Restart life

Chapter 133 0130 [Let the Taobao store that sells underwear also sell Three Kingdoms Kill] (Added by Alliance Leader Successor_)
Beijing Capital International Airport.

Bian Guanyue was holding her phone, busy texting in the waiting hall.

"Is it your cousin again?" Chen Guiliang bought a steaming cup of milk tea.

"Ah."

Bian Guanyue took the milk tea and put it aside, then continued replying to the text message: "She knew I was going to Shanghai, so she told me to go to Hangzhou on the way."

“She doesn’t even go home for the Chinese New Year,” Chen Guiliang said.

Bian Guanyue explained, "Just like you, she's busy with business. Her Taobao store is getting more and more popular, and she can't even leave during the Chinese New Year."

Chen Guiliang said, "We can ask her to help sell Three Kingdoms Kill cards."

"That's a great idea. I'll tell my cousin." Bian Guanyue was very happy. This way, she could help her boyfriend and also increase the variety of products her cousin could sell.

Strictly speaking, having Bian Guanyue's cousin help Chen Guiliang sell Three Kingdoms Kill games is an illegal act.

Neither of them has a publication business license!

But at that time, the internet truly was a lawless zone.

Bian Guanyue said, "After I accompany you to Shanghai Airport, we'll take a long-distance bus to Hangzhou to visit my cousin. When I return from Hangzhou, you'll have just finished your event, and then we'll spend a day in Shanghai."

"Give my regards to your cousin," Chen Guiliang said. "If her online store is willing to resell Three Kingdoms Kill, I can give her a 25% commission. I'll contact the printing factory, but she needs to find a place to stock up on the goods, because the more you print, the lower the cost."

Bian Guanyue said, "She rented a house specifically for stockpiling goods."

Opening a Taobao store at this time certainly gave us a head start, but it was also much more troublesome than later.

Direct shipping from the manufacturer is impossible; Taobao sellers need to stock their own inventory. There are roughly two models—

One type, like the cousin of Bianguanyue, goes to the Sijiqing wholesale market to purchase goods and rents houses or warehouses to store them.

One type involves sharing inventory between physical stores and online stores, primarily selling digital products. They operate both physical stores and online shops.

The moment Chen Guiliang stepped onto the boarding gate, a thought flashed through his mind.

I can ship directly from the factory!
Damn it, no publishing company is willing to distribute the physical Three Kingdoms Kill cards; even a rising star like Li Xunhuan finds it troublesome.

Since brick-and-mortar stores won't cooperate, I can totally cooperate with Taobao merchants.

Currently, the online sales of Three Kingdoms Kill are conducted through two channels: Chen Guiliang's own Taobao store and e-commerce platforms such as Dangdang.com.

But there are countless individual Taobao merchants, why can't we make use of them?

He approached each Taobao shop owner, offered them a dropshipping fee, and they didn't need to stock up on inventory. All they needed to do was attract customers, and then Chen Guiliang would ship the goods from Beijing—thus, the "factory direct sales" model was set up.

Chen Guiliang is the "manufacturer".

But it's still not right.

Chen Guiliang found his seat on the plane and remained silent, weighing the pros and cons.

If this model takes off, and the game "Three Kingdoms Kill" becomes truly popular, piracy will likely be rampant. Especially those Taobao stores with high sales volumes, they are very likely to bypass Chen Guiliang and print and sell their own pirated cards.

However, piracy was bound to happen sooner or later.

Moreover, printing and selling pirated cards is risky; printing too few would result in excessively high printing costs, while printing too many would lead to excessively high inventory costs. Unless it's an online store with explosive sales, it's unlikely to exclude Chen Guiliang.

If a website with explosive sales is involved in piracy, the target is very obvious, and Chen Guiliang should just call the police.

What we really need to guard against are those pirate publishers!

Printing factories don't need to worry about this; without distributors to solve sales problems, printing factories would never print pirated copies themselves.

Chen Guiliang also needs to obtain a publication (wholesale) business license, which he hadn't obtained before because a sufficiently large warehouse is required.

If a large number of individual Taobao stores can boost the sales of Three Kingdoms Kill cards, then it would be normal to lease a warehouse long-term.

Only after obtaining a license did Chen Guiliang dare to call the police and have people arrested when he encountered Taobao stores selling pirated goods. Otherwise, he would also be considered to be selling illegally!
Seeing Chen Guiliang sitting there in a daze, Bian Guanyue knew he was thinking about something again, so she considerately didn't make a sound to disturb him.

Chen Guiliang went through each step repeatedly to make sure nothing was missed before saying to Bian Guanyue, "Your cousin is selling Three Kingdoms Kill cards on behalf of others. She doesn't need to go out and stock up on the goods. As long as she can sell the Three Kingdoms Kill cards, I will ship the goods by express delivery. Of course, the commission will be reduced to 15%."

“She would definitely agree,” Bian Guanyue said.

This direct-from-factory model is like a windfall for anyone opening a Taobao store right now. No need to select, stock, or ship goods; you can earn a 15% dropshipping fee for free. It's practically picking up money!
They will work very hard to help promote the Three Kingdoms Kill cards!

The packaging box for each set of Three Kingdoms Kill cards also displays the official website address of Three Kingdoms Kill, which can convert offline users into online users.

After the plane landed, Chen Guiliang immediately called Senior Sister Ao.

