this man is not calm

Chapter 384 The way forward
The topic was not complicated. It was just about quoting and purchasing Fetion. We needed to communicate more. Even though we couldn't buy it, we still had to go through the process.

Building a large data center also takes a long time to select a site, coordinate with local authorities, build infrastructure, and ensure water and electricity supply, all of which take time to complete.

An investment of hundreds of millions of dollars involves cooperation from all aspects. Even in Beijing, this is a very large project these days.

Not long after, Jin Shang went out to attend a meeting. He had to report the specific progress of the work to his superiors and then promote cooperation from all parties. There was a lot to do.

At the same time, Li Xuan, who is in charge of offline life, came to the headquarters of Jinxi Mall to assist Wei Shuangping in dealing with employment problems and to divert resources for ground promotion, delivery staff and front-line services.

Looking at the quaint warehouse area and docks in the distance that had a lot of charm from the previous era, Li Xuan asked in surprise:
“Can ships still sail in the canal?”

"Of course, the northern line was restored early, and the siltation on the southern line has been almost cleared. Under the most ideal conditions, it can even accommodate ships of nearly 2,000 tons, which is quite impressive. However, there is too much silt in the Yellow River, which has a great impact, and the riverbed is too high. Fortunately, there have been some results in the management in the past two years..."

"That's really good! A 2,000-ton ship already has considerable economic value. You know, the Yangtze River shipping is not much stronger. The upper and lower reaches can handle 10,000-ton giant ships, but in the middle reaches of the Jingjiang River, the water is too shallow. During the dry season, 3,000-ton ships are trembling with fear, and during the flood season, they can only handle around 5,000 tons."

As water conservancy facilities become more complete, the situation will surely improve significantly, but it is just a little embarrassing now.

Without mentioning distant places, just take the Grand Canal as an example. It not only has historical and cultural attributes as well as scenic tourism attributes, but its original purpose has not been completely lost.

"Seagoing ships have large transport capacity and low costs, which are indeed advantages, but they are not omnipotent. It is very troublesome to make a trip, and the distribution of goods involves a lot. Some freight can choose to go through the canal, which is quite convenient."

Its importance is indeed far less than it was more than a hundred years ago, and its main function has indeed been replaced by sea transportation, but it has also left behind many legacies, and the piecemeal freight needs have also facilitated many merchants along the route.

Especially in many small places, conditions are limited. If they really want to use a large ship to transport tens of thousands of tons of goods, there are really no good warehouses for storage, and the port transportation conditions cannot be met, which will cause delays.

"We should adapt to local conditions and not blindly pursue perfection."

Li Xuan agreed with understanding.

"The headquarters location is well chosen. It has convenient transportation, developed water transportation, a train that goes directly to East China, and a seaport that is not far away. In addition, the land price is cheap and the supporting facilities are complete. It is really good."

"Not just now, from ancient times to the present, since the canal was built, this place has been prosperous. It has only been a little quiet in recent decades, but now there is a trend of recovery. Of course, it is impossible to return to its original peak status..."

"After all, times have changed."

Li Xuan sighed and changed the subject.

"There were so many inspections at the beginning of the year. Is that about to come to an end?"

"Yes! In recent years, more and more people from other places have come to Beijing to work. As you know, most of them have only received basic education and cannot do complicated work. Therefore, employment is a difficult matter to deal with. It happens that e-commerce shopping, warehousing and logistics, distribution and after-sales, and offline life require a lot of manpower and material resources to support, and the quality of practitioners is not high."

"Employment!"

At the beginning of 1997, the registered population of Beijing was about 10 million, 7 million in urban areas, 3 million in rural areas, plus nearly 3 million migrant workers, for a total permanent population of around 13 million.

There are more than three million people. Even the locals cannot necessarily find ideal jobs, and there are so many migrant workers who have almost no skills except for their physical strength.

Many small countries have only this many people!

The headquarters of Jinxi Mall is very busy and the employees there are working very hard. Due to the nature of their work, working overtime is the norm.

If I really take a break for two or three days, I'm afraid my position will be liquidated, so it is normal to work in shifts on weekends and nights.

Fortunately, the treatment in Jinxi Mall is decent. Although the work is tiring, the overtime pay is sufficient. Many young workers who are eager to make money, relying on their good health, beg and hope to work overtime just to earn more money and improve their family's financial situation.

