In March this year, Golden Snail Industrial Co., Ltd., a well-known export enterprise in Dongguan and the world's largest supplier of Wal-Mart barbecue pits, announced that it would stop production. Zhu Shanbao, the boss of the company, was once unaccounted for because of his arrears in employees' wages, suppliers' payment, bank loans and taxes. Knowing this news, we tried our best to contact the left-behind staff of the company, trying to find the crux of the export enterprise from this export enterprise with high debts and uncertain future. Today, we will find out with reporters.
First, the lying "golden lying cow"
After several contacts, the reporter met Lu Ma Lu, the general manager of Golden Snail who stayed behind to deal with the aftermath. He has just returned to Guangdong from Wuhan. Lu Ma Lu was originally an ordinary manager of Golden Snail Company. A month after the factory stopped production, he was promoted to general manager of Golden Snail Company by Huoxian. I went to Wuhan this time because the company owed money to two local suppliers.
Lu Ma Lu told reporters: "One of them is more than 20 million (payment) and 21100 million. He hopes we can return it before next month, and then the pressure will be less. We are still talking to him. "
On the way to Dongguan Golden Snail Company, Lu Malu told reporters that Zhu Shanbao, the chairman of Golden Snail, would contact him separately every day. It is really difficult for other employees and hundreds of suppliers in the factory to find Zhu Shanbao. "You really can't see the chairman this time. But he keeps in touch with me every day. It is true that so many managers, including some suppliers, are not so easy to find bosses. Because that time was a critical moment for the whole company. " "Why do you say that?" "Because one chooses to go bankrupt or continue to operate."
What kind of predicament did Zhu Shanbao get into? What caused Jin Lie Niu to fall down so quickly? With all kinds of questions, the reporter came to the factory of Golden Snail in Qingxi Town, Dongguan City. In the assembly workshop, the reporter saw that the power had been cut off here, and the equipment and semi-finished products on the production line were taken away by the court and were not allowed to be sold or transferred.
Here, the reporter met Zheng Xiantao, director of the office of Golden Snail Industrial Company. "How many workers are needed to produce such a workshop?" "The busiest time reached 500 people. Under normal circumstances, it is about 300 people. In the previous stage, before dissolution, there were about 200 people before production was stopped. " "Where are these workers now?" "Now these workers have all gone home for their holidays after receiving their wages."
The reporter saw that the dormitory building provided by the company for employees is behind the factory building and is now abandoned. "Are they all empty now?" "Empty, no one lives." "What about the workers who work here?" "Anhui has a large population, followed by Hubei, Henan, Sichuan and Guizhou, as well as Yunnan and Hunan. There are very few Cantonese people. " "Most of them are mainland?" "The mainland."
After the production was stopped, the workers were sent back to their hometown, and a few people who did not want to leave Dongguan were still waiting here. Facing the camera, many people choose to avoid it. After many twists and turns, a young man in Nanyang, Henan Province finally promised to say a few words. He is Xu Qingyong, deputy director of the original workshop of Jinwoniu Industrial Company. "If the factory doesn't stop production, people's hearts will be stable. Now that you stop production, he doesn't know what to do next, so (the worker) wants to get paid and leave when it's time to go, and do what he has to do. Is it my turn to do business? I'll find another way out. What do you think of your next step? No one can see the next step, but under the current circumstances, no one dares to estimate the next step so optimistically, right? "
Jamlom told reporters that before the suspension of production, the company had defaulted on all employees' wages, even general manager Lu Malu was no exception, and some employees were even owed wages for 20 months. "You are the deputy director of the factory workshop. What was your monthly salary then? " "More than 4,000 yuan." "More than four thousand dollars. I owed you wages at that time. When is the highest time? " "A little over forty thousand." "Almost ten months?" "Ten months."
Luma Road also lives in this dormitory building. At his home, the reporter saw Lu Ma Lu's employee's salary passbook, which is the only proof of unpaid wages. "This part of the salary has been deposited in the company's custody since 2006 10/0." "From what is shown here, you were paid in August,1signed in on October 24th, 65438." "Yes, yes, yes." "So the salary in September was 65438+February 7?" "yes." "At that time, the company's capital flow was already problematic?" "It was a difficult time."
