Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

Chapter 145: Chapter 135: 400 Million Gross Profit, Terrifying Reaction Speed

”Morning, Brother Sen!”

”Morning, Boss!”

”Morning, boss!”

As Chen Yansen walked into Room 206, he was met with a chorus of enthusiastic greetings.

Their June salaries and performance bonuses had just been deposited. Everyone had been grumbling about losing their summer vacation, but the sight of tens of thousands more in their bank accounts instantly filled them with motivation.

Chen Yansen gave a slight nod, sat down at his desk, and logged into the data backend. He scanned the daily active users, sales, and user retention data. After confirming everything was in order, he switched over to a news website.

”Meituan secures another $30 million in financing, jointly invested by Ah Li and DST Capital...”

Seeing the news, Chen Yansen couldn’t help but sigh at how lucky Wang Xing was.

With this capital, even if Meituan couldn’t outcompete Lashou in the second half of the year, it could still secure a spot in the top three of the Group Buy industry.

Chen Yansen understood Ma Liyun’s strategy: run his own Group Buy business while simultaneously investing in external Group Buy websites, then acquire and absorb them into his conglomerate when the time was right.

But Ma Liyun never expected that after Wang Xin took his money and built up his company, he would turn around and align himself with Penguin.

Chen Yansen’s eyes narrowed in thought. After a moment, he called over Wang Yunxia from the promotions team and told her to secretly divert more traffic to Lashou, Gao Peng, and WoWo Group in their upcoming brand activities. After all, the longer the Group Buy war dragged on, the more he stood to gain.

Besides, he didn’t want Meituan to be the one to win!

Though Wang Yunxia didn’t understand the reasoning, she didn’t ask any questions. She simply agreed and went back to allocate several more promotional placements to WoWo Group’s brand campaign.

”Brother Sen, everyone’s here. We can start the Q2 financial meeting whenever you’re ready,” Xu Dan reminded him.

Chen Yansen acknowledged her and headed for the conference room.

June was a hectic month. On top of Taobao and Jingdong’s 618 sales event, there were also dedicated promotions for mobile phones, home improvement, and cross-border shopping, keeping everyone swamped.

They were so busy that it wasn’t until July 4th that they finally found the time to prepare the quarterly financial report.

Chen Yansen pushed the door open, entered, and sat down. ”Don’t overcomplicate it,” he said to Hu Yun. ”Keep it brief, just like always. Send a copy of the data to Director Gao afterward.”

Through Gao Weilin’s connections, Lotte Investment had indeed shown great interest in FoxTao.

However, because the project was so new, Lotte wanted to observe it for a while longer to ensure FoxTao’s profitability was sufficiently stable before deciding whether to invest or make an acquisition.

”Understood, Brother Sen,” Hu Yun replied.

He opened the PowerPoint and began his report, reading from the data sheets. ”In April, our average daily active users were 2.65 million, with new customers accounting for 37.4%. In May, average DAU was 3.04 million, with a new customer ratio of 36.2%. In June, average DAU was 3.49 million, with a new customer ratio of 39.1%.”

Hu Yun paused before continuing, ”Our total cumulative registered users have reached 206 million. We have 127 million quarterly active users and 56 million monthly active users...”

Judging by the user growth trends and new customer ratios for Q2, it was becoming increasingly difficult for FoxTao to acquire large numbers of new customers at a low cost through ad placements.

Only ten to twenty percent of the 560 million yuan from their Series A funding remained. After all, the total number of internet users in 2011 was less than 500 million—the pool was only so large.

”Zihao, cut the ad spend by half for Q3 and scale back our campaigns. Make conversion rate and ROI the primary performance metrics for the user acquisition team.”

Chen Yansen interrupted Hu Yun to give the order to Wang Zihao.

Then, he turned to Zhuang Rui. ”Lower the new-customer weighting for the ’Bargain to Zero’ feature and increase the weighting for returning customers who have logged in within the last thirty days but haven’t placed an order in the last seven. From now on, our focus is on retention and re-engagement.”

”Understood, Brother Sen,” the two replied in unison.

With user traffic nearing its peak and Group Buy sites also spending frantically to acquire users, FoxTao’s customer acquisition costs were rising, even though their business models were different.

Chen Yansen considered this and decided to slow their ad spending. They would shift their focus from quantity to quality, dedicating the other half of the budget to customer retention efforts.

Compared to new users unfamiliar with the shopping-guide model, existing users were cheaper to reactivate and had a higher lifetime value.

”April sales were 760 million yuan, with a gross profit of 83.6 million. May sales were 1.07 billion, with a gross profit of 129 million. June sales were 1.61 billion, with a gross profit of 188 million. That’s a total gross profit of 400 million for Q2,” Hu Yun continued.

Compared to Q1, that represented a 207% quarter-over-quarter increase in gross profit.

This demonstrated FoxTao’s explosive growth in Q2, which was the main reason Augusta Capital had given them a 16 billion yuan valuation.

Next, Hu Yun reported on Q2’s user retention, the sales distribution across various platforms, and the growth of their cross-border e-commerce business.

”In Q2, the Key Account Investment Attraction department onboarded 193 B2C platforms, completed eighty-five targeted brand campaigns and seventeen integrated marketing projects. Commission gross profit was 59.2 million yuan, and advertising fees were 87 million. After deducting expenses for Super Rebate commissions, the actual gross profit was 91.4 million...,” Song Yuncheng began his report, seeing Chen Yansen’s gaze fall on him after Hu Yun had finished.

