Chapter 201: First Release 1.36 Million Units, 21.2 Billion in Sales, Opening Battle Against Apple

When Zhang Liaoyuan left Xucheng with 2 million in funding, the joy in his heart far outweighed his concerns.

Although his shareholding ratio had dropped by 40%, he had also secured Chen Yansen's promise.

Within the week, Three Squirrels' flagship product would appear in the Billion Subsidy channel.

One had to understand that on Pinbei today, the Billion Subsidy channel ranked first in exposure.

For an ordinary C-tier brand, getting selected for the Billion Subsidy channel was as hard as ascending to heaven.

Once selected, even if placed on the very last screen of the product pool, the guaranteed daily sales would never be less than 200,000.

Fly slowly on your own, or hop aboard Pinbei's airborne speedboat and fly together?

Obviously, Zhang Liaoyuan chose the latter.

After finishing his report on the Three Squirrels funding case, Gao Weilin shifted the topic to Zhang Yiming.

After all, in his view, a mere 2 million investment case was just a tiny deal.

If Chen Yansen hadn't spoken up, he wouldn't have needed to personally step in.

"From what you say, it seems Zhang Yiming still wants to make a mobile browser."

Chen Yansen immediately found it amusing.

Still, he could understand Zhang Yiming's thinking—if even Penguin had set its sights on mobile browsers, it proved this type of product had tremendous potential.

As for competitive pressure?

What business doesn't have competitors?

"Yes, but this kid is a bit slippery. The moment he got back to Yanjing, he met with several VC firms in a row, including Source Code Capital's Cao Yi, Capital Today's Liu Jun, and Ethereal Capital's Zhou Zijing."

Gao Weilin said slowly.

From an entrepreneur's perspective, Zhang Yiming's approach was understandable—after all, you'd compare prices on three stores even for a piece of clothing, let alone something as major as fundraising.

"You keep following up. He's still running the business registration for his new company anyway, so there's no rush. Just do your best."

Chen Yansen fully delegated authority, giving Gao Weilin an extremely high degree of freedom.

How much money to spend, how much equity to buy—he wouldn't interfere, as long as the money was spent reasonably and sensibly.

"Boss, I'll get to work then." Gao Weilin rose to take his leave.

"Give Wang Xueting and Xiong Li a heads-up, have them collect the vehicle needs from each department's directors. We'll purchase uniformly for Q1—directors capped at 1 million, supervisors capped at 500,000."

Chen Yansen thought for a moment, then instructed Old Gao.

As Pinbei and Sister Chengzi's Tech's business occasions kept increasing, it often happened that directors and general managers would show up to meet clients driving a 100,000-something commuter car, or simply taking a taxi.

Coinciding with year-end, taking this chance could be considered giving them a benefit.

Plus it was tax-deductible, so Chen Yansen wasn't losing out either.

"Got it, boss." Gao Weilin immediately grinned broadly—he'd caught Chen Yansen's meaning. Although the car was registered under the company, the usage rights belonged to the individual.

Getting a million-dollar luxury car for free—he was over the moon right now.

"Oh right, have HR recruit a driver for me. I can't keep having Director Gao drive me around, it's too improper."

Chen Yansen added.

"Boss, actually I really enjoy driving for you." Gao Weilin grinned and shamelessly sucked up.

"Oh really? Then you'll transfer to that role tomorrow, at a monthly salary of 10,000."

Chen Yansen teased playfully.

"Boss, I'd rather be your moneybag for you. Next life I'll definitely be your driver."

Gao Weilin knew Chen Yansen was joking, so he replied shamelessly.

"Get lost!"

"Yes sir!"

Gao Weilin scurried out of the office in high spirits. Passing the branding department, he didn't forget to shout at Ye Qiuping: "Director Ye, the boss is giving out benefits again—go pick a car, under 1 million, the company pays."

"Wow! Director Ye, congrats, congrats!"

"Sister Qiuping, get a Mercedes AMG!"

"An Audi A7 isn't bad either!"

The few people in the branding department started chattering away.

Tang Zhenzhe sat in a corner, a flash of envy in his eyes. A million-dollar luxury car in 2012—driving it back to his hometown would make him the king of the road.