Lu Malu told reporters that since 2006, workers have rarely been paid on time, which also shows that the performance of enterprises has begun to decline. In order to solve this problem, the company managed to borrow several million yuan from the local town government for emergency. At present, only the top management of the company like him has not got his salary back. Not only that, things that make the left-behind people have a headache happen one after another.
Knowing that the general manager Lu Ma Lu had returned to the company, the staff of the local court came one after another. This court summons just received is a lawsuit caused by the company's default on gas charges. In addition to the supplier's payment, the golden snail also needs to repay the bank loan and the tax payable. "What is your total assets now?" "About 450 million." "How is the current debt constituted?" "The company's liabilities are mainly concentrated in suppliers. The liabilities of suppliers range from more than 3,000 yuan to120,000, totaling about 500 suppliers' creditors. " "What is the total debt of a certain * * *, and what is the supplier's debt?" "According to the company's report, the supplier's debt is about 230 million yuan. "
According to the statistics of Jinniu Company, their current asset-liability ratio has reached 95% and they are on the verge of bankruptcy. Now there are debt collection suppliers blocking the door of the office building every day. The reporter met one of them here. "What are their raw materials?" "Supply screws." "How many years have you been supplying here?" "Three or four years." "Three or four years. How much do I owe you now? " "More than 600,000."
Lu Ma Lu said, "It's more about inquiring about the company. Basically every day, even several times a day, three or four times, there is this situation. " "What issues are they most concerned about?" "Or some plans of the company. Because there are some suppliers, he has some consultations on the phone. Maybe he doesn't believe that your whole enterprise was operating well. Why did it stop production in a short time? "
Second, who knocked down the golden lying cow?
From 2004 to 2005, 4.5 million barbecue ovens of different models were sold overseas, and these products with Jinniu's own trademark were exported to five countries: the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain and Germany. Now the domestic barbecue grill can only lie quietly in the finished product warehouse, and I don't know what fate it will face tomorrow.
The reporter met Zheng Xiantao, director of the office of the company, in the assembly workshop of Golden Snail. "If all this is done, where are these products going?" "This is sent to the United States, Europe and the United States." "What should be the price of a set?" "About four hundred dollars. This is a relatively high-end stove. " "More upscale. How high can this profit be? " "The specific profit is not clear, but this profit is still considerable. Our current profits are mainly obtained by this high-end product. "
As Zheng Xiantao said, Jinwenniu, which was built in 1992, was built in daily growing with export orders. From the original charcoal and gas barbecue, Jin Wenniu has developed into seven factories and two trading companies. At its most glorious time, it covered an area of 550,000 square meters, with a building area of 450,000 square meters and 4,200 employees. He used to be a big taxpayer in Qingxi Town and one of the top 50 private enterprises in Dongguan. /kloc-for 0/3 years, all the barbecues produced by this company have been exported, and the annual sales at the peak reached10.50 billion US dollars. Export 2 million barbecues to Wal-Mart, B&Q and other world retail giants every year. ..
In the sample room, Lu Ma Lu told reporters: "There are some samples on display in this exhibition room, which sell well in North America." "These are all?" "These are all." "How many kinds of samples are there in the showroom now?" "About 70 are relatively large, and more than 20 are relatively small, totaling 90."
In June, 2007, Golden Snail obtained the qualification of Wal-Mart supplier, becoming the only enterprise in the domestic barbecue oven industry that can directly export products to Wal-Mart. However, the good times did not last long. Only eight months later, Golden Snail had to take the initiative to ask Wal-Mart to stop supplying. Lu Malu explained to reporters: "Mainly around the Spring Festival, some negotiations between us and foreign customers failed to reach a (unified) opinion. Because we feel that this factory must be profitable if it is to operate, and the orders we receive are all orders received in the first half of last year. According to the price set at that time, because the price of this raw material has risen sharply, we don't think there is any way to deliver the goods. "
In recent years, domestic steel prices have indeed skyrocketed several times, especially in May 2006, when steel prices rose as high as 10%, which many people still remember. Zhang Guangfu, deputy director of Golden Snail Company General Factory, recalled: "The raw materials (prices) in our country have doubled from 165438+ 10 to 65438+February every year, especially this year. In particular, ordinary stretching plates and ordinary cold plates are more than 8,000 yuan, the highest peak. "
In 2008, steel prices once again exceeded people's imagination. The reporter inquired about the steel quotation in Guangzhou market. The price of cold-rolled sheet, which is in the greatest demand in industrial production, rose from 4767 yuan/ton on July 3, 2007 to 7 19 1 yuan/ton on June 5, 2008, with an increase of 50.8%.
