All of Wenzhou Swore They Hadn't Supplied a Single Pair! Lei Xiangdong Personally Placed an Order from His Own Home!

At 8:30 p.m. on November 12, Old Xu's fourth truck of the day was parked at the garage entrance.

Ma Le squatted by the truck bed, stacking sacks inside. After each layer, he stood up to catch his breath. He had only slept three hours the entire previous night. His cousin had brought in two more classmates to keep working, and they were still being paid a hundred each.

He hadn't taken down the link. Yesterday alone, they had received 5,381 orders, and more than six hundred had been added by this point today. The line on the page hadn't changed either: the first batch within three days, the second batch before the twentieth.

They currently owed more than 4,400 pairs of shoes, while the only stock he had confirmed was Ye's Shoe Factory's thousand pairs.

He knew exactly how big that hole was, but the link couldn't be shut down. The position they had gained overnight yesterday had been propped up by the entire internet. It only came once a year. If he shut it down today, it would fall to the fifth page tomorrow.

The other side's tricks had run their course by today. The report had been rejected by his documentation. Their empty orders couldn't lock up a single pair of his shoes. They had promised two bad reviews a day, yet not one had appeared.

There was only one path left: trace the goods.

Last week, Factory Manager Ye had reported two groups of people asking which warehouses in the area still had inventory. If those two groups couldn't find anything, the ones coming later would be bigger players.

The people stationed at those five or six factories in Wenzhou kept records of every new item coming off the assembly lines each day. However many pairs were produced, that many were hauled away, matched pair for pair. Goods that had been sitting in warehouses for a year wouldn't have a line in those notebooks.

At ten to nine, his phone rang. It was a Wenzhou number.

Factory Manager Ye's voice was unusually bright. He said the goods had been loaded last night, and he had personally escorted them to the freight depot that morning to send them by dedicated route. He would send over the tracking number shortly. If all went well, they could be collected the day after tomorrow.

"Factory Manager Ye, I'll send the remaining payment as soon as the funds come in over the next couple of days."

"Hey, don't say that again." The man laughed, then paused after laughing. "There is something I wanted to talk to you about. The west side of the city was lively today. A group from Hangzhou showed up in two cars, knocking door to door and asking whether anyone had leftover stock of fur-trimmed short boots. They said money wasn't an issue. Word travels fast in our business. By noon, it had already reached the south side of town."

"Did they come to you?"

"Me?" Factory Manager Ye sounded as if he had heard a joke. "My factory's been shut down for more than half a year. The workers scattered ages ago, and even the dog has gotten skinny. Who'd come here looking for goods? When the first two groups came asking, I told them there was no stock. This time, I don't even need to say anything."

Lin Fan stood at the garage entrance. Old Xu's truck was running, its headlights casting a patch of white across the wall.

"Factory Manager Ye, if anyone asks in the future, tell them the same thing."

"Don't worry. My factory is just an empty yard."

That same morning, the lights in that factory building in the north of the city had been on since before dawn.

All six trucks in the yard were running. Yesterday's orders were still jammed at the entrance today. Of the forty-six customer service staff, more than twenty had pulled an all-nighter and hadn't left.

The young man handling order follow-ups came in holding a printout.

"President Lei, the numbers from that store."

Lei Xiangdong was standing at the storage area, watching the warehouse supervisor count inventory. He turned around.

"How many?"

"Yesterday alone, the number on their page went up by more than 5,300."

The movement in the room stopped at once.

The operations manager stood from behind the desk, took the printout, and read it twice. When he looked up, disbelief was still written on his face.

"Five thousand three hundred? In one day?"

"Twenty-four hours."

Lei Xiangdong closed the inventory ledger in his hand and handed it back to the warehouse supervisor.

His own side had moved more than eighteen thousand pairs yesterday. Hall 49, positions in more than twenty stores, six trucks making a run every two hours, running from morning until midnight. This day was what he had earned by stationing people at factories one by one since early October and stacking cash bundle after bundle, buying out the machines through next March.

That store sold them for thirty-nine, and moved more than 5,300 orders in one day.

Three weeks ago, that link had only been selling one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty pairs.

"What did they say about the report?"

"The documentation passed. We kept watch on it. No points were deducted." The operations manager's voice lowered.

"What about the accounts that were locking up the inventory?"

"They can't lock it anymore. He changed the listing so inventory is only deducted after payment. Our accounts place orders without paying, so they can't hold even one pair."

"The bad reviews."

The operations manager said nothing.

"I asked you about the bad reviews."

"They can't be posted." The operations manager clenched the printout in his hand. "Reviews require completed orders first. None of our accounts paid a cent from beginning to end. There isn't even a single transaction on them, so they can't rate him."

Lei Xiangdong looked at him for five or six seconds.

Three jobs, and not one had landed.

Reports, empty orders, bad reviews—who in Hangzhou doing this business didn't use those three methods? Throw them at any store and it would be enough to make that store weep. This time, all three had been thrown at once. The other store's link had gone down for more than a day, then revived itself the next afternoon.

It had documentation, knew how to change inventory settings, and knew that orders placed without payment couldn't leave ratings. Following those moves back one by one, this was someone who thoroughly understood the platform's rules.

He had met people like that before. They were all veterans who had been in the trade for years.

"Prepare the car."

"President Lei, where are you going?"

"Wenzhou."

Last week, he had said that if this store was still open before Double Eleven, he would personally go down to Wenzhou.

He left the city at ten in the morning and entered Wenzhou after two in the afternoon.

