The Supermarket Raised the Rent? I’m Moving Out, So Why Are You Crying?

When Yu Xiangdong was twenty, he used the hard-earned money he'd saved to open a 40-square-meter Pang Dongdong Supermarket. By putting people first, he turned it into an ever-growing business. Everyone laughed at him for being foolish. He shared the profits with his employees and closed the store every Tuesday to take them on outings. Seven years later, Pang Dongdong had grown from 40 to 4,000 square meters, with more than 100,000 customer visits a day. Every business in the building depended on the foot traffic it brought in. The landlord, Su Yaozu, grew jealous. “An orphan with no parents, and he thinks he's something just because he got lucky renting my property?” On the day the lease expired, Su Yaozu tripled the rent, raising it from 4 million to 12 million, and slapped the new price on the table. “Take it or leave it. Plenty of people are lining up to rent this place.” Everyone thought Yu Xiangdong would beg. After all, moving a store meant starting over. What business owner would be willing to do that? But to everyone's surprise, Yu Xiangdong cleared out the store in three days, leaving not a thing behind! He sent every shop owner a notice that the store was closing: “Due to unsuccessful rent negotiations, Pang Dongdong Supermarket will close within three months. Thank you all for your support over the past three years.” Three months later, Pang Dongdong reopened in an abandoned shopping center on the east side of town. The 9,000-square-meter store was packed with people. Loyal customers rode their bikes for half an hour from the west side just to buy a bottle of soy sauce. At Golden Grain Building, the tenants collectively ended their leases. Foot traffic dropped to zero, and the whole building went from a place where every unit was in demand to a ghost town. Su Yaozu panicked. He lowered the rent, offered rent-free periods, and even paid for renovations, but nobody came. Years later, when Pang Dongdong Supermarket had spread across the country, Yu Xiangdong was asked what had made it successful. “I don't know why it succeeded,” he replied. “I just treated customers and employees like people.”