Thirty-Nine to Forty-Two, Not a Single Small Size!

Saturday, December 26, 10:00 a.m., north Hangzhou, the office on the second floor of the warehouse.

A sheet of paper lay spread across the desk, with two lines written on it.

The reported situation had been investigated and found to be unsubstantiated.

The letter had been mailed on November 24, signed with his real name, stamped, and with a phone number left behind. After one month and two days, this was what came back.

"Lei, that's all? Just two lines?"

"Just two lines."

The first line did not surprise him. More than 5,300 orders—money collected, goods shipped. The truth was the truth.

What he had been waiting for in the second line was a name.

A no-name shop's paperwork had cleared in a day and a half, seven days before Double Eleven. He had been in this business for twenty years, and he knew too well what it felt like when paperwork got held up. His own paperwork had been stalled three times. All three times, he had needed to make calls and pull strings. Even the fastest had taken three days.

A day and a half—and a clean day and a half at that.

He could not make sense of it.

What he could not make sense of, he set aside for now.

He turned the computer around and opened that shop.

He had not looked at it in a month.

The listing was still the same one, but the title had changed. Sales had been over 5,300 before; now they were over 8,300.

Three thousand more.

The main image had been changed too. The first picture showed a boot on a white bedsheet, with a ruler laid sideways beside it.

No one put a ruler in a main product image.

He clicked open the size section.

Thirty-nine. Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two.

There was nothing below that.

Nothing above it either.

Four sizes.

He pulled his hand back from the screen.

He knew what export cancellation stock was. A factory took an overseas order, completed it, and the buyer backed out, leaving the entire batch sitting in its warehouse. An entire batch was an entire batch, with a full size run—thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, all of them.

Foreigners had big feet, but foreign women could have small feet too.

There was no canceled export batch in the world that started at size thirty-nine.

This batch had not been dug out of someone's warehouse.

Someone had taken a size chart into a factory and told them to make it accordingly.

Size thirty-nine had the most pairs, followed by forty. There were only a few pairs in forty-one and forty-two. That distribution was tailored to buyers, not warehouse stock.

He pulled open the drawer and took out the shoe from last month.

He removed the insole. The string of letters and numbers underneath was still there. Last year's product code.

That was last year's product.

He wanted one pair from this batch.

He scrolled to the bottom of the page.

One line read: This batch is sold out. Restock dates will be announced when confirmed.

"Use a buyer account and ask when they'll restock."

The operations manager went out.

Lei scrolled down through the reviews himself.

New reviews had come in over the past two days. One after another, buyers had reported their own sizes. Finally got a pair in forty-two. Been looking for shoes for size forty-one feet for three years. My mother wears size forty and loves them.

People above size thirty-nine could not buy shoes all year round. When they finally got a pair, they had to say something.

This screen was more solid than any field on the product page.

The operations manager came back.

"I asked. Customer service said the restock date isn't set yet. They said I could leave a Wangwang ID and they'd notify me when stock arrived."

"That's all they said?"

"I tried asking four different ways." The operations manager took off his glasses and wiped them. "I asked where their factory was, how many pairs the next batch would have, whether I could pay a deposit in advance to reserve a spot. Same answer all four times."

Lei Xiangdong leaned back in his chair.

At the beginning of October, he had gone from factory to factory in Wenzhou. The machines for fur-collar boots had been booked from October through next March, and his people were stationed all day outside the five or six factories in the production area. Every newly produced pair of fur-collar ankle boots this winter sat in his inventory slots in north Hangzhou.

In November, he had gone to Wenzhou himself. Those five or six factory owners had sworn up and down six times. He had gone through the ledgers kept by his stationed men page by page, swept through more than thirty export factories in the west-side development zone, and found not a single pair.

In the end, he had recognized them from the product code beneath an insole.

Last year's goods. Goods that had slept in someone else's warehouse for a year.

He had accepted that explanation. He could lock down machines, but not warehouses. There were thousands of warehouses in Wenzhou. He had accepted it.

Now the size selection sat right there on the screen.

He crossed out the words clearance stock.

He placed the shoe on the desk.

"How many people do you have in Wenzhou?"

"Three watching the production area, two in the west side."

"Pull the three from the production area back."

The operations manager's hand froze on the doorframe.

"Lei, we're not watching the production area anymore?"

"What's the point of watching them?" Lei Xiangdong said. "I know better than their own factory managers what sizes those five or six factories make. Thirty-six to thirty-eight. They barely make any pairs above thirty-nine in a year. They don't even have lasts for them on the racks."

"Then this batch..."

"This batch is still being made this month."

