Chapter 164

The next morning, the autumn wind rustled chillily.

Withered yellow plane tree leaves, clinging to mist, swayed in the wind before finally drifting onto the bedroom's glass window.

This rustling sound woke Chen Yansen; he slowly opened his eyes and saw Song Yuncheng, her hair disheveled, still lying on top of him, fast asleep.

The sky was dim; Chen Yansen glanced at the wall clock: 4:15, more than three hours before sunrise.

He gently moved Song Yuncheng off him, picked up the shorts and shirt from the bedside, threw them on, and walked toward the living room.

Sitting beside the sofa, a stack of new books lay to his right; he casually picked one up and began reading.

Not until sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains did Chen Yansen come to his senses, realizing dawn had broken.

Putting down the book, he turned on the computer and logged into the Pinbei data backend.

Daily real-time new customer increase: 1.3 million!

Order volume: 637,000!

Chen Yansen filtered the options to view specific product details; the top seller remained Sister Chengzi's phone, followed by the Nine Yang Mini Rice Cooker in second place, with a total of 59,000 orders sold and sales nearing 6 million; third place was the Mercury Home Textiles four-piece bedding set priced at 129 yuan, with over 30,000 orders sold.

Fourth place was the Xiyue Navel Orange; in just over seven hours, another 141,000 orders were sold, even faster than yesterday.

Clearly, the group-buying model was demonstrating an astonishing chain-reaction effect.

"Master, good morning!"

At that moment, Song Yuncheng walked out of the bedroom, eyes still heavy with sleep, and instinctively offered a greeting.

"What did you call me?" Chen Yansen paused, then asked with a smile.

"Aren't you my master?" Song Yuncheng ran over with a grin, squatted before Chen Yansen, and asked back with narrowed eyes.

"Once a master, always a father; say 'Dad' for me?"

Chen Yansen bent down and lifted the squatting Song Yuncheng into his arms.

"I won't do it," Song Yuncheng turned her head, biting her lip in refusal.

"You call me 'Dad,' and I'll call you 'Mom,'" Chen Yansen leaned in and whispered, urging her on.

"Really? No backing out!" Song Yuncheng's heart fluttered.

After a moment's hesitation, she lowered her head, leaned against Chen Yansen's chest, and called out softly, "Dad."

Chen Yansen nodded in satisfaction: "Dad will brush your teeth for you."

With that, he carried Song Yuncheng into the bathroom.

Before the door closed, Song Yuncheng's furious roar could still be heard: "Chen Yansen, you have no integrity!"

Chen Yansen smiled; what was integrity?

By the time the two were ready, it was already 10:30 in the morning; Song Yuncheng rolled her eyes and glared fiercely at Chen Yansen.

"I'll never fall for it again!"

Song Yuncheng warned herself inwardly: this man is a beast, full of lies, with no integrity whatsoever.

"It's all your fault; we're late today," Song Yuncheng, having put on her shoes and applied her lip gloss, turned to blame Chen Yansen.

"Last night I told HR; the clock-in time today is changed to 11 o'clock; didn't you know?"

Chen Yansen raised an eyebrow and asked back with a smile.

Last night, Pinbei employees had worked overtime until midnight, so today's work hours naturally couldn't be the usual 9 o'clock.

Although there was overtime pay, people needed proper rest to have ample energy for the next day's work.

Hearing him say this, Song Yuncheng remembered that last night, as soon as she returned to room 0418, she hadn't looked at her phone again; it was normal she hadn't seen the notification.

"Then I'll go to the company first," Song Yuncheng replied, planning to head to the company separately from Chen Yansen.

"Have breakfast with me; I'll drive you later," Chen Yansen suggested.

"No need, I'll take the bus," Song Yuncheng hurriedly refused, grabbed her bag, and rushed downstairs.

Chen Yansen smiled faintly, shook his head, and walked leisurely toward the cafeteria.

Meanwhile.

At the Meters Headquarters in Hu City, as Min Jie arrived at the company, the Operations Department head rushed to greet him.

"Big Lao Wang, how are sales today?"

Min Jie asked casually.

He was referring to Meters' performance on Pinbei; yesterday alone, 41,000 orders were sold, with total sales of 1.62 million.

It seemed inferior to previous output on Fox Tao, but these were two different playstyles.

Fox Tao's average commission rate was 65%-70%; on 10 million in sales, after deducting rebates, only 3-3.5 million remained.

Moreover, Pinbei had just launched yesterday and already sold 40,000 orders; he was quite satisfied.

In Min Jie's view, Chen Yansen was absolutely Meters' lucky star and his benefactor.

