Factory Girls_ From Village to City in a Changing China - Chang, Leslie T_ [26]
Chunming started selling Wanmei health products to supplement her income, mostly to fellow factory workers. She bought Wanmei tapes and attended Wanmei lectures, and her diary turned into a Wanmei sales manual mixed with some bizarre health claims.
THE SUCCESS OF A SALE LIES IN THE FIRST THREE
SECONDS OF MEETING.
WHEN YOU SPEAK, LOOK INTO THE OTHER PERSON’S EYES.
GET TO KNOW THREE PEOPLE A DAY.
THE ALOE MINERAL CRYSTAL CAN REGULATE THE HUMAN
BODY’S FIVE SYSTEMS.
A PERSON LOSES HIS HAIR BECAUSE HE LACKS COPPER.
By the end of 1996, Chunming had an influential job in the factory as head of its general affairs department, but she quit to sell Wanmei products full-time. She spent ten thousand yuan in savings to rent out meeting rooms and equipment for training sessions. She recruited former colleagues from the factory to join her network, with the promise that they would all get rich together. In the back pages of her diary, Chunming listed the salespeople she had recruited. Many of them were still in their teens; the oldest person in her network was twenty-five years old.
Why have we come together today? Simply to let everyone discuss the topic: “How should a person live one’s entire life?”
Think about it: Why are we still so ordinary? Why are so many people who have worked hard their entire lives still not living the lives they imagined? We all had dreams once. We all once struggled and worked hard. But why is there such an imbalance between what we spent and what we have gained? How many regrets have been played out upon us!
We have gradually understood one truth: A person who wants to develop must grasp opportunity. Merely to have a dream and determination is not enough . . . If the choice of vehicle is not good, you will be bustling about your whole life. Just as our mothers and fathers chose farming: They have been busy their whole lives, but when the hair on their heads is white, they must still scrape together money for oil and salt.
My friends, do we want to follow the road of our mothers and fathers?
No!
Give yourselves a round of applause!
Direct-sales companies had taken off in the United States during the economic boom that followed the Second World War. Unlike traditional retailers, companies like the Amway Corporation and Avon Products sold their goods through independent distributors rather than stores. These distributors made money in two ways: through selling goods themselves and through recruiting a network of salespeople and receiving bonuses based on their sales.
In the mid-1990s, a craze for network sales swept China, with some of the chuanxiao companies copying the American sales model. Others simply charged new recruits a hefty fee to join, with the promise of riches when they recruited additional members. These were pyramid schemes: Their money came not from selling actual products but only from the high entry fees they charged. The schemes made money for the earliest entrants but collapsed when they ran out of new members, defrauding many people out of their savings.
The network-sales model was ideally suited to a Chinese society in which traditional morality had broken down and only the harshest rules—trust no one, make money fast—still applied. The companies relied on traditional networks of extended family and friends; the first thing a chuanxiao salesman usually did was to browbeat every friend and relative into buying something. They promised wealth and fulfillment. And they offered a clear road map to success: Get to know three people a day. The industry flourished in the small towns and migrant communities of the Pearl River Delta. Here where rural and urban worlds met, people envied the success of others and were hungry to have it themselves. If someone they knew promised