Lu Ma Lu said: "In the whole barbecue products, more than 55% of the cost of cold-rolled plates we use is made up of the cost of cold-rolled plates. For example, in 2005, the price of this cold-rolled plate was about 3,200 yuan/ton, and the peak value this year was 8,500 yuan/ton. "
In the barbecue industry, it is rare for companies like Golden Snail to design and produce high-grade gas barbecue ovens and have their own brands. However, they still haven't got rid of the fate of falling profits or even stopping production at a loss. In Lumaru's office, a trade settlement letter of credit caught our attention again.
Lu Ma Lu said: "The amount of this letter of credit is 4.47 million US dollars. When I actually got the money, it should be April 2008. The product price was determined as early as April 2007. " "In April 2007, you will sign a contract to determine the price of the product. What is the basis for determining this price? " "According to the RMB exchange rate at that time and the positioning of raw materials at that time, we can determine the product unit price of this barbecue oven." "Didn't consider expectations? Haven't you considered these changes in the coming year? " "At this point, it can be said that all domestic export enterprises and foreign import enterprises, such as the appreciation of RMB in 2007 and 2008, were unexpected by many enterprises. It is impossible to say that the overall environment has undergone such a big adjustment at once. This is what we didn't expect. "
The product pricing of domestic export enterprises is usually determined one year in advance. Take the barbecue industry as an example. In April and May each year, Golden Snail signs supply contracts with overseas retailers such as Wal-Mart to determine a price. From then on, every batch of export products should be strictly implemented according to this price. According to Lu Ma Lu, there are dozens of domestic enterprises producing barbecue pits. In order to compete for overseas orders, there is indeed vicious competition to depress prices. Taurus has to sign the bill and can only be priced according to the meager profit. In other words, this export contract, which determines the profit of next year's products, simply does not take exchange rate changes into account; In other words, an important reason of Taurus crisis is the pricing error when enterprises take orders.
Lu Ma Lu said, "This is a delivery schedule of Jinwoniu General Factory. The delivery plan is the order delivery plan from May 2007 to August 2008, and it is also a quarterly order delivery plan. For products like 848503, under normal circumstances, 5 100 sets should be shipped in July, and more than 4,000 sets should be shipped in 10 month, and 10200 sets will be sold in February (2008). But we can see from the details of this order that some of it is green, and this has been marked as shipped and has been successfully completed. Because the whole company is facing some problems such as rising prices of raw materials, lower export tax rebates, and appreciation of the renminbi, the company is under pressure, which makes it impossible to deliver on time. " "What if we continued to deliver these goods according to this original order contract?" "At that time, we roughly estimated that before June 2008, the loss of our factory would reach about 50 million yuan."
Is Jinniu's bankruptcy dilemma a case of poor management of export enterprises or a crisis affecting the survival of many enterprises? After visiting Qingxi, Humen, Houjie and Tangxia towns in Dongguan, the reporter found that a considerable number of export enterprises in this export city are facing the same crisis as the golden snail.
Third, the Dongguan issue.
The reporter learned in Dongguan that due to the appreciation of RMB and other factors, many export enterprises suffered losses, and some even closed down or went bankrupt. I am surrounded by such an enterprise. Now the name of the factory has been scraped off, but you can still vaguely see the handwriting of Hong Chen Shoes Co., Ltd.
