Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

On October 15, the second day of Jingdong’s presale event, three new coupon portals appeared on the main event page for digital products and home appliances: ”300 off 2,000,” ”800 off 5,000,” and ”1,200 off 10,000.”

In the coupon center, 10,000 no-minimum-spend 20 Hua Yuan Jing Vouchers were also released every hour from 8:00 a.m. to midnight, keeping users glued to the platform for sixteen hours straight.

The head of Jingdong’s event planning team had a simple idea: ’Whether they buy anything or not, I want them opening the Jingdong website or app on the hour, every hour.’

Over the course of the day, the various promotional subsidies amounted to as much as 20 million Hua Yuan, and the results were, naturally, remarkable.

On October 14, Jingdong’s presale sales reached 810 million Hua Yuan.

On October 15, Jingdong’s presale sales reached 1.07 billion Hua Yuan.

They had easily surpassed the one-billion mark!

”Damn it all!” Zhang Jindong couldn’t help but curse when he heard the news.

Jingdong and Sunning had a considerable overlap in both their products and customer bases. Since the repurchase frequency for digital products and home appliances is low, any customer who placed an order on Jingdong would almost certainly not shop at Sunning again.

”Launch the ’Zero-Cost Shopping’ event ahead of schedule.”

With a grim expression, Zhang Jindong summoned the head of Sunning’s e-commerce division and gave the order. He couldn’t stand seeing Liu Qiangdong act so arrogantly.

According to the original plan, the event was supposed to be teased on October 18 and launched on October 25.

The rules were brutally simple: for every 1,000 Hua Yuan spent, the customer would receive a 120 Hua Yuan voucher in return. These vouchers could be stacked, and the rebate was uncapped.

It primarily targeted categories like mobile phones, digital products, computers, and home appliances, covering brands such as Haier, Hisense, Mountain Star, Lenovo, and Apple.

In other words, customers could enjoy an effective 12% discount on purchases like the Surface tablet, Apple iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, Orange C3, Haier refrigerators, and Lenovo laptops.

In reality, although Sunning’s rebate vouchers were advertised as having no minimum spend, they came with category restrictions. They could only be used to purchase small home appliances and high-margin products like snacks, alcohol, and cosmetics.

To put it bluntly, there was a catch.

But it was also the first time Sunning had run a promotion with identical online and offline pricing across all categories. So, despite the clever caveats, there was also a good deal of genuine effort.

The selection of small appliances included hot commodities like rice cookers, microwave ovens, electric fans, and air fryers, but the inventory was limited.

Customers who were too slow could only use their vouchers on overpriced snacks and alcohol.

Back in 2012, buyers were far more naive. As soon as they saw what looked like a 12% discount on Apple and Orange mobile phones, they immediately placed their orders and paid.

The first wave of customers all managed to buy the small appliances they wanted and began posting guides on Weibo, BBS forums, campus networks, and online discussion boards.

This was partly to show off, but also because on October 9, Sunning had launched ”Sunning Pushers,” a CPS (Cost Per Sale) advertising affiliate program similar to Ali’s Mother and the Pinbei Alliance. Users could share rebate links on social media, and if someone clicked the link and placed an order on Sunning, the original user would earn a commission.

After all, how many truly kind-hearted people are there in the world?

They either want to take your money, or they want you to make money for them!

Zhang Jindong’s ”Zero-Cost Shopping” event caught Liu Qiangdong completely off guard. Jingdong’s sales in the large home appliance and digital product categories took a major hit.

Facing his old rival’s offensive, Liu Qiangdong immediately counterattacked by launching the ”Desert Storm” event. It featured 50% direct price drops on small appliances, a ”100 off for every 200 spent” deal, and a 1,010 Hua Yuan coupon bundle for spending just 99 Hua Yuan. The goal was to preemptively satisfy customers’ demand for small appliances.

After all, the most valuable items in the pool of products eligible for Sunning’s vouchers were small appliances. If customers already had their needs for those items met, why would they bother buying large appliances and digital products from Sunning just to be able to spend their vouchers on low-value goods like snacks and alcohol?

Credit where it was due, Liu Qiangdong lived up to his reputation as a veteran of business warfare. He had immediately figured out Zhang Jindong’s endgame and sabotaged it.

