Chapter 715: 23.76 Billion in One Day! Liu Qiangdong: 3 Million? Go Rob a Bank

After Kuai Pao Liquor Travel won the battle, its market share soared, but not without a cost.

In just two months, the company’s costs for marketing, human resources, and materials in the liquor travel category reached one billion.

The good news was that they had won the market share!

According to the latest statistics from iResearch Consulting, the market landscape for online travel agencies (OTAs) in Hua Country was as follows: Kuai Pao held 37.4%, Ctrip had 29.1%, Tongcheng had 9.6%, Tuniu had 6.2%, and Qunar Network had 5.6%.

Kuai Pao had leaped into first place.

Ctrip had fallen to second place in the industry.

Tongcheng’s share dropped below 10%. Users from platforms like Tuniu, Qunar, and Elong were also siphoned off in large numbers by Kuai Pao and Ctrip during the conflict.

Market traffic, once fragmented, was now rapidly consolidating at the top.

Kuai Pao continued to expand with its aggressive ground-promotion offensive and flexible merchant policies, while Ctrip barely held its ground, relying on its established brand foundation.

The survival space for small and medium-sized platforms was squeezed even further.

Behind the scenes, some people even contacted Pei Yi, wanting to sell their companies to Kuai Pao, but he refused.

Kuai Pao Liquor Travel’s organizational structure, operational systems, and merchant network were already well-established. There was no need to acquire a pile of online travel websites with less than 5% market share.

Some of their products didn’t even have an app and were destined for obsolescence. Acquiring them would only add to integration costs.

‘Rather than waste energy trying to revive these uncompetitive “remnants,” it’s better to focus our resources on strengthening our own advantages.’

Two days passed in a flash, and Singles’ Day arrived as scheduled.

Following Pinbei’s submission of its IPO application, Liu Qiangdong also began preparations for Jingdong’s public listing.

Meanwhile, Ah Li had just withdrawn its resolution for a Hong Kong listing and was also setting its sights on New York or the NASDAQ Stock Exchange.

Therefore, it was not hard to imagine just how fierce the competition for this year’s Singles’ Day sale would be.

Tmall Mall required that all featured products in the big sale be priced at less than 50% of their usual price, with free shipping across the board, covering all categories including clothing, food, cosmetics, home appliances, and digital products.

Unreasonable demands gave rise to unreasonable countermeasures.

Merchants of home appliances and digital products, whose profit margins were already slim, were further constrained by brands’ strict price controls. They had no choice but to resort to tricks like raising prices before lowering them or creating new product links in advance to meet the platform’s requirements.

Some digital camera merchants even brought out old inventory from three to five years ago, labeling it with an original price of 10,000 yuan and a sale price of 4,999 yuan, even though the model was only worth a little over 5,000 yuan to begin with.

On Pinbei, it sold for only 4,988 yuan!

Customers weren’t stupid. Once they compared prices, Tmall’s 50% off sale became a joke.

However, high-margin categories like food, clothing, and cosmetics did genuinely offer 50% off.

Jingdong focused on logistics speed and authenticity guarantees. For large home appliances, they launched a “double the difference” campaign: if a customer found a product more expensive than on Tmall, they would be compensated with twice the price difference.

For example, the iPhone 5s sold for 4,788 yuan on Jingdong and 4,778 yuan on Tmall. After placing an order, a customer could contact customer service to receive 20 yuan in compensation for the price difference.

Pinbei, on the other hand, used domestic and cross-border venues as its main gimmick, focusing only on direct price drops.

After staying up all night on Tmall and Jingdong to snatch coupons and combine orders, users discovered that their final price was still not as low as Pinbei’s.

In addition, while there were no large-value coupons over 500 yuan, they issued plenty of 10, 20, 50, and 100-yuan subsidy coupons. When stacked, this resulted in a better shopping experience than on Tmall or Jingdong.

They also launched a “Shop to Get a Red Packet” feature. For every order submitted, users could receive a “luck-based” red packet worth anywhere from 18 to 4,888 yuan, depending on the order amount.