The room went quiet for a moment.

"A factory in Wenzhou is operating this month," Lei Xiangdong said. "A factory not marked on my map."

The operations manager stood there, turning those words over in his head.

"A shut-down factory?"

"A shut-down factory."

"Lei, you know better than I do how much it costs for a factory that's been closed for half a year to reopen a production line. Materials need cash, workers need wages, machines need repairs. A factory that has been shut down for half a year has nothing in its accounts," the operations manager said. "Who fronted them that money?"

"So someone did."

Lei Xiangdong rose and walked to the window.

Below, his own goods were stacked in the yard, pile after pile beneath blue rain tarps, stretching from one end of the wall to the other.

"I've been in this business for twenty years, and I've always believed one thing. Lock down the machines, and you lock down the goods," he said. "In October, I locked down the machines that were running. I never counted the ones that had stopped."

"Get Old Xu up here."

The buyer came upstairs with half a bun still in his hand.

"Do you still have that list from October?"

"Yes. It's been in my cabinet."

"Bring it."

He brought up a folder holding more than ten sheets of paper. Factory names, one after another, followed by addresses, phone numbers, number of production lines, and machine types.

More than half had crosses drawn over them.

Their own people had drawn those crosses. Beside them were notes: shut down for half a year, no goods, doors locked, machines sold, workers gone.

Lei Xiangdong flipped through the pages one by one. When he reached the end, he pushed them back to the buyer.

"Go through every factory with a cross again."

The buyer froze.

"Lei, there are sixty or seventy of them."

"Sixty or seventy. Visit them one by one."

"Look for what?"

"See whose doors are open and whose machines are running." Lei Xiangdong pushed the shoe to the center of the desk. "One look at the lasts on the racks will tell you what sizes a factory is making."

The buyer picked up the folder.

"What if we find one running?"

"If it's running, tell me." Lei Xiangdong said, "I need to know whose job it is. That factory can forget about surviving in this business afterward."

That same morning, in south Wenzhou, Ye's Factory started up two production lines. Five thousand pairs, loaded for shipment on January 5.

Hangzhou, the empty room on the west side.

Ma Le propped a bundle of waterproof bags against the wall.

"Brother, you put that ruler in the main image, right?"

"Yeah."

"It looks weird to me. What shoe seller puts a ruler there?"

"The buyers don't think it's weird."

He had never intended to hide the size range.

Buyers themselves needed to click open the size section to look. If they did not, they would not dare place an order. The 240 people last month had stumbled over exactly this point: they paid, waited ten days, then ended up with a refund. This time, the first thing they needed to see when they clicked it open was size forty-two.

That ruler was there for them.

When the previous batch went up, anyone in the trade could tell with one touch that it had been made for export. When this batch went up, those four sizes were laid out in plain sight. Anyone who understood would naturally know it had been made to order at a factory.

He accepted that hit.

He had even less control over the review section. People above size thirty-nine had to say something when they finally bought a pair of shoes. They reported their own sizes, clearer than anything he could write on the page.

Either this batch stayed piled in the room and never went online, or people saw it.

What they saw were the sizes, not the factory.

The factory sat at the end of an alley piled with coal slag in south Wenzhou, its iron gate pasted with a red hiring notice. For over three months, everyone in the factory had called him Manager Ma, and not one of them knew his surname. The receipts bore the name Manager Ma. Material payments came from Ma Le's card. The sender field on courier slips was stamped with a carved rubber seal.

The night before last, Factory Manager Ye had said over the phone that someone had come asking who had contracted those two lines. He himself could not answer.

Good. Better that he could not.

After counting the bags, there were 1,800 of them—not enough for 5,000 pairs.

He took out his phone and first called the Wenzhou materials supplier to order more bags. After hanging up, he dialed another number.

It rang four or five times.

"Well, Boss Ma."

"Boss Wu, has anything been happening in Wenzhou this month?"

"Something happening?" The man on the other end laughed. "You're asking me? Don't you know yourself?"

"I don't."

"There's a factory in the south part of town that had been shut down for half a year. It started operating this month, with two lines running at full capacity and a hiring notice pasted outside." Boss Wu said, "Everyone making shoes has been talking about it these past few days. They say someone from Hangzhou contracted it."

"How far has the news spread?"

"It's reached me."

There was a pause on the other end.

"Boss Ma."

"Yes?"

"You remember what I told you last time, right?"

He remembered.

The person would eventually find out which factory that batch had come from. Once he did, that factory could forget about staying in this business.

Back then, he had been investigating the goods.

Now, word had gotten out about the factory.

The shipment was loading on January 5. Ten days remained.