Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

The next morning, Jingdong responded again: ”418 Home Appliance Mega Sale, all products 30% off.”

”If a user buys a product offline at Gome or Sunning that’s cheaper than on Jingdong, Jingdong will immediately drop its price by another 10%.”

In an instant, the news shot back to the top of the search rankings.

To ensure every subsidy went to a real user, Handsome Dong secretly hired over 3,000 price intelligence agents across the country. They were posted at Sunning and Gome’s physical stores, responsible for verifying prices.

This move absolutely sickened Sunning and Gome!

As soon as a customer came to buy something, someone from Jingdong would immediately approach them and say, ”Buy it on Jingdong Mall. You can get it for another 10% off.”

Liu Qiangdong’s strategy was simple. ’You want to make this an all-category war? Then I’ll take the fight from online to offline.’

’We’ll see who dies first!’

Ah Li, which had been watching from the sidelines, didn’t stay idle. Using New FoxTao’s price comparison search engine, it ruthlessly exposed Jingdong by releasing a public price report. The report pointed out Jingdong’s shady tactic of ”raising prices before cutting them,” with the actual discount rate being only 4-6%.

This was a far cry from the 30% they had advertised!

This made Liu Qiangdong curse out loud. Gome, Sunning, Dangdang, Yixun, and Pinbei were all doing the same thing. ’You’re only calling me out? Talk about playing favorites!’

Ah Li’s stance was clear. It wouldn’t directly join the war, but it definitely wouldn’t show any mercy when it came to suppressing Jingdong.

After some thought, Liu Qiangdong first had his tech department completely block FoxTao’s search. He had been reluctant to lose that bit of external traffic before, but now he had to give it up.

Next, he had the operations department find dozens of Jingdong home appliances and compare their prices to those on Sunning and Gome, mocking FoxTao for its flawed stance and data.

This wave of the price war escalated, eventually turning into a six-versus-one battle.

On March 30th, Jingdong announced that it would shut down the Pinbei section of its Home Appliance City in twenty-one days.

Twenty-one days was the exact time needed to cover the seven-day delivery confirmation period and the fourteen-day after-sales support period. Once the time was up, the partnership would terminate.

An hour later, Orange Mobile Phone’s official store on Jingdong posted an announcement: It would be closing its store in twenty-one days and exiting the Jingdong platform.

The honeymoon period between Pinbei and Jingdong was officially over!

Six months ago, Liu Qiangdong had been calling Chen Yansen ”little brother,” but now, after their partnership shattered, they didn’t even make a single phone call to each other.

On the last day of March, Chen Yansen finally returned to Xucheng to personally oversee Pinbei and prepare to win this price war.

If they lost, Pinbei’s path to transformation would be delayed by several years. If they won, they could leave users with the impression that ’Pinbei’s home appliances are cheap and reliable.’

This thing called ”impression” might seem intangible, but for an e-commerce platform, it was their signature.

For example, when users thought of Taobao, they thought: a massive selection, but quality varies. Sunning: a place for home appliances with good after-sales service. Pinbei: social e-commerce, low prices, and they treat their customers like gold.

After all, if you bought a counterfeit or low-quality product on Pinbei, you’d receive a full refund plus compensation of at least three times the price, up to a maximum of ten times. You wouldn’t get that kind of treatment on other platforms.

Chen Yansen’s goal in accepting the challenge was this: to make users associate home appliances with Pinbei.

At two in the afternoon, a black-and-white Gusteau drove into the Science and Technology Park.

Chen Yansen got out of the car and walked straight to Building 8.

”Boss!” Huang Zheng, having heard the news, came downstairs to greet him.

”Increase the product weight of digital home appliances, and coordinate with the heads of our key account brands. Whoever is willing to support Pinbei on price will get double the store traffic in the second half of the year!”

Chen Yansen instructed as they walked.

”Boss, we’re already on it. Shuaikang, Aux, Chigo, and Galanz are all willing to lower their prices to the mega-sale standard,” Huang Zheng replied.

”So I take it Midea, Haier, and Gree aren’t willing to support us?” Chen Yansen stopped and looked at Huang Zheng with a knowing look.

”That’s not exactly it. The other major appliance brands are willing to offer us a promotional level on par with Sunning’s.”

Being stared at by Chen Yansen, Huang Zheng felt his heart pound. ’The boss’s presence is so intense.’

”Lao Hu! Come here!”

Chen Yansen ignored Huang Zheng and waved Hu Yun over.

