I paid the deposit or even the full amount, and some of them went to the door to measure, but there was no news about the "whole house customized" cabinets! A number of consumers reported to "Xinmin Help" that they ordered cabinets at "Owen Custom" (Owen Cabinet Company), but the company suddenly closed the store, leaving a mess, and they had nowhere to appeal for a refund.
It is worth noting that the home improvement industry has not had a good time lately. Recently, the A-share "first home improvement stock" has also fallen into a crisis, and Dongyi Risheng (002713) has stopped renovation in many places, and the customer's new house has become a bird's nest. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange has issued a letter of concern to Dongyi Risheng, requiring it to verify and make full explanations on business issues.
Someone paid more than 30,000
Didn't even get a board
According to Xinmin Evening News, Ms. Feng, a consumer, said that when the home decoration entered the final stage of tiling, the renovation worker reminded her that the furniture could look good. To this end, at the end of March, she participated in a "Sunshine Home Expo" and took a fancy to the "Owen Cabinet". "The products of this company can basically meet my requirements for cabinets, such as New Zealand pine for solid wood, multi-layer kitchen cabinets, European pine panels, and many other options, and the samples look good." Ms. Feng happily paid a deposit of 1,000 yuan on the spot. After the designer came to the rough test, Ms. Feng came to the Owen cabinet store in Hongyun Plaza, No. 491 Wudong East Road, looked at the materials and selected colors, and signed a contract to pay 45,000 yuan. According to the whole house customization process, she made an appointment for the second visit to the retest. But what I didn't expect was that the final "retest" turned out to be an "empty word".
A few days later, Ms. Feng contacted the designer to come to the door for a retest, and was told that the designer had returned to his hometown and would have to spend a few days. After a few days, the designer still didn't come. Under Ms. Feng's complaint, the salesperson agreed to change the designer. But then, the arrival of new designers also came to naught. "Later, my husband heard that Owen's cupboard was closed." When Ms. Feng came to the Owen store again, she saw that the door was closed, and many customers had gathered at the door. "So far, the person in charge of the company has been out of contact and there is no aftermath plan. The company personnel who contacted us before couldn't get through on the phone. ”
Many consumers said that the loss ranged from thousands of yuan to tens of thousands of yuan. For example, Mr. Qiu ordered custom furniture for the whole house in "Owen Cabinet", and after paying a deposit of 20,000 yuan, he only measured the size and did not make furniture, and the store was closed; Mr. Fan paid 33,500 yuan and didn't even get a board; Mr. Chai paid a deposit of 50,000 yuan, but the contract had not yet been signed; Ms. Ma's board is only halfway, and there is still about 12,000 yuan left in the plate; Ms. Zhou and Ms. Li paid for the goods and waited for the "45-day delivery", but when they found out, it was empty; Mr. Zhou paid a deposit of 10,000 yuan, and then found another merchant to order cabinets, but Owen Cabinets agreed to refund but closed the door......
According to the investigation, from the end of 2023 to the incident, dozens of people paid Owen Cabinet Company. And they all fell into the deep pit through the well-known home improvement platform "matchmaking" and "stage introduction" before they fell into the pit and were trapped by Owen Cabinet Company. The complainant reported that the intermediate home improvement platforms involved were: Sunshine Home Expo, Easy Decoration, etc.
According to the staff of the Consumer Protection Section of the Xuhui District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau, the market supervision and management department has recently received more than 30 complaints involving Owen cabinets.
Previously, according to the investigation of the market supervision and management department, Owen Cabinet Company did not pay a large amount of money to the manufacturer, resulting in a backlog of goods that could not be picked up. The OEM staff said that "Yuanyan Home" is the main OEM of Owen cabinets. The foundry cooperation between the two parties began in 2021. Many consumers' orders have been completed, but Owen Cabinet has not paid for the delivery of the goods, and the delivery is overdue and finally exploded. At present, the goods are still backlogged in the manufacturer's warehouse, involving about 100 orders with an amount of about 2 million yuan.
Home improvement listed companies were also exposed to "pay debts with things"
According to a report on the 21st, the first store opened in the core area of Beijing's Sanlitun high-end home buyer store Cabana, which has received a number of top capital attention and investment, Cabana has also successfully cooperated with more than 100 well-known foreign home furnishing brands such as Vitra, Flos, USM, Herman Miller, etc., and has even been called "LVMH" in the home furnishing industry by some media. Cabana, who was born with light and capital chasing investment, is now in trouble. As of June 20, the brand's Beijing Sanlitun store and Shanghai Anfu Road store have recently closed, and the official website shows "server failure". On social platforms, there are also complaints about Cabana, and some consumers who once had a lot of love for Cabana are now facing the dilemma of not getting the goods and not being able to return the money.
