Large cross-border service providers collapsed after failing to pay employees wages and running away with the money

Another cross-border service provider has collapsed, affecting a wide range of sellers . Since last year's trademark scandal, it seemed that the only way out for this service provider was bankruptcy. Finally, what was supposed to happen finally happened!

A large cross-border service provider ran away, affecting a large number of sellers

On May 27, a large number of cross-border sellers received a message from ** Growth’s customer service, saying that due to the company’s changes, the corporate WeChat account would no longer be used for work, and asked them to add their personal accounts. Seller Wang Bin also received a message, saying that ** Growth was going to run away, and that the message he received came from a group message from ** Growth’s employees.

Employees no longer work together, which led to the downfall of ** Growth. According to insiders, the company behind Seller Growth, * Hai Group, has issued a relevant notice to inform employees of the difficulties faced by the company. The general content includes two points:

1. Wages owed to employees cannot be paid in time. The company has recently conducted multiple rounds of intensive communication with investors in different roles, but the other party still has some details or risk concerns that have not been finalized, and the investment cannot be received in time for the time being.

2. Allow employees to find new jobs on their own. The company has been working hard to find a solution. If you are in difficulty or cannot wait any longer, you can consider looking for other employment opportunities.

Once this notice was issued, the employees of *Hai Group could no longer remain calm. A letter suspected to be jointly issued by the employees to sue their seller friends was leaked.

The letter first made it clear that they all worked in sales, customer service, delivery and other positions in *Hai Group (*Haiyun, **Zhengzhang, **Cloud, **Cloud).

Secondly , the current situation of *Hai Group was mentioned : On April 14, the group informed internal employees that it would only pay 5,000 yuan per month starting from March as a basic guarantee for their lives, citing operational difficulties, and promised to settle the remaining wages within 3 months. However, as of May 26, no wages for April were paid, and the remaining wages have not yet been settled. Employees are still communicating with the company .

On May 25, the Group issued an announcement to the remaining employees , stating that as the new funding party has yet to finalize the formal cooperation, the Group recommends that the employees seek other employment opportunities on their own (i.e. the notice to employees mentioned above).

Finally, the employees expressed that they were ready to negotiate for their wages with the group for a long time.

An employee working for *Hai Group told Yien.com that he is now trying to find a way to ask for his salary. The company's difficulties did not come suddenly, and it has been in a buffer period before.

At the same time, an internal message from the head of sales at the Shenzhen branch of the Shanghai Group was also leaked. The head told his colleagues that, given the company's current situation, they had several options: one was to go to a company under the control of the company; the second was to go out and find a new buyer on their own; the third was to follow him and find a new buyer together.

All kinds of news have confirmed that *Hai Group has run into trouble. Industry insiders bluntly said that *Hai Group is actually running away with the money. It does not pay employees' salaries, does not settle accounts with foreign lawyers, and does not provide services to sellers. It is preparing to close down. Once it closes down, it will leave. The boss will run away with the money, and the employees, sellers and partners in various chains will suffer.

For sellers who have cooperated with *Hai, *Hai employees have summarized some suggestions in view of the current company situation:

1. VAT business: Keep your historical declarations, payment receipts and tax number certificates, and transfer them out in time. If you are unable to deliver subsequent declarations, use the last quarterly, monthly or annual receipt to transfer to the agent.

2. Trademark business : Customers who have placed orders and submitted them and received receipts can have their orders delivered normally. However, for most customers who have placed orders but have not received receipts, it may be difficult for them to place orders again.

3. Compliant EPR : such as packaging law, weee, battery law, etc. Those who renewed in 2023 and those who have registered and renewed in 2024 or have submitted the number can use it normally this year. If the renewal is not successful, you need to re-register.

4. Refund : Refunds are definitely not available at the moment, and it is recommended that sellers directly seek redress.

*Hai Group is also a large service provider with a certain reputation in the industry. Its business covers VAT tax numbers, trademarks, certifications, etc., especially its ** growing trademark registration service, which has been used by a large number of sellers. Many people will surely be implicated in this incident.

One seller couldn't help but sigh: "It's really easy to make mistakes when doing business on Amazon, and it's hard to protect your rights. My trademark was exposed when I was selling on ** Growth, and I had to spend money to change the service provider to register. Now there are problems every day!"

Closure is expected

In Wang Bin's opinion, the collapse of *Hai Group was inevitable sooner or later. He had worked with **Zhengzhang before and knew that this problem was not accidental.

As early as a month ago, some sellers discovered that they no longer gave receipts for registering TM trademarks on ** Growth. They only collected money but did not register with the United States Trademark Office.

Last November, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released a document listing 53,000 U.S. trademarks that were likely to be cancelled due to non-compliance. The document mentioned the illegal operations of several major cross-border intellectual property service providers such as ** Growth, which were suspected of providing false information to submit product trademark information, and the number was alarming.

Sellers were all worried and checked the list provided by the Trademark Office. Some sellers found that their trademarks were listed, and some sellers even had multiple trademarks on the list.

After hearing the news of ** Growth’s trademark explosion, Wang Bin contacted the service provider immediately, but the result was still asking him to wait. According to him, as early as 2022, he found ** Growth to cooperate and agreed to place 4 trademarks at a price of about 3,000 yuan each. Because it takes a certain period of time to place a trademark, he rarely urged during this period. After a year, there was still no movement on his trademark, and every time he consulted afterwards, the staff asked him to wait.

In November last year , nearly two years after Wang Bin’s trademark application was submitted, news of the failure of the ** Growth trademark came, which completely extinguished his hope. He realized that his trademark might be doomed. He was indignant at the time. Seeing a group of colleagues saying that they would crowdfund lawyer fees to sue ** Growth, he felt that it was useless to sue, as the company would definitely go bankrupt in the future and it would not have the money to compensate the sellers.

Wang Bin said frankly that after a large number of trademarks were exposed, the company would definitely go bankrupt. Because as long as it is still alive, there will be sellers who will go to protect their rights and ask for money. Sellers will definitely ask for an explanation if the trademark is not released after paying money.

For cross-border sellers, paying the money but not getting the trademark is not the most fatal thing. What everyone cares more about is the trademark. For example, when an Amazon seller’s product is halfway sold and there is a problem with the registered trademark, it will definitely be difficult to re-register because the trademark has been fined by the United States Trademark Office. In addition, many sellers are worried that the problematic trademark will be abused by Amazon’s backend, which will involve the seller’s account and financial security issues, bringing great hidden risks to the seller’s business!

**The growing trademark service, as one of the important businesses of *Hai Group, may have doomed *Hai's fate after the trademark explosion incident.

In recent years, there have been many cases of service providers going bankrupt and running away. According to insiders, after such companies go bankrupt, the funds in the seller's account are in the red. Even if the seller does not run away, it seems that there is nothing the seller can do. After the service provider goes bankrupt, thousands of sellers have almost no way to protect their rights. Once again, we remind everyone to be careful when selecting service providers.

Thunder

Big Sell