When Lu Yunho faced Li Mu's desperate gameplay, Niu Waimai suddenly fell into a vicious circle that he couldn't extricate himself from.
Most of Niu Waimai’s electric bike riders hate their own electric bikes and supporting services. As much as they hate their own electric bikes and supporting services, they long for Ele.me’s electric bikes and supporting services.
Therefore, it can be said that when Ele.me poached these electric scooter riders, it was effortless;
After a large number of electric bike riders resigned, Niu Waimai had no choice but to recruit cyclists to become electric bike riders in order to ensure its delivery capacity;
The cyclists had never experienced the sorrow of Niu Takeout electric bicycle riders before. When they really started to get started, they immediately felt the strong despair, so when they were found by Ele.me’s offline recruiters, they Easily transformed into an Ele.me rider.
Now, Ele.me has regarded Niu Waimai as a talent training base. They spend money to recruit people, train them little by little, and let these riders master the entire process of the business. Then, Ele.me recruits these people away as soon as they turn around. .
Moreover, Ele.me’s team of electric scooter riders who only select cattle for takeout have proven successful after repeated trials. Lu Yunho was forced to have no choice but to increase the rider’s basic salary twice in a week, and the platform’s delivery costs reached a new peak.
This strange circle formed a closed vicious cycle, making Lu Yunhao feel like he was doing elementary school math problems. A pool holds one thousand liters of water and has a capacity of ten thousand liters. The water inlet fills 10 liters of water per second, and the water outlet also discharges 10 liters of water per second. liter, asked how long it will take to fill the pool.
The answer is never.
While there were numerous bottlenecks that Lu Yunho could not break through, Li Mu continued to deploy heavy troops in the Shanghai market, digging deep holes and hoarding grain.
Like a war, Ele.me is continuously delivering a large amount of supplies to the Shanghai market. Almost every day, a truck arrives in the Shanghai market transporting various needed supplies.
Today there are hundreds of Ele.me electric vehicles, tomorrow there are a lot of clothes, insulators, helmets and other ancillary equipment, and the day after tomorrow it may be a car of Shenzhou commercial computers that have just rolled off the production line.
As soon as all these materials arrived in Shanghai, they were distributed directly without going through inventory. Ele.me's distribution range in Shanghai is not only getting larger and larger, but the density of riders is also getting higher and higher.
The more people there are, the larger the order volume the platform can handle, and the timeliness is also greatly guaranteed. This is something Lu Yunho cannot match in any case.
At the same time, Li Mu continues to raise the threshold for entry into the industry.
For example, he decided to order no less than 100,000 customized Ele.me mobile phones in batches from the domestic mobile phone brand Vitex.
The requirements for a mobile phone are: it doesn’t matter if it’s bigger, it doesn’t matter if it’s ugly, and it doesn’t need a color screen, but it must have strong battery life, good signal, good quality, and it must be basically waterproof. After all, the most common bad weather encountered by delivery riders is Even if it rains, the waterproof function is very important.
Ordinary people may not bother to use such a mobile phone because it is too big and ugly, but for riders, it is more convenient.
At the same time, he can't wait for the development of Apple's iOS and Android, and plans to bring in the GPS function first and make a positioning phone.
Google's Larry Page has already taken over the navigation company Keyhole, which is now jointly owned by Li Mu and Google, and all technology and data are also shared.
Therefore, Li Mu decided to use this special advantage and add a GPS module to make a positioning mobile phone so that Ele.me riders can achieve online positioning.
If you want to realize mobile phone navigation, you must first equip the mobile phone with a GPS module so that it can receive GPS signals and realize the GPS positioning function. Secondly, you need a set of maps with built-in coordinate information to assist GPS in positioning and navigation.
However, the current traffic cost is relatively high. Although online maps can be made, the traffic cost will greatly increase the usage cost. Therefore, Li Mu wants to make built-in maps and localize the maps.
Moreover, after the positioning mobile phones are produced in the future, the maps will be set separately according to different cities. For example, these 10,000 mobile phones dedicated to the Shanghai market will only have built-in maps of the Shanghai market, which can also save storage costs.
Using the GPS module and Keyhole's advantages in electronic maps and navigation, mobile phone navigation can be realized. On the basis of mobile phone navigation, a coordinate receiving and uploading function can be added to develop a navigation system for Ele.me riders. At the same time, the location of the mobile phone can be updated in real time to the cloud server.
For example, after the rider turns on the phone, the mobile phone sends coordinate data to the server every thirty seconds. This data is just a string of characters and takes up minimal traffic. However, after the server receives the coordinates, it can use its own positioning system to Mark the specific location of the rider, so that the user can see where the rider is currently and how far away from him in real time in front of the computer.
This function is very simple, but no one in the Internet industry has done it yet. Once this function is developed and modularized, it will have great commercial value. For example, if this module is installed on a bus, the cloud will be able to know each bus. The real-time location of the bus can be installed on the taxi to meet the basic needs of online taxi hailing.
