Chapter 160: 4 Jin for 5.9 Yuan with Free Shipping

"6.9 yuan with free shipping? Brother Sen, with that demand I wouldn't dare bring it up—I'd probably get a beating."

Li Hui, upon learning Chen Yansen's demand, waved his hands repeatedly, dropped onto the bluestone slab beside the orchard, and instantly lost all his drive.

Three jin of navel oranges, plus picking, packing, cardboard boxes, and express delivery—at only 6.9 yuan, it simply doesn't cover the cost.

On Taobao and JD. com, fruit sellers only roll out 9.9-yuan-for-three-jin-with-free-shipping products when they're pushing volume, and they strictly limit stock.

But Pinbe wants to sell them wide open!

Zhang Yifeng and Yuan Wei exchanged a glance, equally stumped; 9.9 yuan was already a price only negotiated thanks to Yunsu's express delivery discount.

"Yifeng, what do you say?" Yuan Wei frowned, his mind a tangled mess.

"I'll go talk it over with Boss Wei." Zhang Yifeng gritted his teeth and quickly made up his mind.

The boss set the demand, so they had to find a way to make it work.

Wei Yucheng was the largest local fruit distributor, with his own fruit-washing plant, fruit-crate factory, and cannery, and he also contracted several thousand mu of orchards.

After Zhang Yifeng communicated with the Agricultural Association, they introduced Wei Yucheng to him.

This kind of e-commerce collaboration deep in the place of origin was not unprecedented.

As early as the first half of the year, Juhuasuan had partnered with orchards and vegetable farmers in Qilu, but because supply quality was unstable and bad reviews kept coming, they had no choice but to give up.

Zhang Yifeng and the others had learned from Mama Ali's lesson and went straight to the biggest local "big shot" to cooperate. The benefit was obvious: ample supply, and the ability to rein in fruit farmers who wanted to pass off inferior goods as good ones.

Human hearts are hard to fathom, and Zhang Yifeng knew it well. The three of them could keep a closer eye on things during packing and shipping, but when it came to actually collecting the fruit, they didn't have that ability.

"I'll go with you." Yuan Wei thought for a moment, then said to Zhang Yifeng.

"Brother Feng, Brother Wei, wait for me." Li Hui, who had been sitting on the ground, saw the two of them mount their motorcycles and head for town, and hurried to catch up.

The three of them bumped along the mountain road, rounded the hill, and drove into Jiaguo Food Company.

Wei Yucheng heard the commotion downstairs and came down enthusiastically to greet them.

At their first meeting, Wei Yucheng looked down a little on Zhang Yifeng and the others—after all, the three were barely in their twenties and didn't seem very reliable.

But upon learning they were Pinbe's merchant managers, his attitude immediately changed.

With the internet and e-commerce developing at breakneck speed, Chen Yansen had sold off Fox Taobao and cashed out over ten billion, which gave Pinbe a name in the industry.

Wei Yucheng had opened a fruit flagship store on Taobao, but limited by season, cost, and operating skill, business had been lukewarm.

Introduced by the Agricultural Association, he proactively reached out to Pinbe.

Although Pinbe hadn't launched yet, the internet was already saying that Penguin would open a top-level entry point on QQ and WeChat, with hundreds of millions of exposures every day.

Wei Yucheng didn't dare imagine how many tons of navel oranges he could sell in a day as one of Pinbe's first batch of merchants.

If the cooperation went well, they could sell honey tangerines later on.

So Wei Yucheng was especially attentive to Zhang Yifeng and the others.

Hearing they were staying at a run-down inn in town, he immediately invited the three of them to his home and treated them to good food and drink.

"Manager Zhang, this year's navel oranges are pretty good, aren't they?" Wei Yucheng said with a smile, ushering the three of them upstairs for tea.

Zhang Yifeng sat down, looked at Wei Yucheng, and sighed: "Boss Wei, the fruit is genuinely good, but when I reported the navel orange specs and prices up the line, the company demanded another 3 yuan off every spec."

"How much? Three yuan!"

Wei Yucheng's smile vanished in an instant.

He could offer 9.9 yuan for three jin with free shipping only because of his influence in the local fruit industry.

Drop it to 6.9 yuan, and not only would he not make money, he'd have to eat eighty or ninety cents of labor cost on every order.

After all, oranges don't fall off the trees by themselves—picking, sorting, washing, packing, every step costs money.

"Manager Zhang, we already agreed on everything before. How am I supposed to do business that doesn't make money?"

Wei Yucheng spread his hands and flatly refused.

"Boss Wei, you can't put it that way. Look at our product display page—navel oranges of different specs are all on a single link, which is different from Taobao. Users will pick a spec; they won't all buy the cheapest one."

"Low prices to draw them in, higher prices to lift the profit. Trust me, you absolutely won't lose out."

Zhang Yifeng opened his laptop and showed Wei Yucheng Pinbe's UI design mockups, trying to convince him with the tiered profit margin.

"Sorry, Manager Zhang, I'm a traditional businessman. Business that doesn't make money, I absolutely won't do. But if you change the fruit-diameter requirement to under 6 centimeters, I can agree to that."

Wei Yucheng said, shaking his head.

Fruit under 6 centimeters wasn't bad in taste—it was just too small, and even fruit peddlers couldn't be bothered to take them.

Such fruit was generally used for juicing, canning, or left to rot in the orchard as fertilizer.

Cost was only 0.2 to 0.3 yuan—not even as expensive as the cardboard box.

"Six centimeters? Won't the fruit be too small and affect the taste?" Li Hui came from a poor family and wasn't picky about food; he figured as long as the flavor was no different, a lower price wasn't bad either.

