At noon on July 27, a prefecture-level customer made a video call to Chai Weixia, requesting goods. Chai Weixia held up her mobile phone camera and looked around at the emergency repair site at the entrance to the First Avenue of the Zhengzhou Railway Station business district. She almost shouted, “You want clothes? They can’t be sent! Where can I send them to you!”
This is the seventh day that First Avenue in the Zhengzhou Railway Station business district has been flooded. After tens of thousands of down jackets, parkas, and fur collars stained with mud were rescued from the ground, Chai Weixia was almost desperate. There are about 300 clothing merchants on Diyi Avenue who encountered the same situation as her.
15,000 down jackets were soaked, and merchants lost more than 450 yuan Ten thousand yuan
This is the seventh day after the heavy rain receded. Chai Weixia hasn’t slept for two days. She had to keep an eye on moving the goods, hire someone to deliver them to the laundry, and contact porters.
“After more than 10,000 pieces of clothes were washed in the laundry factory, there was no place to store or throw them away. The laundry factory was still urging people to wait to receive the clothes from home. “On July 27, while standing at the entrance to First Avenue of Zhengzhou Railway Station, Chai Weixia told a reporter from Henan Business Daily.
After cleaning out the muddy down jackets from the underground shops and warehouses on Diyi Avenue, she was almost desperate. This is almost all of her belongings. “They are all down jackets and parkas, at least 15,000 pieces. In addition, there are 60,000 sets of hangtags and at least 20,000 sets of handbags that the manufacturer just sent a week ago. They are all soaked in water. The approximate loss More than 4.5 million yuan.”
On July 26, Chai Weixia hired people to rescue the clothes from Diyi Avenue, and hired a car to deliver them to the laundry factory. Each of the 50 workers paid 200 yuan a day. The cost is 2,000 yuan, and the transportation fee is 2,000 yuan. On this day, Chai Weixia spent 20,000 yuan on labor.
This is not the biggest problem. “I don’t know how much I will be charged for dry cleaning! There is no warehouse to store the washed clothes, so they can only be destroyed.”
For these down jackets, which can easily cost three to five hundred yuan. , destruction is a last resort. Chai Weixia borrowed about 1 million yuan from relatives for this shipment, not including her bank loan.
In 2003, Chai Weixia entered the clothing industry and came to Diyi Avenue to operate in 2009. This was the biggest disaster she encountered in more than ten years in the industry.
On the afternoon of heavy rain on July 20, 2021, the rain had not yet flooded the shops. She and her colleagues raised the cargo. Afterwards, she turned back from Diyi Avenue and went home.
On the way back, the rain gradually became heavier. She became nervous when she saw the floods washing away people on electric vehicles on the road. At this time, my brother and sister-in-law were still rescuing goods on Diyi Avenue.
From around 5pm to around 9pm that day, Chai Weixia made dozens of calls to her brother and sister-in-law, but was unable to get through. At nearly 10 o’clock, the call was finally connected. Chai Weixia shouted in despair, “We don’t want the goods anymore. Come up and go home!”
Some colleagues in the market persisted until the early morning. At 1 o’clock, I saw the rising water approaching my knees and finally gave up the rescue.
With no water or electricity, and in the dark, my brother and his sister-in-law waded through the water to return, and spent the night hiding in the shop of a warm-hearted hotel owner.
The clothing boss who had been working for 7 years lost all his belongings
The workers, covered in mud and water, sat tiredly at the entrance of Diyi Avenue in the sun, with water-soaked clothes lying on the ground at their feet. The merchants gathered at the entrance of the tunnel, their faces expressionless.
Wang Xiaodong and his wife have been running a 60-square-meter clothing store on the second floor of First Avenue in the train station business district for 7 years. They mainly sell down jackets, Furs and pies.
With no other warehouse, Wang Xiaodong piled all the goods in this shop. According to Wang Xiaodong, this shop is all his property.
During the flood, more than 1,000 down jackets were damaged by rainwater in Wang Xiaodong’s store, and the store’s goods were damaged by RMB 600,000-700,000.
Wang Xiaodong recalled that at 2 pm on July 20, he went out for something, leaving his wife alone to guard the store and use sandbags to block the rain to save herself.
By 6 p.m., the water level reached Wang Xiaodong’s wife’s ankles. Reluctant to abandon the goods, my wife held on until 9 pm. The water level was close to her waist, and there was no electricity or light. She had no choice but to give up.
After the heavy rain, Wang Xiaodong hired 13 porters to carry the soaked clothing. Busy from 6 a.m. to the afternoon, it would take Wang Xiaodong several days to clean up the damaged clothes.
Obviously, these rain-soaked clothes cannot be dried directly before being sold. They can only be sent to a laundry factory for cleaning. As for the effect after washing, it is unknown.
Cleaning these clothes also costs Wang Xiaodong a lot of energy and expense.
It costs 3,000 yuan to hire a porter, 700 yuan to transport clothes to the laundry factory, and 6 yuan to clean a piece of clothing. Not counting the materials and labor costs of unpacking and repacking clothes, 9,700 yuan has been spent. These expenses make Wang Xiaodong even more worried. Adding insult to injury.
After cleaning, bigger worries came one after another – there was no place to store the clothes, it was impossible to determine how many clothes could be sold, and there were problems such as staining of the washed clothes. .
What makes merchants even more anxious is that they don’t know whether and how the market management will compensate.
The store is muddy and the rescue is not over yet
On the afternoon of July 27, during an interview with a reporter from Henan Business Daily, Diyi The Avenue Market is counting the damaged merchants. A list shows that Yang Xiuyun, a merchant in area A on the second floor, damaged 22,600 down jackets and 18,000 fur collars. Jin Benling, a merchant in area A on the second floor, lost 7,600 down jackets and fur collars. Get 3,000 items…
You Yiding has been in the clothing business for more than 20 years and moved to Diyi Avenue to run the business for four or five years. He has never encountered such a big business Loss.
“It’s all mud! “He didn’t sleep the night before yesterday and carried out 900 pieces of soaked clothes on his shoulders, which amounted to a loss of more than 400,000 yuan.
Yuan, who has been operating on Diyi Avenue for 4 years Established, 2,500 fur collars were soaked in the flood. Calculated based on the purchase price of 90 yuan, the loss was equivalent to more than 200,000 yuan.
“At the beginning, the merchants were emotional , I am also tired after these few days. What we are most worried about is that no one will pay! “Yuan Jianshe said.
Ma Xingwei, who has been engaged in the wholesale business of down jackets for more than ten years, also suffered heavy losses in this summer rainstorm. “I have more than 7,000 down jackets at my stall. Everything got wet, and even now the whole store is covered in mud, making it impossible to get in. ”
Ma Xingwei’s stall covers an area of about 100 square meters. In addition to down jackets, spring and summer clothes and pants were also affected by the disaster, which cost about more than 3 million yuan based on cost price. This heavy rain almost All his belongings were looted.
Down jackets dripping with mud, rescue workers covered in mud, business owners with sweaty faces, and store employees squatting to eat hot dry noodles at noon , is the most realistic scene for merchants on First Avenue in the Zhengzhou Railway Station business district. The heavy rain has gone, and a new battle has begun.</p