Hu Yun quickly got up and jogged over, saying, ”Boss, what are your orders?”

”What’s our product overlap rate with Jingdong?” Chen Yansen asked.

”7%! But for 24% of those products, Jingdong is out of stock, so the actual overlap is only 5.3%,” Hu Yun replied.

”Not bad! That’s progress! Take the 200 best-selling products on Jingdong and have the promotions team create a special event. We need to hit Jingdong where it hurts!”

Chen Yansen said, patting Hu Yun’s shoulder.

He had never mentioned investigating the product overlap rate, but Hu Yun had the data ready. It showed that Hu Yun was increasingly considering practical business needs when processing data.

”Got it, Boss,” Hu Yun replied with a smile.

Neither FoxTao nor Pinbei had ever gone head-to-head with other platforms before. This was a first.

Chen Yansen glanced over and suddenly saw banners hanging under the light fixtures. They read, ”War on Dong: Our Victory is Assured!” and ”One snap from Pinbei, and Jingdong is history.”

The slogans were so cringey he wished he could dig a three-bedroom apartment under his feet and hide in it.

So with a grim face, he said irritably, ”Whose idea was this? It’s too tacky.”

”Boss, I had the admin department do it. I thought it would boost morale,” Huang Zheng said with a dry laugh. He could of course see that Chen Yansen was not pleased.

”There’s only one truly effective way to boost morale,”

Chen Yansen said calmly.

With that, he had Zhang Junjie announce an all-hands meeting!

「Ten minutes later.」

The open space on the first floor of the Science and Technology Park was packed with a dense crowd of over a thousand people.

Chen Yansen raised a hand to signal, and the crowd instantly fell silent.

”There are a total of six e-commerce platforms participating in this 418 Home Appliance Festival. For our total sales performance on that day, if we rank first, the multiplier for your Q2 bonuses will be 1.5. Second place gets a 1.3 multiplier, and third place gets 1.1. We are going to make our users remember that Pinbei Mall sells home appliances too!”

Chen Yansen announced solemnly.

In other words, as long as they hit the target, everyone’s Q2 quarterly bonus would increase by 10% to 50%.

For those at the supervisor and director level, this meant a bonus of 100,000 to 150,000!

In an instant, the motivation of the Pinbei employees was completely ignited!

The resulting uproar was so loud that people from the neighboring Orange Technology, Today Technology, and Orange Pay all poked their heads out to see what was happening.

After the meeting, the Investment Attraction and Operations Department immediately got busy, pulling out their phones to communicate the mega-sale policies with their brand partners.

Air conditioners, TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, home theaters, DVD players, sound systems, range hoods and stoves, water heaters, and sterilizing cabinets were all added to the negotiation list.

Zhang Yifeng, Yuan Wei, Li Hui, and others led their respective teams and traveled overnight to places like Shunde, Foshan, Yongcheng, and Luzhou to negotiate with the brand partners in person.

Digital home appliances were Pinbei’s weak point. If they didn’t go all out, they couldn’t be sure they’d break into the top three in the market.

In his past life, it had taken Pinduoduo four or five years without success. Chen Yansen didn’t think he could expand from fast-moving consumer goods to all categories in just six months.

As long as they made a name for themselves and left a deep impression on users, it wouldn’t be a loss for Pinbei!

The next morning, Toutiao went live, simultaneously appearing on the homepages of the Orange Application Mall, 91 Assistant, Wandoujia, and App Treasure.

Promotional posters were simultaneously launched on channels like Qian Du, Youku, Sohu, NetEase, Sina, and QQ.

The number of impressions broke 100 million!

Compared to the meager launch of Lingxi Browser, Toutiao’s resource allocation was absurdly extravagant.

Far away in Yanjing, Zhang Yiming discovered the product and felt that its design philosophy and recommendation engine technology were cut from the same cloth as his own Lingxi Browser.

’Could there be such a coincidence?’

Zhang Yiming couldn’t help but wonder.

After some inquiries, he learned that Today Technology was also a subsidiary of Senlian Capital. When he saw Liang Bo’s name in the company information, his mind started buzzing.

’So you said you were going to Hong Kong Island, but you actually went to Senlian!’

’And you even used Lingxi Browser’s recommendation engine technology to build a new content distribution app. How can anyone be so shameless!’

Zhang Yiming didn’t dare to curse out Chen Yansen, so he directed all his resentment toward Liang Bo.