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Chucking tradition, more workers on own
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ASHLEY Huang boarded an early morning plane to Hokkaido for skiing the day after she finished all her orders for tailored garments. Huang, 30, owns a women’s clothing design and manufacturing studio, but she has no employees — she showcases her designs on a online.
“As a freelance designer, I really enjoy what I am doing right now,” Huang tells Shanghai Daily. Her offerings range from casual clothes to cocktail dresses to wedding gowns.
“I work really hard for a period and then go travel for at least two weeks. I can fully control my time between work and leisure. Plus, I do the work I have true passion in,” she adds.
Huang is among an increasing number of young people choosing to be a freelancer instead of working in a company with a stable income, paid leave time and other benefits.
A survey by ganji.cn, one of China’s largest classified information portal, released last week indicates that the average monthly salary of O2O (online to offline) freelancers reached 8,312 yuan (US$1,340) before tax in 2014. It did not reveal the number of respondents.
O2O is a business model that utilizes online marketing and purchasing to promote offline sales. Service businesses are more suitable for this mode, including dining, travel, renting and others.
After four years of development in China, the O2O business mode has attracted many people with special skills, while traditional service businesses like housekeeping and health care are also getting into this new mode for more income.
According to the survey, over half of people choosing a O2O freelance business are young men between 21 and 35 years old. It also reveals that more than two-thirds of the respondents have a monthly salary exceeding 5,000 yuan, and 9 percent earn more than 10,000 yuan. Only 14 percent reported monthly income of less than 3,000 yuan.
People in domestic services and health care, including babysitters and massage therapists for breastfeeding mothers, have the highest freelance incomes. An ordinary massage therapist can have an average monthly pay of 12,244 yuan and the average salary of all domestic helpers — many of them child-care workers — can reach 9,320 yuan.
Huang charges at least 2,000 yuan to design a piece of clothing, excluding the cost of cloth and tailoring. She is not only a designer but also a tailor.
Huang interned at several leading garment companies when she was a university student. It was not happy experience.
“You have to be in the office at 8:30am even though there is nothing to do. The work is inefficient and I had very limited space to realize my design ideas,” Huang says.
“I didn’t get any payment the first year when I started my own business, but now things are getting much better. I know with my skill I can get higher income in big garment companies, but I don’t want to,” she says.
Huang speaks for most freelancers when she says freedom is the key factor for most people choosing to work independently, whether they are using O2O business or not.
Freedom is the merit but also a defect as a freelancer,” say Liu Tianyou, a freelancing magician. “Without an agency, you have to worry about everything from promotion to costumes. There are so many trivial things to worry about.”
For Stella Ling, who quit her job as a bank clerk and opened an online bakery store on Taobao and WeChat, it is the office politics she can’t bear.
“Now I’m doing what I like and I don’t have to suffer the attitude from my boss,” says the 28-year-old Shanghainese.
Ling feels more secure now than when she was working in the bank. “If you have a craft or a skill, you don’t need to worry that much,” she says.
Most of Ling’s clients at first were her friends, but now she says with more support on social networks through her family, friends and customers, she is getting more attention.
“But I have to admit that the reason why I could quit so easily is because of the savings of my previous work plus some financial support from my husband,” she says.
To start a freelance business with no experience can be an arduous choice, according to Cherry Hu, 31. After graduating from the Shanghai Film Art Academy in image design, Hu chose to be a freelance makeup artist. “I wanted to open my own makeup studio,” she says.
But good makeup skills and art talent didn’t bring her many customers. Though her professors and friends occasionally would introduce her to some makeup jobs for weddings and commercials, she can hardly afford the rent.
“I was a waitress of KFC, a bartender and I did many other part-time jobs to make a living,” she recalls.
Pressure from her family was another factor causing Hu to rethink her freelance business.
“My parents were so worried about me and always thought my life was in limbo. They believed a woman without a stable job can’t find a reliable good husband,” she says.
Forced by her parents, Hu started to work in a trendy salon specializing in hairstyling, makeup and design.
“Before long, I started to establish a good reputation and had some loyal customers. And since it was a high-end salon, my financial condition had largely improved,” she says.
Hu was earning about 10,000 yuan a month after tax. But a year ago, she quit it and went to work as a freelance makeup artist again.
“Now with my experience I don’t need to worry about not having customers anymore,” she says. “And I think it is the time to stop and reflect on my career. After all, I want my own studio.”
Now Hu is using half of her time learning and improving her makeup creation while doing some makeup jobs to support herself.
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