The day after Jingdong’s ”Desert Storm” event launched, the sales performance of Sunning’s ”Zero-Cost Shopping” event plummeted. The day-over-day drop was a staggering 53.7%. The event’s effectiveness was gutted, with sales nearly cut in half.

Before Zhang Jindong could even react, Liu Qiangdong launched a series of new services, including free appliance cleaning and ”beauty deliveries.” The former is self-explanatory. For the latter, Jingdong selected a group of attractive, well-built female couriers to make door-to-door deliveries in Smart cars.

It was low-brow, but customers in 2012 ate it up, especially since Jingdong’s user base was predominantly male.

Singles’ Day hadn’t even officially started, yet Sunning and Jingdong were already at each other’s throats. An uninformed observer would have thought they were the main event of the big sale.

Zhang Yong, however, was far more patient. He waited until October 18 to launch the Wealth Treasure ”Top-Up for Red Envelopes” event.

For every successful top-up of 300 Hua Yuan, users had a chance to claim a 150 Hua Yuan red envelope. For every 150 Hua Yuan top-up, they had a chance to claim a 50 Hua Yuan one. Each tier could only be used once per person, for a potential maximum of 200 Hua Yuan in no-minimum-spend red envelopes.

These were released in limited quantities on the hour, every hour from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. With a total of 200,000 red envelopes available, the daily subsidy for this event alone was 40 million Hua Yuan.

The event ran for seven days, from October 18 to October 24, for a staggering total investment of 280 million.

Although users had to be online at the right time to claim them, a single national ID could be used to register six different Wealth Treasure accounts. That calculated out to a 1,200 Hua Yuan instant discount, and the red envelopes had no minimum spend and were valid across all product categories.

In 2012, Ali Baba’s spending on major promotions was far more extravagant than it would be a decade later, and it came with virtually no strings attached.

This was far more generous than what Jingdong and Sunning were offering!

Coupled with other events like ”50% Off Sitewide,” ”1 Hua Yuan Flash Sales,” and ”Half-Price iPhones,” the attention of the entire internet was instantly drawn to Tmall Mall and Taobao.

Jingdong’s average daily sales, which had just held at the one-billion-yuan level for two days, immediately plummeted back to the 500-600 million range.

Tmall Mall’s daily active users climbed steadily as it effortlessly siphoned off 70% of the market’s traffic.

Pinbei was also affected by the fallout.

On the first day of the presale, Pinbei’s total sales were 1.63 billion.

On the second day, sales were 1.27 billion.

On the third day, sales were 1.04 billion.

On the fourth day, sales were 980 million.

On the fifth day, October 18, sales were down to just 730 million.

To put that in perspective, Pinbei’s typical daily sales before the major promotion had been over 800 million Hua Yuan.

After a moment of thought, Huang Zheng had the operations department initiate their own major promotion plan.

First, customers who placed an order on Pinbei would receive a Yu’e Bao ”interest-boosting bonus.” For example, they could get bonuses of 8.8, 28.8, or 88 Hua Yuan for spending 100, 1,000, or 10,000 Hua Yuan, respectively. It didn’t seem like much, but the trick with Orange Pay was that a user could activate the 88 Hua Yuan bonus simply by depositing 10,000 Hua Yuan into their Yu’e Bao account and leaving it there for one month before withdrawing.

This strategy targeted the user’s wallet directly, locking up their funds. The only way to use that money without violating the rules for activating the interest-boosting bonus was to spend it on Pinbei.

At the same time, they increased the Yu’e Bao trial funds given for placing orders. The amount was raised from 5,000 to 6,000 Hua Yuan in trial funds for every 99 Hua Yuan spent—a 20% increase.

Next, on Pinbei’s ”Ten-Billion Subsidy” channel, 10,000 half-off coupons (with a maximum discount of 20 Hua Yuan) were given out on the hour, every hour from 10:00 a.m. to midnight.

Finally, they launched a brand-new event channel: ”Dark and Windy Night, 8 PM Daily.” It featured a selection of flash-sale items priced at 300 Hua Yuan or more, which received an additional 10% to 20% discount on top of the already low prices from the Ten-Billion Subsidy.

