this man is not calm

Chapter 526 The Challenge That Was Inevitable

Since graduating from university, I have been an entrepreneur for five years. The group company, with Jinxi Culture as its main body, is no longer short of money. The improvement in profitability is one aspect. With smooth financing channels, coupled with the huge cash flow provided by PHS (Personal Handyphone System), online games, SP (Service Provider) and financial investment income, Jinshang's business has moved beyond the initial stage of rapid and unregulated growth and is gradually entering a new journey of steady development and solid foundation building.

The number of PHS (Personal Handyphone System) users has hovered around 100 million for two quarters without much change, indicating that the target user group has been largely tapped. On the other hand, the mobile phone business has seen a slight increase. The new generation of Mercury series third-generation mobile phones, launched during the winter vacation, quickly gained popularity among young users. As the world's first camera phone equipped with an 80,000-pixel camera, it quickly spread throughout China and was also popular in the entire Western Pacific region. Its performance is being closely watched worldwide.

In addition, its music ringtones, customized ringtones, mobile news, weather forecasts, stock market information, securities trading, and online social networking (blogs and chat) have made this Mercury series phone a sensation in the industry.

After several years of persistence, the large screen, virtual buttons, preferential data plans, Perlan system (Bluetooth), NFC contactless near-field communication, and built-in WIFI wireless network card have finally activated the needs of a small group of people who pursue fashion trends and are willing to accept new things.

To further consolidate its advantages, just a few days after resuming work on the eighth day of the Lunar New Year, Jinshang, through Hao Qilian's connections, contacted a series of software and hardware manufacturers and basic operators, including China Telecom and China Tower, to form a technology cooperation and patent alliance. They worked in unison to promote the Perlan system, NFC and WiFi technologies and standards, accelerate the pace of capturing the domestic market, and quickly go global to conquer the global communications market.

Whether we can make money or not is still uncertain, but we need to secure these sectors first and not let others get there first.

Many things were finalized at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Because it was close to the end of the year, some plans were difficult to postpone, so they all had to be carried out after the Spring Festival.

Especially at Jinxi Mall, there were so many orders and goods accumulated during the holiday that Wei Shuangping, who was exhausted during her pregnancy, was a little overwhelmed. Fortunately, she had a strong assistant, Jiang Long, to help her.

It took me nearly three days to finally sort out the mess of work.

Jin Shang rushed to finish approving the mountain of official documents and attended several meetings at the municipal government before he finally had time to meet with Jiang Long for the most important performance evaluation before the handover of the e-commerce platform's head.

Even as the snow begins to melt, the weather in Beijing is still quite cold. With four days until the Lantern Festival, the festive atmosphere hasn't completely dissipated, and the employees' enthusiasm hasn't been fully mobilized.

This does not include Jiang Long, who is diligent and hardworking.

"Actually, many sources and suggestions have suggested that I choose someone younger, more familiar with e-commerce, and more knowledgeable about the current state of the internet. There are many specific reasons, which I won't go into detail about. After careful consideration, I've decided to let you do it."

It wasn't just a business consideration; there was also guidance from a "golden touch."

Indeed, Jiang Long is not the best choice, but he is a prospective general manager of one of the top three e-commerce platforms.

As the boss, Kim Sang increasingly felt that doing business and being a person were not such accurate "life games" with no data panels to refer to, nor were there fixed routines to advance the story step by step.

"Is it... that I'm more honest and obedient?"

Kim Sang quickly denied the claim.

If simply being obedient could make someone the general manager of Jinxi Mall, then there would be many more capable people!
There's no need for Jiang Long to take on such a major role.

"The entire e-commerce industry is restless and uneasy."

With a soft sigh, Kim Sang said in a calm tone,
"From 1995 to now, more than 70 e-commerce platforms of varying sizes have emerged. These are the ones with names and a certain scale; there are countless smaller ones. Of these 70-plus, half appeared in the past year. Currently, there are about a dozen that are well-known and have some brand recognition. The only ones qualified to compete with Jinxi Mall are Yigou.com, which focuses on cross-border e-commerce and B2B, and Jinghua Mall, which basically follows our strategy..."

There are also seven or eight niche e-commerce platforms that are doing well, taking a vertical marketing approach, and managing to occupy a small market share and barely survive.

