Young people in Yiwu are wholesale "get rich quick myth".

Without dreams, why go to Yiwu?

Many young people are flocking to Yiwu, chasing the myth of getting rich quick.

These young people who come to Yiwu to start their own businesses usually go through three stages.

The first stage is entering the internationally renowned Yiwu International Trade City. After being looked down upon by the wholesale merchants, they will find that the prices offered by the merchants in the trade city are not as good as those on e-commerce platforms. Being alone and inexperienced in entrepreneurship, young people have very limited bargaining power in this small commodity hub.

The second stage usually involves joining entrepreneurial partners, research or training institutions. The high tuition fees, often in the thousands, are not friendly to young people with limited budgets. However, the unlimited business opportunities mentioned by their predecessors and peers still maintain their beautiful imagination of getting rich quick.

The third stage is entering the practical operation level. Only a few lucky ones can become legends in the entrepreneurial circle. For most people, they have learned all the tricks of selling goods, but still cannot sell them.

Their start-up capital was exhausted, and they were "freeloading" on the return and refund rules for goods, and had to talk to themselves in empty live broadcast rooms. After tasting the bitterness, they still couldn't make ends meet, and one day decided to go to the stock street to sell the carefully selected products by the pound, but unfortunately had to return to their hometown.

"What Yiwu lacks the least is young people." Yiwu driver Lao Zhu seems to have seen through the coming and going of people in this small commodity city. In his view, 80% of young people will hand over their money to landlords, restaurants, merchants, and express delivery in the second year, and sell the remaining inventory to the stock street at a low price, only to end up with nothing. The rest of the people, are just a little better off, and can hold on a little longer, but money is ultimately not easy to earn.

"Is the 'sourcing strategy' useful?

It is 5.5 kilometers long, with a total area of over 5.5 million square meters, equivalent to the size of 770 soccer fields.

The first impression of Yiwu International Trade City is grand. The trade city has 75,000 shops. If you spend 5 minutes in each shop, for 8 hours a day, it would take 781 days, or more than two years, to visit them all.

This is enough to make a young entrepreneur who simply wants to buy low and sell high feel dizzy.

Tiantian hasn't decided what business to do. Driven by the side income from the internet, she bought a train ticket to Yiwu. Before arriving, she specifically searched for a strategy: first, don't ask "how much is this selling for," but rather "what is the wholesale price of this"; asking "can I get a sample" or "can it be shipped for free" will be seen through as being an inexperienced novice.

The stalls in Yiwu mainly focus on wholesale, with minimum orders often starting at several hundred pieces, and customers are responsible for the shipping costs. Many shops have posted notes at their entrances saying "no retail" and "only for foreign trade." The words "no entry for peers, no photography" appear at almost every shop entrance."

Every store in the area is almost indistinguishable, and the dazzling array of styles makes it difficult to know where to start. Summoning up her courage, Sweetie pointed to a hairband and asked, "How much is this? What's the minimum quantity?"

Without looking up, the shop owner replied, "28 cents, minimum quantity is one."

"One? Do you mean just one of these?"

"One is 720 pieces."

Sensing Sweetie's silence, the shop owner looked up and pointed to a small inconspicuous box at the door, "If you want to buy retail, pick from inside."

When asked about product quality and export standards, the merchants in the trading city would at most respond with "no problem." They would respond to every question, but never overly enthusiastically.

The rhetoric circulating on the internet is obviously difficult to deal with for experienced Yiwu merchants. A skilled purchaser would typically bring samples or pictures, directly inquire about the goods and prices, whether they are in stock or made to order, then confirm the lead time and quantity. The whole process usually takes just over ten minutes.

For "old hands" who have been immersed in the commercial city for decades, it's easy to see through newcomers like Tian Tian.

"After the epidemic, everyone thinks there's money to be made in Yiwu, and a large influx of people has come in. Without old customers, they can only offer low prices, and some even sell at a loss, directly disrupting the market," said Mr. Ran, who makes glue in the commercial city, to a reporter from Time Weekly. Having been in business for over 20 years, he has seen too many people who tried to make a fortune in Yiwu only to return in disappointment. "The shops next to mine have changed hands three or four times."

After a day of shopping, Tian Tian's WeChat showed over 20,000 steps, but she only managed to buy a set of guitar strings. When she searched on Taobao after returning home, Tian Tian was stunned to find that the price was 2 yuan cheaper than her own "wholesale price."

The Confused Entrepreneur

After graduating, Old Wu, a native of Anhui, worked on construction sites in the northeast. However, due to the downturn in the construction industry, he decided to "take the bucket and run."

Hearing that he could make money in Yiwu, he took a 28-hour train ride from Jixi to Yiwu. On the way, he read a lot of strategies about "resigning and venturing into Yiwu alone for xx days," and made an appointment with a "entrepreneurship partner" named Tu Tu, who was also coming to Yiwu on the same day.

Tu Tu is a restless Zhejiang mother, tired of her primary financial job and wanting to start a small business. When the two met, Tu Tu talked non-stop about the "business opportunities" in her eyes: the first village's internet-famous milk tea franchise, which can break even in a month with all the rest being profit; shared wireless chargers that can be used in cooperation with hot pot restaurants, with a daily cost of only a few yuan for electricity; leveraging her grandmother's jewelry store to buy gold in Shenzhen Shuibei, and also doing a business of recycling jewelry.

