Five Thousand Orders in a Month Would've Been Lucky? He Sold Five Thousand Three in One Day!

At exactly eight o'clock on the night of the eleventh, the garage door stood wide open. Six students lined up in a row, and the first order was called out.

"Size thirty-seven, one pair."

Ma Le sat at the computer reading them out, pausing after each order until someone answered before moving to the next. Two people in the middle pulled shoes from the piles of boxes, the two behind them bagged and sealed them, and the last person attached the shipping labels.

The orders were from the two thousand shipping slips stamped with the sender's information the night before, pulled out of cardboard boxes bundle by bundle.

Lin Fan did not join in. He stood in the open space by the door, his phone on the backend page, refreshing it once every minute.

There were only two numbers he needed to watch today: the order count and how many pairs remained in stock.

The first number had climbed from forty-one in the morning to six hundred and eighty-nine by seven that evening. He had already calculated the second in his head. They had started the day with 1,567 pairs, sold 689, leaving 878 between the garage and the west side of town.

Eight hundred and seventy-eight pairs. How long would they last?

At 9:10, the number on the screen jumped to 1,143 orders.

Four hundred and fifty orders in one hour.

One of the female students cried out, asking whether the number was broken. How could it keep jumping on its own?

"It's not broken."

At 9:40, the first truck arrived. The young man Old Xu had sent opened the cargo bed, and they began stacking more than three hundred bags inside. Halfway through, he went blank with shock and asked when the next run would come after this load was taken away.

"Eleven," Lin Fan said. "Tell Old Xu we need more."

A little after ten, the number he had waited all day for finally appeared.

The inventory column hit zero.

The listing took itself down.

Ma Le sprang up from the computer. "Bro, it's sold out! It's all sold out!"

The garage fell silent at once. All six students stopped what they were doing and looked over together.

Eight hundred and seventy-eight pairs had sold out in two hours, an hour and a half earlier than he had estimated.

There were only two paths now.

One was to close up like this, pack orders properly tonight, then be unable to sell shoes tomorrow. The listing would sink down the search rankings, and after a week, it would fall back to the fifth page. There were still more than two months left in winter. Their livelihood for the next two months depended entirely on this listing's ranking. Everyone across the internet had helped push it up tonight, and this chance only came once a year.

The other was to keep selling.

To keep selling, they needed stock. He knew those two lots of goods better than anyone. Ye's factory in Wenzhou still had one thousand pairs stacked in its warehouse, stock he had reserved more than half a month ago. He had just transferred a two-thousand-yuan deposit last week. Wu would have surplus inventory in mid-November. They had discussed it face-to-face, and Lin Fan would be the first person he called.

But what truly decided the matter was the express delivery situation over the next half month.

Everyone in the trade seventeen years later would talk about the half month after Double Eleven. Parcels piled up like mountains at sorting centers, there were not enough delivery vehicles in the entire city, and every store online promised shipment within three days. In reality, orders were delayed ten or twenty days, and the complaints never stopped. Everyone would be late. Delays were the norm for those two weeks.

If he clearly stated the date on the page—shipment before the twentieth—then his would instead be the most honest shop on the entire internet.

"I've added inventory," he said as he clicked. "Up to three thousand."

Ma Le leaned over to look at the screen. Once he saw the number clearly, his voice nearly cracked.

"Three thousand? We don't have a single pair left in the warehouse!"

"I added a line on the page. Shipments will go out in two batches. The first batch within three days, the second before the twentieth." Lin Fan did not stop moving. "If we state it clearly, it isn't deception."

"What about the stock?"

"I'm getting it now."

His first call went to Wenzhou. Ye was already asleep, and his voice was hoarse when he answered. But the moment he heard Lin Fan's voice, he was wide awake.

"Director Ye, those thousand pairs. Load them tonight and send them on the dedicated line first thing tomorrow."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight," Lin Fan said. "I'll transfer the balance as soon as funds come in over the next couple days, not a cent short. If you trust me, get the goods on the truck now."

There was no hesitation on the other end.

"What am I trusting you for? I trust the receipt in my warehouse with your fingerprint on it." Ye chuckled. "I'll get people moving. The warehouse door won't close tonight."

His second call went to Wu. He wanted every last pair from the surplus stock expected in mid-November, leaving Wu not a single pair. Wu said Lin Fan's voice echoed and asked if he was in a warehouse.

"I am."

At 11:20, the second truck arrived.

