade City, it has been repeatedly mentioned that there are 75000 stalls. If each stall stays for 5 minutes, it will take more than a year to complete this small commodity maze.
Lisa's mother has a stall in the commercial city, but from childhood to adulthood, Lisa occasionally went straight to her mother's stall and never paid close attention to the entrance of the goods in the stall. After preparing to do jewelry e-commerce, Li Shasha found out for the first time with the data analyzed by the platform that there is a huge difference in prices, elements, and preferences between domestic and foreign jewelry. Behind a piece of jewelry, there will be details such as whether the material is color protected and whether the packaging is environmentally friendly, all of which are related to later sales and logistics.
Once again in Yiwu, Wang Zhixin has left the Internet industry and become an entrepreneur. But unlike most entrepreneurs who want to do small commodity business live streaming and sales in Yiwu, Yiwu's business opportunity for her does not lie in a single small commodity category.
Shortly after leaving, Wang Zhixin returned to his hometown of Hegang. She met many friends in her hometown who were promoting products on the platform. They all have similar confusion: doing e-commerce without a source of goods, doing one piece shipping, and recently being banned by the platform, the payment for goods is delayed and cannot be withdrawn; I have ready-made users who want to try short videos and live streaming sales, but I don't know how to get started.
For many years in a large factory, Wang Zhixin has a precise sense of the hot selling products on the platform. Her idea is to integrate the network and resources she has accumulated over the years, empower the information and supply advantages of first tier cities, and bring them back to fourth - and fifth tier cities.
This time in Yiwu, Wang Zhixin met local business friends. My friends also felt the sudden surge of people in Yiwu this year. He helps people book hotels and often encounters full rooms. Someone approached him for advice on live streaming sales, and shortly after, he made millions of yuan by buying glue.
There are countless wealth stories like this, and Yiwu still has a unique attraction for many young people who are tired of working in the workplace: it has the world's most comprehensive small commodity categories, developed factory supply chains, low warehousing costs, and a huge logistics system. The huge price difference with the outside world seems to breed business opportunities everywhere. Many young people, after resigning naked and losing their jobs, rush to Yiwu one after another in order to realize their dream of becoming rich.
In the commercial city, Wang Zhixin looked at the busy stall in front of her and said, "Everyone's time is busy making money, and no one talks to you about their dreams." As she said this, the sound of packaging kept tearing off the tape in her ears.
Working? Entrepreneurship?
Wang Zhixin did not shy away from making money. When he first entered the Internet industry, it was also because it made more money.
In the past ten years, she has worked for three Internet companies, including the first-line Internet "big factory", and operated over 100 million level projects. In the golden development period of the Internet, Wang Zhixin also bought a house and a car near the "Dachang".
The idea of starting a business actually came to her mind a long time ago, but Wang Zhixin always felt that the timing was not mature enough. "Lack of this, lack of that. In fact, only after it came out did she realize that there was no need to wait for everything to be prepared before doing it. Take off first and then adjust her posture.".
If it weren't for last year's layoffs, Lisa might not have started her business so quickly.
Growing up in Yiwu with a strong business atmosphere, Li Shasha initially opposed doing business. She felt that there were no rules and regulations here, and wild growth relied more on hard work and adventure. She appreciated the work system and atmosphere of "big factories" with rules and methodology. When her hometown friends of the same age all drove Porsche, BMW, and Mercedes Benz, she lived comfortably in a large factory with a salary and never regretted working with a group of excellent people, gaining a broader mindset and perspective.
Last March, Li Shasha, who was well informed, realized that she was likely to be laid off: she had only been in the department for two years and the position was on the edge, so she started submitting resumes to find a way out. In May, she received a layoff notice from the company.
At the moment of receiving the notice, Lisa felt that her boots had finally fallen to the ground. It only took about ten minutes for her to sign the resignation contract. She remembers HR saying that being laid off didn't affect her second career, but at that moment, she didn't realize that she didn't want to return to the workplace after deciding to start a business.
After submitting more than 20 resumes but not receiving satisfactory job opportunities, Lisa gave up struggling. Unlike others, Yiwu is actually a retreat for her. This is her unique advantage: her family has been doing jewelry foreign trade business for many years, and her friends told her that it is not too late to enter the market now, and cross-border e-commerce is still on the rise. From childhood to adulthood, Li Shasha was more familiar with the profits of this industry than others, and soon decided to return to Yiwu to investigate jewelry and do cross-border e-commerce.
