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Chapter 496 Explosive Data

On the morning of September 17, 1998, in the newsroom of The Wall Street Journal on the 12th floor of a century-old building in Lower Manhattan, the rich aroma of coffee mingled with the smell of ink from the printer.

In addition, there was an indescribable restlessness floating in the air, which was the innate sensitivity of financial journalists to market fluctuations and their instinctive expectation of potential major news leads.

In the office area, the screens of dozens of old-fashioned CRT computers flickered constantly, with most of the images frozen on the Nasdaq index real-time trading interface.

At 9:45 a.m., less than half an hour after the market opened, the green numbers on the screen suddenly showed a significant jump.

The Nasdaq Composite Index broke through the 2200-point mark, reaching 2200.04 points, setting a new all-time high since the index's inception.

This breakthrough instantly disrupted the relatively stable work rhythm in the editing room. Many editors stopped their proofreading work, looked up at the screen, and some even raised their arms and shouted.

From the opening point of 1581.53 points at the beginning of the year to the current 2200.04 points, the index has accumulated a gain of 40% in just over nine months.

This exceeded all analysts' expectations for the Nasdaq at the beginning of the year, and everyone was going crazy because of this bull market.

Such an exaggerated surge in a short period is enough to send the entire market into a frenzy.

What really got the editorial team excited was an operational data report that had just arrived from Silicon Valley.

Flash sales are a familiar term to journalists who have long been involved in the fintech sector.

This company, founded by Ernst, has attracted a great deal of market attention since its inception.

In particular, Walmart launched its e-commerce business, attempting to combine its vast offline store network with online channels to seize emerging market share.

Amazon is actively promoting business restructuring, planning to transform from a vertical e-commerce platform mainly focused on book sales into a comprehensive e-commerce platform covering more categories.

Against the backdrop of two industry giants vying for a head start in the e-commerce arena, this e-commerce website, which had not yet been launched at the time, was thrust into the spotlight.

Everyone is watching to see if Ernst's business myth will be broken and whether he can continue his past success in the technology field.

With Walmart and Amazon already having seized the initiative in this field, many people believe that it is impossible for flash sales to break through successfully.

But less than ten days after its launch, Flash Sale delivered a perfect result that far exceeded expectations, like an atomic bomb that shattered Wall Street and the press.

Within a week of its launch, the daily order volume exceeded 126.2 million, and the total sales reached a staggering $4.7 million.

The market potential implied by these data sets is astonishing to everyone.

When Sean, the deputy editor in charge of the financial section of The Wall Street Journal, saw the data report, he seemed to be frozen in place. The printing paper in his hand trembled slightly, and his eyes were fixed on the figure of $4.7 million.

Half a minute later, he slowly came to his senses and couldn't help but mutter angrily, "That's fucking ridiculous. Americans suddenly entered the e-commerce era and don't like offline shopping anymore?"

In 1998, when traditional retail still held an absolute dominant position, the sheer scale of online consumption far exceeded people's understanding of the market.

What is an emerging market? It is a market that has not yet reached a significant scale and accounts for a negligible percentage of the industry.

But now, when people tell him that offline shopping is the emerging field of the retail industry, he believes them.

He instinctively asked the editorial team around him, "What's Amazon's annual sales figure? Can this year's projected sales exceed that number?"

He knew the number without needing anyone else to answer.

Amazon's total sales in 1997 were only $1.48 million, and the industry generally estimates that its total sales this year will be between $3 million and $3.5 million.

However, with Amazon's transformation, many institutions have raised their annual sales forecasts to around $500 million.

But that's only five hundred million dollars, which is as insignificant as a speck of dust in the retail industry.

Flash sales reached $4.7 million in just one week, accomplishing in a week what others did in a year.

"Total sales of $4.7 million—if this weren't Ernst's company, if this weren't official data released by Flash Sale, I would have thought I'd misremembered the date, that today is April Fool's Day," Sean said again, his tone still filled with disbelief.

He slammed the documents he was holding onto his desk, then raised his voice and yelled at the editorial team responsible for data collection and verification, "Haven't we gotten the specific data report for the flash sale yet? Are you all just a bunch of freeloaders?"

No matter how shocked or skeptical they were, it didn't stop everyone in the office from taking action and working on the news.

What is big news?

This is big news.

From a news value perspective, if the data released by Flashbuy is true and reliable, then this startup has undoubtedly created a miracle in the e-commerce field.

Not only will flash sales themselves become the focus of the market, but they will also trigger a chain reaction. The valuation of companies in the entire Internet sector may be reassessed due to the success of flash sales, investors' confidence in technology stocks will be further enhanced, and the upward trend of the Nasdaq index may exceed its previous limit, with the annual increase possibly reaching 50%.

Mad cow?

It can only be said that mad cow disease will sweep across the entire United States.

If there are problems with the data released by Flash Sale, this would also be a major news story worth making a big deal out of.

This is a company founded by Ernst, which inherently generates a lot of buzz.

Not to mention, data fraud would be devastating to flash sales themselves and would have a ripple effect on the entire Nasdaq market.

What appears to be a problem with one company is actually triggering a reaction across the entire Nasdaq.

In a bull market, investors tend to have optimistic expectations for the market. However, once cases of corporate data fraud occur, investor confidence will be severely damaged, triggering a series of chain reactions.

They will begin to wonder if Flashbuy is the only company in the internet industry that engages in data fraud?