At 11:40, the screen showed 2,864 orders.

Ma Le's lips had turned pale from reading out orders, and two of the six students had begun rubbing their wrists. The sound of plastic bags tearing, tape being pulled, and stacks of shoeboxes collapsing all blended together under the garage's white lights, which shone over scraps of paper scattered across the floor.

Ten minutes before midnight, they hit 4,007 orders.

"One hundred yuan each for the work," Lin Fan called out. "I'm going to buy late-night food now."

Someone cheered, but no one stopped working.

He brought back eight portions of fried noodles from the noodle shop at the entrance to the residential complex, which had not closed yet. He set them on a cardboard box, and the six students squatted among the piles of bags to eat. His cousin, her mouth stuffed with noodles, looked up and asked him.

"How much can you make from selling all these shoes?"

"Enough to pay all of you."

At 2:10 in the morning, a commotion came from beyond the rolling shutter.

Old Xu had come himself in his beat-up van. The cargo compartment was empty. Standing at the entrance, he first looked around the garage, from the piles of bags stacked to the rafters to the six students bent over cardboard boxes attaching labels.

The cigarette in his hand was lit, but he had not taken a puff.

"How many orders?"

"Four thousand eight."

Old Xu took the cigarette from his mouth.

"I've collected parcels in this area for six years," he said. "The best month in the whole district, we handled two hundred and twenty a day."

"Three-fifty. Your price."

"Three-fifty." Old Xu rolled up his sleeve protectors. "I called two more people. I'll come again at three-thirty. Starting from six tomorrow morning, I'll schedule trucks for you until night."

He reached out, picked up a bag, and squeezed the boots inside.

"Kid, tell me honestly. Is there a factory behind your shop?"

"I just buy stock and sell it."

"Someone who buys stock and sells it ships four thousand eight in a day?" Old Xu tossed the bag onto the van and shook his head.

Old Xu's question had struck at the most crucial point of the past six months.

The factory was in Wenzhou. Its owner was named Ye. It had not operated for half a year, and even the dogs had gotten thin. The stock from the five or six factories at the source that could produce these goods had been stacked pair by pair in one man's storage space in the north of the city. That man was waiting to see when this shop would close.

As for who stood behind this shop, hundreds of thousands of people across the city were flooding onto one website tonight. Not one of them knew.

At 4:50 in the morning, the number on the page stopped.

Twenty-four hours, from yesterday to today.

5,381 orders.

The six students had fallen asleep between two stacks of bags. Ma Le sat at the computer with both hands hanging over his knees, not saying a word.

Lin Fan took Ma Le's account book, flipped to the last page, and calculated everything from start to finish.

5,381 orders. Sales came to just over 210,000 yuan. Adding the shipping fees paid by buyers, there was a little over 240,000 yuan sitting in Alipay. The shoes cost ten yuan fifty per pair, totaling 56,000. Delivery cost three yuan fifty per order, totaling 18,800. Bags, tape, and slips came to 2,500. Wages for the six workers came to 600.

What remained in hand was around 160,000 yuan.

The money had not reached his bank card yet. He had to wait for buyers to confirm receipt one by one. The first batch of money would arrive in three to five days, and over the following half month, it would come in bit by bit each day.

He set down his pen.

At the end of August, all he had to his name was five thousand yuan. Two thousand had been tied up in the first batch of leggings, leaving three thousand he could use. Back then, he shipped nine orders a day and could sit in front of the computer staring at it for half an hour.

Five thousand yuan at the end of August had become 5,381 orders today.

One yuan of capital, one order.

Ma Le suddenly spoke. His voice was so hoarse it barely sounded like him.

"Bro, did we make it?"

"The money's still in Alipay."

"Then we made it anyway." Ma Le leaned back against his chair, looking at the white light on the garage ceiling. "Last month, I told you two thousand pairs would take until next Qingming Festival to sell."

"You also told me to sleep in the pile of boots."

"I will." Ma Le draped an arm over the bags. "I'm sleeping here tonight."

At 5:20, the sky began to brighten, and Old Xu's vehicle came again.

Lin Fan went upstairs to rinse off. He wore the same shirt from yesterday, and the collar was still stiff.

At 8:40, he swiped his card and entered the sixth floor.

Before the computer had even finished booting, Zhou Bin came over carrying his thermos and stopped behind Lin Fan's chair.

"What's the number?"

"I'm pulling it up now."