Sun Zhengyi has been particularly irritable in recent days.
The reason for the irritability is mostly due to the difficulties Letao is facing now.
Although he is not in China, Sun Zhengyi is very concerned about the situation of China Internet. He has always been optimistic about the development of China Internet. It is also because he is optimistic about the development prospects of Boss Ma that he invested in Alibaba and even the spin-off Leba. Tao.
However, since Li Mu was born in China, the development pattern of China's Internet has undergone tremendous changes. The extremely ambitious Boss Ma did not want to see Li Mu become the overlord of C2C, so he took the initiative to attack Li Mu, but he did not expect that he would It has led to such a passive situation.
Letao.com has invested two million US dollars in promotion fees, but the conversion effect is getting worse and worse. Now it has almost reached the point where it costs nearly 100 yuan to convert a registered user. The conversion rate is so low that it is devastating. Sun Zhengyi feels that the whole In the world's Internet industry, it is impossible to compare with Letao.com in terms of user acquisition costs. It has simply set a world record, a world record that is extremely humiliating and despairing.
Before Li Mu launched a sniper attack, Sun Zhengyi also felt that Letao had a great chance of successfully breaking through this time, because this platform was not only supported by the resources of Boss Ma’s B2B platform, but also had its own financial support. For a large multinational Internet company like Amazon, He is also a shareholder of Letao, contributes money and effort, and has a ready-made book audio and video e-commerce website Dangdang. The overall strength seems to be very strong, but he never expected that such a seemingly strong strength would actually turn out in front of Li Mu. Totally vulnerable.
At the moment, Letao's promotional activities have not yet started, but when Sun Zhengyi looks at this situation, he has almost announced Letao's death in his heart.
Just when Sun Zhengyi had almost decided to give up Letao, Boss Ma came up with another plan, which was to make a last-ditch effort with Taobao through further substantial profit concessions. What was most difficult for Sun Zhengyi to accept was that in Boss Ma's plan , actually let himself and Amazon jointly invest an additional 20 million US dollars to support his promotional war with Taobao.
Ten million U.S. dollars is not too much for Sun Zhengyi, but it is by no means too small. Even though he is now worth hundreds of millions, the purchasing power of tens of millions of U.S. dollars is astonishing in any country. With such a large amount of money, SoftBank If you want to shoot, it must be a sound shot and cannot be a wasted shot.
Sun Zhengyi carefully studied the plan given by Boss Ma. In the plan, Boss Ma hopes to immediately adjust the strategy and publicity methods in the last few days, and directly promote it by giving each registered user a 30 yuan voucher. This There is only one threshold for using the 30-yuan voucher, which is to spend 99 yuan or more during the promotion. Originally, it was 20% off plus free shipping for purchases over 99 yuan. Now it is 20% off for purchases over 99 yuan, minus 30 yuan. Free shipping. If a consumer purchases a product worth 100 yuan, he only needs to pay 50 yuan in the end, and Taobao will also bear the postage.
According to Letao's calculations, with this kind of promotion, for every 100 yuan of transactions on the platform, the company will lose at least 20 yuan. For Sun Zhengyi, this data is really too scary.
Boss Ma’s reason is that only through such large-scale promotions can we attract and gather users under the huge influence of Taobao. If a platform wants to stand firm, the first thing it needs is users.
In addition to users, Boss Ma also feels that no matter how much pressure Taobao puts on Letao, Letao must produce beautiful data for this 929 promotion to show the strength and size of its platform. , only in this way can we attract the attention of enterprises and small and medium-sized sellers. Otherwise, if the transaction volume of the entire platform is very unsatisfactory, enterprises and small and medium-sized sellers will not pay attention to their own platforms at all, let alone choose to develop on their own platforms.
On Taobao's Brand Day, it demonstrated the scale of its platform to enterprises and small and medium-sized sellers across the country: it can create more than 2 billion transactions in one day. Only with such a large transaction volume can it impress enterprises and small and medium-sized sellers. Sellers, after all, with such a big piece of cake, everyone will feel that they have a chance to get a piece of it.
If the first promotion launched by Letao has a transaction volume of one to two hundred million, or even tens of millions, it is basically a fool's errand to attract companies with some strength.
Although what Boss Ma said was reasonable, Sun Zhengyi was still unwilling to accept this plan, because in his opinion, it was obvious that Boss Ma was going all-out and burning the boat.
