I Told You This Store Wouldn't Survive Until New Year!

At 8:50 on Monday morning, Lin Fan arrived at his desk. The first thing he did after turning on his computer wasn't work related to the categories under his charge.

He pulled up the backend and extracted the store's operating data for the entire month of October.

Average daily orders, monthly peak, end-of-month daily sales, refund rate, new reviews—he scrolled through them one field at a time.

Daily sales had been over 1,100 at the start of October, then began falling around mid-month. In the final week, they stabilized at just over 200. Even the dozens of boot orders they had added in couldn't pull it back up. The month's curve had gone from a sharp peak at the beginning straight down to the bottom.

He didn't need to verify any of those figures. He knew what day every order had been placed, whether it was for scarves or leggings, and which supplier had shipped it better than the backend did. He had sourced the goods, fulfilled the orders, and adjusted the prices.

During that price hike in mid-October, a pair of leggings had gone from twenty-nine to thirty-nine. Sales had been cut in half that very day. He had known they would be. The season was ending; they had traded volume for profit, and the volume they had given up was exactly what formed that downward curve.

Now, that curve had to be put into a spreadsheet and handed to someone who already had a conclusion and was looking for evidence.

He exported the data, pasted it into the weekly report template, filled in the month-on-month comparison on the third row, and entered the figure showing sales had fallen by half.

He didn't alter a single number.

There was no need to, and it wasn't worth it. Everything Zhou Bin wanted to see was in the real data, neither more nor less.

At 9:20, he placed the printed spreadsheet on Zhou Bin's desk.

"Brother Zhou, I pulled the numbers for last week."

Zhou Bin had been trimming his nails. He glanced up, and his clippers stopped.

"How much?"

"Two hundred and thirty-seven. It stayed around that level for the last three days of the month."

Zhou Bin snatched up the paper and read it from beginning to end twice. The more he read, the straighter his back became. When he reached the final line, he slapped the desk.

"What did I tell you!"

Two heads leaned over from the neighboring desks.

"It was eleven hundred at the beginning of October and two hundred thirty at the end. It didn't just drop by half—it dropped by nearly eighty percent." He gripped the paper and shook it twice. "What did I say at the review meeting? Tell me, what did I say?"

"Brother Zhou said sales would be down by half by the end of October." The colleague sitting diagonally across from him turned around in his chair.

"It's written right there in the meeting minutes. Director Zheng has a copy." Zhou Bin stood, paced two steps, then sat back down. "This is what it means to understand a business. You don't look at how high it jumps. You look at where it lands after it's done jumping."

He opened his conclusions document and clattered away at the keyboard for the entire morning. He even ordered takeout for lunch rather than going downstairs.

At the team's regular meeting at 2:30 that afternoon, Zheng Haifeng sat at the far end of the long table, and Zhou Bin was the first to speak.

"My conclusion on the store investigation is ready. I'll send the official draft to everyone's email before the end of the day." He passed around the printed copies, one for each person. "I have three points."

Lin Fan lowered his head and flipped through his copy.

First, the store was a test account opened by one of the major sellers in the industry. Its main account had deep roots in the circle, which was why it could dominate search rankings and get onto campaign pages right away. A novice couldn't do that.

Second, the owner's approach was that of a gambler: going all in on a single product, exploding for a while after one successful bet, then collapsing once the gamble was over. This September-October surge had come from betting correctly on the seasonal transition. Once the inventory had been cleared, the season had passed too.

Third, stores like this had no backup plan, no established category, and no foundation of returning customers. An eighty-percent drop in sales meant it had fallen into the pit and wouldn't climb back out. His judgment was that the store would be gone before New Year.

"I put the last sentence right in the document." Zhou Bin pressed a hand onto the table. "This store will definitely shut down before New Year. You can all remember this day."

Some people at the table laughed, while others nodded.

Zheng Haifeng pushed the draft aside and tapped the tabletop twice with his fingers.

"I've read all three points. They hold up." He turned to Zhou Bin. "October's figures are solid. I accept that. Revise the draft, attach the data, and I'll include it in the monthly materials I submit."

"Rest assured, Director Zheng. Lin Fan pulled the data week by week. It's firsthand." As he spoke, Zhou Bin pointed toward Lin Fan. "The new guy is very thorough."

