AI

The warehouse looked nothing like what you’d expect from a 300 million RMB business. It was modest—a few rows of shelves, a handful of people clicking through browser tabs. But what those people were doing with their time told a different story. “Before RPA, we had 170 people doing maybe 100 million RMB in revenue,” Huang Xufeng told me over a video call from his office in Shenzhen. “Today we have 50 people and we’re doing 300 million.” ...

In the back corridors of Guangzhou’s famous Thirteen Hongs wholesale market, where fabric bolts are stacked floor-to-ceiling and bargaining never stops, a quiet revolution is underway. And unlike the polished keynote demos from big tech companies, this revolution runs on spreadsheets, OCR scans, and a WeChat chatbot that won’t shut up about overdue payments. Zhang Feng—the “Feng” behind one of the most talked-about AI transformation stories in China’s wholesale circuit—has a way of making the extraordinary sound mundane. “We just connected everything,” he told me over a video call, his laptop open behind him showing what looked like a dozen browser tabs. “ERP to this, WeChat to that. Suddenly everything talks to everything.” ...

The first time I heard Huang Xufeng say “170 to 50,” I thought I’d misheard. “You went from 170 employees to 50,” I repeated. “And revenue went from 100 million to 300 million.” He nodded. “That’s right.” I checked my notes. Then I checked my notes again. Six months later, I heard Zhang Feng say something similar. From 5 square meters to 40 million RMB in annual revenue. From his wife spending two hours per day on data entry to twenty minutes. From a team that couldn’t scale to a business that could. ...