Chapter 181: If I Can't Pull It Off, I'll Give Suning to You

"Then why is President Liu here? Afraid suppliers will be snatched by Pinba?"

Zhang Jindong retorted without the slightest courtesy, a cold sneer hanging on the corner of his mouth.

With no media reporters present, he simply stopped pretending; the two had been trading barbs across the air for months and were already brimming with pent-up anger.

"If it's mine, it cannot be snatched away."

Liu Qiangdong sat with his leg crossed, appearing outwardly calm and carefree, but inside, Zhang Jindong's words had struck him right in the heart.

He had arrived early and, glancing around, found many 'old acquaintances' seated nearby; there were over 100 digital appliance brand representatives, and surprisingly, more than half of them were JD's KA suppliers.

Only then did Liu Qiangdong understand: no wonder Chen Yansen had merely symbolically added a clause for Chengzi Pay to the contract and allowed JD's self-operated goods to enter Pinba.

Although the two were currently still in a cooperative relationship, the naturally alert Liu Qiangdong had already sensed Chen Yansen's threat to himself.

"That's not necessarily true," Zhang Jindong replied with a smile.

He said this deliberately, with the aim of sowing discord between Liu Qiangdong and Chen Yansen, thereby benefiting Suning.

The experiences of the past year had taught him a lesson: online and offline are two different strategies.

Even if he defeated Gome, online Suning was still a small player, needing to leverage third-party channel traffic to develop and strengthen itself.

Furthermore, Zhang Jindong was confident that with its more than 1,500 chain stores offline, Suning's control over suppliers would definitely be stronger than JD's.

Even if the brand owners under its umbrella bypassed Suning and entered Pinba directly, Chen Yansen would not be able to secure the same supplier prices as Suning.

"President Zhang, I think your current thinking is very good; abandon the online strategy, hand over the appliance business to JD and Pinba, and achieve win-win cooperation."

Liu Qiangdong countered with a smile.

The implication was that Suning simply didn't have the fate to do e-commerce and might as well regard itself as an offline store, handing over operations to JD and Pinba.

"You kid got 1.5 billion in financing and think you're on top of the world? Can you even figure out heavy assets? If Suning's e-commerce business can't be pulled off, I'll give Suning to you."

Zhang Jindong was a shrewd person; he understood Liu Qiangdong's meaning immediately and spoke without the slightest courtesy.

Hehe, he's getting anxious!

Liu Qiangdong felt gratified inside, smiling broadly, and ignored Zhang Jindong from then on.

JD was already under great pressure fighting a price war with Taobao, and he never expected Zhang Jindong to keep biting down so tightly.

For the same product, JD sold it for 100 yuan, while Suning stubbornly sold it for 90 yuan, averaging 5%-10% cheaper than JD.

To protect his market share, Liu Qiangdong could only grit his teeth and lower the price again.

His chat just now was intended to anger Zhang Jindong; having achieved his goal, he left Zhang Jindong and started talking with Li Mingzhe, the e-commerce head of Supor.

Zhang Jindong's chest heaved violently with anger until Chen Yansen led Xu Peixin, the boss of Red Baby, over, at which point he finally calmed his mood.

"President Zhang, I didn't expect you to be here too." Upon seeing Zhang Jindong, Xu Peixin quickly stepped forward to greet him.

Recently, Suning's investment department had been in contact with Red Baby, planning a full acquisition.

Xu Peixin came from an investment banking background and valued investment returns.

At this moment, his thinking was similar to Lei Yi's seven years ago; he felt that doing e-commerce burned money, and after seeing Chen Yansen sell Fox Tao and cash out over 10 billion, he had the idea of selling Red Baby to cash out early.

As soon as Suning made contact, he actively attached himself to them.

"President Xu, does Red Baby also have plans to enter Pinba?"

Zhang Jindong waved, signaling Xu Peixin to sit on his right, and asked with a smile.

He was indeed interested in Red Baby, wanting to merge it into Suning E-commerce to supplement the mother-and-infant category users.

However, once Xu Peixin entered Pinba and performance improved, whether he would still be willing to sell became a question mark.

"President Zhang should understand the difficulties of vertical category websites; if JD's self-operated business can enter, Red Baby certainly has no problem."

After sitting down, Xu Peixin sighed first, then explained.

"What about the acquisition matter?" Zhang Jindong asked tentatively.

"Let's talk after the New Year; by then it will be a complete fiscal year cycle, which will also facilitate Suning's asset accounting."

Xu Peixin thought for a moment and still decided to postpone the cooperation matter, first seeing how Red Baby's sales performance would be on Pinba.

Everyone is a businessman; who doesn't want to sell at a higher price?

As ten o'clock approached, representatives from home appliance brands such as Haier, Little Swan, Vanward, Gree, and Galanz entered one after another.

Merchant representatives from the clothing category included Metersbonwe, Houndu Yishu, Tonlion, Yalu, and Xuezhongfei.

The sports category included Anta, 361, Hongxing Erke, Adidas, and Nike; however, the first three were brand owners, while the latter two were distributors.

Given Pinba's current scale and industry influence, the brand owners willing to attend the investment promotion conference were mostly A-brands and B-brands.

Take the beauty category as an example; those willing to give face were the likes of Meifubao, Meijiajing, and Mofa Shijia; slightly better brands were only Yunifang, Carslan, Pechoin, and Proya, etc.; not a single S-tier brand was present.