After an in-depth investigation, the reporter of "Daily Economic News" found that Cabana has opened special sales activities in Beijing and Shanghai, and the prices of some goods are even as low as 6% off. For consumers who can't get their hands on the goods, Cabana even responds by "paying debts in kind". "Either come to the store and move something, the store will be empty soon." According to one consumer, Cabana employees advised her because there was no refund for the delivery of the goods.
Wang Jiang (pseudonym), who bought Cabana Home from Sanlitun in Beijing at the end of 2023, said: "Last year, I booked two sets of USM (brand) tables in the Sanlitun store, totaling more than 100,000 yuan, and the delivery was delayed until the clerk said that the company had no money. I had no choice but to go to the store to move the goods (to compensate), or to move the defective samples. ”
In addition, according to China Real Estate News, Dongyi Risheng is an influential enterprise in China's home improvement industry, with good quality and service, not only successfully landed in the capital market, but also known as "the first home improvement stock"; In the past 10 years, it has become the preferred brand of home decoration in the minds of many consumers. However, just as the "10th anniversary celebration of listing has just come to an end, Dongyi Risheng has fallen into a public opinion storm of abnormal business conditions: arrears of employee wages, consumer complaints, closure of stores, and even rumors of "running away" in the market.
According to Henan Radio and Television's "Elephant News", Zhengzhou Dongyi Risheng's customers, suppliers and internal employees have encountered contract breaches, arrears of goods and wages, and its flagship store has also been emptied. Subsequently, consumers in Wuxi, Wuhan, Beijing and other cities also said that they were facing the situation of project suspension and even products being pulled away by workers to pay off debts.
Ma Mei, an employee of Dongyi Risheng, has been delayed since the beginning of the year. At first, she didn't pay much attention to it, after all, the company has always been in a good state, and as time went on, the wage arrears became more and more serious, and Mamei and her colleagues began to feel uneasy, and repeatedly reported the situation to the company's human resources department and direct management, but the company did not give a clear solution.
"Between November and December 2023, I only received the minimum wage of 2,420 yuan per month in Beijing; By January of this year, only part of the salary was received. Many of our employees have not been paid since February, and social security and provident fund contributions have stopped since May. Mame said.
The real estate industry has entered the era of stock
Home improvement industry faces "weaning"
The rumors of the closure of stores and running away in the home improvement industry are constantly inseparable from the current situation of the industry. Dongyi Risheng said in its reply to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange that since the end of 2021, affected by the downturn in the industry's prosperity and the adjustment of the company's strategic planning, the company has orderly integrated and closed some stores in order to adapt to market changes, optimize the internal business structure, and reduce inefficient stores. In 2023, the company's upstream real estate industry will continue to decline, home improvement consumers will show more cautious characteristics, the company will continue to reduce stores, close 15 stores throughout the year, and the rent and related fixed costs will be significantly reduced. In 2024, the company will continue to close some loss-making branches and stores, as well as some high-cost and inefficient large stores, in order to improve the company's operating conditions.
According to China News Weekly, Hu Yanan, secretary general of the Residential Decoration and Parts Industry Branch of the China Building Decoration Association, pointed out that first of all, the prosperity of China's home decoration market has benefited from the rapid development of the real estate industry, but with the changes in the latter market, the home decoration in the downstream of the industry has entered the "weaning period" with the reduction in the demand for new house decoration.
Secondly, the home improvement industry is highly dependent on cash flow, the epidemic has led to the suspension of a large number of home improvement projects, and the capital chain of large-scale companies represented by Dongyi Risheng has fallen into a tight state in 2022, and although the market environment is good at the beginning of 2023, the follow-up consumer confidence is slightly insufficient. In addition, the new housing market in first-tier cities tends to be saturated, and the home improvement industry has entered the stock era along with real estate.
Mr. Feng, a home improvement practitioner and blogger in the field of home decoration on Douyin, said that in the final analysis, the matter of home decoration still depends on "specific people", whether it is a designer or a project manager, a supervisor, a worker, etc., everyone's professionalism and service attitude are different, and the labor cost is relatively transparent.
In the home improvement industry with a relatively low degree of concentration, compared with other companies in the industry, Dongyi Risheng does not have an absolute advantage. Mr. Feng said that when the market situation is good, Dongyi Risheng, which has a larger scale and brand influence, has the opportunity to acquire more users and has a stronger ability to support users; However, in the case of an unfavorable environment, large companies will not be able to get rid of it, and once the ability to acquire customers cannot keep up, the decoration business that needs to "collect money first" is easy to fall into a financial dilemma.
Editor|Wang Yuelong Gai Yuanyuan
Proofreading|Lu Xiangyong
The daily economic news is synthesized from Xinmin Evening News, Yijing.com, China Real Estate News, public information, and China News Weekly
National Business Daily
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