I met my whole family through Baidu Tieba.

After introducing the situation regarding quality inspection, Wen Chulan added, "...There are relatively few goods at the moment, so we're still quite busy here, or rather, you could say we're a little relaxed."

Shen Kang understood what she meant. "The An family is still pushing forward, and the number of goods will gradually increase in the future."

After inspecting the quality inspection area, Shen Kang followed Wen Chulan to a wall.

They specifically chose this bungalow; they wanted a single-story house with a large floor area.

After renting the property, they made some simple renovations, adding a wall in the middle. The front half was for disinfection and quality inspection, while the back half was for storage.

The two parts are connected by a door in this wall.

Next to this door, there was a table, and a man sitting behind the table, who looked to be under thirty, clearly a working professional, unlike the college student part-timer I saw at the quality inspection area earlier.

Through Wen Chulan's introduction, Shen Kang also learned that this man was the warehouse manager.

On the table, there were several stacked boxes and a neat stack of papers.

"This is a pickup/exchange notification form."

Wen Chulan picked up a piece of paper, handed it to Shen Kang, and explained, "It has the customer's information, product number, and pickup time on it. Fill it out according to the form when you pick up the goods."

After explaining all this, Wen Chulan pointed to the wall again.

Shen Kang put down the paper in his hand and looked in the direction she was pointing. He saw a timetable posted on the wall, which stated that deliveries would be made at 10:00 and 17:00 every day.

Wen Chulan also explained the whole process: "After the customer places an order, the message will be sent here. Based on the information, we will ship the corresponding goods out of the warehouse, store them centrally, and when it's time for delivery, they will be sent to the laundry room."

The laundry room she mentioned was naturally her home and laundry room at Yang-Ke University.

The process for college students to shop online is as follows: they place an order online, the courier delivers it to the courier point on campus, the student is notified, and the student picks it up at the courier station on campus.

Huanhuan.com also follows this model for "pickup".

Therefore, an offline pickup point is needed.

The advantages of the Beiming system's online-offline closed loop are once again demonstrated here: they already have offline stores, so there is no need to open new stores. They can simply add a pick-up point to the existing stores, which costs almost nothing.

Which of the three stores—Laundry Room, 302 Study Room, and Yanyu Tea Princess—should be the location to add a pick-up point?

The first one to be ruled out is Yanyu Chaji, since it's just a small stall and not convenient at the moment.

After a group meeting of Shen Kang, Wen Chulan, Qian Jun, and Yang Yunhan, it was finally decided to add a pick-up point in the laundry room.

The collective decision was made based on three reasons:

First, compatibility with core business scenarios.

The students' logic in the laundry room is that they drop off and pick up clothes, making it a classic task-oriented space. The user's psychological expectation is "I come here to do something, and then I leave." Picking up goods here perfectly fits this psychological model—it's only natural to pick up a package while getting clothes.

The logic behind the 302 Study Room is social interaction and an experience-oriented space. Setting up a courier point in the 302 Study Room is like putting an ATM in a karaoke bar—it works, but it feels odd, and the customer experience feels disjointed.

Second, the adaptability of physical space and circulation design.

The laundry room already has a dedicated storage and retrieval area. Adding a pickup point simply requires installing another locker in that area. Furthermore, the laundry room is already staffed, handling both laundry and delivery slips simultaneously, allowing one person to perform two tasks, thus reducing labor costs to almost zero.

The 302 study room is different. If we were to add a pickup point here, we would need to plan a dedicated pickup area, and we might even need to hire another employee, which is not cost-effective.

Third, consistency between brand tone and trust transmission.

The core selling point of Huanhuan.com is "trust." The same applies to laundromats: students entrust their clothes to the laundromat because they trust that the laundromat can clean and wash their clothes and that the laundromat will not lose their clothes.

Jiahe Laundry has built this trust through several months of operation and the various events that have occurred during that time.

Setting up offline pickup points for Huanhuan.com in homes and laundry rooms can subconsciously lead students to associate part of their trust in Huanhuan.com.

Study Room 302 does not have this function.

Therefore, in summary, this explains why Shen Kang and his team ultimately decided to set up Huanhuan.com's offline pickup point in the laundry room.

……

After reviewing the pickup process at the warehouse entrance, Shen Kang followed Wen Chulan into the back warehouse.

Once inside, you can see that the original cement floor and exposed beams of the houses have been preserved, but they have been cleaned very well.

The space is very large, even larger than the front half, making it feel very spacious.

This spacious area is filled with rows and rows of shelves.

