Booksellers complain of electricity dealers ' back: stock turnover watered down to cater to investors

Price war Let http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/7578.html "" > Electric Business Enterprise "indigestion", reverse force upstream supplier but become their "new play".

The night before yesterday, Shen President of the Micro-blog on Weibo complained that a domestic large electric dealers through low-cost underwriting products, the formation of unsalable inventory, but not willing to knot with suppliers.

People familiar with the "first financial daily" said that Shen refers to the large electric operators Dangdang. However, Dangdang did not respond to this. Shen's attitude on the matter changed yesterday, saying he was unwilling to talk about it again. "It's still a business," Shen said in a microblog.

Ai Media Consulting CEO Zhang said that from the Shen and the electricity business site reconciliation can be seen, the current electric business platform and upstream supplier relationship is particularly delicate. On the one hand, the electric business platform has gradually become the mainstream retail channel, especially in the book field, the supplier's discourse power from strong to weak; On the other hand, domestic electric dealers frequently carry on the price war, when the purchase depends on the supplier, when the sales knot is forced the supplier.

"Chorus a Play"

This phenomenon is not uncommon. Electric business people familiar with the matter said that in order to show the record of speeding up inventory turnover, electric business enterprises and suppliers to jointly "act" is a more common phenomenon.

Under normal circumstances, the Electronic business site in order to gain exclusive market advantage in the price war, often using a large number of underwriting, but once the market sales, it will face a large backlog of inventory, such as more than the book category generally limited 120 days inventory time limit. As a result, the site will require suppliers to cooperate, through false trading to improve turnover rate.

This practice is usually divided into two steps. The first step: the Electronic Business website will ask the supplier to pretend that the customer will buy the inventory, when the system records the sale, then the purchase order to purchase the goods from the supplier back.

The second step: the sales of the entire process of goods is not true out of the library, just in the system presented virtual buy, sell; After this operation, the inventory turnaround time will be from the previous more than 120 days to adjust the number of days, such as 30 days or less.

The method is generally used by electric companies to "whitewash" earnings turnover, but the amount owed to suppliers will be paid, according to people familiar with the matter.

And Shen complain is, with his cooperation of the electric business site with this virtual purchase time to check the account period, was already in the storehouse of more than 120 days of cargo, due to the supplier to do virtual account period, so the account period and adapt to continue after more than 30 days to knot.

With the continuous improvement of the power of discourse, suppliers are often in a coercive position. Take Dangdang as an example, only 2009 years when the book publishing market occupies 53% of the market share. This allows booksellers to become dependent on the way in which the website of the electric dealer is formed.

Inventory and cost rise

The promotion of inventories is one of the reasons for the joint "whitewash" of the electricity merchants ' websites and suppliers, said the electric business people.

In a survey, the stock pressure is also in the electricity business is ranked in the forefront of anxiety problems. Recently held in Shenzhen, the annual meeting of the Electric business industry, high inventory has almost become the industry recognized the important topic of winter.

This is related to the previous electricity business in more than a year by the frenzy of sudden cold. Many electric business enterprises in order to impact the scale, pull down the price and prepared a lot of inventory, but did not get the expected effect, formed a larger inventory backlog. In addition, in the industry after the cold, in order to compete for market share in order to obtain financing support, the category of price wars are also frequent outbreaks. In response to the price war, some electric business enterprises also in the inventory of worry: If the stock is not enough, it is easy to face the embarrassing situation of goods can not sell, such as the recent Beijing-east and Suning's big home appliances price war, the Beijing-East stock on a large area appeared shortage, and if more goods, but the price war performance is weak, poor delivery, May be faced with further inventory squeeze, cash flow tight, storage costs increase and lengthen the vendor account period and other problems.

Inventory upgrade makes turnover and storage-related cost pressure increase.

As an example, the quarterly report, published this month, showed that the cost of the quarter was $283.98 million, which grew by 9% in the previous quarter and 72% per cent over the same period in the previous year. When the second quarter of the performance expenditure (including warehousing and freight costs) for 180.7 million yuan (about 28.4 million U.S. dollars), accounting for 15% of total revenue, the same period last year 13.3%.

Specifically, according to public information, when the first quarter of last year's warehousing logistics cost of 85 million yuan, and this year one or two quarters rose to 176 million and 181 million yuan. If the ratio is measured against gross margin, it was 63.4% in the first quarter, and 113.73% and 114.74% in the one or two quarter of the year.

And these cost increases also to the enterprise profit formation more pressure. For example, in the two-quarter net loss of 122.2 million yuan this year, the net loss of 28.4 million yuan in the same period last year. Moreover, when the cost of control and compared to the net loss of revenue performance in the industry is still a good level. Dangdang CEO Guoqing previously said that for the big loss of the electricity quotient, "50 steps can laugh hundred steps."

The electricity business is very wary of the storage costs raised by the inventory backlog. An electric trader with a larger platform is mulling more stringent controls on the warehousing of Third-party businesses: The vendor's inventory in its warehouse, which is deducted for 10 days from the withdrawal request, a person familiar with the matter said.

In the industry to go cold and inventory pressure increase in the background, in order to make the financial statements look good to meet investors, together with suppliers in the inventory turnover to do some hands and feet, is also considered to be the helplessness of the electric business.