By sharing with friends, they could randomly get no-threshold or spend-and-save shopping red packets.

Of course, the size of the red packet each user could open was actually determined by a backend algorithm. The higher the user’s value, the larger the red packet they received.

Losing money?

Not a chance!

On November 11th, Pinbei’s sales in the first hour alone reached 5.37 billion yuan!

Chen Yansen leaned against his desk, a faint smile on his lips. He said to Huang Zheng, who was standing beside him, “This is a one-time thing! From now on, during major sales, we’ll stick to the old rule: everyone off by midnight at the latest.”

“Boss, you can’t blame me for this. Who was it that kept handing out bonuses and stock options? If we don’t meet the fourth-quarter and annual targets, I won’t even need you to say anything; the guys downstairs will tear me to shreds,” Huang Zheng said, half-joking.

With the company’s IPO just around the corner, everyone wanted to get the highest-tier quarterly bonus in Q4 to earn more stock options.

One thousand shares were equivalent to forty thousand US Dollars!

Who could resist an incentive policy like that!

“Class President, Mr. Huang, the last batch of skewers is here, fresh off the grill!” Xu Xingxing said with a grin as she walked over carrying a platter of grilled food.

“I’ll pass. Once a man hits thirty, his metabolism slows down. I wouldn’t be able to digest any more grilled meat.”

Huang Zheng waved his hand, grabbed a can of beer, and moved away, preparing to tell the departments to call it a night.

Although he had a cup of coffee in the afternoon, he couldn’t hold on any longer. His eyelids were getting heavy.

“What about you, Class President?” Xu Xingxing asked, her gaze fixed intently on Chen Yansen.

Chen Yansen took a beef skewer and said to Xu Xingxing, “Take it to the second floor. Yifeng, Yuan Wei, and Pengfei have the biggest appetites; they’ll eat as much as you give them.”

“Oh.” Xu Xingxing nodded, a flash of disappointment in her eyes, and started up the stairs to the second floor.

But before she had taken two steps, she heard a comment from behind her: “Old Zhang’s cooking skills have clearly declined. Looks like his Q4 quarterly bonus will have to be bumped down a tier.”

Xu Xingxing paused, her mind racing. ‘I grilled this platter myself. Should I explain that to Chen Yansen?’

‘I tasted it myself, and there was nothing wrong with it!’

‘But Old Zhang went to all the trouble of teaching me how to grill. I can’t let him get in trouble because of this, can I?’

At this thought, she subconsciously turned her head, only to see Chen Yansen looking at her with a knowing, teasing smile.

“Class President, you really haven’t changed a bit.”

Xu Xingxing immediately understood and shot Chen Yansen a coquettish glare.

Chen Yansen smiled, threw the empty skewer into the trash can, and walked toward the door.

Seeing him come out, Huang Boxiang quickly got out of the car and opened the rear left door for him.

“Back to the Delta.”

Chen Yansen said to Lao Huang as he got into the car.

“Yes, Boss.”

Huang Boxiang acknowledged and expertly drove out of the Science and Technology Park, heading north first, then west onto Xucheng Avenue, before speeding along.

Following behind was a Mercedes coupe, and behind that, a Mercedes MPV commercial van.

In the dead of an early winter night in Xucheng, the city was as quiet as a ghost town, save for a few guide lights. Only upon approaching the downtown area could a cluster of brilliant neon be seen.

「Meanwhile.」

Inside the brightly lit Jingdong Headquarters Building.

Liu Qiangdong of Yanjing rubbed his sore, throbbing temples and looked at his watch. It was a quarter past one in the morning.

The data dashboard on the screen clearly displayed Jingdong’s real-time transaction volume for the day of the big sale: 2.47 billion.

“At the current sales rate, hitting the 10 billion target is going to be difficult,” Liu Qiangdong shook his head and muttered to himself.

He didn’t have the same formidable resources as Chen Yansen.

The other guy could send a single professional manager to North America for a roadshow to handle the IPO process, and still manage a premium listing, pushing his market cap to 88 billion US Dollars.

Handsome Dong knew in his heart that he had to go all out before the IPO to get a higher valuation from the investment bankers.