On each shelf, there were also some large pieces of paper with large font markings, which were very eye-catching.

Compared to the rows of shelves, the items on the shelves seem rather sparse, and the quantity appears limited.

Shen Kang followed Wen Chulan while listening to her introduction.

"Currently, we've divided this space into several different shelf areas, arranged alphabetically. Section A is for civil service exam materials, section B is for electronic dictionaries, section C is for digital audio and video, specifically MP3 and MP4 players..."

Shen Kang followed Wen Chulan, starting from the left side of the entrance and then walking around before returning to the right side of the entrance, where they saw a special shelf.

The paper pasted on this special shelf reads "".

The few items on the shelves were not as neatly arranged as the items on the previous shelves; instead, they were scattered and contained all sorts of things.

Shen Kang picked one up and looked at it: it was a piece of paper with a lot of words written on it. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was the lyrics to the song "Starry Sky".

Hand in hand, one step, two steps, three steps, four steps, gazing at the sky, watching the stars, one, two, three, four, forming a line...

"Are you playing Snake, connecting one, two, three, or four in a line?"

Shen Kang muttered a complaint, put it down, and picked up another thing.

This is a set of photo booth pictures. The owner of the photos is a pretty young girl. Judging from the photos, she looks to be in junior high or high school. She has a bright smile and is posing in several ways, including pouting and making a peace sign.

In addition, there are some trinkets like celebrity stickers on this shelf.

Before he could even ask, Wen Chulan began to introduce them.

"This is the area, the 'Memory Storage Area'."

"During the process of inspecting and storing those secondhand items, we found some things hidden inside the protective sleeves of some secondhand items, which are what you see in front of you. I originally wanted to just throw them away, but then I thought about it and realized that might not be a good idea."

As Wen Chulan spoke, she picked up the lyric sheet that Shen Kang had just been looking at, turned it over, and showed Shen Kang the back.

Shen Kang then discovered that on the back of the lyrics sheet, there were many more words:

Niu Jianxin Niu Jianxin Niu Jianxin Niu Jianxin Niu Jianxin...

The handwriting is neat and clear, just like the front side, clearly written by a girl.

"This guy named Niu Jianxin must owe her a lot of money," Shen Kang said casually.

Wen Chulan chuckled, then said with a touch of nostalgia, "I feel that these are all precious memories, and it's not good to just throw them away like this."

Shen Kang glanced at her, intrigued. "Someone owed you money too?"

Wen Chulan said seriously, "Yes, there really is."

Shen Kang's gossipy nature was piqued again, and he urged, "Tell me about it."

Wen Chulan paused for a moment, then said, "Boss, aren't we looking at business?"

Shen Kang didn't care about that thing at all. "We can talk about that later. Besides, caring about the employees' financial situation and helping them solve their financial difficulties so that they can work with peace of mind is also an important responsibility of the boss. Come on, tell me."

Wen Chulan was helpless about having such a gossipy boss.

If it were a few years ago, Shen Kang wouldn't have said anything if he were so gossipy. But now that several years have passed, she's gradually gotten over it and doesn't care anymore. She just treated it as an interesting story from the past and told it.

"That was when I was in my first year of high school, and I had a deskmate..."

Through Wen Chulan's account, Shen Kang learned that Wen Chulan had a crush on her deskmate, a sunny and cheerful boy, when she was in her first year of high school. She also mentioned several specific incidents, one of which was that during class, she was whispering to the boy, and the teacher caught them. As a result, the boy stood up without hesitation, took the blame, and carried a chair outside to stand as punishment.

It was during that incident that Wen Chulan discovered that she suddenly felt a flutter in her heart towards the other person and fell in love with her—sometimes a woman's affection comes so suddenly.

Unfortunately, the boy had a close relationship with the most beautiful girl in Wen Chulan's class and seemed to have a crush on her. He, however, only seemed to treat Wen Chulan as a friend.

Then came the class assignments.

Wen Chulan and that boy were assigned to different classes. Although they would still contact each other occasionally, their relationship seemed to be slowly fading away.

Then came Wen Chulan's freshman year of college.

Wen Chulan and that boy still kept in touch during their freshman year of college. One day, the boy told her that he was in a relationship.

At that time, Wen Chulan was still single, and perhaps she was still waiting for that boy in her heart. But when she heard the boy tell her that he was in a relationship, she suddenly didn't want to wait any longer and accepted the pursuit of a boy who had been pursuing her since high school and who had also come to Yang University of Science and Technology with her.

