Based on these calculations and taking into account the 1,200 franchise stores currently in our sales network, we believe that inventory levels should become increasingly more manageable over the coming year. With the oldest inventory now cleared, our retail network will now be able to focus on displaying Xiniya’s newest products and stabilize their cash flows.
Total value of purchase orders from our Spring/Summer Sales Fair in September 2014 declined in line with our expectations as we work on two fronts to clear inventory channels. We encouraged our partners to place conservative orders as to not fill up inventory again. I am confident that the rapid execution of our inventory buyback during the quarter will enable us to work off any inventory remaining from the years prior to 2013.
We will continue to efficiently deploy our cash into specific areas of our business which will allow Xiniya to develop in a more healthy long-term manner. While the implementation of our new compressed business model will take time to bear fruit, I am pleased to see positive initial results as we work diligently towards generating increased value for our shareholders.
With that I would like to now turn the call over to C.J. who will go through our financials. Thank you.
Chee Jiong Ng, Xiniya’s Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Mr. Xu. Let me now walk you through the financial and operation performance of our business in the third quarter. To start off, I would like to quickly go over the accounting details that lead into our inventory buyback. As Chairman Xu explained, we bought back approximately one-third of inventory currently in our sales channel. As of September 30, 2014, we bought back approximately 334 million of inventory. This amount includes 17% value-added tax. We repurchased at the original price we sold to our distributors. Since value-added tax can be claimed back from the government, the actual buyback amount was RMB 285 million. Accounting wise, we need to assign a value to the inventory bought back which we conservatively measure to be around 59 million or $0.31.
Taking this into account, the amount spent on inventory buyback was 197 million which appear as a line item in our income statement. During the third quarter of 2014, Xiniya had revenue of 205 million compared with 389.8 million during the same period last year. The decrease in revenue was mainly attributable to the reduction recorded by the distributors due to a challenging retail environment and softening of China economic growth. The company delivered approximately 0.9 million units during the third quarter of 2014 compared with 1.63 million units during the third quarter of 2013.
Xiniya’s network of authorized retailers had a net reduction of 207 retail outlets in the third quarter of 2014 consisting of 49 new retail outlets opened and 256 retail outlets closed. The total number of authorized retail outlets was 1,214 as of September 30, 2014. Selling and distribution expenses were 64.7 million in the third quarter of 2014 has decreased from RMB 104 million during the third quarter of 2013. The decrease was mainly due to a reduction in advertising expenditures and a decrease in rack expenses for authorized retailers.
