Chapter 738 I'm unlucky when I see you
The neighbor Sun Jiatong mentioned is Li Haiyan, a psychological counselor at the school. She does not teach regular classes, but only gives a mental health lecture in the middle of each month. She is also responsible for counseling students on mental health.
Because she had few classes, she had a lot of spare time. She would take part in the square dancing downstairs of the dormitory building every night, and she would never miss a mahjong game.
Li Haiyan came into the room, took a quick look, and said with a smile, "Hey, are you eating?"
Zhu Hanwen said enthusiastically: "Just bring the bowls and chopsticks, Teacher Li, come over and sit down, let's eat together."
Li Haiyan quickly waved her hands and said, "No, no, I've eaten. You guys eat first."
Then, she pulled Sun Jiatong aside and said, "Teacher Sun, there is a new thing called online shopping. Do you know about it?"
Before Sun Jiatong could reply, Li Haiyan continued, "I heard about this yesterday. It was said that you can open a store and make money with just a computer. You don't need to purchase goods or pay rent. The money you make is yours. I think this is a no-cost business, isn't it? I spent the whole morning learning from that teacher, and he taught me how to open a store. You said that we teachers have a lot of free time, so we can open an online shopping store. Anyway, we don't need to invest any capital, and the money we make can also supplement our family expenses."
Zhu Hanwen asked: "You don't have to buy goods or pay rent, and the money you make is still yours. This is a great thing."
Li Haiyan said hurriedly, "That's right, Mr. Sun. The company is called eBay. It's a big company in the United States. I asked about it and they said it has more than 200 billion. What does that mean? It's absolutely reliable. If you open a store there now, you can enjoy various preferential benefits. There are too many benefits to count. Mr. Sun, you should open one as well. This is a good opportunity to make money for free. If you miss it, you will never have it again."
When Li Haiyan first started talking about this, Lu Yiming thought she was talking about Taobao. Because only Taobao was free to open a store, and Jack Ma followed Lu Yiming's advice and turned Alibaba into a supply chain, specifically looking for sources of goods all over the world to supply Taobao's individual sellers.
As a result, Li Haiyan was talking about eBay, which shocked Lu Yiming a little.
eBay is also offering free store opening?
Can't it hold on any longer?
Thinking of this, Lu Yiming almost laughed out loud.
eBay is indeed awesome now, after all, it has a scale of hundreds of billions, this is no joke. If you want to compare eBay's spending, Taobao will definitely not be able to compare.
However, as the saying goes, "Those who learn from me will live, those who imitate me will die." Although it is free to open a store on Taobao, in fact, everything else costs money, such as traffic promotion, selling store templates, and supply from Alibaba... What's more, it is the investors' money that is burned. As a result, Alibaba has lost a lot of money.
If eBay fails to realize this and simply spends money to gain market share, even if it can eventually surpass Taobao, it will still be seriously damaged.
You know, Lu Yiming still has Luming Mall. Will the dying eBay be able to cope with it by then?
Sun Jiatong smiled and said to Li Haiyan, "I didn't expect that Teacher Li is so trendy that she has learned to open an online store. Look, today I also opened a Taobao store with the help of my niece and your teacher Zhu's students. My store sells women's clothing. What do you sell in your store?"
When Li Haiyan heard that Sun Jiatong had opened a store on Taobao, she was stunned for a moment, then said with a look of disdain: "As for me, my store sells extracurricular tutoring books, all of which are carefully selected by me. How can you open a store on Taobao? I tell you, eBay is a large international platform and more reliable. Isn't it said that eBay is competing with Taobao now? Once eBay makes a move, Taobao will definitely be finished."
“Ah, this…”
After all, Lu Yiming was sitting here, and Sun Jiatong was still so shocked by Li Haiyan's words that she didn't know what to say.
Unexpectedly, at this moment, Lu Yiming actually said with a smile: "Teacher Sun, I think Teacher Li said too much. Anyway, opening one store is the same as opening two stores. Isn't it free to open a store on eBay? It's a good deal if you don't take advantage of it."
Li Haiyan said: "That's right, it won't affect you. Just move your store to eBay. As long as you submit the application, someone will help you solve all the problems. I'll give you a number, and you can call and ask when the time comes."
Then, she looked at Lu Yiming and said : "This young man has a good vision and is sensible. He will definitely do great things in the future. Teacher Sun, is this your relative's child? Oh, by the way, when you register an eBay account, remember to fill in my nickname in the referral column. My nickname is..."
Sun Jiatong felt a little confused and asked, "Why did I have to fill in your nickname when I registered?"
Li Haiyan didn't pretend and said directly: "Because after writing it, it means I recommended you to register and open a store, so I also have some small benefits. You can do the same after you successfully register, recommend others to open a store, and you can also get rewards if you are regarded as the recommender."
"Oh, okay."
Li Haiyan picked up the pen on the table and wrote down her ID, then said, "Remember to fill it out. OK, I'm going to go back and wash the dishes first."