A month later, the boy suddenly contacted Wen Chulan again, saying that he had broken up with his girlfriend. In his conversation, it seemed that he was testing the waters and wanted to try being with Wen Chulan, but he didn't say anything specific.

Wen Chulan's feelings at the time were very complicated. She had an impulse to break up with her current boyfriend and be with that boy, but her sense of morality prevented her from doing such a thing.

Finally, Wen Chulan told the boy that she was in a relationship too. The timing was coincidental; it happened right after the boy told her he was in a relationship.

The boy ultimately said nothing, only laughed on the phone and wished her happiness.

After that initial contact, the boy and Wen Chulan had less and less contact, and gradually became strangers.

Wen Chulan and her boyfriend broke up more than half a year later due to incompatibility.

In the end, Wen Chulan was single again, without a boyfriend, and not with the boy from back then.

"...I once heard a saying that the most helpless thing in the world is meeting the right person at the wrong time."

After telling the story, Wen Chulan sighed deeply, "Now that I think about it, that's how it was between him and me."

Shen Kang listened with great interest.

Hearing this, he commented, "I think the most frustrating thing in the world is when you go to someone's house to pick up a laptop, you've done the quality inspection, negotiated the price, and received the money from the customer, only to find out when you take it back, the motherboard has been repaired, the battery is bulging, and the screen is a re-pressed one."

"..."

Wen Chulan didn't laugh or cry, "That's just how it is."

After composing herself, Wen Chulan continued, "I took a photo booth picture with him, but I don't know where I put it, I can't find it. When I look through old photo booth pictures, I think of that one."

"Actually, I don't have any feelings for him anymore. The reason I thought of that photo booth picture is just because it's a part of my past. Sometimes it's nice to reminisce about it, because it shows that the past really existed."

Wen Chulan looked at Shen Kang as she spoke, "Boss, I don't know if you've ever felt this way. Over the past twenty years, many of my memories have become blurry or even forgotten. For example, I don't remember anything from second to fifth grade; it's as if that period never existed. It makes me quite…"

Wen Chulan paused here, unable to find a suitable word to describe that feeling.

Shen Kang succinctly added, "Weightlessness?"

Wen Chulan was taken aback. After thinking about it carefully, the more she thought about it, the more she felt that this word was very apt. "Yes, it's weightlessness. Like an astronaut floating in space, without coordinates or direction."

As she spoke, Wen Chulan remarked, "Boss, you really know a lot! You're clearly younger than me."

Shen Kang thought to himself, "No wonder you're so young and have such feelings! I only gained this clear understanding when I was in my thirties, looking back on my life. I guess girls really do mature earlier; male college students this age are still acting like idiots, just playing video games all day."

After expressing surprise at Shen Kang's "precociousness," Wen Chulan continued, "So, I really wanted to find that photo booth picture, but I can't. Then I wondered, was the owner of this lyric picture, this photo booth picture, also like me?"

"So I kept them."

Wen Chulan touched the shelf and said, "It's all marked here, showing which item number each item came from. Boss, why don't you talk to the An family and have them return these things to their rightful owners? Besides, I think this could be developed into a long-term business."

Wen Chulan felt that this matter was very meaningful.

However, after spending the past few months with Shen Kang, she had come to understand him better and knew that he was very pragmatic. So she added, "Of course, this will definitely increase the cost a little, but I've calculated it. We don't need to deliver it separately. We can just deliver it when we come to the door. It won't increase the cost by much."

Shen Kang remained silent.

Wen Chulan felt something was off, so she looked over at Shen Kang and saw that he was staring at her.

Seeing Wen Chulan looking over, Shen Kang exclaimed, "You're a genius!"

He immediately made the decision, "Okay, this concept of a 'memory storage area' is excellent, I really like it, it's settled then! I'll also arrange the coordination with Anjia."

For the mid-to-high-end customer groups who are looking to settle down, emotional value is often very useful, and Wen Chulan's idea of ​​a "memory storage area" is a perfect example of providing emotional value.

That's why they say the wisdom of the people is boundless.

Wen Chulan was pleased to see that Shen Kang had agreed to her idea.

After inspecting the warehouse, the two left the warehouse and returned to the front part of the storage and quality inspection center, where they found a place to sit down.

Wen Chulan also took out a few sheets of paper.

I've finished looking at the situation at the warehouse quality inspection center; now it's time to report some other things to the boss.

"Currently, 90% of the secondhand items received by Huanhuan.com are purchased directly, while only 10% are sold through consignment..."