These peers have a high chance of going through the first three rounds of financing, but whether they will have a bright future is still unclear.

After giving a brief review of his industry peers, Jin Shang neither belittled them to highlight his own brilliance nor overestimated his own advantages, but instead offered a very objective conclusion.

“If you’re just a qualified ‘goalkeeper,’ there are too many people who can be replaced. You must have some noteworthy strengths to be put in charge of Jinxi Mall.”

"I don't quite understand..."

After pondering for a while, Jiang Long, unsure of the specific reason, couldn't help but ask. Jin Shang didn't keep him in suspense and readily explained:

"If we measure the development of e-commerce in China from a holistic perspective, the first stage can be described as pioneering, being the first to try something new, with almost no one optimistic about it, including our own people. It was entirely due to my unilateral decision-making and forceful promotion. The second stage was like a seedling growing into a seedling, requiring several years of careful nurturing before it could barely survive on its own. The third stage is now one of rapid, explosive growth and gradual expansion. This is not yet obvious in China, but if we refer to the development trajectory abroad, we can roughly understand the path forward."

Jinxi Mall is the world's first e-commerce platform. Compared with its domestic counterparts, it is undoubtedly outstanding. However, compared with foreign e-commerce companies, its development speed is not necessarily faster.

The reason for this phenomenon is not that the management of Jinxi Mall is incompetent, but that China's computer ownership and network infrastructure are much behind those of Europe and the United States, which allows Western counterparts to catch up and surpass them despite being a step behind.

Fortunately, the differences in our life experiences are not particularly large, so they are not completely incomparable in a short period of time.

Especially under Wei Shuangping's leadership, Jinxi Mall was able to maintain a high-speed expansion while basically ensuring a balance between income and expenditure and incurring slight losses, which is enough to prove that the two senior executives who were actually in charge of the operation were very outstanding.

As we entered 1999 and were about to step into the 21st century, the number of internet-connected computers in China rose rapidly, and the total market size expanded at an astonishing pace. Under these circumstances, Jinxi Mall fully leveraged its first-mover advantage and firmly controlled more than 70% of the domestic e-commerce market share, becoming a veritable industry giant.

Once you reach this point, it becomes extremely difficult to improve further.

“The existing market has been almost completely developed, and the new internet users are not novice users who are very familiar with computers and the internet. It will take a lot of effort to convert them into fans of Jinxi Culture’s products. As our IT peers gradually exert their strength, and even copy our Jinxi Culture’s products and services verbatim, it has put a lot of pressure on the company directly and indirectly…” In these three years, Wei Shuangping did a good job, but as the market gradually matured, the competition began to become fierce.

Currently, among Jinxi Culture's IT businesses, the comprehensive portal website is the most mature and has the most competitors. A total of six or seven websites share nearly 90% of the domestic market share. The remaining niche markets support a number of small websites, but it is still unknown how many will survive.

The largest comprehensive portal website in the Asia-Pacific region is not even the oldest, Northern Union Online. Ultimately, it's because this model is too easy to replicate and the barrier to entry is too low. Most BBS site owners and enthusiasts are capable of creating one, attracting investment, renting a server, and scraping and reposting news from the internet, and they can sell advertising and operate it in a respectable manner.

With the rapid development of the internet in the past four years, there are countless websites all over the world. In China, countless new websites emerge every day. Most of them do not last more than three months. Even small websites that only have a short lifespan will divert a large portion of traffic.

Jin Shang's plan is that the comprehensive portal website does not need to be the best; it only needs to be one of the top few in the country.

Having a voice is essential, and other practitioners almost universally regard it as the mainstay. However, Jinshang treats it as a defensive business segment. In recent years, it has also been tasked with incubating niche businesses. It is still very important, but not the most crucial one.

At this point, Jiang Long seemed to understand something.

"I heard the pressure on the instant messaging side is quite high."

"Yes! The online video business has been packaged and launched along with the chain bookstores and copyright operation center. Although it hasn't shown substantial value yet, its development is quite rapid. Combined with simultaneous online and offline promotion, it has already amassed a large number of loyal users, so there's no need to worry about it in the next few years. Software application is a technical job that requires a lot of time to cultivate. It requires continuous investment, and you won't see many results in a short period of time, so you have to be patient. Today's chat service is showing signs of decline and needs more time and energy to maintain and develop..."

