Chapter 465: A Heart in Suspense, Now Almost Hanged

Chapter 465: Chapter 281: A Heart in Suspense, Now Almost Hanged

Star City Bay Phase II, Huipin Mall.

The grand opening promotion was scheduled for three days. Today was the final day, and it was also the first day of Berkeley’s reopening.

This was a day Han Guangqi had carefully chosen.

By leveraging the customer traffic from the first two days, he could ensure that as many local residents as possible knew about Huipin Mall.

That way, even with Berkeley reopening, he would steal their customer flow!

‘After all, how could a mall that had lost a third of its tenants possibly compete with him?’

As usual, Han Guangqi arrived at the mall early in the morning.

But he found that the foot traffic was at least 50% lower than before.

While there were still quite a few people, it was a noticeable decrease compared to the previous two days.

After parking his car, Han Guangqi walked into the mall. The previously bustling, crowded scene was gone.

The supermarket on the basement level, in particular, no longer had a line.

Seeing that something was wrong, Han Guangqi immediately returned to his office and summoned his secretary and assistant.

“What’s going on? Why are there so few people?”

“President Han, Berkeley opened today. They’ve poached a lot of our customers,” the assistant reported.

“Can their prices really be better than ours?”

For a long time, the one thing Han Guangqi had been most confident about was his company’s price advantage.

Huipin Group had its own powerful supply chain. In terms of pricing, it was definitely superior to a small-time operation like Berkeley.

Faced with low prices, he didn’t believe the public would choose to shop at Berkeley.

“They have a lot of loss leaders,” the assistant said.

“They’re exclusively selling Mu Xing’s high-quality beef at Berkeley. They’ve also packaged the noodle shop’s soup base, and even bottled the sour plum juice and craft fruit wine. This has drawn in a lot of customers.”

“And those things alone are enough to steal all our customers?”

“They also have promotions. Their prices aren’t that different from ours, which is another reason customers are being drawn away.”

Han Guangqi was silent for a long time.

“Come with me. Let’s go take a look!”

The three of them left the mall and drove to Berkeley.

Parking on the side of the road, Han Guangqi was a bit baffled by what he saw.

“What is all this flashy stuff at the entrance?”

“That’s a pavilion they built. Customers who ride motorcycles can park them there. They say the shade from the pavilion keeps the seats from getting hot, so it won’t burn your butt when you ride away.”

“What is all this random crap? And what’s with the dog kennels over there?”

“They said it’s for customers who are home alone and can’t leave their pets by themselves. So they set up a pet-sitting area where someone is responsible for giving them water.”

Han Guangqi: ???

‘What the hell is all this?!’

“President Han, why don’t we go inside and take a look?” the assistant suggested.

“Our people have been in there since this morning. I heard their business model is also very innovative…”

“Let’s go.”

The female secretary handed over some masks. After putting them on, the three of them followed the constant stream of customers into Berkeley Mall.

The moment he walked in, Han Guangqi stopped in his tracks.

“President Han, they’ve designed a total of seven types of shopping carts to meet the needs of different groups of people.”

Huipin Group had started out in the supermarket business; he knew the process inside and out.

Seeing these, even Han Guangqi had to admit the designs were very thoughtful.

Following the aisle inside, he found that there were even more people here than he had imagined.

Even with a third of the tenants gone, the customer flow didn’t seem to be affected at all.

After entering, Han Guangqi discovered that the products here weren’t that much cheaper, but there was one point that couldn’t be ignored!

They had actually labeled the wholesale prices!

That was equivalent to telling customers exactly what their profit margin was!

“Why is there someone in a nurse’s uniform over there?”

“They’ve set up a nursery here and even hired a professional maternity and childcare nurse…”

Han Guangqi felt a little numb listening to all this.

‘Are they here to make a fucking profit or to do charity?!’

“Let’s go to the second floor. So many shops have closed, how can there still be so many people?”

Taking the elevator, the group arrived on the second floor.

On the second floor, he discovered that all the closed storefronts had been turned into displays for their own self-operated products!

Although many of them were repetitive, each “store” had a decent number of people.

“They’re really good at fooling consumers!”

“It’s just padding to fill the space, but it’s clearly effective. Consumers don’t really care that much, as long as the space isn’t empty,” the assistant said.

Han Guangqi knew this principle too, but he felt that Lin Jiang was just too cunning.

‘Damn it!’

‘They’re not playing fair! Shit!’

“Let’s go check out the basement level!”

For Han Guangqi, the supermarket business was Huipin Mall’s moat. Therefore, he had to see Berkeley’s supermarket.

But upon reaching the basement level, Han Guangqi froze, momentarily at a loss for words.

The customer traffic here was even heavier than on the first floor!

Not even Huipin Mall had this many people on its first day of opening!

Han Guangqi made a careful comparison. The prices were about the same as at Huipin Mall, and some items were even a few cents, or a few dozen cents, more expensive.

This gave Han Guangqi a small measure of psychological comfort.

‘In terms of price, my side still has the advantage.’

“Our moat is still intact. As long as we defend our price advantage, they won’t have this many people after these first few days.”

