Anxious small and medium-sized enterprises are counting money and days every day
A few days ago, a stationery store in Dongguan collapsed.
This Nanzha International Stationery Manufacturing Company, located in Humen, can be considered a sub leader. They specialize in producing binders and mainly export them. At its peak, they could occupy 60% of the global market share.
The reason for the bankruptcy can be summed up in one sentence: due to the dismal performance caused by the epidemic and the worsening of the war, lending was the last straw that crushed them.
Stationery is generally less affected by the overall environment, but in recent years, sales of student stationery have decreased by 30%, office stationery has decreased by nearly 60%, and Nanzha International's overseas customers have shrunk by 80%. It is not difficult to imagine the difficulty of the company's operation. Although all possible methods of layoffs and cost savings have been used, it still cannot prevent the fate of cash flow depletion.
Dongguan, where they are located, used to have closed management. Although many factories have resumed work now, they mainly focus on completing delayed orders. Strict users often give various reasons for deducting money, and new orders with small quantities still need to be postponed. Many customers cannot accept immediate cancellation. The factory does not have a sustainable source of income, but hard costs such as factory rent and salary still remain. The small bosses of each factory are calculating their cash flow, how long they can last, and praying that orders will continue to appear.
Such small and medium-sized business owners are now the mainstream.
There is a saying circulating in the catering industry recently that most restaurants that opened in 2021 have already closed down.
Xiao Z is one of them, and catering relies on customer flow. She chose a storefront in a shopping mall complex. At that time, the epidemic had basically subsided and the flow of people had increased. She originally wanted to open a store to support her family, but was first caught off guard by a hidden rule. The mall required the use of a designated brand for decoration, but the result was self-evident. Xiao Z originally planned to spend 100000 yuan to complete the decoration, but ended up spending 160000 yuan, directly exceeding the budget by 60000 yuan.
If the customer flow is good, then we can also look forward to the future. As a result, since the beginning of business, the customer flow of the shopping mall has plummeted. Previously, restaurants had to queue up every weekend, but now they burn incense when they can fill up during peak hours. Upon further analysis, it was found that the main customer flow in the past was children from training classes in the building. After the double reduction, these people have disappeared without a trace.
Workdays are the coldest, with more staff than customers in the mall. Xiao Z feels that it's even harder to stay in the store than to stay alone. "Even when staying alone, there are people who tease and tease, and there's not even a trace of a person in the store," he said. Most of the customers rely on takeout, but the platform has a high proportion of takeout, and food prices are rising day by day. Excluding store rent and labor, he actually loses a lot every month.
Persisting for a year, losing hundreds of thousands, unable to recoup, Xiao Z had to give up.
2. There are also some small business owners whose entire family's savings have disappeared in the past two years.
There is a small boss who works in consumer electronics in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen. In 2019, the company's sales reached 100 million yuan, orders skyrocketed, and the team expanded. He was full of ambition and sold his house to supplement the company's cash flow.
However, since 2020, business has become difficult to do. A large number of their orders come from overseas. However, 90% of European customers are always infected by COVID-19, and the economy stops. He suffered immediately. Previously, a major customer had millions of orders every month, but now it has shrunk to tens of thousands.
If it doesn't work overseas, then it's better to have internal circulation. It's easy to have some orders, but when we run out of chips, prices have skyrocketed dozens of times and there's still no stock. Naturally, they can't deliver either.
The chip has eased a bit, and Amazon has started to clean up cross-border e-commerce merchants again. His big customers cannot pay, and orders have sharply shrunk, causing his company to lose money in just a few months. However, at this time, he has deeply tied himself to the company and mortgaged three houses to the bank, unable to repay them. He has to wait for the bank to collect the houses, one of which belongs to his parents.
I have been working in a company for ten years, working tirelessly from dawn till dusk, striving with all my might, and then returning to dust.
Recently, fresh food e-commerce has been greatly affected. Many cities are unable to deliver, and some express delivery companies return goods halfway through. Most of the returned items have to be thrown away. For companies with a certain scale, it is normal to lose tens of thousands of yuan a day. If they can't sell it, they have to stop purchasing. Poor those upstream fruit farmers, they can't sell their ripe fruits and wish they could cry while holding the tree.
As for smaller physical stores, it is also very difficult. In many cities, closing stores is no longer an option for one or two.
There are also some stores, the store is empty, send a video down the fire, for no other reason, behind the laughter is tears, too many people feel the same.
3. China has 0.14 billion market players, 95% of which are small, medium and micro enterprises, contributing 60% of GDP, 50% of tax revenue and 80% of employment, especially to employment.
Why was it not as difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises in the first two years as it is now?
