I escaped from the milk tea franchise trap and turned to Amazon

The restless heart only wants to start a business

I had no intention of talking about these old stories, after all, it is a bit embarrassing to talk about my own failure. However, recently the milk tea franchise scam was exposed on a large scale on the Internet. Seeing so many similar experiences made me feel like I was holding back my anger, and I would not feel comfortable if I didn't talk about it.

After I graduated in 2017, my family arranged for me to work in a company that was somewhat like a state-owned enterprise. Although the monthly salary was not high and there was no room for promotion, fortunately there was not much get off work and I could get off work on time. The main studio processed some data and needed to deal with a large number of tables every day. I soon got tired of this kind of work.

After much deliberation, I finally persuaded my family to support me and joined a milk tea shop that was relatively well-known in our local area. Of course, I also did a lot of preparation, including squatting at the door of one of their stores with a counter every day to observe their sales. Now I think that all these efforts I made only scratched the surface of the milk tea industry.

Joining the milk tea franchise has become a big failure in life

The site selection was not smooth at the beginning. A milk tea shop is too dependent on its geographical location. If there are not enough people, sales will not be good at all. However, the rent in popular areas is too high. I struggled for a long time and finally gritted my teeth and took a storefront in a better location.

After the milk tea shop was actually opened, I found that the funds after paying the rent were not enough. The shelf life of raw materials was not long, and the SOP also had requirements for freshness. However, the cost of maintaining materials has already accounted for a lot, and the brand side also asked me to pay for training before employees could start working. I stepped into these pitfalls one by one, and I thought that the sales after the official opening would make me recover quickly, but who would have thought that there would be bigger pitfalls behind.

When we first started holding opening events for new stores, sales were pretty good. But after the events stopped, sales got worse and worse. The brand suggested that I hold more events, but then I realized that there would only be some sales when there were events, and this group of people were just looking for the bargains.

I struggled like this for nearly a year, and during this period I had many arguments with the brand side, but I finally got some money back and got out. Here is a reminder to friends who are still obsessed and want to get into the trap, don't franchise if you don't have a mine at home! The milk tea industry is now a red ocean in the red ocean. Many franchisees don't care whether you make money or not. Before paying the money, you are the uncle, and after paying the money, you are the son. In addition, their team is already familiar with handling such refunds, which is very tricky. If the conditions are not good, you will really lose everything.

Okay, I’ve reminisced too much. Now let me talk about why I worked at Amazon.

Find a new way and start over

Because of the failure of joining the milk tea franchise, I decided to work for a while before considering other things. It was at this juncture that I went to an e-commerce company with my classmate as an operator, thinking that I could learn e-commerce from the basics and start my own business after I became more stable.

Operations work is relatively easy for me to get started with, but the competition among domestic e-commerce platforms is so fierce these days that even if you invest real money, it will not go to waste. I think even if I learn something here, it will still be a big pit to start my own business. So when this company opened the Amazon department, I immediately applied for a transfer, wanting to try working on foreign platforms.

From the domestic market to the foreign market, the platform's gameplay has changed a lot. Taobao focuses on stores, while Amazon focuses on products. The entire operation concept needs to be completely changed. At that time, the company was also in the process of exploring the Amazon business, so it was equivalent to learning and exploring with me and the company. Fortunately, I had an Amazon supervisor to guide me, and I did learn a lot during that time.

Because from the beginning I planned to learn well and then start my own business, so when I felt that I had almost mastered the daily operations of Amazon, I resigned. At first, I felt a little guilty about this idea, but after a long time, I got over it.

Having been taught a lesson by milk tea, I was very cautious in starting my own business this time. Fortunately, opening a store does not require too much investment. However, just when I started, I was taught a lesson by the rules of society again.

I had my eyes on a few eyeglass frames and ordered a batch of them for FBA delivery. When I asked for the price at the logistics center, I found out that the frames had to be approved by the FDA. After learning that they couldn't be sold or even shipped without a certificate, I lost another batch of deposits.

To sum up, it was because the old company was an e-commerce company and already had some mature products when it started working on Amazon, so I didn’t know much about the product selection process in foreign markets, which led to such a joke.

Fortunately, I learned from the last time and did not order too much at once. I still used a small-scale test model, so the money I lost this time was much more than the milk tea shop. I learned from the lesson and confirmed the market and certification issues again when selecting products. Finally, I did not "die before I succeeded". Although I don't have many products now, they are all carefully selected by me. The sales are still at the beginning, that is, the level of supporting myself. I certainly can't compare with the big guys, but compared with my last failure experience, it is already very successful.

Finally, I want to say to my friends who are working on Amazon and want to start a milk tea shop as a side job, don't go, the pit is too deep. Brother-in-law just deducts your money secretly, you can still make a small profit with a little thought, but joining is really a blatant robbery!

Finally, I would like to thank this seller for his contribution. He has the courage to tell his story to warn other sellers. If you also want to share your story with everyone, please scan the QR code and contact me to submit your story.