He visited all five or six factories in a single day. He didn't exchange pleasantries when he entered. As soon as he sat down, he asked to see the records.

At the first factory, the manager flipped through the hardbound notebook carried by the young man stationed there, then spread it open on the table from beginning to end. One page per day: how many pairs came off the line, how many were loaded onto trucks. The numbers matched, and the final page even bore the driver's signature.

"President Lei, since October 8, not a single pair from our factory has gone out through any door other than your trucks. The person you sent eats and sleeps in my workshop. If I dared divert even one pair, you know better than I do how much the contract says I'd have to pay."

The manager of the third factory grew anxious. He called the workshop director, warehouse keeper, and accountant who issued invoices into the office, making them stand there one by one and say there was nothing.

Wu's factory was the last one. By then, it was already dark.

Boss Wu poured him tea, the smile never leaving his round face, his voice softer than anyone else's.

"President Lei, my factory has two lines. One makes for you, and the other also makes for you. Where would I get goods to divert? Your young man squats beside the trucks every day. Even the tape sealing the boxes has your own printing on it. Not even an empty box can leave my factory."

He had heard the same words six times over the course of the day.

Strangely, he believed them.

The records from the past month had been written day by day by people he himself had sent. The record keepers were his people, the notebooks were bought by him, and the tape bore his company's printing. The tighter this system was, the more it served as proof for that batch of goods.

They hadn't come from those five or six factories.

That only left the warehouses.

All the fur-trimmed short women's boots newly made for this winter by legitimate factories were stacked in his storage slots. That batch was genuine. The documentation could pass the platform's checks, the fur stood up straight, and the stitching was tight. If genuine goods hadn't come off an assembly line, then they could only have been moved out of some warehouse.

The factories in Wenzhou that made export shoes were clustered throughout several development zones on the west side of the city.

After eight that night, two cars turned into the development zone. The walls on both sides of the road stretched beyond sight.

At the first factory, the old man in the guardhouse didn't even open the window, just waved them away through the glass. At the second, they entered the office, and the sales staffer's face changed the moment he heard they wanted to buy warehouse stock. He said the factory was producing normally, so where would there be any inventory? At the third, the gatekeeper looked Lei Xiangdong up and down, saw the two cars outside the gate, then turned back and shouted. Someone came out and said the boss was away on a business trip.

Factories sitting on stock wouldn't admit they had stock. He understood that. If tens of thousands of goods were sleeping in a warehouse and word got out, suppliers would block the door, creditors would block the door, and competitors would wait to laugh at them.

After ten, the car stopped at the entrance to the development zone. The operations manager handed over the list from the previous two days.

Two sheets of paper, more than thirty factory names, each with a cross beside it.

Reasons were written after the crosses: none, doesn't make women's boots, only makes men's styles, closed down, couldn't find anyone.

He read from top to bottom.

On the second-to-last page was one line: old factory district in the south of the city, Ye's Shoe Factory.

A cross. After it, six words: shut down for half a year, no stock.

His finger paused on that line.

A factory that had been shut down for half a year, with workers scattered, not a cent in its accounts—if its warehouse really held several thousand pairs of good shoes, they would have long since been sold cheap to leftover-stock dealers. They couldn't have lasted until today. His calculations had never been wrong in twenty years.

He handed the paper back and turned it over.

After eleven, outside the development zone, the operations manager got out to book rooms at a hotel. Lei Xiangdong remained seated in the car.

Wenzhou was huge. There were thousands of shoe factories and thousands of warehouses. He couldn't get through the door of any of them. If he knocked door to door, he still wouldn't finish by next spring.

After a whole day, he hadn't even gotten his hands on that boot.

He had stared at the image on that page for half a month. Fur trim, short shaft, round toe, the most common color. What could an image tell him? Nothing.

But shoes were different.

Shoes couldn't hide their origins. The label on the tongue, the stamp beneath the insole, export goods with foreign inspectors' paper cards tucked into the box, stitch spacing, the smell of glue. Put a shoe in his hand, and he could tell at once which factory made it and which country's order it had been produced for.

Only so many factories in Wenzhou could make goods like these. Find the factory, and one question would reveal who that batch had been sold to.

He rolled down the car window and called to the operations manager.

"Buy a pair of boots from that store."

The operations manager stood outside the car door without moving.

"Buy them?"

"Buy them."

"Which account should I use?"

"Use your own account, under your own name, and have them shipped to your home." Lei Xiangdong said, "Pay for it."

The operations manager got into the car and tapped at his phone. After a while, he looked up.

"President Lei, there's something."

"Speak."

"Their page says shipments are split into two batches. The first batch ships within three days, the second before the twentieth. My order is in the second batch."

Lei Xiangdong said nothing.

He himself had more than ten thousand unshipped orders piled up at the moment. Customer service had been cursed at from last night until that afternoon. There weren't enough delivery trucks on the entire internet; no one could criticize anyone else. What was strange was that this store had written the dates out plainly on its page. In all his years of business, this was the first time he had seen a store dare to state its shipping dates on the listing.

"How much?"

"Thirty-nine, plus five for shipping."

Forty-four yuan, and he would have to wait until after the twentieth.

He took the folded page printout from his jacket pocket, unfolded it across his knee, pulled out a pen, and wrote numbers in the blank space beneath the image. The operations manager read them out, and he wrote them down one by one.

When he finished, he folded the paper and tucked it back into his pocket.

"When this pair of shoes reaches my hands," he rolled up the window, "I'll know at a glance which factory made this batch."