Wanwuji was an e-commerce unicorn. The hollow model collapsed, 1200 suppliers unpaid.

Wanwuji (万物集, formerly MyMRO) began as Grainger China, the local arm of the US industrial supply giant. In 2020 the management executed a buyout and spun the business off as an independent Chinese company, renaming it Wanwuji in late 2022. The pitch was an industrial e-commerce platform — a 'JD.com for factories' — that connected corporate buyers with MRO (maintenance, repair, operations) suppliers. Nearly 20 top venture capital firms invested, including China Merchants Venture Capital and Sinovation Ventures, and the company was valued in the tens of billions of yuan.

The model was a pass-through: Wanwuji took orders from large state-owned enterprise clients, passed them to suppliers, collected payment from the client, and then paid the supplier. In theory it required little capital. In practice the payment terms were mismatched — the company borrowed short from suppliers and lent long to state-owned clients that paid slowly. Cash flow was always tight. To inflate GMV and chase the next valuation milestone, Wanwuji also spent heavily on unrelated projects like a street-stall night market initiative selling snacks and toys.

The collapse came in three steps. By October 2025 suppliers reported payment interruptions. In January 2026 Wanwuji placed new purchase orders with suppliers while knowing it could not pay — a move suppliers later described as fraud. By February 2026 the Shanghai headquarters was empty, 90% of employees were gone, and the founder had gone silent. The supplier group that formed counted over 1,200 members, with unpaid debts exceeding ¥200 million. The police accepted case filings but made no arrests.