Chapter 674: Shipping Fee Insurance Goes Live! The First Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Chinese

After they walked out of the hotel, Li Zijie couldn’t help but ask, “Brother Xu, I think if you had lowered the commission to 10%, he might have agreed. Why didn’t you negotiate further?”

“If I had offered 10%, he would have demanded 8%. You should spend more time reading the industry reports on the intranet. A mid-range hotel like Star Dream isn’t part of a chain, nor does it have a star rating. Knowing Ctrip’s style, unless Liang Zhangjian is Wang Haifeng’s cousin, Star Dream’s commission rate with them is definitely no lower than 15%. Don’t worry, Wang Haifeng will call us back.”

Xu Xiangguo explained methodically.

Before leaving, he had given Wang Haifeng his business card.

“Alright, the next one is Nest Hotel. It’s even smaller, with only 40 guest rooms,” Li Zijie replied.

“You’ll take the lead on the next one,” Xu Xiangguo instructed.

“Okay.” Li Zijie didn’t hesitate and readily agreed.

Whoever signed the merchant got the commission.

Xu Xiangguo couldn’t mentor him forever. He wouldn’t have wanted to, and neither would Li Zijie.

Everyone who joined Kuai Pao’s field sales team was there to make money. Who would want to be an intern forever?

Xu Xiangguo had been observing his performance. He hadn’t shown any fear and had kept a perfect poker face in front of Wang Haifeng.

In his opinion, Li Zijie was already capable of handling things on his own.

The two then headed toward the next hotel.

「Three days later.」

Xu Xiangguo and Li Zijie returned to Star Dream. They successfully signed the hotel with a 12% commission rate and the promise of 50,000 targeted traffic views.

“Ah Jie, let’s go. I’ll treat you to a big lunch.”

Xu Xiangguo said with great satisfaction, holding the contract.

“It’s not going to be the Kuai Pao Cafeteria again, is it?” Li Zijie teased.

“What’s wrong with the Kuai Pao Cafeteria? It’s clean and hygienic, much better than restaurants outside,”

Xu Xiangguo retorted.

He had a mother in her fifties and a three-year-old son to support, not to mention paying for his regular foot massages. ‘How could I get by if I didn’t save money?’

‘Every penny has to count!’

“Brother Xu, my treat. Let’s go to Hundred Flavors Pavilion!” Li Zijie said, slinging an arm over Xu Xiangguo’s shoulder as they headed to the restaurant.

Over the past few days, he had also signed deals with several small hotels. They were mostly budget hotels with monthly revenues under 50,000 yuan, but added together, his commission was two or three thousand. Treating his ‘mentor’ to a big meal was no problem.

Kou Zhen had deployed over four thousand people in field sales teams like Xu Xiangguo and Li Zijie’s across the country. He refused to let a single hotel slip by, regardless of its size.

To secure deals with hotels like Marriott, Hilton, and Sheraton, he proposed a joint effort with Pinbei. In the end, he successfully won over the brands with a dual-platform onboarding contract.

In mid-September, over a mere ten days, Kou Zhen swept from East China to Southern China and then to North China, snatching away partnership rights for over 10,000 small and medium-sized hotels from competitors like Ctrip.

On the product side, Kuai Pao also launched ‘hourly room’ bookings, further increasing the daily revenue of its partner hotels.

Ctrip was beaten into a steady retreat, its market share shrinking by 8% in one fell swoop. The alliance between Liang Zhangjian and Li Yanhong instantly became an industry joke.

Chen Yansen paid attention for a couple of days at first. But when he saw Pei Yi methodically seizing market share in Ctrip’s heartland, with the coordination of Zhang Xuhao, Shan Jiawei, and Liang Changlin, he put the OTA war out of his mind and shifted his focus to preparations for the new Orange Mobile Phone launch.

Senlian Capital’s behavior of making enemies everywhere earned it the private nickname “the industry’s shit-stirrer”!

Wherever its tentacles reached, that industry would be thrown into turmoil.

But for the average worker, Senlian Capital’s expansion was a good thing.

Take employees in the hotel and travel industry, for example. In the past, most of them didn’t get overtime pay or quarterly bonuses.

After Kuai Pao’s full-scale entry into the sector, bosses at various companies had to improve benefits to retain talent.

While there was still no overtime pay on weekdays, they started getting paid for working on Saturdays. Even though it was just at the standard rate, it was better than nothing.

…

…

On September 22nd, Semir Online launched its first insurance product: Shipping Insurance!

It began a small-scale internal beta test among Pinbei’s mid-tier and top-tier merchants.

The premium was 0.8 yuan per shipment!

After a customer purchased it, if the item they received wasn’t as described, they could apply for a return and receive an 8-yuan shipping subsidy to cover the return cost.

On the merchant side, the platform specifically invited 1,000 partner merchants to enable the “Shipping Insurance” service.

The merchants would pay the premium, covering the cost for the user, in order to increase their product’s order rate and reduce their own return shipping costs.

After a week of testing, merchants’ order conversion rates generally increased by over 30%, though the return rate also rose from an average of 2% to 9%.

However, after calculations, both transaction volume and gross profit saw a 15% increase.

All at once, merchants who hadn’t received the test invitation began demanding access to the ‘Shipping Insurance’ feature.

Huang Zheng immediately reported the situation to Chen Yansen.

“Launch it officially,” Chen Yansen decided on the spot.

Since the test results were so positive, he figured he might as well open it up completely.

The next day, September 29th, the Shipping Insurance feature appeared in the merchant backend. It was available to everyone who paid, regardless of their store’s transaction volume or brand level.

The women’s apparel category, which had the highest return rate, was among the first to enable the ‘Shipping Insurance’ feature.

Previously, for every 10 items sold, customers might return 5.