"During the Lantern Festival, Mr. Jin visited the elders at home and talked about some topics that are not suitable for outsiders to talk about."

"about what?"

"Like 'What is the most valuable asset of a rich person?'"

"Poor?"

After a brief thought, Wei Shuangping gave an answer. Hearing this, Li Xuan chuckled and said:

"Although not quite right, it's not far off either. Your reaction is similar to Mr. Jin's, and the answers given by the elders are even more direct."

"what?"

“Poor people with ambition.”

The scene suddenly became quiet.

Wei Shuangping is not a rich person at the moment, and is hardly even middle class, but she is a senior executive of a large company who has the power to allocate resources. Therefore, as long as there are many hardworking employees willing to work overtime, she will sooner or later be able to cross that ceiling and become someone like Jin Shang and Li Xuan.

"Our culture has ingrained the belief that one can change one's destiny through hard work, and is willing to use the efforts of one or even several generations to gain the qualifications to move up the social ladder. But..."

Wei Shuangping murmured to herself, not for Li Xuan to hear.
"People with this kind of self-confidence, self-centeredness and stubbornness, once they find that this road is not feasible, their resistance and tyranny are also very terrifying. Because they will not believe that they are wrong, the only thing wrong is the world."

Looking throughout the world, only this nation is born like this, and the long and well-documented history has proved this to be a truth over and over again.

"Therefore, Jinxi Mall will definitely grow and develop, and it will expand at a speed beyond imagination to a jaw-dropping level."

After exchanging a glance with Li Xuan, Wei Shuangping looked at the busy people coming in and out with deep emotion.
"With these hard-working employees, it's hard not to succeed. All we have to do is try our best to make them feel that their efforts and contributions are worthwhile..."

"You have to pay more."

Both of them are smart people, especially Wei Shuangping, a true winner in life with a natural brain. Li Xuan is not bad either, but she is much less motivated to use her brain.

For Jin Shang, after passing the most dangerous initial stage and gaining a firm foothold, it was not difficult at all to make a lot of money and become a successful businessman. His birth and background determined that his starting point was naturally far ahead.

The real challenge is how to be a positive entrepreneur. It is not enough to just know how to make money, you also have to know how to spend it.

After thinking for a while, Wei Shuangping shook her head regretfully:
"It is not advisable to simply increase wages. Business should be business. If you really have compassion, you can donate more money to charity."

"Help in times of emergency but not in poverty."

Li Xuan was also well aware of this.

At least these people still have jobs and can live a decent life. Those who really need money to save their lives are the targets of charity.

"No more talking. If we continue, it won't be about work anymore. Let's talk about offline marketing..."

Wei Shuangping cleared her throat and said seriously,

"The platform's main source of revenue is home appliance sales, with door-to-door service being a big help. The main profit points are service fees, modification fees, and parts replacement fees. Unlike previous home appliance stores, which were almost one-time transactions with terrible after-sales service, Jinxi Mall is committed to tapping into the consumption potential of every customer, offering high-quality products at low prices and good services, so business is getting better and better. It doesn't matter if the direct profit margin is low, and it doesn't matter if the surrounding costs are high. In addition, after opening third-party stores, charging advertising fees, service fees, and promotion fees, it will sooner or later make a lot of money..."

“Capture the users, please them, and in turn suppress the sellers?”

"That's pretty much what I mean. The size of an online page is so small, and the display space is extremely limited. Only a few online stores can maintain their popularity. This is a naturally scarce resource, and we can charge high service promotion fees."

Using buyers to control sellers, or in other words, taking advantage of both the downstream and upstream suppliers, this is the inevitable attribute of an Internet platform that is naturally monopolistic. If it becomes really big, it will become extremely powerful.

You can make money, but I will never lose money.

It’s no wonder that Lao Ma was so arrogant and lost his mind in those years. The illusion that everything was under control was really wonderful.

After a long sigh of relief, Li Xuan couldn't help but sigh:
"No wonder e-commerce is now the darling of the Internet, on par with portal websites. Ordinary people can't see it, but how can the cunning big players not understand it? Even if you burn money for subsidies and make losses year after year, it doesn't matter. As long as you can persist and wait for the day of harvest, you can quickly make back your investment with profits."

Today, the market is still small and immature, so any talk of profits is false. Market share and control are the key, and the core of this is to compete for core users with purchasing power.

In this regard, Jinxi Mall is already one step ahead, but other competitors will not give up easily. The interests involved are really terrifying.

