The company went bankrupt and used the store to pay wages, but the operation took over and turned a profit

Some companies simply announced their dissolution, paid back the wages owed, and then said goodbye. Other companies were already penniless and had no choice but to use their only "assets" to pay the operating staff to pay the wages.

The company went bankrupt, and the boss used the store to pay the operation salary

In recent years, the cross-border e-commerce industry has begun a major reshuffle. With the entry of giants such as Temu, TikTok and Alibaba, the living space of small and medium-sized sellers has been severely squeezed, and some companies have directly declared bankruptcy and left the market.

According to Xiaoliang , an Amazon operator , in mid-October this year, the company he had worked for for a year officially announced its dissolution. Since the capital chain had been broken at the time, the company's leadership negotiated with Xiaoliang to use two Amazon stores to pay off one and a half months' salary.

It is understood that when Xiaoliang first joined the company, he was responsible for opening up new stores, and he did not receive any commissions, but only a fixed salary. At the beginning, Xiaoliang's monthly base salary was about 10,000 yuan, but later it gradually dropped to 8,000 or 7,000 yuan due to the poor performance of the company. Later, the company even began to delay salary payments, sometimes not paying for a month or two.

In the end, the money was all gone, and the store still didn't improve. The two bosses lost 700,000 to 800,000 yuan in half a year, and decided to cut their losses. When the few remaining operators in the company were told that the company was going to be dissolved, they could only accept it calmly. However, they did not accept the store as a salary like Xiaoliang, but insisted on waiting until the day when they could get their salaries.

According to Xiaoliang , after he joined the company, he was always told what to do by his superiors, but in fact, several superiors did not know much about Amazon. However, in the eyes of the superiors, the main reason for losing money on Amazon was that Xiaoliang had problems with his operational capabilities, and they invested so much money but did not see any splash.

Both sides insisted on their own opinions, and each believed that the other should bear the blame. But no matter what, the fact that the company went bankrupt has already happened, and there is no point in continuing to argue. However, Xiaoliang plans to use practical actions to prove that there is no problem with his operational ability.

In order to prove himself, Xiaoliang started to operate the two stores independently after taking over them, taking full responsibility for everything from product selection to delivery. Of course, the biggest problem facing an independent store is funding. When funds were insufficient, Xiaoliang even borrowed money from a lending platform to keep going.

Fortunately, hard work pays off. Xiaoliang's shop started to make a profit in January this year, and the loan is expected to be repaid smoothly in a few months.

According to the order information released by Xiaoliang, although there was no huge explosion of orders, the store can basically guarantee orders every day, and the average order value is not low . It is not a problem to sell 1,000 to 2,000 US dollars a day.

After Xiaoliang's story spread online, it sparked heated discussions among the majority of workers. Many workers said they had experienced similar situations as Xiaoliang, but they did not have the courage to jump out and work alone, and said that Xiaoliang had helped the majority of workers vent their anger.

However, some people questioned the authenticity of Xiaoliang's story. After all, the market is so bad now. He couldn't do well in the company. How could he suddenly succeed as a single person? "It's obviously a made-up story," many netizens commented.

Regardless of whether this story is true or false, there is one indisputable fact: sometimes being larger in scale does not necessarily mean making more money for Amazon.

A large number of sellers died due to expansion, and traveling light may be the best solution

In the cross-border circle, there have been many cases of sellers dying from blind expansion.

In the first half of 2023, considering the rapid growth of performance in the previous two years, Amazon entrepreneur Mark decided to start expanding: expanding the team , moving into a larger office, and developing more new products.

But things did not go as planned. After working hard for nearly a year, Mark found that the company's overall revenue had only increased slightly, but costs had risen sharply, and the per capita output ratio was seriously lower than the average level of previous years.

"Lowering expectations, small and beautiful is the best way out for the company." After realizing this problem, at the beginning of 2024, Mark began to formulate a layoff plan, striving to return the company to previous years' profit levels starting this year .

In addition to Mark, many sellers have discovered in the process of continuous trial and error that the era of wild growth of cross-border e-commerce has long passed, and the era of testing the comprehensive strength of a company has officially arrived. Under the business thinking of product being king and supply chain as the basis, refined operations, cost reduction and efficiency improvement are essential to keep up with the times.

Luis was one of the first sellers to realize the problems that come with blind expansion.

It is understood that Luis first came into contact with the cross-border e-commerce industry in 2015. After working in several companies to learn operational experience, he officially started working alone in 2018.

The industry was developing rapidly at that time, and Luis's store revenue soared like a rocket. But facing the sudden surge in performance, Luis seemed a little overwhelmed.

"The ceiling for development if you work alone is definitely very low. Only by developing a team and training people to delegate tasks, freeing up your time and hands, can you have the time and energy to do other things." This is what Luis thought at the time.

Luis's original operations team was small, with only three people including his assistant . After the expansion, the team size increased to nearly 20 people, and the office was moved from the original residential building to a spacious and bright office building.

I thought the next step was to wait for the performance to take off, but unexpectedly, a few months later, several of Luis ' best-selling links were besieged and blocked by similar sellers, and were even taken off the shelves, causing the company's business to stagnate for a short time.

“Expanding a team is more complicated than you might think. If you simply expand a company without the corresponding ability to resist risks, then the hit products you once prided yourself on will become a time bomb that drags down the company . ” Luis concluded after experiencing this .

From pursuing expansion to sticking to small and beautiful, sellers like Luis found that team expansion brought many disadvantages to the company:

First of all, expansion means moving into a larger office and hiring more employees. Rent, utilities, employee salaries and social security are all expenses that must be borne every month.

Secondly, expansion is not as simple as recruiting people and selling goods. It involves various aspects such as talent training, product line planning, finance, management, etc. Each aspect requires a mature management system , and it is difficult for ordinary small companies to cope with these problems.

Finally, the company's ability to resist risks will be greatly reduced after blind expansion. As the saying goes, a small ship is easier to turn around, and even if a decision-making error occurs, it can be adjusted quickly, but if a large company makes a mistake, the blow it will suffer is huge.

In the new year, are sellers preparing to expand cautiously or stay put? Feel free to leave a comment in the comments section to discuss.

( Xiaoliang , Mark, and Luis are all pseudonyms )

Amazon

operations

Resignation