To compensate, merchants had to raise their prices, passing the cost of lost shipping fees onto the customers.

Now with Shipping Insurance, the premium was as low as 0.8 yuan per order.

Although the premium would rise along with the return rate, the total cost was still lower than the expenses incurred without it.

Besides, if competitors offered Shipping Insurance and they didn’t, customers would naturally choose the store that offered more secure returns.

When Liu Qiangdong heard that Shipping Insurance had gone live, he was instantly lost in thought.

Jingdong’s first-party retail had its own logistics system, meaning low costs for returns and exchanges. Plus, with the launch of their Plus membership imminent, member benefits would include free return shipping, so they didn’t really need Shipping Insurance.

But third-party (POP) merchants were also a part of Jingdong. The higher their transaction volume, the higher Jingdong’s overall valuation.

‘But Jingdong doesn’t have an insurance business!’

After a moment of thought, Liu Qiangdong called Chen Yansen. “President Chen, is Semir Online’s Shipping Insurance open to third-party platforms?”

Even before answering, Chen Yansen had guessed Liu Qiangdong’s purpose. He replied with a smile, “If anyone else asked, the answer would be no! But since President Liu is the one asking, how could I refuse?”

“Thank you, President Chen. In that case, I’ll start a group chat. Should we get our teams connected now?” Liu Qiangdong said with a grin.

He didn’t believe a word of it, but since Chen Yansen was willing to offer the service, there was no need to say anything more.

After all, if Jingdong didn’t partner with Semir Online, its only options were to build its own insurance company or work with other insurance firms.

That would be both time-consuming and expensive, with no guarantee of success. ‘It’s better to partner with Semir Online for now and figure out their game plan.’

Ma Liyun had a similar idea to Liu Qiangdong and also called Chen Yansen at the same time, but the line was busy. He had no choice but to wait patiently.

It wasn’t until over ten minutes later that his call finally went through. He immediately stated his purpose.

“If anyone else asked, the answer would be no! But since Mr. Ma is the one asking, how could I refuse?”

Chen Yansen repeated the exact same line he had just used on Handsome Dong.

“How straightforward of you, President Chen!” Ma Liyun was slightly taken aback. He had expected to have to do some serious convincing, but to his surprise, Chen Yansen agreed with remarkable ease.

In fact, Ali had previously partnered with an insurance company to launch a similar return shipping insurance service, but it primarily targeted the consumer market.

Ma Liyun hadn’t approached it from the right angle at the time.

Asking users to pay extra was a tough sell, so the project eventually fizzled out.

But Chen Yansen had done the opposite, shifting the cost to the merchants. This both encouraged users to place orders and reduced the merchants’ losses from return shipping fees.

Therefore, while choosing to work with Semir Online, Ma Liyun was also considering restarting his partnerships with other insurance companies. He planned to bring in multiple providers to select the product with the fastest claims processing and the most mature business model.

As for whether Ali itself should enter the insurance industry, Ma Liyun hadn’t given it much thought yet.

“Ali invested in Kuai Pao and Fast Taxi, and Kuai Pao still has a portal on the Taobao App. Mr. Ma, your acquisition of Dianping… are you planning to declare all-out war with Senlian Capital in the O2O sector?”

Chen Yansen asked with a sudden, cold smile.

Ma Liyun was caught completely off guard. His mind raced, and he replied with an awkward smile, “Juhuasuan’s business is focused on online group-buy products. Acquiring Dianping was just to supplement our offline traffic module. As you know, user growth in e-commerce can’t keep up with the rising cost of user acquisition.”

Lao Ma flatly denied it, terrified that Chen Yansen would turn his guns and ally with Liu Qiangdong.

Chen Yansen sneered. ‘This old fox isn’t telling the truth,’ he thought. ‘A war between Senlian Capital and Ali is probably inevitable.’

People change. Who could guarantee that once Ali went public and was flush with cash, it wouldn’t launch an offensive in the O2O sector?

After finishing his conversation with Lao Ma, Chen Yansen hung up.

Shipping Insurance was just Semir Online’s first product. It would be followed by accidental injury insurance, third-party liability insurance, and supplementary medical insurance. The first step was to cover all employees of Senlian Capital.

Only then would they be rolled out to the broader market.

Chen Yansen glanced at his watch. Five o’clock in the afternoon—time to get off work.

He closed his laptop, stood up, and walked out.

「Meanwhile.」

After a series of qualification reviews, preliminary selections, and final selections, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences confirmed the final laureates for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on the last day of September.

Because Deep Blue Battery had been widely adopted in the pure electric car, mobile phone, electric vehicle, and digital camera industries, making a tremendous contribution to human society, there was debate in the European scientific community. However, not awarding this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Deep Blue Technology would undoubtedly lead the public to question the impartiality of the Nobel Prize itself.

Thus, on September 30th, although the official announcement hadn’t been made, Chinese scientists in Europe had already received the news.

A chief scientist and two senior lead researchers from Deep Blue Technology would share this year’s Nobel Prize.

Furthermore, this was the first Nobel Prize in Chemistry ever won by Chinese scientists!

Once the rumor broke, it quickly spread from Europe to North America, and then back to China.

“Is it for real? Is Deep Blue Battery really that influential?”

“Drop the ‘really’! Do you have any idea how many energy storage orders Deep Blue Technology has taken in the last few months?”

“Amazing! Three winners at once. Deep Blue Technology’s R&D is just too powerful.”

The internet was abuzz with discussion.

But some people also jumped in to say that the official announcement hadn’t been made yet. ‘Don’t celebrate too early. What if it’s fake news?’

At that same moment, Chen Yansen received a call from Ma Zhi Ao, who relayed the information from the invitation sent by the Nobel Foundation.