Ten minutes later, Jingdong’s major promotion battle report finally arrived. With 3.07 billion in sales, it cemented its position as number three in the industry.
Ah Li: 19.7 billion Hua Yuan!
Pinbei: 7.03 billion Hua Yuan!
Jingdong: 3.07 billion Hua Yuan!
The three e-commerce giants, a total of 29.8 billion Hua Yuan in a single day!
At the same time, the General Postal Association announced that on November 11, 2012, the total business volume for the day had surpassed one hundred million parcels for the first time!
Instantly, it wasn’t just the domestic media that went into an uproar; even the Lighthouse Country on the other side of the ocean was utterly shocked.
’Three e-commerce websites sold 4.5 billion US Dollars’ worth of goods in a single day?’
It was so outrageous it was hard to believe!
Keep in mind, the Lighthouse Country was currently in its Christmas shopping season. From November 1st to November 11th, a total of eleven days, the cumulative online spending was just over 6 billion US Dollars, with a daily average of a little over 500 million US Dollars.
Yet in Hua Country, just three e-commerce companies had achieved a transaction volume of 4.5 billion US Dollars.
Additionally, the one hundred million parcels picked up in a single day also stunned their counterparts in Europe and America.
Amazon’s leader, Bezos, immediately initiated a video conference with the head of Amazon Hua Country. After some discussion, it was decided that headquarters would inject additional resources and cash to further increase Amazon’s market share in Hua Country.
Faced with the shock of 30 billion in a single day, Bezos had to admit he had underestimated the e-commerce potential of Hua Country.
「Elsewhere.」
Canada’s Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan was ecstatic. Their initial purpose for investing in Jingdong was to get a piece of the IPO proceeds to cover their pension funding gap.
Ah Li, Pinbei, and Jingdong had collectively brought Hua Country’s e-commerce industry to a new height.
Investment firms from the North American Region all flocked to Asia in unison, hoping to acquire equity in the three major e-commerce companies. Alternatively, they aimed to manage their IPOs and profit from the process.
Jingdong Mall’s valuation skyrocketed, and the OTPP immediately decided to push forward with the second round of financing as soon as possible.
If this was the case for Jingdong, then it went without saying for Pinbei.
Gao Weilin sat in his office, fielding calls from morning till night. They were from venture capital firms expressing investment interest, as well as brokerage firms clamoring to take Pinbei public and ring the bell on the Nasdaq.
"I can give Pinbei a valuation of 26 billion US Dollars!"
"28 billion!"
"30 billion!"
Charles Schwab, Merrill Lynch, and Fidelity, three financial giants, were all vying to give the highest offer. But Old Gao adhered to the big boss’s principle for handling them: be polite, be enthusiastic, but don’t agree.
He wasn’t an idiot; he knew with crystal clarity that every single one of these top Wall Street predators wanted to take a huge bite out of Pinbei.
How could Chen Yansen possibly let them get their way?
Pinbei had accepted financing from Penguin because Little Ma controlled the two major traffic gateways of PC and mobile. They had guided Huake and Huaxin to invest in order to increase the shareholding ratio of state-owned institutions. And giving Goldman Sachs an opportunity was in preparation for future overseas market expansion.
Therefore, barring any surprises, Pinbei would absolutely not initiate another Series C funding round before its IPO.
Foreign capital came flocking in!
Ma Liyun had originally planned to accelerate the formation of Cainiao Logistics as soon as Singles’ Day was over. However, brokerage managers from Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange called one after another, proposing collaborations and requesting inspections.
Having single-handedly secured 20 billion in transaction volume during the Singles’ Day promotion, Ah Li had become a hot commodity in the eyes of capitalists.
Cai Xin rushed back overnight from Hong Kong Island to the Hang City Ali Headquarters to make the final plans for the group’s IPO.
While Pinbei, Ah Li, and Jingdong were all reaping the rewards of their successful Singles’ Day promotions, the express delivery industry was bogged down in a quagmire.
Tiantian Express’s Jiang City distribution center was less than 10,000 square meters. Its previous maximum daily processing capacity was only 300,000 items. Faced with a sudden influx of millions of packages, its sorting efficiency plummeted. For three straight days, it failed to process even 10% of its volume.
The situation was similar for express companies like Guotong, Best, and Guofeng.
On top of that, from November 12th to 13th, the major platforms, in a show of tacit understanding, launched "Encore Promotion" events. In just two days, the volume of packages increased by another 60 million.