Before long, bursts of cheers erupted one after another from Building 6 and Building 8.

Directors and general managers could freely pick any car under 1 million; supervisors could choose cars under 500,000.

Wang Zihao sent Chen Yansen a message saying his current BMW 750 was perfectly fine, so he didn't need to buy a new car.

"If you have more cars, you can rotate between them. It's just like girlfriends—you always need to have a backup option."

Chen Yansen replied.

"Brother Sen, y-you're too scummy." Wang Zihao couldn't hold back and complained in the chat.

"When you were sneaking perks at Galaxy Star, why didn't you call yourself scummy? Pfft! Next time there's a business dinner, I'll bring Wang Teng instead."

Chen Yansen shot back.

"Nooo! Brother Sen!" Wang Zihao hurriedly recalled his previous message and immediately backed down.

Chen Yansen closed the chat window and shook his head with a smile.

Meanwhile.

The rivalry between Jingdong and Suning intensified. Liu Qiangdong set up an "Anti-Suning Command Center" in Yanjing, personally leading the team, and publicly announced "Zero markup on home appliances, 10% cheaper than Suning."

Faced with such a blatant provocation, Zhang Jindong certainly wouldn't indulge Handsome Dong. He immediately had the marketing department issue a declaration: "Suning's prices will definitely be lower than Jingdong's, and we'll pay double the price difference."

Shortly after, Gome and Dangdang also joined the fray.

In last year's book price war, Liu Qiangdong had given Li Guoqing a severe headache. Taking this chance, Li Guoqing of course wanted to throw a wrench at Dong.

On the eve of the Spring Festival, digital and home-appliance products should have been the perfect opportunity to hike prices, yet in this melee the prices were driven lower and lower.

Although Zhang Jindong and Liu Qiangdong were subsidizing out of their own pockets, this still broke the brands' price controls.

In 2012, for most digital and major home-appliance brands, online was merely an important sales channel, not the core one.

The price controls were thoroughly thrown into chaos by Jingdong, Suning, and Gome — and behind that, the interests of over a hundred thousand offline distributors nationwide were affected.

The heads of Gree, Haier, Hisense, TCL, Skyworth, Huawei, and ZTE stepped out, first trying to persuade Zhang Jindong and Liu Qiangdong to sit down and talk it over slowly, but these two old friends had long since seen red and were in no mood for negotiations.

Liu Qiangdong figured that Jingdong's position as the No. 2 home-appliance player was probably about to be lost, because it was about to surge into first place!

Zhang Jindong, on the other hand, felt that if he couldn't even keep this little brat Liu Qiangdong in check, then all these years would have been for nothing.

It wasn't until January 14 that the General Association for Economic Development forcibly called a halt to the free-for-all among Jingdong, Suning, Gome, and Dangdang.

But the grudge between Zhang Jindong and Liu Qiangdong was now firmly cemented; the price war might have stopped, but the war of words never did.

Chen Yansen watched the two of them trading insults on Weibo and felt that the Weibo environment of a decade-plus ago was truly wild and free.

This wasn't treating Weibo like a Moments feed — it was clearly being used as a chat window.

They dared to spill out anything!

Still, in this wave of price wars, Sister Chengzi Tech ended up the biggest winner.

On January 11, Jingdong dipped into its own pocket and slashed the price of the Chengzi C1 to 1,959 yuan!

Suning followed suit immediately, dropping it to 1,949 yuan ten minutes later!

Jingdong didn't flinch in the slightest, cutting the price again, driving it straight down to 1,929 yuan!

Suning struck back in time, pulling the price down to 1,919 yuan!

By late night at eleven o'clock, the Chengzi C1's price had plunged to as low as 1,839 yuan!

It got to the point where users would place orders on Suning, cancel them shortly after, then place orders on Jingdong, and then go back to Suning to order again.

Many people spent the whole day fussing around, placing dozens of orders only to cancel every single one.

Two days later, Suning's self-operated Chengzi C1 was selling for just 1,799 yuan!

Jingdong dropped it to 1,789 yuan!

