"The delivery is too slow! Did you plant cotton after you placed the order?" "The spring clothes were not shipped until summer"... Beginning of summer has passed, and it is the season change period for clothes, "Super long pre-sale" It has once again become a hot topic among netizens, with many saying that the pre-sale time for clothes on e-commerce platforms is becoming increasingly outrageous.
Recently, reporters found that on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Douyin, remarks such as 30-day pre-sale and 45-day pre-sale are very common. The industry believes that in the ultra-long pre-sale model, merchants ostensibly fulfill their notifications, but in fact they use their operational advantage to completely pass on the inventory costs and time costs of product preparation to consumers.
I have to wait a month and a half to buy a dress
"I'm such a fool! I bought two spring floral dresses and they said they were on pre-sale for 12 days. It was a long wait. "It lasted for a month and a half." In April this year, Ms. Liu originally selected a fairy dress and wanted to go out to take some beautiful photos during the cherry blossom season. Unexpectedly, after placing the order, she found that the dress would not arrive for several weeks, and she could only watch helplessly. "Missed Spring".
The phenomenon of extremely long pre-sales is not an isolated case. The reporter saw on Taobao that a large number of clothes being sold by Internet celebrity Hanfu stores generally have a pre-sale period of about 25 to 30 days, and some even have a pre-sale period of as long as 2 months. "The construction period of this dress will be about 2 months. The construction period of other clothes is uncertain. It is subject to the actual shipping time. It may be earlier or delayed, but once you choose to pre-sell, we will not return or exchange it." A certain person was selected as a "must shop" The customer service of the Hanfu store told reporters.
On DouyinIn the Hanfu live broadcast room, the phenomenon of "extremely long pre-sales" is also quite common. Take a leading anchor with more than 2.2 million fans as an example. Among the 38 pieces of clothing sold in his live broadcast room, 32 pieces of clothing are pre-sold, and the logistics waiting time is shown to be one and a half months. "We are currently arranging orders and shipping them in order of payment. Early orders are shipped early, and there is no stock in stock." The store's customer service said.
The long wait required for "extremely long pre-sales" has caused clothing to miss the seasonal period and also caused headaches for consumers. As of press time, there were close to 5,000 notes on Xiaohongshu about "hate pre-sales", and the topic of "Is super long pre-sales reasonable" on Weibo had nearly 22 million views.
Pre-sales are only to avoid backlog risks
Pre-sales of clothing are nothing new on e-commerce platforms. The reporter learned that pre-sales were initially used in Hanfu, JK uniforms, cashmere coats and other relatively niche clothing with low output, high cost. However, in the past two years, the pre-sale model has begun to spread, and now it has swept almost all Internet celebrity clothing stores, and the pre-sale time is getting longer and longer.
Why do merchants like "pre-sales"? Mr. Zhang, who has been in the Hanfu business on Hanzheng Street in Wuhan for 20 years, told reporters, "Online pre-sale stores usually do not have their own factories. I have now transformed into online stores. I opened two online stores at the beginning of this year. The business is good, and the best-selling styles are also discontinued." But I have my own factory and can deliver the goods within three days at most.” Mr. Zhang also told reporters that more and more businesses are adopting pre-sales, in the final analysis, it is because of clothing. The industry faces a high risk of inventory overhang. Merchants are afraid of selling goods when they are unsure of sales, and pre-sale can help them estimate the approximate sales volume and submit an appropriate number of orders to the factory.
In addition, "to facilitate secondary sales" is also the main reason why more and more online stores choose ultra-long pre-sales. Internet celebrity stores are different from ordinary clothing stores. Sales often surge on the day of the launch of new products, and batch returns may occur later. "The growth rate of product sales in some Internet celebrity stores is closely related to the 'new launch day'. These stores When setting up a '30-day or 45-day super long pre-sale', you may not necessarily stock a large amount of new products before they are put on the shelves. You may even choose to ship them in batches, using the first batch of consumers'The returned goods are used as replacement orders and sold to the second batch of consumers. "Mr. Zhang said.
However, some clothing store owners told reporters that the epidemic has caused production to be unable to keep up, so the pre-sale time has been extended compared to before.
Improve the regulatory mechanism to prevent consumers from being "injured"
The long pre-sale period has led to a lot of chaos. "I waited 15 days from the time I placed the pre-sale order to getting the clothes. When I was trying on the clothes, I actually took out a mask that someone else had worn from my pocket!" Netizen "Xing Twinkle" complained on the social platform.
Consumer Ms. Zhang said that she had bought a pre-sold windbreaker before, but the merchant was slow to deliver the goods. In the end, she had to apply for a return herself, but the merchant did not have any violation costs.
The reporter noticed that e-commerce platforms currently generally have a relaxed attitude towards the pre-sale period. According to Taobao platform rules, the maximum time limit for full payment pre-sale for various purposes is different, including 48 hours, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, etc. If the merchant fails to deliver the goods within the specified time, he must pay the buyer 10% of the actual transaction amount of the product as liquidated damages, and the maximum compensation amount shall not exceed 100 yuan and the minimum amount shall not be less than 5 yuan. In order to avoid punishment, some merchants will maliciously extend the delivery time of goods to the upper limit specified by the category.
At the end of April, the China Consumers Association named "ultra-long pre-sale". The China Consumers Association believes that "extremely long pre-sales" are suspected of transferring risks to consumers. During the "ultra-long pre-sale" process, merchants can avoid inventory overstock,It will also recover the economic losses caused by "returns", but it will infringe on consumers' rights and interests to a certain extent, damage their expectations for the goods, and affect the consumer experience.
Some people in the industry have also called for further improvement of the pre-sale mechanism, which requires coordinated cooperation from multiple parties and multiple measures. E-commerce platforms can introduce some "practical measures" to effectively supervise sellers' commitments such as delivery times, transaction prices, and shipping methods. Merchants who do not comply with their commitments must pay certain liquidated damages to buyers, thereby increasing the cost of breach of trust. For the merchants themselves, they need to improve their ability to predict inventory and market quickly, so as to effectively avoid "extremely long pre-sales" from overdrawing consumers' enthusiasm and trust in the brand.
(Yangtze River Daily reporter Zhang Jun)
[Editor: Ding Yi]
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