Such a positioning mobile phone is also very simple to use for navigation. The system directly publishes the coordinates to the mobile phone, and the mobile phone marks the coordinates on the local map and uses the algorithm to calculate the route.
The only trouble is that it is difficult to upgrade the map, but it does not matter. Early car GPS map upgrades were difficult, but they still brought a revolutionary experience to drivers. Such positioning mobile phones were quickly designed and mass-produced. To a large extent, Ele.me is closer to the mature form of later generations, and it can at least be used for a long time, until the mobile Internet era truly arrives.
After Lu Yunhao learned what Li Mu was doing, his despair became stronger. He realized that what Li Mu wanted to do was to use one billion or even billions to do what could have been done with ten million. Since then, the entry threshold for the entire industry has been raised, so high that it is beyond the reach of the vast majority of people and companies.
Now, he deeply feels the pain caused by the continuous raising of the threshold. Let alone customized mobile phones and customized positioning and navigation mobile phones, he is not even strong enough to customize electric vehicles and cannot deal with Li Mu's various methods.
In the first month after Niu Waimai was launched, the daily order volume on the platform was still around 10,000. The amount of subsidies for users and riders in a single day exceeded 100,000 yuan, and the overall loss amounted to hundreds of thousands of yuan, which made Lu Yunhao feel nervous.
The small amount of funds I have, if I keep the current scale unchanged, may only be able to sustain it for a few more months. After a few months, if there is no second investment coming in, the capital chain will be broken.
In comparison, Ele.me’s daily order volume in Shanghai is more than 800,000. From white-collar workers working in office buildings to ordinary citizens surfing the Internet at home, as well as netizens in Internet cafes, everyone is using Ele.me. Let’s place an order.
Although Ele.me’s daily subsidy is more than 2 million, Li Mu is not in a hurry.
Burning money is just the beginning. Whatever I burn today, I will get back a hundred times as much tomorrow.
However, Li Mu has also begun preparations to reduce subsidy costs.
He held a meeting with the core team of Ele.me, and it was decided at the meeting that from now on, merchants must bear 50% of the nationwide Ele.me subsidy, and the other 50% will be borne by Ele.me.
In other words, Li Mu decided to get rid of half of the burden in one fell swoop.
Mr. Lei was a little worried about this. He felt that businesses might be resistant to dumping such a big burden all at once.
Li Mu said: "Don't worry, they are counting on us to make money. We are not trying to exploit them, we are just letting them take part of their vested interests. If this is not acceptable, how will we save money for Ele.me in the future?" ? All senior management talents can see that our ultimate profit model relies on merchants to take commissions. If we continue to indulge merchants, we will never make a profit."
Mr. Lei nodded and said, "Mr. Li, I understand what you mean, but should we do it step by step?"
With that said, Mr. Lei added: "Especially the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The subsidies in the Shanghai Stock Exchange are very high now. We need an average subsidy of 4-5 yuan per order, and some are even higher."
Li Mu said: "For a subsidy of 4 yuan, let the merchant contribute 2 yuan; for a subsidy of 5 yuan, let the merchant contribute 2.5. If you agree, we will continue to cooperate. If you don't agree, we will suspend the operation of his store for three days and let him think about it himself."
I help you sell things, and you give me a share. This is a matter of course, and it is also a healthy cooperation model. However, because Ele.me needs to attract merchants in the early stage, it spends its own money to subsidize users, which itself goes against the normal rules. , so when the time comes, it is natural to change the subsidy model.
At first, some merchants were reluctant, thinking that we don’t even need subsidies for beef delivery, so why do you want us to subsidize it
Ele.me does not give any explanation, nor is it mandatory to agree. It only gives merchants two choices. If you accept it, you will continue to send orders, and if you do not accept it, it will stop sending orders.
Ele.me's tough attitude has indeed caused dissatisfaction among many merchants, but Li Mu doesn't care at all.
Because Li Mu knew very well that he was now helping merchants make money, and they couldn't do without him.
Now, merchants are only allowed to bear a certain share of the subsidy first. In the future, merchants will not only have to bear the subsidy themselves, but also give 10% of each order to the platform. After all, the platform will make money from merchants in the future, not from consumption. Make money in the hands of those who make money.
If a merchant cannot adapt to this change, it can only mean that he has not realized the importance of the platform.
Large supermarket chains like Wal-Mart, because of their huge traffic and huge sales, are extremely powerful in front of their suppliers. Not only do they have a long payment settlement cycle, but also various promotional activities require suppliers to foot the bill. If the supplier does not agree, Then prohibit entry to supermarket shelves, so that any supplier will give in.
It is true that there are restaurants that do not believe in evil, and they must confront Ele.me head-on.
Lu Yunhao saw another opportunity in the darkness. He felt that because Li Mu was so tough on the merchants now, it might be a good opportunity for him to overtake in a corner!
(End of chapter)