Like many enterprises in the Pearl River Delta, the workshop of this factory is leased. Now, the factory has closed down and the boss has posted an advertisement for rent. On the way to the interview, you can often see such advertisements for renting factories. Zheng Xiantao, director of the office of Jinniu Company, told us that the situation here is not what it used to be. "It started in the second half of last year, which is more prominent. We have been here for so many years, and I have been here for five or six years. I have never talked about factories falling here and there before, so I didn't talk about it. This factory is also under constant construction. There are many vacant factories now, but they cannot be rented out. No one came to rent it. "
There are thousands of export factories in houjie town. Zhang Yu, a young man who works here, told reporters that several factories in the town have collapsed recently. "This is a garment factory that just closed down." "A new garment factory? It was just sealed on March 4, 2008. " "The factory owner ran away." "The factory owner ran away?" "yes. After he ran away, the local village Committee gave this part of the employee's salary. " "Is that when all the workers didn't get paid?" "No, no, I didn't get paid. I owe it for several months. "
In Dongguan Intermediate People's Court, Vice President Chen, who is in charge of the liquidation of bankrupt enterprises, told us that he and his colleagues clearly felt the crisis of export enterprises. "Obviously feel it. Last year, for example, we handled a case of Jinwan Plastic Co., Ltd. in Humen Town, Dongguan. This enterprise used to be very big, with about six or seven thousand people at the most. Their factory should cover more than 20 acres. The building area of that factory building and dormitory building alone is over 80,000 square meters. Such a large enterprise did not operate well last year. For various reasons, the only remaining cases are those of our court. It should have been in our Humen court last year. There are more than 240 factories in this factory alone, and our intermediate court accepted it. Because we are under the jurisdiction of different places, the intermediate court has to accept more than 10. "
Chen took us to an export enterprise in Humen. This is a toy factory that can be counted locally. It also closed down in the crisis of export enterprises. Because there was no money to pay the bill, hundreds of suppliers took the enterprise to court. Chen alone handled more than 240 cases. ""We came when we came to seal it up, and the situation was very chaotic. " "What a mess?" "At that time, I was nervous. There are cars everywhere, and all the cars are in front of me. Vehicles are littered, because everyone is in a hurry and all suppliers are collecting debts. "
After the American subprime mortgage crisis, there were signs of consumption recession in European and American markets. Clothing, footwear, furniture and other export enterprises feel the strongest. Take leather shoes as an example. In the first two months of this year, Dongguan exported 35.78 million pairs of leather shoes, a sharp drop 15.6% compared with the same period last year. Among them,14.48 million pairs were exported to the United States, a decrease of 19.7% compared with the same period of last year. In order to know more details, we came to Dongguan Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau and met Favor Cai, deputy director. "There are indeed some enterprises, and it is also because of this rising cost that losses are caused." "Have you ever done statistics? At present, due to these factors, how many of our export enterprises and foreign trade enterprises have closed down recently, and how many have fallen into debt disputes? " "The closure and transfer of this enterprise is a complex issue, which can only be clarified by an enterprise's investigation, so it is difficult to form a very accurate figure in this situation. In 2007, about 909 foreign-funded enterprises closed down or closed down, which is a total, including those that moved to other places. "
Favor Cai told us that a series of export policies and measures to promote enterprise transformation and industrial upgrading were introduced last year, which made life difficult for some labor-intensive export enterprises with low added value. "One is to reduce the export tax rebate rate, and the other is to increase some commodities as commodities restricted by processing trade. In this case, reducing the tax rebate rate will of course directly increase the cost of exports, and the tax rebate rate will drop. In addition, if this commodity is added to the restricted category, then according to this regulation, enterprises must pay the deposit when re-importing raw materials, that is, the deposit in the bank account, which will also crowd out the operation of some enterprises' funds and increase the seriousness of their capital backlog. "
Bank of China Dongguan Branch also provided reporters with such a set of data: At present, nearly one third of the export costs of export enterprises in Guangdong Province are caused by the appreciation of RMB. In 2007, the appreciation of RMB caused the loss of Guangdong's general trade exports of 654.38+09.52 billion yuan, of which private export enterprises lost 9.2 billion yuan. It is estimated that Guangdong's general trade exports will lose 52.45 billion yuan in 2008, of which the losses of private export enterprises will reach 25.34 billion yuan.