There are many reasons, there are three main points:
1. The rescue measures are intensive. In 2020, there will be more than 800 policies to help small and medium-sized enterprises, which will benefit many companies in terms of tax, rent and social security;
2. At that time, small and medium-sized enterprise owners still had surplus grain in their pockets, and some were still considering expanding their scale;
3. At that time, the order volume and consumption did not shrink significantly, and small and medium-sized business owners generally still had confidence.
Two years later, several trends are clear:
1. People's consumption is declining too fast. Apart from the necessary expenses of eating, drinking and education, other expenses can be saved. Many people buy new clothes and shoes less frequently. In the past, a new mobile phone must be replaced. Now a mobile phone can be used for more than 3 years everywhere, and the desire for optional consumption has dropped to freezing point;
2. Why don't you spend money? Because of poor income expectations, the news of layoffs and salary cuts comes out from time to time, even the big factories that love to burn money in the concept are no exception, and the news of the cut-off has increased a lot. For many families, the mortgage and education expenditures are still the largest, and they can only continue to reduce other consumption;
3. Layoffs are also an option for bosses, because the company's financial report is getting worse and worse, income is reduced and hard costs are basically not reduced. In 2021, because the epidemic is well controlled, many cities have canceled social security and rent concessions, but many companies' operations have not fundamentally improved. With the downturn in the multi-gold industries such as real estate and the Internet, it is difficult for related industries to buck the trend.
4. The downstream demand in some industries has not shrunk, but the upstream raw materials have soared. For example, last year's chip price hike, a chip was 5 pieces before, now 120 pieces, the original 10 pieces, now 180 pieces. The surge in raw materials has made it almost impossible for downstream companies to make money.
The impact of the epidemic on the economy is greater than we expected, for example, some companies in Beijing office, the business should not have been affected, but more than half of the employees live in Yanjiao, Yanjiao strict control, the company is basically in a state of suspension.
4. Some people say that half a day is short of money. If there are various credit measures specifically to support small and medium-sized enterprises, it will be over to borrow money?
Things are not that simple. For example, if a company does not have an order, it is useless for you to give him money. The loan must be repaid. Low interest is also money. You can only lose more and more.
Some companies really need money, but it is also difficult to apply for enough funds, because good policies may be out of shape in implementation.
In 2020, in order to support small and medium-sized enterprises, the state gave a large amount of loans, but in some places, the money went to the property market, such as the case of operating loan speculation in Shenzhen, which was later strictly investigated and the amount was not small.
In the past two years, real estate companies have been thunderous from time to time. An analysis shows that they are buying land crazily in 2020. As soon as the three red line policies are released in 2021, everyone is dumbfounded. Then why do these tens of billions and hundreds of billions of companies unanimously misjudge the general trend?
A real estate owner said that at that time, he wanted 10 banks to beg you for a loan a day, and the interest rate was not high. This is how many companies buried the thunder. There is a lot of this money, which should have supported small and medium-sized enterprises.
There are also many institutions that package and split up relatively mature projects to cope with regulatory inspections. A lot of money has not gone to the places where it is most needed.
Those companies that really get the money also enjoy limited financial concessions, Peking University professor Huang Yiping said the mystery.
What's going on?
It turns out that the accounts receivable time of small and medium-sized enterprises in the past two years has been obviously much longer. The original three-month account period is now basically half a year. It is normal to delay for one or two years. The cash flow cannot come back, and the cash flow of small and medium-sized enterprises is exhausted. I had to find another way to raise funds, and the cost went up again.
Then can't we do this kind of business? No, there is a lack of orders. Large enterprises need to grab orders. Small and medium-sized enterprises basically have no negotiation ability in terms of payment.
5. Small and medium-sized enterprises are so difficult, so you can see that in recent months, there have been many more support policies for small and medium-sized enterprises, such as tax reduction, rent reduction, and various support. The determination to help small and medium-sized enterprises is great.
What do small and medium-sized enterprises need most? According to the survey, there are three major problems:
1, the biggest problem is insufficient orders, underemployment;
2. It is the problem of rising costs caused by labor costs and raw material costs;
3, is the shortage of daily operating funds.
Tax reduction is certainly welcome, but the effect of tax reduction is not direct enough, because the premise of tax reduction is to have income, income to have orders, which is urgently needed by many small and medium-sized enterprises, so some people suggest that government procurement should be more inclined to small and medium-sized enterprises, with orders, in giving some financial policy support, confidence will naturally be much better.
But to be honest, it also takes a certain amount of time. In contrast, vigorously cutting hard costs is easier to achieve and the effect is more obvious.
Hard costs include what?
For example, rent relief, such as social security relief, which is a hard cost that many companies calculate on a daily basis, in the final analysis, this is a race against the epidemic, so that more than 0.1 billion small and medium-sized business owners to maintain confidence, is the most important thing right now.
Information source: Enterprise management
