In recent years, the overseas purchasing websites and shops have sprung up. Searching the overseas purchasing in weibo will get more than 9 million shops. The same action on Taobao will result in more than 20 million goods. With the popularity of Weimob wechat Business, Vdian provides lower threshold for the overseas purchasing agents. To people, the purchasing agents are earning money only by go shopping, but they have their own hard life. How is their daily life? What kind of difficulty do they encounter? The journalist uncovers their stories and explores their survival way.
Liu Qian is packing the snack to deliver.
Doing it in part-time is for fun, while in full time is for starting a business.
Cancan comes from Langfang in Hebei Province. She went to the United States four years ago to get married with her boyfriends. She has a carefree life there, but as an excellent girl who graduated from Communication University of China and then was recommended to the Peking University, she did not want to live the ease life. The person who just arrived in America is forbidden to work, so she began her own overseas purchasing career. The goods she bought rang from designer handbags, clothes to daily necessities.
In addition to the girl like Cancan, there are some people with a relatively easy job and leisure time to do the overseas purchasing business in their part-time. They pay attention to the popular goods, such as milk powder and health care products. Liu Qian, a Chinese teacher in Thailand, says, "If all your friends are doing the part-time job, it's normal for you to have your own business."
Besides, the journalist finds that the marketing from the part-time and full-time purchasing agents are different. At present, the Vdian, Moments, Weibo and Taobao are the main channel to promote the goods. The full-time agents establish their own company to promote goods through these channels, while the part-time agents mainly rely on friends. Although they don't have their own company, they have wider space to do the business because of the Vdian.
The goods ordered by customers.
Overseas purchasing is a physical work.
Most people consider that purchasing agents are happy work. The agent only needs to go shopping. However, the real life is that they need to reply to hundreds of notes every day and make purchases consistently for nearly eight or nine hours. Besides, they have no time to have breakfast and lunch.
Only agents themselves know how hard it is. Speaking of the hard life of purchasing agents, Cancan complaint that the time they finish purchasing is the morning in China, so they have no time to stop working. "We need to put the goods in order, picture it on the, give the price, make the links and put them on the Wechat and Weibo. We also need to answer the notes from the potential buyers." Usually they work late until 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. They even have no time to go to toilet. They spend 18 or 19 hours on purchasing work every day. It's impossible for them to have a meal or go to the cinema with husband or wife. The part-time purchasing has other difficulty as well.
In addition, cash flow is another problem that the professional purchasing agent faces with. Most buyers would not confirm the order as soon as they receive the goods. Even they get the goods on time; the money would be paid after one and a half months. Sometimes, in order to purchase more goods, they have to borrow money from their relatives and family. Besides, the goods are usually stopped in customs especially in Chinese festival. During the Spring Festival in 2014, one hundred cases had been stuck in customs for three months. And she had to face with the expediting from consumers every day.
A large amount of goods.
Authentic proof can be fraudulent, which depends on the agents' conscience.
Doing purchasing work depends on merchants' conscience. The crisis of confidence always confuses the agents. They work hard to buy goods for the consumers, but are suspected to buy fake goods. She has the experience of buying fake goods herself. When she was in China, she bought several pairs of shoes in internet. While after she lived in U.S.A, she found that they were not bought from regular stores. She glanced over that online store again. To her surprise, it has better reputation now. It sells the bags that sold out in America, and the price is slow. Besides, they use the direct mail to send the fake goods to customers, so that they believe that the goods are qualified. Accordingly, they can get huge profits.