Tan Qian and Tan Mingli, the father and son who run a chain hotel, are also partners of Jin Shang and Mei Yingnian. They have never been polite to them. Jinghua Mall is already the biggest competitor of Jinxi Mall. It has even formed an alliance with Spacetime Cloud Network, Fetion and other portals and forums to fight against the pressure from the "Jinxi Group".

Large domestic and foreign capitals also seem to have noticed the business opportunities in this area and are conducting research and preparing to integrate resources.

Amid the undercurrent, Jinxi Culture and its subsidiaries are doing their own things step by step. Recently, they are busy with listing and promoting MP3 players. Jin Shang has no time or energy to care about Jinxi Mall which is already on the right track, but this business is very important and cannot be ignored.

Wei Shuangping explained the recent move:
"Inviting more powerful merchants to settle in is one thing, and the second-hand trading market is becoming more and more active..."

"A personal shop?"

Li Xuan frowned slightly.

"As far as I know, there are all kinds of people in it, fake and inferior products are rampant, and there are many complaints and disputes..."

"This is inevitable. They are not legitimate businesses in the first place. Let's not talk about their qualifications for now. At least their services are supervised. It's okay here. The e-commerce platforms out there are so crazy. There are all kinds of monsters and demons. It's just a riot of demons."

This is a world of competition. You don’t need to be outstanding, as long as you are a little better than your competitors, that’s enough.

“We can’t just leave it alone!”

"Of course, there are some things that we can turn a blind eye to, but there are others that we...we must crack down on. Let's not talk about other things, just fake transactions, fake orders, and the swindling of information and cash. We have caught many of them. Once discovered, we will deal with them severely."

Wei Shuangping said very firmly,

"We should stick to the route of B2C as the main and C2C as the auxiliary. We can't avoid mistakes just because it's troublesome. If we push customers out, it will be cheaper for others and we will cultivate a competitor out of thin air. Therefore, I need your offline team to allocate more resources to small commodity markets around Gyeonggi Province and even across the country, invite small and medium-sized merchants and self-employed individuals to join and enrich the product categories of the platform."

Jinxi Mall has already developed a large business in selling many major consumer goods and daily necessities, but some niche products are not available there, and it is impossible for the company to spare the energy to produce them.

For example, soymilk machines, kettles, water purifiers, etc. are still niche household kitchen appliances. The market is small, but the demand is always there. If your company does not sell them and others do, you will lose customers.

After hearing Wei Shuangping's request, Li Xuan couldn't help but smile bitterly:
"I am also very short of staff here. If I want to allocate some space to do this, I will probably have to recruit more people."

"Then recruit. If you don't know how to do it, you can train them and learn slowly. There has to be someone to do it. If there is no one outside, you can recruit people from the same industry. If you offer a higher salary, you don't have to worry about people not coming."

"All right!"

The number of employees in the entire Jinxi Mall accounts for more than half of the total number of "Jinxi System". The remaining more than 30% are Jinxi Video's offline store distribution channels. Other branches and headquarters together account for only 20% of the total number of employees.

This proportion will increase in the future, especially as the national logistics and warehousing construction of Jinxi Mall is expanded. A large core station will require at least two hundred people to maintain operation, and there are numerous second-level and third-level stations. It is only a matter of time before the number of employees rises to more than ten thousand.

The fixed salary expenditure is millions every month, this scale is already exaggerated.

No wonder so many leaders want to come to inspect. They won’t feel at ease unless they actually take a look.

"It seems that the time for offline life to be operated independently has not yet arrived. The overlap between the two businesses is too high. We have to wait for a few years."

The BC2 and O2O models have many similarities and are indeed compatible, but if they want to grow and develop, separation is inevitable. The external performance of the two is similar, but their core competitiveness is actually not the same.

"That's too far off. Let's first negotiate the financing. If that doesn't work out, we can only offer shares internally and have employees hold shares."

Valuations are getting higher and higher, and more and more people want to lower prices and take advantage. As time goes by, Jin Shang is less and less willing to introduce more inexplicable capital, unless it is a strategic partner with strength and resources, such as Glacier Trade, who can guarantee a large and stable supply of goods.

Rather than letting outsiders get the benefit, it is better to issue shares on demand and share the dividends with company employees.

That's right, everyone doesn't have that much money, so we're stuck here.

(End of this chapter)