How would he do it?

Naturally, by delivering a satisfactory report card to overseas investors during the Singles’ Day and Double Twelve sales, as well as in the fourth quarter.

“Lao Liu, are you off work yet? I can’t sleep when you’re not home.”

The phone on the desk went BUZZ as a message popped up.

Liu Qiangdong grinned, immediately gathered the documents at hand, and shut down his computer.

After leaving his office, he greeted a few senior executives from the purchasing and marketing department and the operations department, then hurriedly took a car home.

The next morning, his girlfriend, with her arm linked through his, got into a Mercedes nanny van together.

At that moment, reporters from the “21st Century E-commerce Weekly” were staked out near the villa complex and happened to capture the scene.

“President Liu’s daughter?”

“Never heard he had one!”

“Naive! You guys don’t know men at all. Who doesn’t like a young girl!”

“I’d guess there’s a twenty-year age gap!”

“Who cares! This is big news. This month’s bonus is in the bag!”

The three reporters discussed excitedly.

“What’s a bonus? Maybe President Liu would be happy to buy these photos off us?”

“Brother Bin, if the company finds out, we’ll be fired at best, blacklisted from the entire industry at worst! Besides, Jingdong’s legal team is not to be trifled with!”

The leader, a chubby man with glasses, dismissed his colleague’s warning. “Think about it. Look how fucking high the housing prices in Yanjing have gotten. You want to be stuck in a rental for the rest of your lives?”

His question silenced the other two.

It was true.

Living in Yanjing was no easy feat.

Their salaries were decent, and they could occasionally pocket some travel expenses and “writing fees,” but the speed at which they earned money could never keep up with the rising housing prices.

“Brother Bin, then… we’ll listen to you,” one of them said, gritting his teeth.

“Let’s do it! I’ll make the call,” the other decided instantly.

As a result, before Liu Qiangdong even arrived at the office, he received a call from the public relations department, saying someone wanted to discuss a ‘special’ round of financing with him.

To show their sincerity, the other party had also sent a clear photograph.

After Handsome Dong opened the picture, his face instantly darkened. He understood what they meant.

‘This isn’t financing!’

‘It’s blatant extortion!’

Jingdong was currently in the IPO preparation stage. He was single, so logically, a normal relationship shouldn’t have a negative impact on the company.

But Xiaotian was too young!

Liu Qiangdong thought for a moment and had the PR department step in to first gauge the other party’s appetite.

Just as he arrived at the company, the director of the PR department pushed open the door to his office.

“Boss, they’re asking for 3 million.”

How much?

3 million?

Liu Qiangdong laughed in exasperation. It’s not like he’d done anything illegal.

“Tell them 50,000. If they want more than that, they can publish whatever they want,” Liu Qiangdong said with a cold snort, sitting in his boss’s chair.

“Understood, President Liu. I’ll handle it right away,” the PR director replied.

「On the other side.」

After Brother Bin and his group learned that Liu Qiangdong was only willing to “invest” 50,000 in their shell company, they knew their dreams of getting rich were dashed.

50,000 yuan wasn’t even enough to buy a bathroom!

At noon, the photo of Liu Qiangdong holding hands with the Milk Tea Sister quickly went viral.

On the day of the big sale, the boss’s scandal actually overshadowed Jingdong’s pre-booked announcements, leaving the Market Department not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

But he soon discovered that Jingdong’s web traffic was rising.

After all, the Milk Tea Sister was one of the original amateur internet celebrities. As soon as the news broke, it brought a very significant wave of traffic to Jingdong.

Jingdong’s transaction volume also saw a slight increase!

It wasn’t that users were specifically going to Jingdong to place orders because of the Milk Tea Sister. Rather, the trending news reminded them of the Jingdong platform, and they felt an impulse to browse.

In the early morning hours, Singles’ Day ended, and Jingdong’s final transaction volume topped out at 10.34 billion yuan.

「On the other side.」

In the Pindu Headquarters Building, the LED screen on the second floor displayed the total 24-hour sales volume: 23.76 billion!