"Come, I'll take you to the workshop and have a look. The taste is definitely fine—it's just the size that's small, so they don't look as nice."

Seeing Li Hui was interested, Wei Yucheng took the three of them to the fruit-sorting workshop.

The moment they stepped inside, they saw dense clusters of navel oranges being sorted by diameter into basket after basket by conveyor belts and sorting machines, while workers nearby neatly stacked the sorted oranges.

"Here, these are the ones." Wei Yucheng pointed at the fruit in the corner.

Zhang Yifeng, Yuan Wei, and Li Hui stepped forward to inspect, frowning involuntarily. They picked up a fruit and held it in their hands for comparison—these oranges were only a bit bigger than tangerines, not even as wide across as a duck egg.

"Let me taste it." Li Hui was quite straightforward—he wrenched it apart with effort, tore off a piece, and stuffed it in his mouth.

After two chews, he didn't taste the expected sourness; instead it was sweet, crisp, and juicy—compared with the 8-centimeter large-diameter navel oranges, the flavor was no worse.

"Let me try." Zhang Yifeng said to Li Hui.

"Here! Brother Wei, you try too." Li Hui handed the navel orange in his hand over.

"Hey, you can't deny it—apart from the looks, the taste is no worse at all." Yuan Wei took a bite and said with a smile.

"Boss Wei, what's the cost on fruit under 6 centimeters?" Zhang Yifeng took a bite, turned his head, and asked.

"Let's call it two mao." Wei Yucheng said casually.

"How about 4 jin for 5.9 yuan with free shipping? Using navel oranges of this diameter to draw in traffic will definitely work better than 9.9 yuan."

Zhang Yifeng's eyes lit up, and he sought Wei Yucheng's opinion.

"Then I'd still be selling at a loss!" Wei Yucheng did the math in his head — just the cost alone was already around 6 yuan.

"Boss Wei, if you trust me, I can sell out the navel oranges from these nearby orchards in a single day."

To get Wei Yucheng to agree, Zhang Yifeng brazenly bragged with a straight face.

"Manager Zhang, do you know how much these orchards produce? The number will shock you — at least 30,000 tons. At 4 jin per order, that's 7.5 million orders."

Wei Yucheng gave a light laugh, not believing a word of Zhang Yifeng's claim.

Even a hot-selling fruit on Juhehuansuan only moved a few tens of thousands of orders in a day at best!

He, Wei Yucheng, was no clueless newbie to e-commerce — there was no way he'd buy it.

Zhang Yifeng's expression didn't change as he said matter-of-factly, "It's only 30,000 tons. If I can't sell them all, I'll stay here and plant oranges for you for a year."

"Damn! Manager Zhang, going that hard?" Wei Yucheng was startled by the bravado.

Even though it was just a joke, it let him see Zhang Yifeng's confidence.

"Boss Wei, give me a straight answer — are we doing this or not?" Zhang Yifeng pressed him for a commitment.

"Fine, let me lay it out ugly first: at 5.9 yuan I'll only do 100,000 orders. If the gross margin doesn't pick up, I'm not doing any more after that."

Wei Yucheng thought it over and gave his answer.

The fruit itself wouldn't lose much money — the main cost was labor.

Zhang Yifeng breathed a sigh of relief, then pushed the price of 6–7 cm diameter navel oranges down by 1 yuan, and slashed 2 yuan off every other grade.

Although he hadn't met Chen Yansen's demands, he had genuinely given it his all.

That evening.

Chen Yansen received Zhang Yifeng's message. He deliberated for a few seconds, then agreed.

After all, there were navel oranges of every diameter — just leave the choice to the users.

If navel oranges sold like crazy on Pinbi, he could later expand from fruit to produce, and even the entire food category.

Add in apparel, general merchandise, small appliances, beauty products, and other categories, and Chen Yansen was confident that before Pinbi launched, he'd have all the mainstream hot-selling categories covered.

His starting point was different from Huang Zheng's: one, he lacked no capital; two, he lacked no traffic; three, he lacked no merchant resources.

The project had only been running 20 days, and the first batch of onboard merchants had already reached over 400 — nearly ninety percent were factories and brand owners.

If they couldn't offer a satisfactory price, they simply didn't qualify to join.

He knew perfectly well: as long as Pinbi could make money, these merchants would come running the moment they caught the scent — no need for him to hawk it.

Just like when he first set up Fox Tao, he had to build a benchmark so the industry knew you could make money on Pinbi!

Mei Te Si was the backup; the fruit merchants of Xiyue were the first choice.

Because produce had low unit prices and high order volumes, only then could Yun Su Express expand rapidly alongside it.

Right now, 4,300 couriers contributed over 2,000 wisps of Human Realm Flame to him every month!

If that number climbed to 100,000, that would be 600,000 wisps of Human Realm Flame in a year!

At that rate, in less than two years he could push his physique and spirit both above 100!

After replying to Zhang Yifeng, Chen Yansen left the tech park.

People from dst Capital were coming to visit tomorrow — nominally a tour, in reality an investment assessment.

While ensuring he kept controlling interest, Chen Yansen wasn't opposed to financing partnerships, especially with investors like dst who held abundant supply-chain resources.

Moreover, dst had partnerships with both Gao Tong and Microsoft, giving them more room to negotiate on communications patent licensing fees.

In Chen Yansen's view, the value of the Sister Chengzi phone factory far exceeded that of Sister Chengzi Tech. Ceding some equity in exchange for rich supply-chain and patent resources was an absolute bargain.

(End of chapter)