Shen Kang listened quietly.

The "direct acquisition" and "consignment sale" mentioned by Wen Chulan are two models for Huanhuan.com to recycle second-hand goods.

The difference between the two can be illustrated with an example.

Let's say a customer wants to sell a used laptop.

After the home improvement company came to my home and conducted an on-site inspection, they quoted me 500 yuan.

If the customer chose option one and purchased the laptop directly, he would receive 500 yuan on the spot, and the transaction between Anjia and him would be complete. Whether the laptop was sold for 1,000 or 2,000 yuan afterward was irrelevant to this customer.

If the customer chooses option two, consignment sales, the person settling in will not pay on the spot; they will simply take the laptop away for free.

Once the laptop arrives at the warehouse quality inspection center and undergoes in-depth testing, it will be further valued based on the results of the testing and then listed for sale on Huanhuan.com, for example, for 1,000 yuan.

If someone makes a purchase, Huanhuan.com will deduct an 8% service fee, which is 80 yuan, and send the remaining 920 yuan to the customer.

In this case, the customer will receive 920 instead of 500.

Of course, it's also possible that if a thousand yuan worth of goods can't be sold even after many days, then the price will be lowered to eight hundred or six hundred or something.

If it's sold for 600, Huanhuan.com will deduct 8%, which is a service fee of 48 yuan, and give the customer 552 yuan.

552 yuan is about the same as 500 yuan. In fact, if it's sold at a lower price, the customer might not even get 500 yuan.

These are the main differences for customers between direct acquisition and consignment sales.

For Huanhuan.com, both direct acquisition and consignment sales have their advantages and disadvantages for customers.

If a customer chooses to acquire the product directly, Huanhuan.com can set its own price during the subsequent resale process, resulting in a much larger profit margin, which is an advantage.

The downside is that Huanhuan.com requires users to pay upfront to purchase items, which puts significant pressure on capital and inventory, making it a relatively asset-heavy model.

If the customer chooses consignment or agency sales, then it's exactly the opposite.

Under the consignment sales model, Huanhuan.com's profit margin is relatively small, earning only a service fee, which is a drawback.

The advantage is that Huanhuan.com does not require you to pay money to buy things in advance; you can get them for free. It is an absolutely asset-light model, which will not put any pressure on the company's finances.

The reason for presenting the two options to the customer and letting them choose is, of course, because Shen Kang's consistent principle is to prioritize customer satisfaction and give customers the right to choose.

Upon hearing Wen Chulan's report that as many as 90% of clients had chosen to acquire directly, Shen Kang frowned slightly.

90% direct acquisitions—that's an extremely high percentage.

Although Huanhuan.com's business volume is currently very small, and it can easily sustain itself with this amount of money, if this ratio continues in the long run, the financial pressure on Huanhuan.com will be too great.

However, Shen Kang did not speak immediately.

After Wen Chulan finished his report, he finally spoke: "90% direct acquisitions, that's far too high a percentage."

Wen Chulan also looked worried: "Yes. If this continues, the financial pressure will be too great... Boss, what ratio do you think is appropriate? What ratio should we strive for?"

Shen Kang thought for a moment, then shook his head. "There are too many things involved, including sales speed and available cash. For example, if sales are very fast, and goods received yesterday can be sold today, then there's no need to worry about a 90% success rate, but that's impossible."

"If I had to give a number, I think it's best to keep it below 50%."

Wen Chulan was even more worried.

Currently, direct acquisitions account for 90% of the total, and to reduce it to 50% would be almost a 50% cut. Numerically speaking, this is indeed quite difficult.

"Okay." Wen Chulan agreed and explained her next plan: "President Shen, please tell the An family that when they come over, they should also ask why so many clients choose to acquire directly."

Shen Kang nodded, agreeing with Wen Chulan's line of thinking. To change this situation, you need to understand what the client is really thinking.

Although Shen Kang already had a hunch, he felt it was mainly related to the nature of Anjia's mid-to-high-end clients. Those people, if they chose consignment sales, would constantly have to monitor whether their goods were selling. If they weren't selling well and prices needed to be lowered, Huanhuan.com would have to negotiate with them, which was too troublesome. Therefore, they simply chose direct purchase, settling the payment in one lump sum, and not bothering with the potential extra few hundred or tens of yuan.

However, these are just Shen Kang's guesses.

As the saying goes, "Without investigation, there is no right to speak." It would be more accurate and truthful to conduct an on-site investigation, as Wen Chulan suggested.