Big news! Is the Black Shark, which has laid off employees and owed wages, really a big seller on Amazon?

The end of the year has arrived, and as a worker, the thing I fear most is salary arrears.

Previously, the news that Global Easy Shopping defaulted on payments to suppliers seemed to be just yesterday. Recently, Black Shark Technology, once a "net celebrity" in the domestic technology industry, was also caught up in the controversy of defaulting on layoff compensation. Many employees have started the long road of rights protection, but this year seems to be difficult for everyone......

This news also swept the cross-border circle. There are rumors that Black Shark Technology is also a big seller on Amazon. Is this true? Kanmei conducted an investigation.

Black Shark is caught up in a layoff and wage arrears storm!

Employee: Give me back my hard-earned money!

Whether you have money or not, you go home to celebrate the New Year, but if you have no money, how can you have a good New Year?

In the past 2022, the wave of layoffs seemed to sweep across many companies in the technology industry. Black Shark Technology also laid off nearly 80% of its employees from August to December last year, from a company of more than 1,000 people to more than 100 people , and the compensation to be paid was between 70 million and 80 million yuan . It is understood that the official blog of Black Shark Technology has been updated since October last year, and the official blog of Black Shark Gaming Phone was recently updated on January 1.

More importantly, in recent days, Black Shark Technology has been facing criticism from all sides due to its overdue layoff compensation, especially the dissatisfaction of its employees, which has caused a huge wave on the Internet.

Recently, Black Shark Mobile issued a notice to some laid-off employees, saying, "Since the company encountered huge operating difficulties, we have been committed to paying compensation in this special period. This month, we are sorry to inform you that the severance pay cannot be paid in full as agreed . We will continue to try our best to solve the funding problem and strive to pay the remaining severance pay as soon as possible."

Image source: Weibo

As a result, the notice caused a lot of dissatisfaction among employees, and many employees started to defend their rights. According to media reports, there was a banner in the office of Black Shark Technology, which read: Black Shark Technology owes wages, give me back my hard-earned money!

Image source: Weibo

In addition, Luo Yuzhou, the legal representative and CEO of Black Shark Technology, left many comments in the comment section of his Weibo account, asking for compensation and indemnity. One of the comments showed that many people said they only received 2,000 yuan , which is far from the compensation they should have received in the contract ( the "N+1" compensation for layoffs is divided into six installments ). Therefore, many people in the comment section questioned: "How can I go home for the New Year?"

Image source: Weibo

We can also see from this incident the symbiosis between enterprises and employees. Once an enterprise has problems, most of the people who "take the lead" are us workers. This is both an unspoken rule in our society and the helplessness of many people.

Of course, to be able to create such a wave, we also checked the background of Black Shark Technology. According to Tianyancha, Black Shark Technology belongs to Xiaomi Group. Since its marketing methods and technology are backed by Xiaomi, how did Black Shark Technology get to this point?

Image source: Qichacha

Black Shark, who is not loved by his father and mother,

Is it still selling well on Amazon or 3C?

In recent years, e-sports mobile phones have gradually become popular, and I thought that Black Shark's development would be good, but the reality is not the case.

When someone talked about Black Shark, he said that Lei Jun, Liu Jiangfeng and Luo Yonghao had all endorsed it. The Black Shark products were indeed good at the time and were very popular. Black Shark Technology also had the ambition to build an ecological gaming industry and received support from many parties. But now Black Shark is caught up in layoffs and wage arrears. What went wrong?

A more public statement is that after the release of the Black Shark 3 generation of mobile phones, Black Shark began to plan VR gaming equipment and invested a huge amount of money in research and development in half a year. However, Xiaomi was not interested in VR equipment, so Black Shark began to seek a "financial sponsor". Later, Tencent came to Black Shark and invested a large amount of money in it and negotiated acquisition matters.

However, since the Tencent acquisition was shelved, Black Shark was almost in a situation of "neither father nor mother loved", and then Black Shark encountered various problems. Regarding this acquisition dispute, Black Shark, Xiaomi and Tencent had the following tug-of-war in 2022:

• In January 2022, it was reported that Xiaomi wanted to sell Black Shark for 3 billion, but Tencent cut the price to 2 billion.

• In May 2022, it was rumored that Tencent gave up the acquisition of Black Shark Technology. Since then, there has been no new progress on the financing of Black Shark mobile phones. Black Shark has not updated any new mobile phone products for 8 months.

• In October 2022, some media reported that Black Shark was drastically reducing the number of jobs, and the job cuts involved all departments of the company.

• At the end of 2022, some media broke the rumor about Black Shark’s technical personnel adjustments.

As a well-known domestic e-sports mobile technology brand, in addition to mobile phone products, Black Shark's products cover almost all the needs of game users, including heat sinks, headphones, mobile phone accessories, etc. In addition to the domestic market, we searched for the brand Black Shark on Amazon US and found that many products are very popular overseas. The ratings of Black Shark's two Bluetooth headsets are both over 5,000 .

Image source: Amazon

When we clicked into the official store of Black Shark brand, we found that the company associated with the brand store is an independent business company in Shenzhen, and has no connection with the aforementioned Nanchang Black Shark Technology and its subsidiaries. Some sellers speculated that the Black Shark products on Amazon are likely to be operated by its brand dealers.

Image source: Amazon

Even if Black Shark Technology operates the Black Shark brand directly on Amazon, it is hard to say whether it can make a profit given the current asset-heavy development trend of Amazon. In addition, in the increasingly competitive 3C market, it is difficult to gain a foothold on Amazon without strong products as core competitiveness and a professional operation team.

From being favored by investors to now being deserted with only a few employees left, it has to be said that the world has changed a lot. Does Black Shark still have a future? It is still unknown.