From Taobao intern to the father of Pinduoduo

Chapter 125 Cashing out 2000 million from stocks

Chapter 125 Cashing out 2000 million from stocks

On March 1st, after the Lunar New Year, Sheng Mingyue found Lin Mu.

She has already spent most of the 1200 million yuan that came in last year, opening a flagship store in the core business districts of the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Last Christmas, Karl Lagerfeld had his brand launch a collaboration with Tsukiko, and this style was only available at Tsukiko.

The collaboration stockings caused a frenzy in Paris as soon as they were released, with people setting up tents and queuing up in the middle of the night once again.

Subsequently, news of the Paris shopping frenzy reached China, causing another buying frenzy at five flagship stores in the country.

Today, the fashion industry's valuation of Yuezhi has tripled, rising from 120 million to 360 million.

Sheng Mingyue brought in the head of Metersbonwe to handle the Series A funding.

2010 was the peak of Metersbonwe's success. This year, its offline stores will expand from 2000 to 5000, making it the first A-share listed women's casual wear brand, and it has even hired Jay Chou as its spokesperson.

Their investment in Moonweave is based on its fashionable attributes, which can help Metersbonwe tell a compelling story and boost its stock price.

At the banquet, Lin Mu spoke candidly about his thoughts on the development of the fashion industry. He believes that as China's economy continues to improve, Chinese people will eventually lose their fascination with international brands and instead develop a fondness for domestic clothing brands.

Moreover, with the development of mobile internet, various niche and personalized fashion brands will spring up like mushrooms after rain.

Ultimately, the head of Metersbonwe decided to invest 7000 million yuan. Of this 7000 million yuan, 20 million yuan was used to acquire 10% of the shares from Lin Mu, and the remaining 2000 million yuan was given to Sheng Mingyue in exchange for 5000% of the shares.

After finalizing the investment, Lin Mu and Sheng Mingyue walked out of the hotel. Sheng Mingyue said, "According to the plan, I will use this money to open more stores in first-tier cities in China. Once the stores in first-tier cities are all opened, the money on hand will be almost spent, and the performance can be boosted again."

"Then I will join several e-commerce platforms to expand sales channels. Thanks to Ms. Yang Mi, I also plan to enter the entertainment industry, so that our monthly knitting's flagship products each quarter will become fashionable items loved by female celebrities."

Sheng Mingyue said in a sweet, coquettish tone, "Lin Mu, this should be the limit of growth I can imagine."

"I think that in two or three years, my business model should reach its peak, with revenue of around 2 million and a valuation of over 10 billion."

"But I really can't think of how to develop in the future, or how to continue to find room for revenue growth."

Lin Mu said, "In two or three years, around 2012 or 2013, when mobile internet has developed, you should focus on online sales channels, such as promotion through Sina Weibo."

"By then, there will be more and more screens in the world, and people will segment the Internet into different niches based on their own interests. That's when our contracted domestic designers will come in handy."

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"Right now we're telling the story of how popular the brand Moonweave is in Paris and how foreigners love it; in two or three years, we can start telling the story of domestic designers. Right now, we've signed more than 30 domestic designers, right? In three years, that number should be over 100."

"At that time, let these 100-plus designers go out and try their luck on the Internet, see which designers can gain a foothold on the Internet, and find new growth from here."

Sheng Mingyue listened thoughtfully, then asked, "Are you so optimistic about mobile internet? Smartphones aren't cheap; a small smartphone can cost almost as much as a computer. Will that many people really use smartphones?"

Lin Mu said, "I don't believe in mobile internet; I believe in our motherland. Mingyue, you know nothing about our motherland's industrial capabilities."

Sheng Mingyue smiled and said, "Now that we've finished discussing business, let's talk about personal matters. You haven't been sneaking out for snacks lately, have you? I brought a few pairs of really nice stockings for you to admire."

After a series of explosions and clashes, Lin Mu walked out of the hotel, rubbing his lower back, wondering if he should buy some medicinal wine to nourish his body.

Meanwhile, he was doing the math in his head: he had used 1000 million to start a business, invested the rest in Moutai and Tencent stocks, and also bought some Bitcoin and stored it on his hard drive. He was now financially secure.

However, using 1000 million to develop e-commerce is really a drop in the bucket.

His team now has more than 20 people, each of whom is highly skilled. However, precisely because they are highly skilled, each person's salary is very high, with an average annual salary of 30 yuan.

In other words, excluding other costs, he has to pay 600 million RMB a year just for employee salaries.

Besides employee salaries, building his own data center is another major expense. He wants to run an e-commerce platform like Pinduoduo, and he also needs to work on big data and algorithms, so he has to build his own data center.

Renting a server room puts you in a very passive position. If the server room security personnel simply unplug the power, you're completely rendered helpless, not to mention the risks of data theft or virus infection.

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Building your own data center is very expensive; a single blade server can cost anywhere from 50,000 to 60,000 yuan, and you have to buy dozens of them at a time.

What's even more troublesome is that electronic products are updated too quickly. The top-of-the-line servers now will be worthless in a few years, and in five or six years they will be almost like electronic waste.

In 2010, Lin Mu planned to invest 200 million yuan to build the first phase of his self-built data center.

Besides building their own server room, marketing and promotion costs are also substantial. Although Lin Mu is a marketing genius, and Pinduoduo's model originated from viral marketing and viral spread, which would significantly reduce acquisition costs, even with low customer acquisition costs, subsidies for merchants and users are still necessary. Moreover, during the initial launch phase, some financial support is required. This alone will require another one or two million yuan, plus loan costs, making the expenses considerable.

In short, Lin Mu's 1000 million yuan is not enough to last long, and without new investments, it may not be enough by the second half of this year.

Fortunately, the 2000 million yuan he received from selling stocks gave him a chance to catch his breath, enough to get him through the year.

Of course, Lin Mu was not satisfied with the 2000 million. He needed to continue to raise funds, both financially and in terms of resources.

The internet is a vast field, but limiting it to e-commerce platforms would be too small.

In particular, Lin Mu was a popular figure. His departure from Alibaba was personally approved by Jack Ma, who stated that he would "never be hired again," which caused a small sensation in the e-commerce platform field.

When Lin Mu publicly announced that he was in the startup phase and needed financing, capital from various internet consortia turned their attention to him.

The first person to contact him was Mr. Li from Youa.com, who gave Lin Mu an unexpected reply.

Mr. Li said, "Lin Mu, Robin Li, the CEO of Baidu, would like to meet you in person."