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Written by| Wen Yehao

edit| Wu Xianzhi

Walking on thin ice is the best summary of Zhang Xiao's (pseudonym) mental state in recent times.

Zhang Xiao's studio is filled with wood and hardware. In his hands, these materials are transformed into small ornaments of various shapes. Some are made of delicate gears, which have a steampunk feel; others are modeled after DC's Superman, with a ferocious face made of nuts glued together under a red cape.

At first, Zhang Xiao only shared handicraft videos on Bilibili and sold his works to fans. But as more and more people became interested in his works, Zhang Xiao finally decided to make a living from his craft, and turned his small workshop into a Taobao store, starting a large-scale business.

However, since Taobao and JD.com followed suit and only implemented refunds at the end of last year, both merchants who were already overwhelmed by the return rate and Zhang Xiao, who had just entered the e-commerce field, have personally felt the changes in the ecology.

In this context, struggling sellers want to escape. In addition to new e-commerce players such as Video Account and Xiaohongshu, a familiar yet unfamiliar name also appeared on the list of refuges for merchants: Xianyu.

Businesses that were "forced to retreat" flocked to the "marginal areas"

After opening the store, Zhang Xiao truly experienced the fickleness of human nature.

"Because they are all handmade, each one is bound to have natural flaws, such as small glue overflows at the bonding points, or slight scratches on metal parts." Zhang Xiao told Photon Planet: "Before at Bilibili, most of the customers were fans, and if there were any problems, everyone could communicate easily, and they would not deliberately make things difficult for you."

In contrast, the completely different atmosphere of Taobao stores often makes him feel at a loss. "No matter where the customer's dissatisfaction comes from, sometimes it has nothing to do with the product itself, customer service always intervenes quickly to provide a full refund. These losses are ultimately borne by small businesses like us."

He still remembers one time when a customer bought a set of DIY material kits in the store. The buyer was supposed to assemble the kit by himself and enjoy the fun of DIY, but he asked for a refund on the grounds that the style did not match the description. In the end, the platform refunded the money to the buyer because the buyer was nitpicking and making unreasonable demands.

Ah Huan (pseudonym), who is engaged in the food business, hates the platform's refund policy even more. He mistakenly believes that many clauses that seem to put the interests of consumers first are a conspiracy of the e-commerce platform, aimed at "forcing away" customers, so as to pocket all the money and maximize the platform's profits.

“The platform is just using the heat of local violence inflicted on merchants to create a false sense of warmth.”

In his opinion, in addition to favoring buyers at the policy level, the platform will even encourage buyers to make frequent refunds, and the merchants will always be the losers.

"For example, after a customer pays, the platform almost immediately pushes links to products with lower prices and small coupons to the customer, tempting the customer to cancel the original order and re-order, but the promotion fee and technical service fee calculated based on the order will not be deducted. And some customers inadvertently mention the word 'goods' during the chat, and the system sometimes even automatically pops up a return option."

In addition, the rising return rate will not only increase costs such as inventory management, packaging costs, and human resources, but the platform will also reduce the weight of the store, thereby affecting traffic recommendations. Sitting in the dim office, every time he stared at the high return rate, his heart felt like being stabbed with a needle.

Economist Thomas Sowell once said: "The inherent flaws of human nature are the fundamental problem; civilization is merely an imperfect effort to overcome the problems of human nature."

Even if the platform has superficially lowered the refund amount for the sake of its own reputation and to motivate merchants to promote, there is no absolutely correct solution for the platform when facing the black hole of desire and greed.

As merchants, they have almost no control over orders, and even when faced with obviously malicious orders, they can only passively accept them helplessly.

Faced with reality, merchants can only swallow their anger and hope that the platform policies will change, or flee to other platforms. Perhaps because of this, new e-commerce platforms such as Video Account and Xiaohongshu will emerge in 2024.

As the saying goes, "When rituals are lost, look for them in the wild." When Taoism is abandoned and the system itself has flaws, fleeing to the "marginal areas" to seek "fairness" is a better choice.

Xianyu's survival rules: screen customers and disguise yourself

Compared with mainstream e-commerce platforms with strict entry rules, Xianyu is more "free" - the listing cost is low, the procedures are simple, there is no complicated SKU management, and the platform supervision is relatively easy. Most importantly, Xianyu inherits the "dynamic fairness" of the past C2C model, that is, buyers and sellers are equal, and the platform will not favor either party too much.

This is particularly evident in the thorny issue of returns.

Zhang Xiao once met a buyer on Xianyu who came to his door because the color of the ornaments he received was slightly different from the color displayed on the screen. Although he agreed to return the goods and refund, the buyer insisted on a partial refund. Faced with malicious bargaining, Zhang Xiao did not give in to the other party, and the matter eventually ended up in a small court.

In the small court, Zhang Xiao submitted multiple pictures of the product under different light sources, successfully explaining that the so-called color difference was caused by different lighting conditions, as well as the buyer's "bargaining" chat records, and finally won the victory with a score of 12: 3. In his opinion, the Xianyu small court and the customer service judgment mechanism are relatively fair. As long as there is sufficient evidence and the case is reasonable, a fair judgment can basically be obtained.

Wen Jie (pseudonym), who is engaged in the foreign trade tail-end business, prefers to attribute it to sellers' "grouping together for warmth."

In his opinion, the reason why the existence of the small court gives sellers a great sense of security, in addition to other factors that cause imbalance in the platform, is largely due to the composition of the small court's public reviewers.

