dkrc Chapter 127 Internal Adjustments
Chapter 127 Internal Adjustments
Chapter 127 Internal Adjustments
At Pinduoduo's headquarters, the newly arrived tech guru, Mi Yu, was demonstrating the first-generation beta version of the Pinduoduo app to Lin Mu. Lin Mu was running the app on his Android phone; clicking and opening it was smooth and fluid, without the slightest lag.
Upon opening the app, you'll find a very common UI layout with four icons at the bottom: Home, Flash Sale, Chat, and User Center. On the home screen, the screen is divided into two sections in a 1:4 ratio: the top section has four icons for ¥1 Flash Sale, ¥10 Flash Sale, ¥20 Flash Sale, and ¥30 Flash Sale; the list below displays products in a waterfall layout.
Since no merchants have logged in yet, the products used on the page are all fake products for internal testing.
Lin Mu first clicked on a normal product without a special offer. The test material was a pillow priced at 10 yuan.
The price is 10 yuan if purchased individually, and 6 yuan if purchased in a group, with free shipping.
Lin Mu clicked "Group Purchase," and the system quickly and automatically matched a virtual dummy to complete the group purchase. Then, the purchase icon below lit up, and Lin Mu only needed to click to pay to complete the purchase.
In this regard, Lin Mu had already made a request to the technology department: on the normal product interface, the so-called group purchase does not actually require users to invite others to join the group purchase. As long as the user clicks on the group purchase interface, the system will automatically match a dummy user to complete the group purchase.
The price tag of 10 yuan is just used to anchor the price for users. The truly cost-effective items for group buying are all on the flash sale page.
Lin Mu opened the flash sale page again and selected the 1-yuan flash sale. In the 1-yuan flash sale section, there was currently only one fake product for testing: a bottle of Coca-Cola. The normal purchase price was 2.5 yuan, but as long as he invited a user to join the group purchase, whether it was a new user or an old user, they could snag it for 1 yuan, with free shipping to their door.
On the 10-yuan flash sale page, the item is 10 pairs of socks; on the 20-yuan flash sale page, the item is a mobile phone charger and socket; and on the 30-yuan flash sale page, the item is two boxes of milk.
These four flash sale sections correspond to group buying for one person, two people, three people, and four people, respectively.
In reality, the platform cannot make money on the flash sale page. Its core logic is to provide users with material incentives through low-priced goods, so that users can help attract new users.
After watching the demonstration, Lin Mu offered some suggestions, saying to Mi Yu, "Mi Yu, you need to add a countdown timer to this group-buying interface. For example, set the time to 4 hours. When the time runs out, if the user hasn't met the group-buying requirements, automatically refund the user and close the order. This will give the user a sense of urgency."
Mi Yu accepted the feedback and immediately went back to make the revisions.
After finishing his work with the technical department, a sales representative proactively approached him, offering his services. A man with a large blue dragon tattoo on his arm stepped forward and said, "Hello, Mr. Lin. My friend told me that your company is recruiting sales representatives, so I'd like to recommend myself. My team and I have been responsible for promoting Shanda's 'Zhengtu' game and also for the sales promotion project for Shi Yuzhu's Brain Gold. We have extensive experience in sales promotion. Would you like to outsource your sales promotion work to our team? Our prices are very reasonable."
At this time, the Pinduoduo project had just been launched, and brand awareness in the market was almost zero. Lin Mu definitely needed a ground sales team to handle the situation. He could leverage the convenience of the internet and promotional activities to acquire new users at low cost, but recruiting merchants was a challenge.
Although he has a lot of connections in the e-commerce merchant circle, he estimates that he can attract a few hundred merchants without any problem. However, a few hundred merchants are just a drop in the ocean for an e-commerce platform.
Therefore, Lin Mu had previously used Lu Hai's connections to find a very promising young man who had interned at GG Alliance Goodye.com and worked at a health product group, where he participated in the on-the-ground promotion of "Life No. 1".
Lin Mu offered the young man a high salary of 2 yuan and put him in charge of the initial ground promotion work. In the later stages, after Pinduoduo became large and stable, the ground promotion team was transformed into the marketing department, responsible for connecting with KOLs and marketing.
Lin Mu thought to himself that Zhang Qiang's team probably noticed him after he announced that he was recruiting ground sales staff.
He then inquired about the outsourcing price in detail, and Zhang Qiang's quote was indeed very favorable, settled on a base salary plus performance-based commission.
So Lin Mu signed a labor contract with Zhang Qiang, dividing the ground promotion business into two lines: one online, which focused on poaching merchants from major e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba and Taobao; and the other offline.
One network pipeline was handled by company staff, while the other was handled by Zhang Qiang's team.
Just then, Jiang Fan came to the door and suggested, "President Lin, our Pinduoduo's style matches a certain group very well, but we have a hard time reaching them in our normal promotions, namely the square dancing aunties."
Lin Mu's eyes lit up. That's right! Square dancing aunties have spare money and plenty of time, and they are also the connecting points of social relationships among neighbors. If we do on-the-ground promotion among them, the cost-effectiveness will definitely be very high.
So Lin Mu assigned the task to the marketing department, but a conflict arose during the task distribution. According to the job description, Lin Mu assigned the task to Zhang Qiang's team, but Zhang Qiang strongly resisted it.
His resistance was not without reason: Lin Mu offered referral fees ranging from 500 to 5000 yuan for other channels, but for recruiting square dancing aunties, he only received 20 yuan per person, and there were also certain performance requirements for the users he recruited. As a result, recruiting square dancing aunties became a low-paying and laborious task.
Just as Lin Mu was pondering whether to allocate a special bonus to promote this matter, Chen Ping, a college graduate in charge of online promotion, took the initiative to accept the task. However, he made a request: he needed an independent fund or some outsourced staff to recruit a group of part-time employees to advance this work.
After a moment's thought, Lin Mu handed over the task and the corresponding funding to Chen Ping.
Firstly, he wanted to see the young man's abilities and give him a chance to hone his skills.
Secondly, Chen Ping was, after all, one of their own, and he didn't want to hand over the entire field promotion business line to Zhang Qiang's outsourced team.
Although it is only a transitional phase at present, if problems arise in this business line in the future, the outsourced team will face a lot of trouble in handling the aftermath.
After handling internal company affairs, Lin Mu continued to look for financing opportunities in the market.
As March progressed into April, many business owners expressed their willingness to invest in Pinduoduo, but Lin Mu rejected them all.
Most of these bosses only had money, but they couldn't provide Lin Mu with the resources he truly wanted.
During this period, Lin Mu also contacted people from Tencent Capital, but Tencent was very cautious in its attitude towards Pinduoduo.
In 2010, Tencent Capital was not like it would be in later years, focusing only on whether it could sell traffic distribution for a good price and not getting involved in specific management.
Tencent's current investment strategy is based on the potential for collaborative operations.
They already own Paipai.com, and the management is still repeatedly analyzing and considering whether to invest in a competitor and conduct internal competition.
Until one day, Lin Mu, relying on his pleasant collaboration with Shen Wei, the head of vivo mobile phones, made a connection with a big shot.
Shen Wei said on the phone, "Lin Mu, let me introduce you to a boss. He's my former boss. You might have heard of him. His name is Duan Yongping. He founded Subor learning machines and BBK e-readers. OPPO and vivo also evolved from BBK mobile phones."
"After listening to Pinduoduo's product logic and business model, he found this approach very interesting and wanted to invite you over for a meal to discuss it further. By the way, Peng Zhijian, the vice president of Tencent's investment department, will also be at the dinner."
>