No matter how Suning cut the price, Jingdong just had to be cheaper than Suning!

Normally, the Chengzi C1's sales across the entire web had already dropped to 60,000 units per day by the time of the Chengzi D1 and Chengzi C2 launch events.

But after the two companies made such a ruckus, an extra 160,000 units were sold!

The subsidies alone resulted in losses of over 300 million yuan!

Averaged out, 100 million yuan a day!

This also made ordinary online shoppers realize for the first time that the competition between e-commerce platforms could actually be this crude and simple.

Quite a few people bought digital and home-appliance products at super-affordable prices during these few days.

Some netizens even went to Liu Qiangdong's Weibo comments section to fan the flames.

"Brother Dong, we're all behind you! The Chengzi C2 is about to go on sale — can you bring the price down? 1,999 yuan would do!"

"Brother Dong, Suning looks down on our Jingdong — cut the price one more time and show them what's what!"

It put Liu Qiangdong in a position where he couldn't reply, yet couldn't not reply.

But what caught his attention was that, after a week of warm-up and optimization adjustments, the Chengzi D1 and Chengzi C2 had finally reached their sales time.

January 14, 10 a. m.

Six channels — Chengzi Mall, Pinbei 10 Billion Subsidy, Jingdong, Suning, Taobao, and Telecom Online Mall — launched simultaneously online and offline.

In just one hour, the Chengzi D1 sold a terrifying 94,000 units!

Moreover, the contract phones and business-outlet sales from Telecom's offline channels were not included in this figure.

The Chengzi C2's sales reached as high as 47,000 units!

And the day before, the China-version Apple 4S had also officially gone on sale, with presales breaking the million-unit mark in a single day.

Could Sister Chengzi Tech break the record set by Apple?

Not only were netizens concerned about this issue, but even a host of industry peers were pulling strings to find out the real-time sales figures for Chengzi phones.

Two hours later, the Chengzi C2's total sales across the web were 105,000 units, and the Chengzi D1 had sold 182,000 units!

At the current growth rate, the total sales might surpass the Apple 4S, but the flagship Chengzi C2 would top out at fewer than 400,000 units.

As of midnight that day, the Chengzi D1's sales were 730,000 units!

The Chengzi C2's total sales were 371,000 units!

Combined, they exceeded 1.1 million units!

Although there was still a huge gap compared to the Apple 4S's presales, this result was already among the very best domestically.

Take the Meizu MX as an example — on its launch day it sold fewer than 10,000 units.

The Samsung Galaxy S II's first-day sales also didn't exceed 50,000 units.

Although the Chengzi C2's price was considerably lower, its terrifying sales of 371,000 units still let peers like OPPO, Meizu, Ku Sect, Xiaomi, and Huawei see the strategic significance of multi-channel launches.

Chen Yansen sat on the fifth floor of the tech park, waiting until 1 a. m. before receiving the offline-channel sales summary sent by Zhao Maolin.

Simply added together, the Chengzi C2's first-day sales became 470,000 units!

And the Chengzi D1's sales, unexpectedly, reached 890,000 units!

"Damn! No wonder everyone wants to make phones!"

Chen Yansen sprang up, feeling a bit speechless inside. In terms of product performance, although Chengzi phones were stronger than Xiaomi, Meizu, and OPPO, they hadn't pulled apart by all that much.

Apart from system smoothness, it was really just extreme spec-stuffing, paired with a price point users could accept.

A cumulative 1.36 million units, with total sales of 2.12 billion yuan!

But in the media's pen, Sister Chengzi Tech's 1.36 million units naturally beat the Apple 4S's first-day presales of 1 million units.

After seeing the trending news, Chen Yansen smiled, but he wouldn't have the branding department step out to explain.

He had this wave of traffic locked down!

In fact, on January 14, besides the massive sales of Sister Chengzi phones, there was another news story that got drowned out.

In first-tier megacities and provincial capitals like Yan, Hu, Yue, and Shen, tens of thousands of people received their new phones on the very day they placed their orders.

The combination of forward warehouses and express delivery was quietly, slowly changing users' shopping habits.

(End of this chapter)