The diva and I cross each other

Mr. Li had already thought clearly about what Luo Ming had just said. He smiled and said, "Don't worry, Mr. Luo! There will be absolutely no problem with the goods.

I arranged for them to start from two aspects: the first was to poach merchants from Taobao. In recent years, Alibaba has always looked down on Taobao's profit margin and has been desperately promoting Tmall on Taobao's platform, sucking the blood of small sellers to build its own high-end platform.

Especially during this year's 618, users lost money, merchants lost money, and all the money was made by Alibaba. After 618, we contacted many Taobao merchants. These merchants were very dissatisfied with Alibaba, and some were even in a state of serious losses. As soon as we came to recruit people, they agreed almost without thinking.

Secondly, in addition to Taobao, we have also contacted a large number of factories that produce for well-known brands.

When doing group buying before, Baidu itself had accumulated some connections in this area, and those manufacturers did not mind having an additional shipping channel.

My people invited them to join the Pinduoduo platform to sell their own brand products or directly unbranded products, and most manufacturers agreed.

For some factories that have no experience in this area, I have also hired professionals to provide long-term guidance to ensure that their products can keep up with our needs.”

"Mr. Li, this is great! You have arranged the merchants so clearly so quickly." Luo Ming exclaimed.

“It actually has nothing to do with me. It’s just that Alibaba is too greedy. In a sense, Alibaba is pushing merchants to our side.

When our platform is really established and merchants benefit from it, they will know the benefits of Pinduoduo and will be even less willing to cooperate with Alibaba," said Mr. Li with a smile.

Luo Ming nodded when he heard this. It was true that a large part of the reason for Pinduoduo’s rise in the previous life was due to Alibaba’s own actions.

Alibaba itself occupies the mid- and low-end market of the e-commerce platform, but Alibaba is unwilling to give up the high-end market directly, so it created Tmall Mall.

Alibaba is only concerned with grabbing the market but has overlooked one point: good quality and low price can itself attract a large number of users.

The best evidence is that Pinduoduo, which gained over 2 million users in just two and a half years, is the best evidence.

However, Pinduoduo's expansion also has hidden dangers, that is, Pinduoduo attaches too much importance to the rights and interests of consumers and has been squeezing the rights and interests of merchants.

Not to mention other things, just the refund item alone has caused merchants to suffer a lot of losses invisibly, because some consumers really don't care.

The profits of ordinary merchants are not high to begin with, and if the platform is too biased towards consumers, it will discourage the merchants. This is also one of the hidden dangers that the Pinduoduo platform will encounter in the future when it develops to a certain extent.

Luo Ming pointed out this hidden danger, and everyone had different expressions after listening.

After a moment, Mr. Li said: "Mr. Luo, for the situation you mentioned, we can learn from JD.com's solution and use express delivery to solve it. My express delivery company is developing quite smoothly.

In the future, as long as users add freight insurance when purchasing our products, if they need to return or exchange the products, they can directly use the freight insurance and my courier company will be responsible for the return.

Only refunds can be changed to unconditional free returns, which can minimize the losses of merchants and protect the rights of users. "

"This method is feasible." Luo Ming agreed.

In this way, everyone reached a consensus.

The next day, Pinduoduo began to purchase advertisements on a large scale to promote its own APP, which began to appear on major websites.

Pinduoduo’s advertisements are almost always prominently displayed on apps owned by Zhuoguang and Baidu.

This is Pinduoduo’s first large-scale advertising, and it happened just as Double 11 was approaching.

This year, netizens were severely ripped off during the 618 shopping festival, and it was a time when they were complaining.

At this time, Pinduoduo’s advertisements easily attracted their attention.

There are dozens of categories and hundreds of small commodities of all kinds of fruits and vegetables, snacks, stationery, small appliances, various tools, children's toys, kitchen sets, small accessories, everything you need.

Moreover, the prices of these products are very, very cheap, most of them only cost a few dollars. Netizens are not sure about the quality of the products for the time being, but the prices are definitely very attractive, and many netizens have chosen to place orders to purchase them.

However, Pinduoduo's tactics are completely different from those of other e-commerce platforms. If netizens want to buy goods at a price of a few dollars, they must gather enough people, from three to five people to more than ten people.

There are also rules for this number. The more common and practical something is, the more people need to join in a group purchase, and vice versa.

This is because everyone definitely knows far more people than this number, but the people you know may not necessarily need the product you want. The more common something is, the more people will buy it.

Therefore, in order to get enough people to buy goods at preferential prices, netizens will send the link to QQ, WeChat, and even some Kuaishu work groups have Pinduoduo links.

