The official website of e-commerce giant GearBest has been offline for more than a week now. This has left several persons who rely on the website for their e-commerce needs in the lurch. There are even reports of buyers whose products are yet to be shipped to them before this sudden shutdown of the website. Perhaps, the worse hit segment is GearBest affiliate marketers, some of whom have thousands of dollars of unpaid affiliate earnings.
The present situation has been a long time coming. In June this year, a case was filed in Guangdong Province court, categorized as a bankruptcy review. The applicant was the Shenzhen Nanshan sub-branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Co., Ltd., while the respondent is Shenzhen Globalegrow E-Commerce Co., Ltd, GearBest parent company.
Shenzhen Globalegrow E-commerce Co., Ltd (also known as Globalegrow or Global Tesco) was founded in 2007 with its headquarter in Nanshan District Shenzhen. The GearBest brand opened shop in 2014 and since the establishment of the platform, the brand has been committed to providing overseas consumers with more abundant products and high-quality services. Gearbest has been online in 23 countries with roughly 50.98 million registered users, and an average monthly visit volume of 234 million.
GearBest’s growth was backed by the strong overseas warehouse network and supplier resources of its parent company, Global Tesco. The company grossed 3.64 billion yuan ($550 million) in 2015. Since then, it has been a roller-coaster ride until the last few years. The parent company is in a deep financial pit and a few days back, a video emerged of GearBest’s CEO addressing the Chinese media where he explained why the company won’t be able to pay its suppliers. In such situations, suppliers won’t be willing to continue providing products to fulfill orders. This has resulted in several complaints by consumers of excessive delay in shipments of their products.
There is no official word yet on when the website will come back online. Perhaps, if the company is able to clear up what it owes suppliers. The parent company also operated apparel sites SammyDress.com and DressLily.com which are still up and running. That leaves a glimmer of hope that GearBest may still bounce back. Also, the affiliate dashboard is still up and running but before now, it takes ages to process payment requests from affiliates. We doubt if any fresh request will be treated presently.
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