In a way, the ”Dark and Windy Night” channel was like the old FoxTao special sales, driving prices down to rock bottom.

A five-jin bag of Shaopei Rice, 9.9 Hua Yuan with free shipping!

A 12-jin container of Libai laundry detergent, 26.9 Hua Yuan with free shipping!

Orange Mobile Power Supply, 89 Hua Yuan with free shipping!

Midea high-speed blender, 179 Hua Yuan with free shipping!

Aux 1.5 HP air conditioner, 1,399 Hua Yuan with free shipping!

With this flurry of promotions, Pinbei’s single-day sales skyrocketed, immediately shooting back up to 1.5 billion.

On October 20, the Pinbei Alliance reached a strategic partnership with shopping guide websites like Mogujie, Meili Shuo, and What’s Worth Buying. These platforms began to shift their traffic resources in Pinbei’s favor.

It couldn’t be helped. Pinbei was simply offering too much money.

Besides, ”Handsome Dong” often mocked shopping guide sites on Weibo, saying they ’had no value and were nothing but robbers.’ And Ma Liyun, after acquiring FoxTao, was naturally focused on nurturing his own in-house project.

In Lao Ma’s eyes, Mogujie, Meili Shuo, and What’s Worth Buying were nothing but leeches sucking blood from Ali, and he had long wanted to kick these shopping guide sites to the curb.

It was just that Ali was in the critical stage of preparing for its IPO, and the sales generated by third-party channels were still indispensable.

Otherwise, all he had to do was issue a new regulation stating that sales from shopping guide referrals would no longer count toward search result weighting or the baseline sales metrics for Juhuasuan and other major promotions. Every shopping guide e-commerce site would die overnight.

In Ma Liyun’s view, that commission rightfully belonged to FoxTao!

’Who the hell did Mogujie, Meili Shuo, and What’s Worth Buying think they are?’

’Thinking they can control Ali’s external traffic channels?’

’An absolute pipe dream!’

It was then that the idea of moving against the shopping guide sites began to form in Ma Liyun’s mind.

This was precisely why Chen Yansen had been so insistent on packaging and selling FoxTao the previous year.

FoxTao’s business was overly dependent on referrals from Ali. With rivals like Jingdong, Yixun, and Amazon failing to put up a fight, the moment Ma Liyun decided to play dirty, FoxTao’s valuation would be cut in half, at best.

Even if FoxTao made it through 2013 and 2014 unscathed, Lao Ma would absolutely turn around and stab him in the back the moment Ali went public.

Fortunately, he had acted in time. With the cooperation of Lotte and Augusta Capital, he had offloaded FoxTao onto Ali and used the money to found Orange Technology and Pinbei Mall.

Therefore, no matter how dissatisfied Ma Liyun was, shopping guide sites were still the best partners an e-commerce platform could have in 2012.

So, when Pinbei proactively extended an olive branch, they hit it off immediately. Mogujie, Meili Shuo, and What’s Worth Buying all joined the Pinbei Alliance. On their own platforms, they adjusted the proportion of Pinbei product displays from an initial 15% to around 45%, nearly on par with the Taobao ecosystem.

In addition, dozens of mid-tier shopping guide websites also successively integrated with the Pinbei Alliance, treating it as a core part of their business.

On October 20, boosted by traffic from these third-party sites, Pinbei’s single-day sales broke the two-billion-yuan mark for the first time, reaching 2.06 billion Hua Yuan.

「Meanwhile.」

After receiving 50 million in funding from Senlian Capital, Hu Weiyi founded the OFO shared bike project in Hang City and began her journey of so-called entrepreneurship—in reality, she was just working for someone else.

Far away in Yanjing, Cheng Wei soon got the news. When he found out that the investor behind OFO shared bikes was Chen Yansen, he completely lost it. ”I haven’t even fucking offended you! Why do you keep coming after me?!”

But he knew in his heart that with the backing of Senlian Capital’s funds and resources, OFO’s expansion would be far faster than he could possibly imagine.

”DiDi Bike has to start its Series A funding round immediately!”

Cheng Wei couldn’t wait any longer. He no longer dared to play it safe and capture the market steadily. In an instant, his mind was made up.