After sending out the link, you just need to wait for more and more group buying users. When the group is full, the Pinduoduo APP will automatically remind users, and then you can make the purchase and wait for the goods to arrive. When Pinduoduo was only engaged in fruit business, although it developed very fast and even caught up with other second-tier vertical e-commerce platforms, a single vertical e-commerce still did not attract much attention.

But now, Pinduoduo's products have suddenly reached hundreds, and they are all consumables that users frequently need. Coupled with the novelty of its promotion model, the daily transaction volume has begun to increase rapidly in an explosive manner.

This large-scale growth rate naturally alarmed Alibaba in Hangzhou.

"Pinduoduo!" Mr. Ma looked at an analysis report in front of him, frowned and said to the assistant standing opposite him: "Have you checked the background and founding team of this company?"

"Pinduoduo's shares are registered overseas. It will take some time for us to find out clearly," replied Qiao Duanyang, assistant to Mr. Ma.

"Then who is the person in charge of this company? Who is the founder?" Mr. Ma asked with a frown.

"Pinduoduo's founding team is composed of several middle-level managers who left our company and JD.com. CEO Hui Haifeng is a senior executive of JD.com. We are not sure whether he is the real founder of Pinduoduo."

"Hui Haifeng? I have some impression of him. I remember that he was in charge of connecting with merchants at JD.com, right?"

"Yes, Mr. Ma."

"Will JD.com let such an important executive go? Without any non-compete agreement or something like that? Could it be that Pinduoduo was set up by JD.com to target us?" Mr. Ma asked with a frown.

“I don’t think so. Pinduoduo’s current model is completely different from the e-commerce platform we hope for. It is more like group buying with social functions added.

JD.com has never experienced the era of group buying, and it does not have any social channels, so it is unlikely to create such a shopping platform." Qiao Duanyang said.

“Whether it is them or not, this platform is very likely to become a new dark horse shopping platform in the future. We have to pay attention to it.” Mr. Ma said in a serious tone.

Since the explosion of mobile Internet, both Taobao and Alibaba have gotten rid of the need for search engines and browsers on the PC side, forming a closed loop. Coupled with the rapid development of mobile Internet, the number of users of shopping platforms has increased significantly.

In this context, both JD.com and Taobao have achieved sufficient success. Mr. Ma once thought that with the formation of the 618 and Double 11 shopping markets, the e-commerce platform landscape on the market has been determined. At most, some vertical e-commerce platforms will be born, and it is impossible for a third large shopping platform to emerge.

This is also the reason why Mr. Ma dared to take drastic measures and ignore the interests of merchants and consumers to build Tmall Mall.

But no one could have imagined that a new small company, by leveraging group buying and social networking models, would grow to such a large scale in just half a year. This made Mr. Ma feel a long-lost sense of crisis.

Alibaba's core business is e-commerce, and JD.com had taken a piece of the pie before. Now there's Pinduoduo. Mr. Ma rubbed his swollen head and felt that things were becoming more and more complicated.

"Mr. Ma, don't worry. Maybe this company was set up by several former managers of JD.com!" Seeing this, Qiao Duanyang hurriedly whispered to comfort him.

"Don't worry! I won't lose my composure over such a small matter. The most urgent task now is to find out where this company came from and who is the capital behind it." Mr. Ma said in a serious tone.

"Don't worry, Mr. Ma, I'm already checking it out and the results should be out soon."

Mr. Ma nodded and said nothing more.

Two days later, Mr. Ma's assistant Qiao Duanyang came to Mr. Ma's office with a document.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ma, we still haven't been able to find out whether there is anyone behind Pinduoduo, but we have discovered part of their capital flow," said Qiao Duanyang.

Mr. Ma was not surprised by this result. The other party hid so well that it was impossible for them to find out so easily. It would be great if they could find some capital flows.

Thinking of this, Mr. Ma said, "Bring it here!"

Upon hearing this, Qiao Duanyang immediately handed the folder to Mr. Ma.

Mr. Ma opened the folder, quickly glanced through it, and then asked, "Is this information authentic?"

"It should be correct. We contacted our partners in the United States and asked them to confirm many times that Pinduoduo's 10 billion funds must have been transferred from Europe. However, it is hard to say whether it was raised by European capital or domestic capital using Europe as a springboard." Qiao Duanyang replied.

"Is this the only part we can investigate?" Mr. Ma continued to ask.

"Mr. Ma, there are too many countries in Europe, too many banking systems, and countless private banks. It's really hard to check."

Mr. Ma sighed. It was so frustrating that he didn't even know who his competitors were.

After thinking for a moment, Mr. Ma asked Qiao Duanyang: "Qiao Duanyang, do you still remember the Juhuasuan we did before? Can we start this project again now?" (End of this chapter)