HPDBC Chapter 43 Super Discount
Chapter 43 Super Discount
Lin Mu clicked on the link and glanced at the product's main image and details page. Everything was exactly as he had said last night, executed flawlessly.
Lin Mu thought to himself, "This Boss Gu is quite efficient and decisive." He glanced at the product title again; there was nothing wrong with the title selection, and there was basically no room for modification.
Lin Mu typed, "Hey, I have a beta test qualification for a new feature here. Do you want to sign up and try it out?" Then, he briefly introduced the "Buy One Item While You're at It" feature in the chat box.
The reason he didn't call Gu Ming "Boss Gu" in the chat box was to ensure that the chat history remained official in case someone checked it in the future.
After a while, Boss Gu roughly understood the "Buy One Item While You're at It" feature and replied, "Okay, thank you, Brother Lin. I want to participate in this beta test."
After confirming that Gu Ming would participate, Lin Mu contacted other Taobao sellers. He managed thousands of Taobao sellers, but he didn't need to worry about most of them—the vast majority of shops only sold a few or dozens of orders a month, and they were doing the most unskilled dropshipping, so there was basically no need to support them.
After screening, Lin Mu selected 80 Taobao sellers who were doing reasonably well, with monthly sales exceeding 200 orders. He sent beta testing invitations to these 80+ sellers who could cooperate with each other, encouraging those interested to sign up.
After a busy period, Lin Mu finished collecting the registration requests before leaving get off work—almost all Taobao sellers agreed to participate in the beta test. After all, this was a free traffic source, with no loss to be had, so why not take it?
At 8 PM, Gu Ming was still at his computer. Just as it hit 8, the system started beeping with inquiries. A buyer asked, "Boss, what does this 'near-expiry' food mean?"
Gu Ming thought to himself, "This promotion is really useful! Compared to simply lowering the price by 50%, the advantage is that it still sells during normal hours, allowing me to lose less money." After this thought, he immediately replied, "Dear customer, 'near-expiry food' means it's about to expire. This batch of bread has two months left before it expires, so please think carefully before ordering."
The buyer replied: "Oh, it expires in two months, fine, I'll buy it. I'm buying it for the animals in my dorm, if something goes wrong, we'll all get diarrhea."
In the next hour, Gu Ming closed dozens more deals. Once he confirmed the marketing results were stable, he handed over the customer service position to temporarily recruited part-time staff. As the owner of a food company, he had many things to do all day and didn't have time to be a customer service representative all the time.
A few hours later, customer service reported the results to him: on the first day of the marketing campaign, daily sales increased by 500%, and 50 orders were sold.
Gu Ming immediately did the math: 50 orders a day could bring in 600 yuan in revenue, which would amount to nearly 18,000 yuan a month. But that's not all—as monthly sales increase, the store's ranking on the overall sales and comprehensive rankings will rise; once it reaches the first page, the resulting traffic boost is considerable.
Conservatively speaking, a monthly turnover of 24,000 to 25,000 yuan is guaranteed.
If we calculate based on 2000 orders per month, we can probably sell 4000 boxes in two months.
No, the closer the product is to its expiration date, the harder it is to sell. To be on the safe side, it can't be sold when there are only two weeks left until the expiration date—selling expired food and being reported by buyers will result in a fine. Therefore, he can probably clear out about 3000 boxes of inventory through online e-commerce.
3000 boxes is fine too; at least it's much better than expected. Gu Ming sighed, "Lin Mu truly deserves to be called an e-commerce master; his skill is evident even with just a slight gesture."
Meanwhile, inside an e-commerce company.
Chengyi E-commerce is a company specializing in pre-made bread, and it ranks first in the bread category on Taobao.
The store offers over 20 types of bread, with annual sales reaching 10 orders. Besides their Taobao store, they also have a flagship store on Tmall, but Tmall is currently underperforming and hasn't seen much success. Furthermore, they are gradually expanding into offline channels.
Today, during our routine ranking check, the operations staff discovered that one store was making a strong surge, with over 50 orders in a single day, propelling it into the top 20 of the overall ranking and 32nd on the sales ranking.
After conducting some research, he discovered that the other party had used a "super discount" to achieve 50 orders in one day.
He glanced at the price and exclaimed, "Wow, 30 loaves of bread for only 15 yuan!" As an operations manager, he knew very well the cost of this kind of bread. The cost of one loaf was about 1 yuan, so selling it for 5 cents meant losing money on every order.
The operations team surmised that the other party was clearing out inventory. Since that's the case, there's no need to worry. Once they've cleared out most of their inventory, the price will naturally drop; there's no need to even report it to the boss.
……
the next day.
Gu Ming brought a bunch of hairy crabs to Factory Manager Mao for advice: "Sister Mao, you can tell a master as soon as they make a move. Yesterday, with General Manager Lin's guidance and the promotion, I got 50 orders in one day."
"But now there's a small problem: with more orders, there are frequent instances of incorrect or missing orders during packaging; also, I've found that the part-time customer service isn't very effective. Many orders that could have been completed either fail because the customer service reps are unhelpful or because the wait is too long, and buyers simply give up on them. Do you have any good solutions?"
Factory Director Mao joked, "You never come here unless you need something. If I want to eat some hairy crabs from you, I'll have to give you some dried goods first."
Gu Ming chuckled and said, "Not at all, it's nothing."
Factory Director Mao replied, "I actually have ways to deal with issues like missing or incorrect delivery orders."
"Let me show you a post, written by Mr. Lin. If you follow the instructions in the post and streamline and modularize the packaging process, you can reduce this situation a lot."
"As for customer service, I don't have any good solutions. You're just hiring a part-timer, not adding more staff. With the surge in orders concentrated in just a few hours, they'll be exhausted trying to keep up. Oh, I see, you want to borrow someone from me, right?"
Gu Ming laughed and said, "Sister Mao is the smartest."
Factory Director Mao said helplessly, "It's really not easy to get this meal of hairy crabs from you."
A few days later, with the "Buy One Item While You're at It" feature debugged and the first batch of merchants selected for internal testing, the internal testing feature was officially launched.
At 8 p.m., in the student dormitory. Zeng Wen returned from playing basketball, took a shower, and went back to his dormitory. He kicked a box of eight-treasure porridge next to his bedside table, knocking the box over.
Zeng Wen scratched his head and said helplessly, "Did you finish the eight-treasure porridge?" He shouted to his roommates, "I'm hungry! Does anyone have anything to eat? Be sensible and share!"
Soon, a response came from inside the dormitory: "Get out!"
"I have a handful of feathers here, do you want some?"
"I have instant noodles, but I'm not giving them to you. I'm keeping them for myself. Aren't you angry?"
After all the commotion, Zeng Wen received some snacks from his roommates, but he still wasn't full. He sighed helplessly, "Oh well, I'll just have to bear with it today. I'll go to the supermarket tomorrow and buy some bread to eat."
Huh? Zeng Wen suddenly remembered that he had recently developed a habit of browsing Taobao because of World of Warcraft. He had seen a "Super Discount" entry on Taobao and clicked on it a few days ago out of boredom. There were many discounted items, including convenience foods such as bread, sausages, and instant noodles.
His school was located in a remote area with underdeveloped commercial districts. The supermarket on campus was expensive, and the supermarkets off campus were far away. He decided to buy things on Taobao, which would save him a lot of money.