Tu Tu feels that in this era, if you rely on online traffic to sell goods, you can't compete with those unscrupulous people. The local internet celebrity in her village caused a scene at a stranger's funeral and even handed condoms to the police, a series of sensational behaviors firmly grasped the attention of people from all around.

"She goes live for a few hours every day, doing nothing, and most people come to criticize her, but there are also quite a few onlookers who give her tips, which are real money."

Lao Wu doesn't talk much, but he looks sincere. Tu Tu jokingly invites Lao Wu to start a business together, "What do you think of my power bank business? Do you want to invest fifty thousand in me first?"

Lao Wu swallowed and politely declined with a wave of his hand.

After working at the construction site for four years, excluding the money sent back home, Lao Wu doesn't have much savings. What's more, since last year, his family has been urging him to save money for the bride price.

Tutu's plan didn't really materialize, and soon she felt that it was easier and had more "money-making prospects" to work with her old classmate Xiao Yu.

Xiao Yu's business, to put it plainly, is "taking advantage of platform subsidies." He mobilizes relatives and friends to place orders during the subsidy period on e-commerce platforms, then sells them at a higher price to hoarders. The latter sells at a price lower than the spot price during the platform's downtime, making a profit from the price difference.

After some discussion, Tutu felt that she was getting closer to her small goal - a Chanel women's bag priced at 45,800 yuan.

Lao Wu felt that Xiao Yu's business was somewhat "illegal," and he also didn't have the ability to mobilize so many relatives and friends.

After wandering alone in Yiwu for another two days, Lao Wu once again asked in the entrepreneurial partner community, "Are there any friends with limited funds like me who also want to start a business?"

Five minutes later, two people replied to him. But after flipping through the travel photos in the other party's Moments, Lao Wu instantly lost the desire to communicate. He felt that those two people were both second-generation rich, and not his kind of people.

The unlearnable get-rich-quick scheme

Young people who have never started a business are "unyielding," and they continue to flock to Yiwu.

Another aspect is the continuous expansion of the entrepreneurial community.

Online, the most popular Yiwu study tour blogger on Xiaohongshu, although only enrolls thirty to forty students each month, has no shortage of inquiries. In just two months, the group chat with a limit of 500 people was filled.

Xiao Yang, who runs a jewelry e-commerce business, spent two months in the group. Whenever he didn't understand something, he would ask, and although he often received brief answers, he found that few people were willing to add friends for further communication.

Xiao Yang felt that the conversations within the community, rather than being exchanges of learning, were more like mutual venting and providing emotional value. "Because it's already 'very competitive,' when someone finds a hot-selling product in Yiwu, the next day everyone can find the same product to imitate. And with the same product, someone else can start selling within a week, while I've been promoting for a month and still no one is interested. It's better not to promote and just leave it there. Maybe one day, it will explode, right?"

In the streets of Yiwu, you can often see advertisements for entrepreneurial training schools.

On the fourth floor of an old commercial building, in the corridor of a live broadcast training institute, the "student message" that easily generates millions of orders did not make this training institution shine in a physical sense.

This training institute has been open for nearly twenty years, and its course manual is as thick as a menu in an old restaurant, covering training courses for Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao, Pinduoduo, 1688, and Shopee. Teacher Zhang generally does not rush students to pay for classes, nor does he promise that they will "generate orders" after completing the course. In response to students' inquiries, he always throws out a question: What category do you want to focus on?

For a more practical "get rich quick" experience, you might have to look to the night market vendors.

A boss selling shoes at the Binwang Night Market in Yiwu often imparts his entrepreneurial secrets to passing young entrepreneurs: "Choose good products, stay at the stall, and you will make money."

"What you sell determines whether you need inventory, whether you need to rent extra warehouses. Thirty thousand yuan worth of socks can be sold in half a month, but if it's accessories, you don't need that much space. From sourcing to setting up the stall, you need at least a 30-50% gross profit margin to make money."

The boss said that for stall vendors at the night market, most of the goods in the commercial city are "boutique" items, and the truly profitable goods need to be obtained from the factory as "tail orders," which are flawed products.

From clothing and bags to the trendy wearable armor, the content sold at Binwang Night Market is no different from night markets elsewhere, but Yiwu city has brought natural traffic to it.

The International Trade City closes at 5 p.m. every day, leaving the entire night to the night market.

Entrepreneurs who have hit a wall in retail at the Trade City, tourists, and foreign businessmen who have finished their big business deals always like to spend money at the night market. It is for this reason that the rent for stalls has been rising. At the end of March every year, it is the time to renew the lease and grab a stall. This year, the highest annual rent near the entrance is 280,000 yuan, and even at the end of the night market, the rent offered by the landlords is also as high as 58,000 yuan.

The neighboring stall owner sneered at the price of 58,000 yuan. "Just that shabby stall for 58,000 yuan? It's just to deceive the newcomers, and it won't make a profit!"

In the eyes of the driver Lao Zhu, the ones who benefit the most from the wave of young entrepreneurship may still be the landlords in Yiwu.

In communities like Changchun, Futian, and North and South Zhudown in Yiwu, the infrastructure level of the demolished houses from 20 years ago is still maintained. Far-sighted locals have bought entire buildings early on, becoming long-term landlords. They live on the top floor, rent out the ground floor to shops, and the remaining houses will always be in demand.

"Don't be fooled by the talk about the real estate market not doing well. Here, the rent is paid annually, and it increases by two thousand yuan every year," Lao Zhu said.

(The names Lao Zhu, Tian Tian, Lao Wu, Tu Tu, Xiao Yang, and Teacher Zhang are all pseudonyms.)