The attending brand owners and factory representatives numbered over seven hundred; looking out from the stage, it was a sea of black heads.

"Hello everyone, I am Chen Yansen, founder of Pinba. It is a great honor to gather with all of you in one room at today's investment promotion conference. Over the past forty days, Pinba's cumulative sales have broken through the 6 billion mark, which is inseparable from everyone's support and trust."

Chen Yansen spoke slowly.

For an e-commerce platform that had been online for less than two months, this report card was bright enough.

Zhang Jindong downstairs felt slightly embarrassed; after all, Suning E-commerce had been online for two years, yet its annual sales had not even reached 6 billion.

Chen Nian from Vanke was lucky not to have come; otherwise, Chen Yansen's words would undoubtedly have been an opening critical hit for him.

"For Pinba, 2011 is just the moment we set sail; 2012 will be the time to ride the wind and break the waves. The following content is divided into two parts: the Three-Step Method for New Merchants and Cloud-Speed Intelligent Logistics. For the first point, please welcome Ms. Song Yuncheng, Pinba's Major Client Director, to share with everyone."

After briefly finishing his speech, Chen Yansen walked straight off the stage and handed over the subsequent process to Song Yuncheng.

The Three-Step Method for New Merchants, to put it plainly, is a support policy for small and medium-sized merchants, including: 0-yuan bargaining and group-buying gameplay, 10 billion subsidies, and search algorithm optimization.

As long as the goods are good, the products are good, and the prices are good, even if they cannot enter the 10 billion subsidies, they can still obtain massive traffic on the main search page.

In 2011, the 'thousand people, thousand faces' algorithm of e-commerce platforms had not yet become popular; Pinba's kind of marketing operation undoubtedly opened a brand new door for peers.

"This is good; go back and copy it!"

Liu Qiangdong thought excitedly and silently took note.

With the shift from the PC end to the mobile end, a single screen on a mobile phone could only display 6-8 products; how to achieve effective product exposure became a problem troubling e-commerce practitioners.

Song Yuncheng stood on stage, a faint smile on her face, calmly and composedly introducing PinBe's core channels and the sales output of those channels, pulling out real case studies at any moment to explain how a certain brand had achieved daily sales of up to ten million on PinBe.

In Mama Ali's industry jargon, it was about empowering merchants and enhancing their ability to survive on the platform.

Chen Yansen sat in the audience, quietly watching Song Yuncheng.

"In this world, capable people are countless, but those who get the chance to be developed are few and far between."

Chen Yansen smiled faintly, offering that assessment in his heart.

Song Yuncheng's presentation was very compelling — not because of her looks, but because the success cases she mentioned were mostly B-tier and C-tier brands, which made many people think, "I could do that too."

Take the Cixi factory that made air fryers — it used to be nothing more than a small brand supplying Taobao's mid- and small-sized sellers, yet on PinBe it sold close to a million units.

The factory's boss, sitting in the audience, excitedly waved his hand the moment he heard Song Yuncheng mention the name "Zhixuan."

The brand representatives around him all turned to look at him in unison.

Obviously, this man was the boss of "Zhixuan."

If even a completely unknown factory could be pushed by PinBe to over a hundred million in sales, then for these well-known small-appliance brands, once they went online, their sales results would surely be no lower.

Half an hour later, Song Yuncheng finished her presentation.

Right after, Shi Quan, marketing director of YunSu Express, took Song Yuncheng's place and led the talk on the model and operations of "YunSu Smart Logistics."

The first half introduced YunSu's current state of development — including the numbers and growth rates of stations, couriers, sorting centers, and regional transit warehouses — followed by a discussion of the pricing issue merchants cared about most.

Due to the counterattack of STO, YTO, ZTO, and Best Express, everyone had driven the starting delivery fee for packages under one kilogram down to two yuan.

But Shi Quan smiled and said: "YunSu Express's warehouse-included customers will enjoy a special rate of 1.5 yuan per order starting January 2012."

The moment those words were spoken, the merchants in the audience could no longer sit still.

They immediately started chattering away in discussion!

For merchants with small-volume, lightweight goods, this new policy was an unprecedented boon — on shipping costs alone, they could save over a million a year.

Liu Qiangdong frowned, turned to glance at Chen Yansen. Although YunSu was only PinBe's third-party partner courier, the boss was the same person, and with PinBe's strong push, YunSu was bound to claim a place in the industry.

In fact, YunSu had already forced STO, YTO, and ZTO into the two-yuan era.

For a moment, Liu Qiangdong couldn't help feeling a flicker of apprehension — if JingDong Logistics opened up for outside operations in the future and faced YunSu head-on, did he stand a chance?

After Shi Quan came off stage, Chen Yansen returned to the stage, said a few brief words, and moved the proceedings into the signing phase.

After all, most of this crowd was here to grab resources, connections, and partnerships; they weren't really interested in what he had to say.

After signing the入驻 contract came the payment of the shop deposit.

At the luncheon, Chen Yansen greeted the heads of several leading home-appliance brands one by one. Gree's Zheng Zhou and Supor's Li Mingzhe came over, their words all hinting that they wanted extra resource support.

Chen Yansen smiled, snorted coldly to himself, and handed the two of them off to Song Yuncheng to handle.

Want traffic? Then pay up!

(End of chapter)