Had it not been for Fox Tao and then Pinbei opening external sales channels for Meters, his position as General Manager of Bang Shopping would not have been secure.

Those T-shirts, hoodies, and casual pants accumulated in the warehouse from 2007 to 2009 finally had a chance to be cleared out.

"From midnight to 11 o'clock, a total of 73,000 orders! About 125 product links are sold out; Mr. Song from Pinbei urged me to submit new items; I've just selected the products," the Operations head hurriedly reported.

"Send it to my email; I'll review it immediately," Min Jie replied, quickening his pace toward his workstation.

At this moment, in the Meters warehouse, besides their own staff, three delivery couriers wearing Yunsu uniforms were busy with tape and packing bags, working with nimble hands and feet.

At this moment, in the Meters warehouse, besides their own staff, there were three delivery couriers wearing Yunsu uniforms, holding tape and packing bags, busily working with nimble hands and feet.

The warehouse staff were overwhelmed.

The delivery courier responsible for pickups at Meters Headquarters, in his anxiety, also started packing by hand.

The three delivery couriers worked continuously for over two hours before finally plopping down on the floor, panting, and saying, "Tell your boss to hire people ASAP! With just our few hands, we can't keep up!"

"Brother Bin, won't our commissions this month be through the roof?"

"Brother Bin, won't our commissions this month be through the roof?"

One of the deliverymen, his face full of anticipation, asked the long-haired young man beside him.

"Wait till payday, I'll take you two for a foot bath." Gu Wenbin draped his arm over his coworker's shoulder and said with a grin.

The partnership with Meitesi Express was a contract price signed by headquarters, but they still got a commission of 1 mao per order.

In the past, when there were only a few dozen pickups a day, if the company only gave them a 1-mao commission, they would have cursed the boss's ancestors eighteen generations over and over.

But now it's different!

Meitesi had tens of thousands of orders a day, at least one million orders a month guaranteed!

Just the commission alone was 100,000 yuan!

Split evenly among the three of them, each could get over 30,000!

They had to make over a dozen trips a day hauling the parcels back to the sorting center — it was indeed tiring and grueling — but the thought of the generous compensation made all three of them instantly full of drive.

"Bin-ge, can we go up to the second floor?" the remaining deliveryman asked with a sheepish grin.

"Third floor would be fine too! Let's go, haul this stuff back to the sorting center first."

Gu Wenbin gritted his teeth and stood up, feeling as if his limbs were filled with lead, a wave of soreness shooting through his muscles.

Yun Su Express had crushed the starting delivery fee for e-commerce orders under 2.5 kilograms straight down to 3 yuan.

Any customer shipping over 100 orders a day could enjoy the special contract price.

This news quickly spread from Hucheng to Hangcheng.

The Taobao shop owners around Yiwu did the math together — switching their partnered courier to Yun Su would save them 1.5 to 2 yuan per order in costs.

For merchants with daily orders in the low hundreds, that meant saving 5,000 to 6,000 yuan a month.

In 2011, that was no small sum!

In no time, Yun Su's Yiwu station saw its business volume explode.

In a single day they signed dozens of contract-price partnerships, and even won the warehouse distribution services for Taobao King and Huiqisi Department Store — deliverymen moved directly into the clients' warehouses, and once the goods were packed they were loaded onto trucks and shipped to the logistics center.

Yun Su had originally been just an obscure little courier company, but riding the coattails of Pinbei, it suddenly rose to fame in the e-commerce and express delivery industry.

Faced with Yun Su's sudden price cuts, the station bosses of Santong Yida, Tian Tian, Guofeng, and Sufeng got anxious — most of them were franchisees responsible for their own profits and losses, and now plenty of customers had run off to Yun Su.

How were they supposed to make money now?

So they all called headquarters one after another, hoping the company would step in and warn Yun Su against this kind of "no profit, crush the competition" behavior.

Soon, Shentong boss Chen Dejun got hold of Liao Wei's number and called in a fury to confront him: "Boss Liao, that's no way to do business! If you pull this stunt, nobody makes any money!"

"Chen Laoban, misunderstanding! It's all a misunderstanding! The three-yuan price is Yun Su's contract price for medium and large merchants — the people below misunderstood. I'll put a stop to it right away." Liao Wei brushed it off with a chuckle.

He planned to pacify Chen Dejun first, then grab another wave of customers before anything else!

"Boss Liao, I don't care whether you meant it or not — just don't stick your neck out! If you mess with everyone's cake, Yun Su shouldn't expect any peace either!"

