In a room on the upper floors of the somewhat decrepit Dayuan building, marked with the sign “e-commerce and livestream base”in the north of Canton, in the south of China, Huang Yuepei takes stock of his affairs. We might have expected frenetic activity during this Singles' Day period, the big Chinese sales on November 11. But at his tea table, he analyzes the decline in online furniture sales: Chinese consumers have certainly not disappeared, the market is deep, but everything is moving more slowly than before.
While listening to him, it's impossible not to look at the imposing speaker behind him, equipped with an integrated video projector, two microphones and a tablet for choosing songs. “As we had nothing to do, we bought ourselves a karaoke machine to pass the time”he laughs, also taking poker chips out of a drawer. The man notes that consumer demand is amorphous: “People are paying a lot more attention than before, that’s obvious. »
This year, he therefore refused to participate in Singles' Day, an event popularized in 2009 by the e-commerce giant Alibaba and which has become, over the years, the Chinese equivalent of Black Friday in the United States, or a version most intense of the January sales in France. It would be necessary to offer attractive discounts to attract consumers, but he judges that the margins have already eroded too much: he cannot keep up.
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His neighbor from room number 509, Huang Yuanping, came to stop by. He makes the same observation. “Some people still have money, but they prefer to keep it. From [la crise liée au] Covid-19, consumers are more cautious »he said, taking a cigarette out of a red packet illustrated with the Forbidden City.
Walking the corridors of this building where each office houses an online store is like taking the pulse of the world's second largest economy. Opposite, Mme Gu, who only gives his last name, sells women's clothing on several platforms, including Taobao, Alibaba's site aimed at small merchants, and Pinduoduo, which in Europe is known as Temu. She produces in small workshops in Canton. Her best seller is a jumpsuit for a little over a hundred yuan (around 13 euros), she explains behind her computer. While processing orders for November 11, she also notes that the economy “is idling”.
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