Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

The next morning, Jingdong, Pinbei, and Taobao released their 618 battle reports. Sunning, Gome, and Yixun Network followed close behind. The series of exceptionally brilliant report cards made online shopping a popular trend in 2012.

The explosive growth of smartphones, electronic payments, and the express delivery industry provided fertile ground for the expansion and development of the e-commerce market.

Although 618 wasn’t a core promotional event for Taobao, Ma Liyun still invested heavily in marketing expenses and traffic resources to counterbalance Jingdong. Their GMV of 6.73 billion yuan was far ahead of the competition.

Pinbei ranked second, with publicly announced figures of 3.04 billion yuan.

Jingdong had actually fallen to third place in the industry. Its sales figure of 2.07 billion yuan looked impressive on the surface, but it was nearly a billion yuan less than Pinbei’s.

One was a thirteen-year-old veteran of B2C e-commerce, while the other was a social e-commerce upstart founded only a year ago.

When the news broke, many e-commerce professionals were stunned.

They knew Pinbei was growing rapidly, but they never expected it to have surpassed Jingdong by such a large margin in just one year.

”Can’t beat Pinbei? Liu Qiangdong’s loss comes down to his self-operated logistics. Jingdong is moving forward shouldering the weight of eighty thousand couriers!”

”Jingdong’s number two spot is really gone!”

”The Strongest Post-90s Young Entrepreneur: Chen Yansen Defeats Jingdong in Just Three Moves!”

Liu Qiangdong stared at the headlines on his screen, growing more and more furious. He immediately summoned his assistant, Zhang Pang, and told her to have the legal department send a cease-and-desist letter to this unscrupulous media outlet.

’Dammit, *you’re* the one who’s gone limp!’

”Right away, Boss.” Seeing her boss’s furious expression, Zhang Pang quickly acknowledged.

’Three billion in sales in a single day for Pinbei? They probably included the results from June 17th and then padded the numbers a bit.’

Liu Qiangdong’s guess was spot on. He cursed Chen Yansen internally for being such a sly kid.

After some thought, he quickly made up his mind. For the Double Eleven mega-sale, he had to move the start time up by two days. Then, he would use the cumulative sales from all three days for the battle report.

This wasn’t entirely about playing games. He had discovered that planning and preparing for a major promotion took a whole month, and a single day of sales was clearly not enough to fully unleash the customers’ purchasing demand.

With this in mind, Liu Qiangdong clicked on the link to Pinbei’s PC site, intending to study his competitor’s product strategy.

”618 Limited-Time Encore! We’re Serious About Low Prices!”

Liu Qiangdong froze for a moment when he saw Pinbei’s promotional copy. ’What... the hell is this?’

’Didn’t 618 just end?’

Liu Qiangdong let out a wry laugh, filled with admiration for Chen Yansen’s tactics. The kid could even take something as simple as the timing of a major sale and spin it into all sorts of different tricks.

A pre-sale, the main event, and a 618 encore—the rhythm was one interlocking phase after another, hard-locking customers for three straight days.

’I have to learn from the good stuff!’

Liu Qiangdong casually copied the link, dropped it into the senior management group chat, and added a message: ”For Jingdong’s Double Eleven sale, we can’t just copy last year’s plan. It needs to be new and creative. Focus on conversions and retention.”

「Meanwhile.」

「Hang City Ali Headquarters, Taohua Island Office.」

Ma Liyun gently pushed an industry report from a third-party data analysis firm across the desk to Zhang Yong. ”It seems Pinbei is quite a hidden threat to Ah Li,” he said faintly. ”Chen Yansen is far more difficult to deal with than Liu Qiangdong.”

”Three billion? With no inflated numbers?” Zhang Yong’s eyes scanned the document as he asked with a frown.

”Whether the numbers are inflated or not, Pinbei’s true sales for 618 were likely no less than 2.5 billion.” Ma Liyun’s lips turned down and his brow furrowed slightly. Pinbei’s battle report had put him on high alert.

Although Ah Li was involved in investment projects for Fast Taxi and Kuai Pao and was a partner of Senlian Capital, Pinbei was still a competitor to Taobao.

His feelings about Chen Yansen were quite complex. He saw him as an exceptionally capable young man with astonishing business talent. It was just a shame he hadn’t been able to recruit him when his venture was just starting out.

”From a brand and product perspective, the overlap between Taobao and Pinbei is only 13%. Furthermore, Taobao’s average order value is much higher than Pinbei’s. Therefore, Taobao’s main competitor is still Jingdong.”

”I suggest we strengthen management of our top KA brands, offer them rebates on annual fees and preferential commission rates. This will limit Pinbei’s merchant resources to B-tier and below, creating a gap between us and them in terms of brand tone and price range.”

Zhang Yong pondered for a moment before speaking slowly.

In reality, this was a strategic consensus he and Ma Liyun had reached long ago: use the 80% of small and medium-sized sellers to support the 20% of major sellers, thereby facilitating Taobao’s smooth transition.

”You’re right. That Su Bei Tiger, Liu Qiangdong, is always shouting about surpassing Taobao in three years. If we let him succeed, he’ll be an even greater threat to Ah Li.”

Ma Liyun smiled faintly and spoke in a low voice.

Little did he know, a barking dog doesn’t bite, but the one that bites doesn’t bark.

For now, however, he didn’t want to have a falling out with Chen Yansen. Cainiao Network needed the support of Cloud Speed Express to move forward.

After all, Cloud Speed, which had successively acquired Yunda and Zhongtong Express, now handled half the daily volume of the entire private express delivery industry. Without Cloud Speed, Cainiao would just be a product for their own amusement.

By now, his views on express logistics had already changed.

Ma Liyun was more strategic than Liu Qiangdong. In the initial phase of his plan, he didn’t intend to adopt a heavy-asset warehousing model. Instead, he wanted to use the business resources of Taobao and Tmall Mall to ”borrow a chicken to lay eggs” with logistics companies like Cloud Speed, Shunfeng, Shentong, and Yuantong.

Once Ah Li went public in the future and had ample capital, he would then further strengthen his control over the express delivery industry.