After careful analysis, Sun Zhengyi believes that with such a powerful opponent as Taobao, Letao will completely confront Taobao, and the chance of winning is zero. In front of Taobao, Letao cannot be regarded as a real opponent. If Taobao is a personal A strong boxer, Letao is like a paralyzed patient. If he is forced to stand in the ring with money, once the opponent attacks fiercely or stops investing, Letao will definitely fall.
If tens of millions can allow Letao to stand in the ring, then the money is worth investing. However, in Sun Zhengyi's view, Letao is a platform destined to fall. Spending tens of millions to let Letao stand for a few more years. God, what's the point
So, he asked his investment manager to send a fax back to Boss Ma. In this fax, Sun Zhengyi expressed his three views.
First, we do not support Boss Ma’s plan to continue fighting Taobao to the end, and we will not continue to pursue investment;
Second, Letao cannot continue to confront Taobao, otherwise it will die;
Third, I advise Boss Ma to give up imitating Li Mu’s B2C industrial model. It is recommended that Boss Ma give up B2C completely and become a service-oriented platform that only serves small and medium-sized sellers, and not get involved in any self-operated business;
After expressing these three views, Sun Zhengyi left a message to Boss Ma in a personal tone: "Jack, you told me before that what you want to do is to be similar to eBay, but more flexible and focused than eBay. It is a C2C platform that is completely free for buyers and sellers, but why is it affected by Li Mu and Taobao that it invests a lot of manpower and material resources in B2C and competes head-on with Li Mu? Li Mu has strong promotion channels, strong cash reserves and powerful To confront him head-on, as the Chinese saying goes, is to hit an egg against a stone. I think you should think about it now, clear your mind, and shift Letao's focus from B2C. Only by moving to C2C and moving competitors from Taobao to eBay can we differentiate ourselves from Li Mu and have a chance to succeed."
When Boss Ma saw this fax, he almost went berserk in the office.
"Sun Zhengyi is so not optimistic about Letao's future? He still wants me to clear my mind. I think it's him who should clear his mind!"
The angry Boss Ma was furious in front of several core employees. In his opinion, Sun Zhengyi not only rejected him, but also denied himself, which was unacceptable to his self-esteem.
Boss Ma is a proud man. His greatest sense of accomplishment has always been to use his thinking and eloquence to impress those who have a higher status than him. He feels that he is the one who should teach others. How to do things? As for investors like Sun Zhengyi, the most important state they should reach is to recognize themselves and then provide money. However, Sun Zhengyi suddenly rejected himself and denied himself at the same time. This is not something that Boss Ma can accept in his heart. of.
This additional plan is the only possible path that Boss Ma has found after repeated deductions in the past few days. When he can't compare to Taobao in terms of products, publicity, and plans, the only thing he can do is to use Come up with a more attractive discount strategy than Taobao, which means that you need to lose money and earn money to do a good job in the first promotion event launched by Letao.
Boss Ma believes that as long as he tries his best to do a good job in promotional activities, he can open up a certain situation. At least he can stand firm in the rapids and have a chance to go upstream. However, if he does not stand firm this time, he will never be able to stand firm in the future. After this torrent, you always stand up again. If you want to stand up again, you can only avoid the fast-flowing rivers and try the gentle streams. In that case, you will voluntarily give up the main battlefield and give up the only main battlefield. The battlefield was left to Li Mu, and from now on, Li Mu was completely sealed in the corners. This was something Boss Ma could not accept.
However, the most painful thing right now is that Sun Zhengyi is unwilling to give money! If you don’t have money, how can you use it to carry out large-scale promotions
At this time, Lu Zhaoxi said: "Mr. Ma, Amazon has not responded yet. If they are willing to pay, let them put pressure on Sun Zhengyi. Maybe Sun Zhengyi will compromise."
Cai Chongxin also nodded and said: "Sun Zhengyi rejected us, which proves that we no longer have enough influence on him. We can only place our hope on Amazon. After all, I think what William Yang has always shown is that Amazon wants us Being able to increase investment means that Amazon is ready for additional investment."
When Boss Ma heard this, his mood eased a little and he nodded slightly.
Lu Zhaoxi and Cai Chongxin are right. It seems that the most important thing right now is to get Amazon to agree.
I mentioned this plan to William Yang, but William Yang did not express his position. He said that he wanted to ask the head office for instructions. I don’t know what the conclusion is now.
At this moment, someone knocked on the office door, and Boss Ma said, "Please come in."
It was William Yang who pushed the door open.
As soon as William Yang entered the door, he saw Boss Ma looking at him with extremely expectant eyes. He sighed helplessly, shook his head and said, "Sorry Jack, the headquarters rejected your plan!"
(End of chapter)