"Many reviewers are professional sellers. After all, most ordinary users only use Xianyu as a tool for idle transactions and rarely pay attention to the judgment of the small court. Sellers are always online, with a high usage rate, and are more willing to participate in these disputes." Wen Jie said frankly: "It's not to the point of completely reversing right and wrong, but those reviews that each has their own reasons actually convey the seller's will."

However, as a veteran Xianyu seller, Wenjie is well aware of the complexity of the platform's rules. From the very beginning, the screening of buyers has begun, leaving no opportunity for buyers to maliciously request a refund.

Wenjie told Photon Planet that as long as a buyer is involved in a refund dispute or goes to court, regardless of whether the buyer agrees to a refund or wins the review, the account will be downgraded invisibly. "I have an account that agreed to a return and refund, and the exposure instantly dropped from tens of thousands to hundreds."

Over time, he learned how to screen clients while disguising himself.

Under the unhealthy trend of malicious refunds, merchants on mainstream e-commerce platforms often share information about "freeloaders" and suspicious post stations and areas in merchant groups in order to protect themselves, so as to take precautions. On Xianyu, everything is more transparent.

Xianyu's mutual review mechanism allows sellers to know buyers' reviews and credit ratings in advance; and compared to mainstream e-commerce platforms, Xianyu allows sellers to proactively cancel orders. This allows merchants to proactively screen out low-quality buyers and nip malicious refunds in the bud.

Wenjie once encountered a suspicious buyer who had no account, paid directly without any communication, and the delivery address was a certain vocational and technical college. When he tried to communicate with him, the other party did not care about the details of the goods, the tags, etc., and just urged him to ship the goods as soon as possible. Faced with this buyer, Wenjie finally took the initiative to close the order on the grounds that there was no stock, rather than taking the risk of shipping.

Hiding your identity as a merchant is just as important as selecting your customers.

Wenjie told Photon Planet that Xianyu buyers have an instinctive aversion to merchants and vendors, and prefer to buy from individual sellers. For this reason, Wenjie not only set his gender to female, modified his personal profile, but also deleted the transaction records immediately after selling a product to ensure the "uniqueness" of the product, thereby avoiding potential buyers' suspicion of his identity.

In addition, Xianyu has become less friendly to sellers in the past one or two years. According to Wenjie, Xianyu now charges a 1% service fee for monthly transactions exceeding 10,000 yuan, and commercial sellers are also required to bear the obligation to return some products within seven days without reason. Even so, Xianyu is still much more tolerant than many e-commerce platforms.

Is it possible to achieve both scale and profit?

People are very familiar with the story of the Trojan Horse, but few people know that it was just an apple that triggered the Trojan War.

At that time, Hera, the Queen of Heaven, Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, and Venus, the Goddess of Love, asked Paris, a prince living near Troy, to judge who could get the golden apple that symbolized the most beautiful goddess. Faced with the promises of power, wisdom, and love from the three goddesses, Paris chose to get a love that was unattainable for mortals, but eventually ignited the flames of the Trojan War.

This means that adding a little weight to one end of the scale will inevitably make the other end almost invisible. The same is true for merchants who escape from mainstream platforms and turn to Xianyu.

Shunzi (pseudonym), a small home appliance merchant who switched from a certain platform to Xianyu, told Photon Planet that although Xianyu's transaction fees are very low and its policies are relatively loose, there is a ceiling on the income of a single account, making it difficult to expand. In other words, it is difficult to have both scale and profit.

Although social media is always full of course advertisements claiming “Start selling on Xianyu at zero cost, drop ship one by one, and earn tens of thousands per month,” in fact, compared with mainstream e-commerce platforms, the output of a single Xianyu account is relatively limited, whether it is an individual seller or a business.

"Xianyu seems to have a traffic bottleneck. Once each account passes the peak period, or reaches a certain number of orders per day, the traffic will drop sharply. Xianyu's paid promotion and traffic diversion is very immature. Therefore, even if the platform operation is proficient, the monthly profit of an account is unlikely to exceed 5,000 yuan, and a single account earning tens of thousands of yuan in a single month is even rarer." Shunzi said frankly.

In order to avoid the bottleneck of a single account, Shunzi built a store matrix and expanded its business scale through multiple disguised "personal seller accounts".

During this process, Shunzi gradually figured out his own methodology, such as avoiding bulk listing and delisting of goods, purchasing low-priced goods appropriately to complete platform tasks, strengthening interactions such as likes and comments, or replying to messages in a timely manner.

The most important thing is to avoid the risk control of the platform. Shunzi told Photon Planet that if a device switches back and forth between multiple accounts, or multiple devices use the same WiFi, it may be recognized by the system and lead to batch blocking of accounts. To this end, Shunzi prepared an independent mobile phone and data card for each account, simulating real users through "one device, one number".

However, with dozens of accounts, it is hard to imagine the operational pressure of disguising as real people in all aspects. Even though the Shunzi team has achieved batch operations on the computer through screen projection software, the personal energy of employees is always limited. "Sometimes, after mechanically clicking likes like a machine and chatting with buyers all day, I miss the past when I didn't have to pretend."

"There is no absolute right or wrong, and there is no such thing as being forced into a desperate situation. The two choices are just different expressions of the law of the jungle."

But in any case, the flocking of merchants to Xianyu, just like the tracking of people who only request refunds, exposes the fragile dark side of the current e-commerce ecosystem.

It is just like what Nathaniel Peffer said in "The Far East": "It was ridiculous that an imitation of the American political system was established in China in 1912. This system ended tragically. However, it was not the system that failed, but a generation." Taobao and JD.com, which were beaten badly by Pinduoduo, followed suit and only offered a refund, but it was these merchants who suffered.

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