Everyone in the room looked his way, and Lin Fan sat a little straighter.

"I just did what Brother Zhou assigned."

"You should learn to look at these things too." Zhou Bin grew more animated and leaned back in his chair. "Listen, Xiao Lin. When you manage a category, just looking at order volume is useless. I'm not impressed just because someone suddenly gets a thousand orders in one day. You need to see what's supporting it—whether it's their own products and their own customers, or whether they're just making a quick grab while the wind is favorable. The ones making a quick grab show their true colors the moment the wind stops. This store is the best teaching material. I'm keeping this case to use in the training materials at the end of the year."

"I'll remember that."

As the meeting broke up, Zhou Bin called him back.

"Don't stop the weekly reports. Keep pulling them until New Year."

"You want me to keep pulling them even though the conclusion has already been submitted?"

"Keep pulling." Zhou Bin rolled the draft into a tube and tapped it against his palm. "I want to watch it shut down. Once it's completely gone, I'll submit a final wrap-up report. That's what makes it complete."

"Alright. I'll submit one every week."

On the way back to his desk, Lin Fan turned those words over in his mind.

The man who wanted to watch it shut down had welded his eyes to Lin Fan's hands. From now on, every week, Lin Fan himself would be the first person in the group to know where that store's numbers were going. Zhou Bin would be second, and what Zhou Bin saw would be whatever Lin Fan chose to pull up for him.

He had read through the conclusions document as well. Of its three points, each was further off the mark than the last.

The main account had deep roots? The store's business license was under Ma Le's name. It had been one store from beginning to end, with no main account at all.

A gambler going all in? He had indeed stocked up heavily, but every batch he stocked had been based on knowing exactly when the market would rise and when it would fall.

No category and no returning customers? There were over five thousand reviews and nearly a thousand repeat buyers. Those people were currently clicking into the new boot listings one by one.

Nine days.

November 11 was next Wednesday, and there were over 1,900 pairs sitting in the warehouse.

Zhou Bin had circled that day as the date for the ending. His aim was pretty accurate—just pointed in the wrong direction.

A little after four, he went to the break room to get water. Su Qing stood there holding a cup.

"Your team's conclusion was copied to us." She set her cup down on the counter. "You read it, right?"

"I did."

"I disagree."

Lin Fan pressed the red button on the water dispenser and didn't respond right away.

"A drop in volume doesn't mean the store is finished." Su Qing tapped a finger against the wall of her cup. "Veterans in apparel clear out autumn stock, then hold winter stock during the transition. This is when the numbers look the ugliest. Looking ugly for half a month is perfectly normal. Your colleague says this store will be gone before New Year. Based on what? Just one month's curve?"

"Brother Zhou has October's figures."

"I read the figures too. The refund rate hasn't risen, the reviews are still increasing, and they're still shipping over two hundred orders a day." She lifted her cup. "This kind of store doesn't look like it's dying. The reviews are the first thing to go bad when a store is dying."

"Did you write up your opinion?"

"I wrote two lines and copied them back." Su Qing smiled. "Your colleague will probably turn them into a joke. I'll keep note of it for now. We'll naturally see who's right before New Year."

She left with her cup.

Lin Fan watched the water in his cup ripple twice.

Reviews go bad first. That was the kind of thing an expert would say. Dozens of people in the whole department had been studying this store, but she was the only one who could pick up the scent from the refund rate and reviews.

Fortunately, those two lines of hers would become a joke on Zhou Bin's desk tomorrow.

At 7:30, he got home to find Ma Le crouched at the garage entrance, sealing boxes. They had twenty-nine orders today.

"Brother, someone placed an order and then returned it today. They even sent me a whole bunch of question marks."

"Let them return it. I'll handle the refund."

He went upstairs and turned on his computer. He clicked on Wangwang first. A red dot was blinking in the bottom-right corner of the screen. When he opened it, it was a notification from the store backend.

Someone had reported the store for selling counterfeit branded goods.

The listing had been temporarily suspended. They had to upload purchase receipts for this batch of goods before the deadline. If the documentation failed verification, points would be deducted and the listing would be removed.

The reports had come in sometime after three that afternoon. There were three of them, all within the same time period.

He scrolled down. The newest review under the listing was also from an order placed today, just five words.

Counterfeit goods. Don't buy.