Incidents of lost and misplaced packages occurred frequently, and users flooded the phone lines of the market supervision bureau and the General Postal Association.
It was then that online shoppers across the country discovered that while Cloud Speed Express’s delivery speed had also slowed, it was still within an acceptable range.
Moreover, Cloud Speed Express had deployed 41,000 Cloud Speed Express lockers in over 30,000 communities nationwide. In the field of smart last-mile delivery, it possessed extremely high dispatch efficiency.
Employees of companies like Best and Tiantian could handle just over 100 packages a day at most. But a Cloud Speed courier, using the express lockers, could easily complete over 500 delivery tasks in a day.
The efficiency was completely incomparable!
Logistics companies that had not yet joined the Cloud Speed Express Alliance were filled with regret. They could only watch helplessly as alliance members like Cloud Speed and Shunfeng deposited packages into the express lockers.
Liao Wei’s phone rang nonstop with calls from the heads of major express companies. But he was too busy coordinating delivery resources to have time for them, so he handed it all off to his assistant, Zhai’an, to handle.
It wasn’t until November 15th that Cloud Speed Express’s pickup services returned to normal.
Meanwhile, companies like Best, Tiantian, and Guotong were still facing immense pressure from warehouse backlogs.
They were completely unable to accept new pickups!
Cloud Speed Express’s business volume soared!
In just three days, its daily volume, which had been 10 to 12 million before the promotion, crazily surged to 15 million orders.
Seeing this, Liao Wei immediately started hiring!
After all, some of the smaller express companies were losing large numbers of employees every day.
Leveraging its superior compensation and benefits, Cloud Speed effortlessly recruited over 5,000 new employees.
"That bastard Liao Wei! It’s one thing to steal business, but he won’t even leave my damn employees alone."
Xi Chunyang, the chairman of Tiantian Express, cursed furiously.
But there was nothing he could do about Liao Wei!
In reality, Liao Wei hadn’t made a move at all; it was all driven by the customers.
Tiantian Express’s warehouses were overflowing. Packages were piled up like mountains in the transit warehouses and sorting centers, and God only knew when they would be processed.
Senders couldn’t wait that long. Cloud Speed, being the first to resume pickup services, became the customers’ top choice.
Even a small portion of Shunfeng’s business was cannibalized by Cloud Speed.
Wang Wei was slow to realize it. The last time he visited Cloud Speed’s sorting center, he had silently mocked Liao Wei. ’He has more money than sense,’ he’d thought, ’sinking over a billion into automated sorting equipment is a complete waste.’
Now, he regretted it!
Although Shunfeng had begun using basic automated sorting equipment like conveyor belts and cross-belt sorters, its sorting process was still predominantly manual, with a low degree of automation.
In the entire business process, a single bottleneck was enough to drag down the overall speed of package flow.
’Good things are meant to be copied!’
Wang Wei narrowed his eyes and made the decision on the spot.
Unwittingly, Cloud Speed, a third-rate express company from two years ago, had leaped to the top of the private express company rankings. In terms of technology and business ecosystem, it had become the object of imitation for companies like Shunfeng and Best.
...
...
「November 18th.」
After more than forty days of preparation, OFO bikes finally made their debut at the entrances of Hang City’s subway stations.
The first batch consisted of 3,000 bikes!
They were painted a striking orange and featured aluminum alloy frames, thickened puncture-proof tires, and alloy-plated chains. Paired with a smart lock and a solar power panel, the bike had an extremely high-tech look.
If you placed an OFO bike next to a first-generation DiDi Bike, the latter’s shoddiness would be immediately apparent.
You get what you pay for; the difference in manufacturing cost was obvious.
The unlocking process was also extremely simple. When a user scanned the QR code on the bike with their phone’s app, the phone would send the bike’s unique identification number to the backend system.
After confirming the unlock command, the backend server would send an unlock text message via the cloud to the SIM card on the bike.
Then, the bike would receive the text message, the motor inside the lock would turn, and it would click open.
It sounds complicated, but in practice, it was much simpler than a mechanical lock. Moreover, it eliminated the absurd problem of users memorizing a specific code to ride for free for life.
With OFO in the south and DiDi Bike in the north, a great war in the bike-sharing sector had officially begun.
「At the same time.」
A company named Klock was quietly established in Yanjing.