After Li Haiyan left, Sun Jiatong felt even more confused and asked Lu Yiming, "Why did you ask me to open a store on eBay?"
Lin Yuzhen also said: "I remember that eBay is a competitor of Taobao. You actually let your aunt open a store on eBay? Isn't this aiding the enemy?"
Lu Yi understood her and said, "What do you mean by aiding the enemy? I don't like to hear that. I am a person with a broad mind, understand? I will never make a choice between the two. But I remember that eBay charged money to open a store before, but now it is free, and there is also a referral system. It seems that they are going to play a big game. Let's see what is going on first."
"Okay, then I'll call and ask?"
"Well, ask."
Sun Jiatong dialed the phone number Li Haiyan left, verified her real identity and Taobao ID, chatted for a few sentences and then ended the call, saying that she would add QQ to do the operation.
After adding QQ according to the process and fiddling with it for about half an hour, eBay said that they had helped Sun Jiatong open a store and sent a store address.
Sun Jiatong clicked on it and was immediately confused. She said, "Hey, isn't this my Taobao store? Did they send it to the wrong person?"
Lu Yiming took a closer look and found that it was exactly the same as the webpage he had just designed, but the URL was eBay's.
He understood at once that eBay was simply plagiarizing, copying and pasting without even changing the layout?
Are they planning to use magic to defeat magic?
"Let me take a look."
Lu Yiming sat in front of the computer and first opened Sun Jiatong's Taobao store to take a look, then opened Sun Jiatong's eBay store to take a look. Except for the different URLs, there was no other difference.
He then went into other stores on eBay and compared them with Taobao, and found that many stores were exactly the same.
Not only that, he also saw that in the eBay store opening benefits, it was written that if you bring people from Taobao to open a store, you can get paid directly on a per-person basis, 200 yuan per person, and the more sellers you bring in, the richer the reward.
"No wonder this teacher Li is so kindhearted and came over to ask you to open a store. It turns out that she can take cash directly."
Lu Yiming smiled, then took out his cell phone and called Jack Ma to tell him about eBay's operations.
When Jack Ma heard this, he was so angry that his teeth itched. He said in a deep voice: "They are really shameless. Plagiarism is fine, but they also want to cut off the source of the trouble?"
If eBay was trying to attract ordinary users, Ma Jieke wouldn't be so nervous, but it would be a different story if it was trying to attract sellers.
After all, most users choose Taobao Mall because there are more sellers here and more categories of goods can be provided, so they can fight back against eBay.
If there are no sellers, will buyers still choose Taobao Mall?
Although in theory you can open a store on either Taobao or eBay, eBay is just offering benefits, giving out 100 yuan without any care, which is too much of a luxury. Plus, after you open a store, eBay will do some promotion to increase sales, so will sellers give up Taobao and focus on eBay?
As long as the time is long enough and the money is enough, such a transformation is inevitable.
The most important thing is that there is no free lunch in this world. eBay can use this method to first kill Taobao, and then get the money back from the sellers or buyers.
Jack Ma asked tentatively: "Mr. Lu, how about we also give some head money?"
Taobao is developing very well now, and there are many people lining up to give money to Taobao. Jack Ma is now more confident and even wants to start a price war with eBay.
Lu Yiming consoled her, "Don't worry. We will definitely follow eBay's path, but it won't have much impact. After all, we don't charge any fees because Alipay is our own and the bank waives the fees when signing the contract. eBay can't do that anyway. So, even though their number of sellers is increasing rapidly now, when the sellers get the benefits promised by eBay and want to continue doing business, they will still choose to come back to Taobao. Unless eBay can make them more money than on Taobao, but that's impossible."
Although some people invested in Alibaba, giving Taobao money to burn, it still seemed a little lacking in confidence compared to eBay's scale of hundreds of billions.
Although both websites cost less, the user experience is quite different between the two websites.
First, Taobao's servers are located in China, so there are no obstacles to domestic access. However, eBay's servers are located abroad, and data access must go through domestic transfer stations and switches. In this environment where the performance of equipment is generally "sufficient", this perception is still quite obvious - for example, if it is the same hourly flash sale, Taobao's flash sale will probably successfully jump to the payment interface, while eBay's background image may not even be loaded.
For any Internet company, experience and price are crucial, unless your price is so low that people ignore the experience and save money.
However, if the price difference is not high enough to make people ignore the difference in experience, many people would rather choose something that is a few cents or a dollar more expensive on Taobao than go to eBay, which crashes and lags at any time.
Subsequently, Taobao launched an activity to pay people to open stores, while at the same time directly suing eBay for plagiarism. It not only wanted to steal people but also ruin eBay's reputation.
Under Lu Yiming's manipulation, Taobao's registered members quickly broke through the 3 million mark, a year-on-year increase of more than 10 times, and the daily transaction volume rose to 9 million yuan. On the other hand, eBay's share continued to shrink and fell into a half-dead situation.