This kind of doubt can make investors hesitant and afraid to continue investing.

If funding doesn't keep up, the current situation of stepping on one foot to get up will not be so easy when it comes to getting down. It will definitely be a stampede, and who knows how many bones will be buried.

"Boss." Just as Sean was about to continue his outburst because no one responded, his secretary came running over from the other end of the office area.

"Count...count...data." The other person was out of breath, but Sean didn't care whether he lived or died. He snatched the documents from the other person's hand and eagerly started flipping through them.

Although it doesn't contain detailed financial indicators and audit opinions like a listed company's financial report, it's much better than the report Sean had seen before, which only listed simple data.

The document not only contains overall sales data for the flash sale, but also details the sales performance of each product category, including key metrics such as order volume, sales revenue, and average order value.

As Sean swiped his finger across the food delivery section marked above, he was stunned again when he saw the data.

In an era where people still rely on phone ordering and pizza chains almost monopolize delivery services, Flashbuy not only introduced this delivery service to the community store industry, but also connected with 462 cities with populations of over 50,000 in 41 states across the United States.

He recalled that there were only 603 cities in the entire United States with a population of over 50,000.

And there are even more cities and towns with populations under 50,000.

By relying on internet platforms to accept orders and integrating offline store resources, the average delivery time for a single takeout order has been kept within 48 minutes, which is simply incredible.

As early as the 50s, large-scale food delivery services had already emerged in the United States, but the concept of the food delivery industry was previously considered to be just a theoretical idea that was difficult to put into practice.

Even pizza, now synonymous with takeout, cannot guarantee delivery time, despite chain stores offering delivery services.

In the traditional telephone ordering model, various problems arise when there is a slight increase in orders during peak dining hours.

Either consumers encounter a busy line when trying to order food, and have to give up after repeated attempts.

Either the pizza shop staff are too busy to process all the orders in time, resulting in a backlog of orders and a significant increase in production and delivery time.

A market research institution once conducted statistics and research on the traditional food delivery model. The result was that an average food delivery store can only handle a maximum of 5 orders per hour. Once this number is exceeded, at least one of the following will be significantly affected: delivery time, food quality, or customer service experience.

However, Flash Sale has perfectly solved these long-standing problems that have plagued the traditional food delivery industry through its innovative business model.

The online platform connects consumers and merchants in the ordering system. Consumers can place orders directly through the online platform, and the order information is synchronized to the merchant's back-end system in real time. Merchants no longer need to have cumbersome phone communication with customers. They can simply prepare the goods according to the order information, which greatly improves the efficiency of order processing.

At the same time, Flash Sale has also established an independent professional delivery team to be responsible for the pickup and delivery process. Merchants no longer need to invest additional manpower and material resources in the delivery process, nor do they need to worry about the problem of delivery time being extended due to too many orders.

This was something that was impossible before. If merchants wanted to take more orders and make more deliveries, they would need to hire more employees, which would be a huge problem in terms of cost.

Therefore, many chain stores would rather not take orders than hire more staff.

Thinking of this, Sean suddenly realized something. He quickly turned his head to look at the open-plan workstations in the office area, his eyes sweeping across dozens of seats. He quickly locked onto a familiar figure and called out, "Harper."

"What's wrong, boss?" Harper put down the mouse and looked at Sean with a puzzled expression.

"I remember you ordered pizza through a flash sale, right?" Sean asked uncertainly.

He remembered that three days ago, when he was working overtime, he ordered pizza in the office, and he remembered that Haber said he ordered it from a flash sale.

However, he had too many items at the time and wasn't sure if the pizza was also ordered through a flash sale.

"Yes, I absolutely love this website." Upon hearing Sean mention flash sales, Harper immediately became interested, his tone filled with excitement as he began to share his user experience.

"You don't know, but there's a convenience store that WShop has invested in, just around the corner not far from our building."

"The pizza I ordered last time I worked overtime was from that store. From the time we placed the order on the flash sale to the time the delivery rider brought the pizza to the editorial office, it only took less than twenty minutes."

As Haber spoke, he unconsciously scratched his hair, a dramatic expression on his face. "This speed is even more convenient than going to the pizza shop ourselves, it's incredible. You know, before, when you ordered pizza by phone, it would take five or six minutes just to wait for the operator to answer the phone, and by the time you finished talking to him and confirmed the order, about ten minutes had passed."

Sean ignored the other person's continued adoration of flash sales and all sorts of free promotion; what came to mind was the central kitchen he had heard about before.

Clearly, pizza has also become one of the products.

Such fast delivery, and the fact that you can order online without any limit on the number of orders, tells us something.

That central kitchen developed pre-made pizzas that only need to be transported to various stores and then processed in a large microwave oven when needed.

Commercial microwave ovens used in large catering establishments can process at least a dozen pizzas at a time, and the heating time is very short, only three to five minutes.

This greatly improves the store's production efficiency, unlike traditional pizza shops where the entire process of kneading dough, making the crust, adding toppings, and baking takes at least 20 minutes.

Thinking about this, Sean subconsciously muttered to himself, "I wonder how many pizza shops that rely on the traditional model will go out of business because of the rise of flash sales."

Then he discovered that there were just too many things to report on in flash sales, and he didn't know where to begin.

There's just too much news to report about Flash Sale's own performance, its partner stores, central kitchens, and its impact on various industries.