Chapter 121: The First Talent (Begging for Monthly Tickets)

That afternoon, some Fox Taobao users who had browsed overseas shopping B2C websites received pop-up ads and in-site messages.

The content briefly introduced the launch of the Overseas Shopping Assistant feature and how to use it.

This news delighted those users who wanted to shop on overseas e-commerce sites but were stumped by not knowing English, not understanding product sizing, and not knowing how to do international direct mail.

Zhang Peng was one of them; he liked buying sneakers, and Amazon's overseas site, eastbay, and sneakersnstuff often had super-low clearance prices pop up.

But he had no dual-currency credit card, didn't understand customs declaration procedures, and didn't know English, so in the past he could only window-shop on foreign sneaker websites.

But today was different. After reading the site message, he immediately opened Shangcheng Cashback, found the eastbay entry, and jumped to the product page.

He skillfully entered the sneaker code, and after entering the product page, Zhang Peng noticed a 'One-Click Purchase' button had been added to the upper-right corner of the page.

He tried clicking it, and was immediately taken to a new page. The layout was similar to eastbay's product detail page, but the text had all been replaced with Chinese by the built-in translation plugin.

Although it was a literal translation and read awkwardly, it wasn't hard to understand.

The size column had a new detailed chart — by foot length and width, he could pick the right pair of athletic shoes.

Zhang Peng was overjoyed. He ticked off the size and color, continued to the next step, and arrived at the order submission page.

He quickly filled in the shipping information and completed payment using Zhifu Bao.

The total was 580 yuan. Besides the original product price and first-leg shipping, there was an extra 70-yuan fee for purchasing agent and forwarding services (including combined packing, split packing, reinforced packaging, and warehousing fees, etc.).

Of course, if customs happened to inspect the package, he'd have to pay a tariff on top.

The shopping experience was incredibly smooth — no different from placing orders on Taobao or JD. com.

Zhang Peng studied it a while longer. He had used the one-click purchasing agent service; if he had only chosen the overseas transit warehouse service, he could have saved another 10 yuan.

"Awesome! Going back to the dorm to tell those bastards."

Zhang Peng picked up his laptop and walked from the teaching building toward the dorm.

……

……

"Sen-ge, the pop-up ad had 390,000 impressions. Following the new-user guide flow, 2,700 people completed their first overseas shopping order, of which one-click purchasing agent users accounted for 72%."

Hu Yun, holding his laptop, stood beside Chen Yansen and reported.

"What's the conversion rate for these test users?" Chen Yansen looked up and asked casually.

"1.7%. The main loss was on the link from the pop-up to Shangcheng Cashback — sixty percent of users dropped off there." Hu Yun answered immediately.

"Much better than the previous 0.2% or 0.3%. You and Zhuang Rui observe the data for one more day. If there's no problem, we'll do a full launch the day after tomorrow."

Hearing the data was good, Chen Yansen made the decision on the spot.

"Got it, understood." Hu Yun nodded, turned, and went off to coordinate with Zhuang Rui.

The overseas shopping business looked like it was only a hundred or two hundred billion in scale, but in reality the true demand hadn't been unleashed yet.

Once Mama Ali, JD. com, and NetEase entered the fray, it didn't take long before they grew the market to several hundred billion in scale.

Chen Yansen didn't have that kind of grand ambition — as long as he could grab 1 billion in sales from the overseas shopping business and bump up Fox Taobao's valuation, that was enough.

A few days later.

Far away in Yanjing, Sui Liangdong discovered that recently the natural traffic to Smzdm had increased, but the overall conversion rate was dropping sharply.

Since he couldn't track users' shopping behavior on third-party platforms, he could only use the clumsy method of exporting user contact info from the database and doing follow-up calls.

"Your product recommendation articles are pretty good, but I don't understand English, and I can't tell which websites do direct mail, so I just went to Fox Taobao to place my order."

"Fox Taobao's Overseas Shopping Assistant is especially easy to use. Sure, there's a service fee, but the cashback covers half of it — super worth it."

"You guys at Smzdm are just my info site for picking out products. To actually buy stuff, I still go to Fox Taobao. You have no service and no cashback — why would I use you?"

Several follow-up calls in a row nearly drove Sui Liangdong up the wall.