“President Han, the problem now isn’t really about the price,” the assistant whispered.

“Our purchasing manager came here early this morning. He reported something to me: the quality of Berkeley’s produce is better than ours…”

Refusing to believe it, Han Guangqi walked over to the fruit and vegetable section to see for himself.

He had spent most of his time in his own supermarket over the past few days, so he was familiar with the quality of his own products.

After a careful comparison, he found that the produce at Berkeley’s supermarket was indeed slightly better than his own.

His heart, which had been hanging in suspense, now plummeted.

“Coming through, coming through, please make way.”

Two masked employees, carrying a large box, arrived at the banana display.

“These are the ones that were picked over. We’re not going to sell them anymore. Please choose from these instead.”

The two employees took away the picked-over bananas and replaced them with fresher, higher-quality ones.

“No way, they even do that?”

“I was at Huipin yesterday, and no one even bothered to clear away the rotten bananas. Look at Berkeley—the bananas they’re taking away are better than the ones Huipin is selling.”

“From now on, even if it’s a bit of a longer walk, I’m shopping here. The quality and service are truly impeccable.”

Hearing the customers’ chatter, Han Guangqi’s brow furrowed.

A side-by-side comparison completely destroyed Huipin.

For a company to leave such an impression on its customers was especially fatal!

“Ah! You’ve got to be kidding me! Such a big durian, and it only has three small sections? I thought it would have at least five! Over 200 yuan wasted. What a ripoff.”

The complaint drew the attention of Han Guangqi and his companions, and they turned to look.

A young couple was buying a durian. After opening it, they found the flesh inside was too little and couldn’t help but complain.

“I guess we just got unlucky. Let’s just take it home and eat it. We should learn how to pick durians next time so we don’t get a dud again.”

“Okay.”

The young couple didn’t say anything more. They had picked the durian themselves, and the fact that the store opened it for them for free was already a nice service. If it had little flesh, they could only blame their own bad luck.

Han Guangqi and his companions had no desire to linger over such a small incident.

They had too much to do to waste time on trivial matters.

“Ma’am, if you’re not satisfied with this durian, we can exchange it for a new one, free of charge,” said the employee behind the counter.

“Huh?”

This sentence caught the attention of many people nearby. The young woman looked at the employee in astonishment and said:

“You mean, you’ll give me another one for free?”

“Yes. Because the amount of flesh in this durian is indeed quite small, we can exchange it for you free of charge.”

The employee pointed to the durians behind him and said:

“You can pick another one. We’ll refund the difference if it’s cheaper or you can pay the difference if it’s more expensive.”

“WOW!!! No way, you’ll even exchange this?!”

“Our principle is ‘the customer comes first.’ We must ensure you are satisfied.”

“Then thank you so much.”

After that, the young couple picked another durian, but their luck was still no better this time—it was another three-section one.

“Our luck is still bad. We’ll just take this one, we won’t exchange it again.”

“How about this? We won’t charge you anything extra. You can take the flesh from both durians. That would be like getting a six-section one. Is that solution acceptable?”

Not only the young couple, but all the surrounding customers were stunned.

‘Who knew they could do something like that?!’

“In that case, we’ll take you up on that offer.”

“There’s a problem with this batch of durians, so the responsibility is on us. All that matters is that you’re satisfied.”

“Satisfied, so satisfied! We’re very satisfied.”

Everyone around was shocked. In all their years of grocery shopping, they had never encountered a situation like this.

The young couple left with their durian, completely satisfied.

And that employee then took all the durians off the shelf.

“Young man, why are you taking all the durians away? We were waiting to buy one,” a female customer said.

“This batch of durians is poor quality. I’m going to report it to my supervisor, so we won’t be selling them.”

“Your service is just too good! We won’t have to worry at all when shopping here in the future.”

“That’s right.”

The employee pointed to a small sign not far away.

“If you buy fruit that isn’t sweet, you can also bring it back, and we will exchange it or give you a refund for free.”

“You mean, even if there’s no quality issue, even if the fruit just isn’t sweet or doesn’t suit our taste, we can still exchange it or get a refund?”

“Yes.”

“Berkeley Supermarket is amazing! They even have this kind of service. I’m not going anywhere else from now on, I’m only coming here!”

“They really treat their customers right. After all these years, I finally get to be treated like royalty.”

“What are we waiting for? Let’s buy more fruit! Even if we get some that aren’t sweet, we don’t have to worry.”

“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have gone to Huipin yesterday. Their stuff wasn’t good at all.”

Listening to the employee’s words and the customers’ discussions,

Han Guangqi and his two companions were at a complete loss. In their eyes, this business model was completely suicidal.

“President Han, now that they’ve launched this kind of service, customers will make side-by-side comparisons. Our advantage is completely gone.”

Initially, they all believed that Huipin Mall had the price advantage. As long as they guarded their moat, there wouldn’t be a problem.

But now, it seemed the people coming to Berkeley didn’t care about the small price difference at all.

“Xiaowang, go buy some oranges. In a little while, say they’re not sweet. I want to see if they’ll actually exchange them!”

“Understood.”