Favor Cai said, "Why does the appreciation of RMB have such a great impact on the export of this foreign-funded enterprise? Because it is very, very difficult to predict, and many foreign businessmen tell us that when we talk about the order price with our customers, because there is no way to predict the appreciation of the RMB at the time of delivery, customers will not accept your demand for price increase, so this is indeed a difficult situation. "
What impact has the crisis of export enterprises brought to the suppliers in the upstream of the industrial chain? We tried to find the answer among 500 suppliers of Taurus. However, during the interview, neither the supplier of Taurus nor many local small factories supplying export enterprises are willing to face the camera directly. After many twists and turns, an accessory supplier of an export furniture factory in Huizhou expressed his willingness to be interviewed.
Fourth, loss orders.
"I moved here from Dongguan in 2006, dug it up with this mountain, and then built my own factory. I can't occupy those farmland. It is planned to be developed within 20,000 square meters. "
Zhang Yucai from Huizhou Yuxing Hardware and Wood Products Factory has been working in Guangdong for almost 20 years. Seven years ago, he took out his savings for many years and opened a hardware and wood processing factory to provide accessories for several local furniture export enterprises. In Huizhou, he rented a mountain area of 20,000 square meters and built a factory building of 1000 square meters. We noticed that the land of 20,000 square meters was only half leveled. From the traces on the soil, we can see that the infrastructure project has been stopped for some time. When we asked about the reason for the shutdown, Zhang Yucai looked very helpless. "It turned out that business was good before 2003, but it has been declining since the second half of 2003." "Is the landslide serious during this time?" "The landslide is serious, the most serious is from 2007, the basic September of 2007 to the present, to 2008, so far, it has reached the most critical time."
Zhang Yucai is talking about the crisis faced by export enterprises. A few years ago, although the competition among peers was fierce and some foreign anti-dumping investigations were encountered from time to time, small factories like them still lived well. Small factories in Zhang Yucai can receive orders of 600,000 to 700,000 from several big customers every month, and roughly calculate that they can earn more than 50,000 per month. "A few years ago, our gross profit could be at least a dozen points, at eleven or twelve points."
However, in the past year or so, the appreciation of RMB and the rise of raw material prices have exceeded people's expectations. The present situation of several large furniture export enterprises that have business dealings with Zhang Yucai is not optimistic. "How many major customers do you have?" "The main customer has eight customers." "What is the status of these eight customers now?" "There are four customers who are basically more difficult than our factory." "More difficult than your factory?" "There are already two or three, and two others are not very good, and the monthly payment has not been sent to us on time."
On one side of the factory building, Zhang Yucai told us that once the export enterprises were dumped, the original orders would be invalidated. At present, these surplus wood and semi-finished products are piled up here for this reason. "What's this for?" "This is the back of the office chair, and this is the sitting board. The rest, there are hundreds of thousands of finished products made of raw materials, and hundreds of thousands of investment molds have been spent. A round trip has been more than 200,000, and it has been stagnant here for nearly a year. " "All the stagnation pressure here? Is your family like this or not? " "Many similar things, many peers encountered similar things, and customers placed orders. In the end, he canceled the order, which led to our small business, capital compression, and various reasons, which made it difficult to maintain this. "
In the survey, we feel that although export enterprises are still placing orders for suppliers, the high cost has turned these orders into hot potato. Zhang Yucai calculated an account: "This is my customer's purchase order. (model) 10393, the cost of this board we bought back is 2020 yuan /m3, plus 6% tax, that is, 2020×0.06 equals 12 1.2 yuan, and 2020 equals 2 100. In addition, the loading and unloading fees and transportation fees of workers in our factory are 18 yuan/cubic meter. " "So, according to this calculation, if you do this, you need 2 159 yuan. How much can I sell now? " "Selling to customers is 2037.4 yuan/cubic meter, the cost is 2 159 yuan/cubic meter, and the loss is 12 1 yuan."