Including previously onboarded clients, FoxTao’s mall rebate section now featured over 300 B2C websites, covering a wide range of product verticals and accounting for over 20% of the total gross profit.

Chen Yansen nodded without comment.

In June, top performers like Song Yuncheng, Li Hui, Zhang Yifeng, and Yuan Wei had each earned over 100,000 yuan in commission.

Zhang Yifeng, the top performer, had a total June income of a staggering 142,000 yuan!

This was a huge motivator for the other members of the investment attraction team. To put it in perspective, back in 2011, a house in a small county town cost only fifty or sixty thousand yuan. That amount of money could buy two or three houses.

Song Yuncheng’s outstanding performance in the Group Buy and B2C sectors earned him 126,000 yuan, second only to Zhang Yifeng.

Yuan Wei brought in 106,000 yuan. He felt that joining FoxTao was the best decision he’d made in the last two years.

And then there was Li Hui. He was only going to be a senior in college next semester, yet he already had almost a year of work experience before even graduating.

After just a few months, his bank account balance had already reached 300,000 yuan.

He planned to go home at the end of the year and buy his parents a new house.

Li Hui was filled with gratitude toward Chen Yansen.

When Li Hui had betrayed his previous campus card distributor to come work for him, Chen Yansen hadn’t held it against him. Instead, he had given him priority access to phone card resources, allowing him to earn a small fortune.

After joining FoxTao, he was willing to provide dedicated service even to merchants who only generated a few tens of thousands in revenue per period. As a result, he had the fewest key accounts among the top members of the investment attraction team.

Yet he still earned just over 100,000 yuan and held his position as an investment attraction team leader securely.

After listening to all the Q2 reports, Chen Yansen did a quick calculation. Total sales for the first half of the year were 4.93 billion yuan.

Considering the second half of the year was the peak season for e-commerce, their 10-billion-yuan sales target was more or less guaranteed, barring any surprises.

He was in an excellent mood. ”Talk to Xu Xingxing,” he instructed Xu Dan. ”See what nearby places would be good for a trip and organize a team-building event. Try to schedule it for July or August.”

”Yes, boss,” Xu Dan replied with a small smile.

July and August were the e-commerce off-season. Consumers had already released their pent-up purchasing demand during the 618 event, so it was the perfect time for the team to relax.

After that, the team leaders began reporting their Q2 results. The core metrics for the Investment Attraction team leaders were sales figures and gross profit.

The category managers’ core task was to meet the monthly sales targets for Super Rebates. The pressure was immense, but the bonuses for success were generous.

Depending on the gross profit growth of their respective categories, bonuses ranged from 5,000 to 50,000 yuan. While it couldn’t compare to the top earners in investment attraction, the category managers for major verticals like digital products, food, and women’s apparel were still taking home twenty to thirty thousand yuan a month.

Even though everyone reported in a rapid-fire, to-the-point style, it was nearly noon by the time the meeting finally concluded.

Chen Yansen glanced at the time, then at the over one thousand wisps of Human Dao Fire on his system panel. He decided to head back to Room 418.

He declined Wang Zihao’s lunch invitation and walked straight toward the faculty apartments.

He had accumulated 1,457 wisps of Human Dao Fire in June. Adding the 44 left over from May, he had a total of 1,501.

Chen Yansen synthesized them into 15 wisps of Divine Dao Fire and allocated them all to his Spirit attribute.

The stat increased from 10.02 to 10.17!

It didn’t seem like a big change, but Chen Yansen could clearly feel his memory and comprehension rapidly improving.

He could clearly recall every book he had ever read, able to access the information at will.

His information processing speed was like a computer’s!

After two days of observation, Chen Yansen discovered his sleep duration had shortened again. He used to sleep for four or five hours, but now he woke up precisely after just four hours.

His weight had increased from 94 kilograms to 97 kilograms!

Yet, he looked like he weighed 85 kilograms at most. In reality, the density of his muscle, bone, and flesh had reached an astonishing level.

Privately, Chen Yansen had tested himself at the gym. He could easily lift a 500-kilogram barbell with one hand.

His BMW 750 had a curb weight of 2,000 kilograms.

He had tested his strength and found he could lift the car half a meter off the ground with one hand. Using both hands, he felt he could flip it several meters away.

His strength was comparable to an elephant’s, his reflexes as fast as a hummingbird’s!

To test his reaction speed, Chen Yansen held a pencil two meters in the air and let it go.

He was able to catch and release the pencil 21 times before it hit the ground, whereas an ordinary person could do it once at most.

But Chen Yansen felt it was inaccurate to say his reflexes were 21 times faster than a normal person’s. He could clearly feel that the contraction speed of his hand muscles couldn’t keep up with his reaction time.

Simply put, his body couldn’t keep up with his brain.

However, Chen Yansen wasn’t bothered by it. In fact, he deliberately slowed his movements to appear normal.

In the following days, the graduating students began to leave campus.

On July 8th, Xuyuan University’s summer break began. Within two days, all the first- through third-year students were gone as well.

The vast campus became empty and eerily quiet. Even the cafeteria staff had gone on vacation, leaving only the hundred or so employees of FoxTao.

Xu Xingxing had to contract two off-campus restaurants to handle the three daily meals for FoxTao and Orange Technology; otherwise, even getting food would have been a problem.