More Xiaobai businesses from the Internet are not as lucky as her. Liu Nan was also laid off by a large factory. In order to stay in Beijing, she has to pay a monthly rent of over 3000 yuan on the East Third Ring Road. In order not to worry her parents, she also helps them pay social and medical insurance for a year. After a fierce battle in the job market, Liu Nan suddenly became clear headed. An HR friend told her that just one day after a regular position was released, the backend received over 500 resumes, including large factories and elite overseas returnees. "I used to think it was me who couldn't do it, my abilities weren't enough." Liu Nan no longer doubted herself and decided to start her own business.
Liu Nan, who loves handicrafts, accidentally stumbled upon a live streaming room selling beads and found that so many netizens were squatting in the room to buy beads. She tried to grab it, but failed once. Since then, she has been immersed in more than 20 different live streaming rooms day and night, observing whether the sales model is mixed or individual, and the pricing of different live streaming rooms.
"This may be an opportunity," Liu Nan thought.
Some people have decided to find a job first, understand every chain, and then start a business. After arriving in Yiwu, Wu Miao, who left the Internet industry naked, gave himself three days to decide where to live and work. Because of her previous experience, Wu Miao soon found an operation job in a Tiktok e-commerce training base. She rented a single room next to the company for 1000 yuan a month.
At first, her plan for herself was to start numbering and selecting products while working. But the company has strict KPI assessment for employees. Starting from the one month inspection period, we only look at whether the sales of the live broadcast room have been steadily increasing. If the project does not meet the standards, we will leave.
During that period, Wu Miao had to follow the start time of the broadcast every day. In order to measure the best selling time period, sometimes it starts broadcasting in the morning, and sometimes it lasts until late at night. She spent almost all her time on account operation and didn't take a day off in the first month.
Fortunately, the daily sales can reach around 100000 yuan, and Wu Miao can also earn around 10000 yuan in monthly income. However, most companies here do not pay the five insurances and one fund for their employees. Wu Miao has paid her flexible employment social security.
Ways to make money
On another scorching noon, Wang Zhixin and the netizens she contacted online made an appointment in Xiazhu Village, north of Yiwu. Beixiazhu Village has been the hottest live streaming village in Yiwu for a long time. Broadcasters and influencers from all over the country are heading north to Zhu, dreaming of starting their wealth from this "first village of live streaming internet celebrities".
Wang Zhixin and netizens are meeting in Beixiazhu Village.
Among them, there are people like Wang Zhixin who have resigned and are preparing to start their own businesses, as well as those who are looking for part-time job opportunities. Except for a few who have already targeted specific categories, the vast majority are still clueless novices.
On this day, Wang Zhixin led them to inspect the explosive product base and the e-commerce live streaming college. The infrastructure related to live streaming e-commerce is widely spread in the north. Compared to the thousands of minimum orders in the commercial city, here we can achieve one item delivery or collaborate with experts, making it more convenient for novices to start from a low cost.
It was also at the scene of Xiaobai being "chopped off with leeks" that Wang Zhixin saw for the first time in the north. Not long ago, Wang Youxin brushed the training organization account related to e-commerce live broadcast on Tiktok. The account has a complete training system, and what is even more enviable is the traffic and sales volume of the account. Although he knew there might be tricks involved, Wang Zhixin decided to take a look offline. The classroom of the training institution is almost filled with people, and the teacher on the podium is introducing how to contact influencers to bring goods. A student sitting in the last row, after chatting with Wang Zhixin, repeatedly advised her to leave, "Don't enroll in classes, otherwise you will regret it.". After adding Wang Zhixin's WeChat account, he sent her the complete information and told her that the so-called training is to read the materials from beginning to end, and the price for enrolling in classes is 6999 yuan.
Wu Miao has relevant experience and can easily identify common tricks. He firmly believes that no amount of training is better than down-to-earth investigation. Every day when she goes to work, she pays attention to the ranking list in the software backend and observes which category sells best. On weekends or after work, she rides an electric bike with her roommates, starting from the dormitory and heading towards the commercial city and the vicinity of Beixiazhu Village, more than ten kilometers away, to inspect and appreciate the goods. When she arrived, Wu Miao felt her buttocks numb. Every time, she sighed that it would be great if there was a car. About a month later, Wu Miao and her roommate almost ran through the supply chains, factories, and live streaming rooms of all sizes in Yiwu, with many contact information of bosses and entrepreneurs stored on their phones.