You bastards!

They're all Smzdm's users — how can they treat me like this!

Still, he learned the key piece of information: Fox Taobao had launched a plugin called the Overseas Shopping Assistant, helping users with zero language background easily shop overseas.

At this time in China, there were barely any overseas shopping forwarding companies — most had just been founded, with pitifully small business volumes.

Sui Liangdong had no idea overseas shopping cashback could be operated this way. After trying out Fox Taobao's Overseas Shopping Assistant feature, he immediately deflated.

He had only one option: establish or partner with a third-party forwarding company, copy Fox Taobao's Overseas Shopping Assistant, to stop users from flowing to Fox Taobao.

After weighing the options, he approached Zebra Logistics.

This cross-border logistics company, established less than two years ago, specialized in 'collection-and-forwarding' services and had barely any order volume before.

Meeting Sui Liangdong, they hit it off immediately.

A few days later, they launched their officially promoted overseas shopping transit service, trying to retain users.

Meilishuo, Mogujie, and Taofenba also followed suit one after another, rolling out similar services to take a share of the overseas shopping cashback market.

After learning of this, Chen Yansen just smiled faintly and didn't take it seriously.

On the shopping-guide track, these platforms that only knew how to copy and imitate weren't even fit to eat his dust — users wouldn't give them the time of day.

One week after Fox Taobao's Overseas Shopping Assistant launched, the conversion rate rose from 0.3% to 3.7%. Although compared to the domestic business's 15%–20%, the gap was still large, it had nonetheless added 40 million yuan in sales.

Over a month, that came to 100–200 million yuan, greatly improving the odds of hitting the 10 billion yuan revenue target.

At the same time, the payment license Chen Yansen had applied for under the name of Senhai Technology also came through.

Before long, he transferred it to the name of Senlian Capital.

IDG, Siwei, and Penguin called to inquire — after all, this thing counted as a company asset. Although in 2011, a payment license could be applied for as long as you met the conditions and wasn't exactly rare, Chen Yansen's shell-game approach made them frown hard.

Chen Yansen didn't hold back either, going straight to the "Measures for the Administration of Payment Services of Non-Financial Institutions" issued last year to make his case, claiming that since IDG was foreign capital, keeping the payment license under Senhai Technology could pose policy risks down the line.

The three investment firms felt the argument had some merit, but in their hearts they also knew Chen Yansen had indeed used company resources.

Then, when Chen Yansen casually mentioned April's revenue, the three representatives promptly shut up.

Compared to a payment license, Fox Taobao's 760 million yuan in April sales shocked them even more — after all, e-commerce's peak season was in the second half of the year.

If Chen Yansen could hit the 10 billion yuan revenue target by year-end, the company's valuation would be at least 6 billion yuan by then, and they'd be making a killing.

What's a payment license worth?

A year might see one or two hundred issued—let Chen Yansen take them if he wants to!

In the blink of an eye, the May Day holiday arrived.

Because the 1st was a day off, Fox Tao had already transferred wages to employees' cards on April 29th.

Chen Yansen had just finished washing up when the Human-Cause Spark increased by 393 wisps; with the Aurora R&D team in place, the monthly increase in sparks was growing larger and larger.

Once May came and the B2C commissions from February and March's merchant recruitment arrived in succession, he estimated another 500 wisps of Human-Cause Spark could be added.

Chen Yansen had long since experienced the benefits of raising Spirit, so this time he decisively added the points to Spirit.

But what puzzled him was that this time the effect of adding points was noticeably weaker.

Once everything settled, he summoned the system panel: Spirit was 10, Human-Cause Spark remaining was 236 wisps.

The Talent column gained a new entry 【Photographic Memorization】: Mountains of books, seas of learning—one glance takes them all in!

Chen Yansen had no time to think it over. He returned to the bedroom, picked up an unopened copy of *Concrete Mathematics*, and a strange sensation instantly swept over him—rows of obscure text drilled into his eyes.

Over a thousand characters on that page: one glance, and with his eyes closed he could recite the content verbatim in his mind.

Photographic memory!

The corner of Chen Yansen's mouth curved upward. This made studying far more efficient—8.43 and 10 were only a hair apart, yet missing one talent boost made the effect utterly different.

(End of chapter)