As for eBay, just as Lu Yiming expected, many shop owners first went to eBay to open stores and get benefits, and then turned around and ran to Taobao to continue doing business, which made Meg Whitman very angry.
Because Sun Jiatong has opened online stores on both eBay and Taobao, she can better understand how different the atmospheres of the two platforms are.
eBay was dead silent, with few people around. On the other hand, Taobao's chat reminders would ring from time to time, with many people asking for prices and bargaining.
After a while, Sun Jiatong invited Lu Yiming to her home for dinner and asked him about some tips on opening a store. During the meal, she talked about this with Lin Yuzhen and Lu Yiming. Lin Yuzhen felt very unbelievable and said, "eBay lost just like that? After all, it is a US-listed company with a market value of more than 200 billion, right? It was so confident that it would crush Taobao like an ant, but this is the result?"
Lu Yiming said confidently: "eBay actually loses because of the 'free'. Taobao is free, but eBay is not. If eBay doesn't lose, who will?"
Later, Lu Yiming explained, "For the still developing online shopping market in Xiaguo, online goods must be cheaper than offline goods in order to be sold. Although eBay offers free store opening and free money, other services are not free. Their charging model increases the burden on sellers, making it difficult to compete with the offline market in terms of cost-effectiveness. Taobao's free policy, supplemented by marketing, can quickly attract a large number of small and medium-sized sellers to settle in, thus making a comeback."
Lin Yuzhen seemed even more curious: "Since it is a problem that can be solved for free, why doesn't eBay do it?"
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "This is the trade-off between long-term and short-term interests, and it is also the difference in business thinking. eBay is obviously too focused on short-term profits. In fact, Xia's e-commerce market is still in its infancy and it is difficult to become mainstream in two or three years. So we must focus on ten years later. Therefore, when adopting business strategies, we must deeply understand that user growth is far more important than short-term profits. It's a pity that eBay's shareholders don't think so, and Meg Whitman herself is just an excellent traditional professional manager. Her understanding of the Internet is not thorough enough."
Lin Yuzhen rolled her eyes at Lu Yiming and said, "So you are more powerful than this Whitman?"
Lu Yiming said without any modesty: "Of course, after all, I have defeated her twice, and she has never been able to get the upper hand from me."
The battle between eBay and Taobao has not yet come to an end. It may still last for several years, but the final result has actually come out.
There is no doubt that Taobao's "free model" won, while the "paid model" insisted by Meg Whitman lost completely.
Taobao, the humble "ant", not only survived, but also defeated eBay, the giant elephant that came across the ocean, and became the overlord of Xia's C2C market.
This battle can be regarded as a turning point in the awakening of e-commerce in Xia State.
The outside world also regarded Lu Yiming as the key figure who turned the tide of the battle.
Because judging from the results, it was Lu Yiming's joining that eBay's goal of quickly defeating Taobao was thwarted.
Half a month later, Lu Yiming suddenly received a call.
To his surprise, the call was from Meg Whitman.
Meg Whitman invited Lu Yiming to have coffee together.
Lu Yiming readily agreed.
The two met in a coffee shop.
This was the second time the two met. Although Taobao and eBay were fighting fiercely before, Lu Yiming himself did not actually confront Meg Whitman directly.
Looking at Lu Yi's young yet calm face, Meg Whitman felt a little complicated.
Although she was reluctant to admit it, she had indeed fallen into Lu Yiming's hands again, and this time she lost even more thoroughly. She was directly defeated by her opponent on the front battlefield, in eBay's strongest field.
As the winner, Lu Yiming behaved quite generously. When he saw Meg Whitman, he smiled and said hello: "Beautiful Ms. Whitman, we meet again."
Meg Whitman also forced a smile on her face, but she was not polite at all when she spoke: "Yes, we meet again. I don't know why, but every time I meet you, I seem to have bad luck."
Lu Yiming asked: "Then why did you ask me to come over for coffee?"
Meg Whitman said, "I'm going back to the United States. I'm taking a flight tomorrow morning."
Obviously, she no longer had any hope for the Xia country's market. eBay was unable to defeat Taobao despite having all the advantages, and instead got itself into such a mess. The situation will only get worse in the future.
Meg Whitman looked at Lu Yiming and said, "I lost this time, but eBay can afford to lose. Sooner or later, I will win back."
Lu Yiming said bluntly: "You have no chance. eBay has lost the market in Xia Country, and in the United States, you are no match for Amazon. You can only be a supporting role in the future."
"impossible!"
Meg Whitman is obviously unwilling to accept failure. She is still the strong lady of the business world, ready to wash away the shame of failure at any time.
"Then we'll have to wait and see."
The two chatted while drinking coffee. After finishing the coffee, Meg Whitman got up and left.
Looking at Meg Whitman's leaving back, Lu Yiming was in a good mood. After all, the heavy bet he placed on Alibaba back then had finally come to fruition.
Taobao, which defeated eBay, has firmly established itself as the e-commerce giant in China. The original $5 million will be earned back a thousand times over in the future.