In Yiwu, there is a saying that is widely circulated among many people, "Eight point product selection, two point operation." Wu Miao firmly believes that if the product selection is good, orders can explode in minutes. But Wu Miao knows that no one wants to tell you the specific ways to truly make money. She has seen a boss who has sold out cross-border e-commerce, and in order to prevent people from seeing the products they are doing, the store is always closed when passing by. After reading the story of Yiwu where she became rich overnight, she insisted that making big money depends on opportunities and connections.
Li Shasha may be the lucky person in Wu Miao's mouth. Returning to Hangzhou with over 1000 yuan worth of goods approved for the first time in the commercial city, Lisa quickly opened multiple e-commerce platform stores both domestically and internationally. At first, she wanted to pursue the e-commerce business of domestic and international jewelry simultaneously. Not long after, she realized that it didn't work. The best-selling jewelry in China couldn't be sold overseas, and the elements that foreign customers liked were not interesting in China. She decided to give up domestic platforms and focus on cross-border e-commerce, making men's jewelry.
A month and a half later, Lisa finally sold her first order. When a Russian customer placed an order, Lisa had not yet completed the entire sales process. She hurried to buy a machine for printing face sheets and face sheets corresponding to different countries, bound her Alipay account, contacted the courier, and sent her first international package from Hangzhou. "She calculated the cost and international shipping, and there was no loss on this one. 'I'm super happy,'" she said
In the early stages, Li Shasha had to take on most of the work herself, except for having her friends take photos and design the products for her. While constantly upgrading her products, she was also expanding new platforms. Li Shasha, who used to work in operations, felt like she was not only an operator, but also a buyer and warehouse administrator, as if she had rotated every position in a large factory. "Which link went wrong? Maybe we won't be able to ship the goods this year."
Due to manpower issues, her movements are very slow. In the first few months, Lisa's monthly income was not even half of what she had when she was in a large factory, and her orders were only a few hundred. "But my business has been on the rise and I haven't been too anxious." It wasn't until six months later that she finally felt that her business had picked up.
Lisa can imagine that if she were an outsider, she would encounter many barriers when she first entered the game. But fortunately, she avoided all of this. With a local circle of family and friends doing business, Lisa has more convenient access to the resources she wants than others. Due to her previous work experience, Li Shasha is familiar with e-commerce rules. Although she may not be as good as high-end sellers, she knows better than those small and medium-sized sellers how to distribute traffic, and can also recognize tricks and language in buying and selling.
Without these connections and resources, Liu Nan had to rely on his own exploration. She began to truly have a concept of money and went to buy and sell goods. She thought that the boss in the live broadcast room would erase the change from the previous friendship, but as a result, the other party would calculate every dollar and every penny very clearly.
After visiting the original factory for inspection, Liu Nan learned that the most primitive prices of the beads he had seen in the live broadcast room were one yuan per bead, which may only cost one or two cents when leaving the factory. She went to buy data monitoring from the platform and found out that she had seen a live broadcast room with 70 to 80 people watching at the same time. If it continued to play for two or three hours, the daily sales would reach 20000 yuan, and the profit could be over 10000 yuan.
After the shock brought by price and profit, the actual problem immediately lay before her. She batch these beads and how to quickly sell them after making them into finished products?
In fact, after arriving in Yiwu, Liu Nan started opening a store on the platform, but the reality was far more complex than she had imagined. She had not actually operated the qualifications required to open a store, how to advertise, and the backend operations. Before really starting to operate, Liu Nan thought that the past Internet theory and experience could help her get started quickly, but she soon realized that what she knew was only a scratch. In her own words, she did not reduce the granularity of the problem.
Flow
"Unemployed Internet people want to go to Yiwu to start their own businesses, so is Yiwu really suitable for starting their own businesses?" On the last day of the survey in Yiwu, Liu Nan sat in a hotel room and recorded a video in front of the camera. She said in the video, "Yiwu can make money, and the key point of making money is the profit range generated by the difference between the price of goods and the price of information, but it needs to plan in advance to run through the entire sales link." This video has received tens of thousands of praise, becoming her most popular content at present.