Chen Dejun didn't care about any of that — whether Yun Su's price cut targeted small sellers or medium and large merchants, in essence it was stealing everyone's livelihood.

He couldn't stand for it!

"Chen Laoban, you can't put it that way. It's just fair competition — if you lot can eat this cake, why can't I?"

Ever since latching onto Chen Yansen, Liao Wei had started throwing his weight around too.

Seeing he couldn't bluff Chen Dejun, his tone instantly turned stiff.

Shentong might be an industry mini-giant, but he, Liao Wei, wasn't afraid — he had no shortage of money, and no shortage of business.

If Chen Dejun wanted to fight, he'd see him to the end!

"Fuck!" Chen Dejun cursed and hung up the phone.

He then called together Shentong's senior management to study a group strategy for dealing with Yun Su's price cuts.

But a price war could only be fought on the price front.

Before 5 p. m. that day, Shentong stations nationwide received a notice: for customers with daily orders exceeding 500, they would roll out a 3-yuan starting delivery price, in line with Yun Su.

All to hold onto their medium and large KA customers!

Huitong, Yuantong, Yunda and other companies, upon hearing the news, could only follow along helplessly.

The express delivery industry's involution, stirred up by Chen Yansen, had been brought forward by seven years!

Now it all came down to who had the deepest pockets, the most stations, and the biggest business volume — after all, the more parcels picked up, the lower the per-item cost, and the more prominent the advantage.

Meanwhile.

Chen Yansen walked out of Building 8, entered Building 6 where Pinbei was located, held a short meeting with the heads of each department, and finally looked at Xu Xingxing and said:

"Tell the park to rent out that empty half of the cafeteria. Hire a kitchen team through admin — from now on, Pinbei and Sister Chengzi Tech's three meals a day, we'll handle ourselves."

The food at the tech park cafeteria was too awful — apart from a few employees who weren't picky, most people took the shuttle bus to eat at the east gate of the Courtyard.

But as the number of employees grew, the restaurant had a queue every lunch hour, wasting a huge amount of time.

"Understood, President Chen." In formal settings, Xu Xingxing didn't dare call him class monitor anymore, switching to a more appropriate form of address.

As for the suggestion of running their own cafeteria, employees had actually been raising the issue for a while.

Xu Xingxing left the meeting room and immediately went to find the park manager to discuss it.

"Fine, but you'll need to get all the relevant permits in order — if something goes wrong, I can't take the responsibility." The park manager reminded her quietly.

Fire safety, environmental, health permits, and food license — not a single one could be missing.

Given Pinbei and Sister Chengzi Tech's influence in Xucheng, the park manager didn't dare refuse — otherwise if they moved to another park, he'd just have an empty office building to re-rent.

"Deal, that's settled then. I'll have legal send over the lease contract." Getting the answer she wanted, Xu Xingxing left the park office with a smile.

"Sigh! Those idiots at the cafeteria don't even know how to make money when it's handed to them."

After Xu Xingxing left, the park manager couldn't help but complain.

Even college students couldn't stomach it — one could imagine how terrible the tech park cafeteria's food was.

At exactly 6 p. m., the Weibo official account of the "21st Century E-Commerce Evening News" suddenly posted a sales report on Pinbei's first day online.

Five million registered users!

1.8 million orders!

Daily sales exceed one hundred million!

The news instantly shook the industry.

Many knew Pinnbei had launched, but none expected it to achieve such striking results upon debut.

Although QQ and WeChat's top-level entry points brought massive traffic, only high-quality products could convert it into such performance.

"Daily sales over a hundred million?" Liu Qiangdong felt a pang of bitterness upon hearing this; he had struggled for over a decade just to push JD's daily sales to 300–400 million.

Ma Liyun of Mama Ali, upon learning this, frowned.

When acquiring FoxTa, sixty percent of mid-level managers chose to leave.

But most of them were second- or third-year university students, or recent graduates—he had never regarded them as worthy.

The acquisition agreement required Chen Yansen to refrain from entering the guide-commerce industry for five years.

Unexpectedly, this kid shifted to vertical e-commerce—and thrived.

Yet after pondering it, Ma Liyun didn't take it too seriously.

After all, Pinnbei's current scale was far too small; compared to Mama Ali, it was like a tiny ant, utterly insignificant.

Inside Pinnbei, at 10 PM that night, they were celebrating a cumulative registration count surpassing ten million and daily sales breaking two hundred million!

This time, new users from group buying and zero-yuan price slashing accounted for thirty percent; QQ and WeChat channels dropped to forty-seven percent; the rest came from ad placements.

(End of Chapter)