Despite the pleasant cooperation between Jinxi Culture and the major basic operators who share the same origin but have now separated, and even the formation of a technology alliance with a large number of software and hardware manufacturers to share the benefits of development, in key areas that affect the overall situation, competition is still necessary.

Relying on its massive mobile phone user base and leveraging wireless network traffic, Fetion quickly rose to prominence, even surpassing Jinxi Chat at one point.

After more than two years, under Jin Shang's careful guidance, they finally closed the gap and even surpassed Jin Xi Chat with their complete application ecosystem and superior services, making the future of Jin Xi Chat look very bright.

However, at the end of last year, Fetion was separated from its parent company and introduced strategic investors to deepen its market operations, making the instant messaging market in the coming years even more unpredictable.

In fact, Fetion has another pillar that Jinshang has always been concerned about, namely the regional specialty services led by local telecom operators, such as chat rooms and offline event discounts, which have brought Fetion a great advantage in the end-user market.

For many young computer novices, Fetion is their first choice for internet chatting. Now, Jinxi Chat will need to spend more effort, greater investment, and more time to win over these users.

What's even more worrying is that among the investors introduced by Fetion, besides a few large industry support funds and related central and state-owned enterprises, Tan Qian, who holds 15% of the shares, is really too conspicuous.

"I wonder how much money and how many connections the Tan family father and son spent to get so many shares and a board seat, occupying the key position of operations director. Don't be fooled by how enthusiastic that kid is when we meet; when it comes to making moves, he won't hold back at all."

If we're talking about which competitor is most enthusiastic about copying Jinxi Culture's products and services, it's undoubtedly Tan Mingli's "sea turtle" son, a business partner of Mei Yingnian's second uncle.

You're just a spoiled brat who went abroad to study, get a degree, travel around, chase girls, and drift through life. You actually learned some decent skills and even shamelessly used a follower tactic to annoy Jin Shang.

In the past, Jin Shang didn't care about those Tom, Dick, and Harry who fought alone, no matter how rich or powerful they were, or how much they made a big fuss. But Tan Qian was different. Even when he followed Jinxi Culture step by step, Jin Shang only paid some attention and wasn't worried.

Falling behind at one step leads to falling behind at every step. The first-mover advantage in the IT field is too great, truly embodying the joke, "Go your own way and leave others with no way to go."

But if Tan Qian had mastered Fetion, this "rocket booster," things would be different. A large number of applications, including Jinghua Mall, would receive a huge boost in traffic.

From now on, the two can truly be considered to be on the same level and competing on the same stage.

"A formidable rival!"

Even though there were some alliances of varying sizes in the past that tried to integrate resources and stick together for mutual support, they were not one entity after all. Differences were inevitable, and there were conflicts of interest, so it was impossible for them to work together wholeheartedly.

Things are different now. Fetion, as a traffic portal, has found its place and can then receive feedback from e-commerce, electronic music, gaming, social networking, and professional forums, which will greatly enhance user stickiness.

"It is estimated that in the next few years, the domestic Internet market will be a two-way competition. Of course, we still have a great advantage. With the rollout of PHS (Personal Handyphone System) and the rise in our mobile phone sales, the method of pre-installing complete software will also increase our market share. In this fierce competition, your steady approach, rich experience, and hard-working spirit will be the ballast of Jinxi Mall."

It's unreasonable to expect Wei Shuangping, who is in her childbearing years, to continue doing the kind of work that involves welcoming and seeing off guests, building relationships with clients, strengthening marketing, and managing logistics across the country. It's not that she can't do it, but it feels like she's using a musket as a mace.

One of the most important tasks for Jin Shang, the boss, is to rationally allocate positions to each employee, especially senior executives.

In his early forties, Jiang Long is full of energy and dedicated to further education and improvement. He is in the prime of his career and excels in warehousing, logistics, marketing, and socializing.

“I understand. Director Wei… there are some things my female colleague can't do! I'm very happy to take over the e-commerce work and strive to make the company bigger and stronger…”

"Great! Have you arranged your personal life? You'll receive reimbursement for airfare to visit relatives twice a month, and your car and housing allowances will also be increased appropriately to relieve your worries."

Since they will be based in Beijing from now on, many things will need to be rearranged to ensure both public and private convenience, so that they can contribute their efforts with peace of mind.

(End of this chapter)