Liu Nan expressed his feelings about visiting Yiwu in Tiktok and received thousands of praises.
After working in Hangzhou for several months, Li Shasha finally moved her entrepreneurial base back to Yiwu. When the link started running, she found that there was no place that had an advantage compared to Yiwu. In Yiwu, where the ecological chain was very complete and mature, she could find professionals specialized in product photography, with abundant packaging and manual resources, as well as low express delivery costs and warehouses. Moreover, this place is closer to the source of goods.
She remembers that during the Spring Festival this year, she often packed in the warehouse until midnight. Although busy, she feels full of energy and can always earn money while lying at home during holidays. She calculated that her monthly income now is more than twice her original salary in a large factory.
This year, Lisa used her earnings to make installment payments to buy a car. Now, she will no longer get lost shuttling through the commercial city and can become a tour guide with ease.
She looked at the young people constantly rushing into Yiwu, hoping that their high education and high-quality background would bring more fresh blood to Yiwu, but at the same time, she felt that the timing of her entry was just right. If she were to be laid off this year, she might also be anxious.
After hearing the news of layoffs from a large factory not long ago, Liu Nan lost sleep for another whole night. This means that the job market will once again attract a wave of talented people to compete with oneself.
During his days in Yiwu, Liu Nan found that almost everyone in front of him was too busy to stop. The wealthy landlady still insists on going to the stall every day and doing similar things to her employees. There are also big bosses who personally drive to another city overnight to pick up the goods that fans want. In this environment, she couldn't help but sigh, "Diligence can really lead to wealth.".
After returning to Beijing from Yiwu, Liu Nan felt that he couldn't keep up with the speed of Yiwu and completely felt the advantage of being in Yiwu. The beads were sent to her hands and then made into finished products. Before sales could increase, a large number of new models were already being launched in Yiwu. The cost of express delivery is also a problem that she finds difficult to solve. In Yiwu, a single express delivery can be as cheap as 1.2 yuan, while in Beijing, small businesses like her who do not have a minimum quantity can get a friendly price of around 8 yuan per order.
She tried to turn her beading process into content and post it on social media, which also attracted a wave of fans, but when she hung the product link on the showcase, many times no one paid attention. She tried setting up a stall, although it wasn't smooth either, she was finally able to make a comeback.
Over a period of more than three months, from being a novice to having a certain understanding of the industry, Liu Nan witnessed firsthand a product category that had just gained public attention, developing into a price war. Many of the merchants she followed had to choose to withdraw because they couldn't afford it. The rapid changes in the market made her unable to help but sigh.
Wu Miao, who is in Yiwu, understands better the taste of Liu Nan's inability to wait for traffic and sales. Here, it's impetuous. "Those who do well may sell tens of thousands of orders in a day, but those who do poorly may not sell a single order." She has met many entrepreneurial friends around her and frequently falls into anxiety. "Unless you are very confident about this project, then these days can be endured, and there may be a turning point right away." Wu Miao said that whenever she has a 70% or 80% chance of success, she would immediately start a business, but now she only has about 30%.
In another month or two, Wu Miao's house will expire, and she is preparing to resign at that time, truly starting her entrepreneurial journey in Yiwu. Before that, she decided to save money again.
There is still a steady stream of people who have found Wang Zhixin and want to investigate Yiwu with her. Another weekend, Wang Zhixin took them to the factory, live broadcast room, and warehouse. She, who has been sitting in the office for a long time, has not conducted such a step-by-step on-site inspection in a long time. In a live streaming village, she met an influencer waiting to make jokes. A middle-aged aunt takes videos every day at different factory stores and supply chain entrances to promote goods. She tells Wang Zhixin that she can always earn living expenses and is also waiting for the day when orders explode.
One late night, Wang Zhixin visited a live broadcast room with an average of 10000 orders per day. In the basement, the anchors have to broadcast until the latter half of the night every day, maintaining a rhythm of daytime rest, afternoon delivery, and evening live broadcast without stopping. And in a late night live broadcast room like Yiwu, it's everywhere.
Wang Zhixin recalled the previous wave of netizens who came with her to investigate, "After they came to see it, they may have taken no further step forward, and it's still the same as before."