After explaining his plan, Chen Guiliang said, "You and Xie Yang should contact Taobao stores one by one. Start by contacting Taobao merchants that mainly sell cultural and sports goods and electronic products. After you've finalized deals with these stores, then contact other popular ones. Even stores that sell underwear can help us resell the trading cards!"

"How do we collect the money?" Ao Yanchen asked.

Chen Guiliang said, "At the beginning, we provided the initial funding, and once we were more familiar with the business, the merchants started providing the initial funding."

Why can't we do direct shipping from manufacturers these days?

The payment system was also a problem. At that time, Alipay only supported transaction guarantees within the Taobao platform and could not be directly used for fund settlement between merchants and external manufacturers.

Cross-platform automatic revenue sharing wasn't available until 2008. The feature allowing manufacturers to set dropshipping prices and for the system to automatically synchronize orders wasn't available until 2010.

As for now——

Customers pay for their purchases via Alipay first, and the money is only released to the online store after the customer confirms receipt. Therefore, one party must advance the funds, either the online store or the manufacturer.

Moreover, this kind of advance payment cannot be contracted and can only be maintained by credit.

Ao Yanzhen thought it over carefully and said, "Fortunately, the amount of each transaction is not large, so we can advance the funds first. Once the online store receives the money, it must transfer the funds to us immediately. If they fail to transfer the funds within the deadline, they will be permanently blacklisted."

“The risk is actually not that great. We sell trading cards, the return rate is close to zero, and we don’t need merchants to hold inventory or ship goods,” Chen Guiliang said. “As long as the merchants are not out of their minds, they can’t possibly cheat us out of our money. Even if there are some unexpected incidents, the losses will not be significant.”

Ao Yanzhen said, "We also need to be careful. If a single online store sells more than 500 sets, we must make the online store advance the funds, and at the same time increase their commission. They have already tasted the benefits, and if they can also increase their commission, they will definitely be willing to advance the funds themselves."

"That's a good idea," Chen Guiliang praised.

Ao Yanchen laughed and said, "President Chen is really impressive, coming up with this factory direct shipping model. Within a month, I want 50% of Taobao stores to be reselling our Three Kingdoms Kill game!"

In this pioneering era of online stores, it was indeed possible to achieve this.

Imagine you were a Taobao shop owner in 2005. No matter what you sold, you had to handle everything yourself: sourcing, stocking, and shipping. Then, the only thing you didn't have to do was sell the card game "Three Kingdoms Kill." Would you agree to a partnership? Even if you didn't sell a single set, you wouldn't lose money.

So, imagine this scenario: A consumer logs onto Taobao, intending only to buy a few pairs of socks. After browsing twenty or thirty Taobao stores, he discovers that all the sock sellers are also selling the card game "Three Kingdoms Kill"! Then he wants to buy two pairs of thermal underwear, and the thermal underwear sellers are also selling "Three Kingdoms Kill." Wouldn't he be curious about what "Three Kingdoms Kill" is?

Over in the capital.

Ao Yanzhen called Xie Yang over and explained Chen Guiliang's method.

Xie Yang was utterly shocked: "You can do it like that?"

Ao Yanchen smiled and nodded: "As long as we negotiate cooperation with each one individually, we can get all the Taobao stores to sell Three Kingdoms Kill!"

Xie Yang said, "Awesome."

Xie Yang was filled with excitement and his thoughts were racing. Ever since Chen Guiliang started selling private clothing, he had always admired him. Seeing this method Chen Guiliang had come up with today, he felt that Chen Guiliang was a business genius!

……

Upon arriving in Shanghai, Bian Guanyue transferred to Hangzhou to visit her cousin.

Chen Guiliang went straight to the Qingsongcheng Hotel.

This year's New Concept Writing Competition is still being held at the Qingsongcheng Hotel. However, the final competition venue has been changed to the Education Hall, which is about a 10-minute walk from the hotel.

Chen Guiliang ran there with practiced ease, and made a phone call to Hu Weishi halfway there.

Hu Weishi is actually not an older woman; she's quite young, only around 30 years old, and has a very delicate appearance. Well, just delicate, you could say she's beautiful.

After hanging up the phone, Hu Weishi said to the contestants who were signing in, "Chen Guiliang is coming. Those of you who want his autograph shouldn't miss the opportunity."

These contestants quickly ran to their rooms to put down their luggage, and then took "Those Things of the Ming Dynasty" back to the lobby to wait.

In terms of social recognition, Chen Guiliang is far less well-known than Han Han and Guo Xiaosi.

But in the eyes of these new concept contestants, he was already at that level, even surpassing Guo Xiaosi—many finalists had a very bad impression of Guo Xiaosi.

Contestants arrived at the lobby from time to time after hearing the news, and in the blink of an eye, dozens of people had gathered.

Some parents were even present, as they were worried about their children coming to Shanghai alone, so they accompanied them throughout the competition.

At that moment, a parent said to their daughter, "I know you like literature, and I didn't stop you. I even accompanied you to the competition. But in your senior year of high school, your studies should be your priority. Look at Chen Guiliang. Even though he was specially admitted to Peking University, he still studied hard and ended up exceeding Peking University's admission score in the college entrance examination!"

The daughter forced herself to say, "Okay, I understand. I'll study and do my homework when I get home."

Another parent laughed and said, "Don't push your child too hard."

The parent who spoke earlier said, "You dream of becoming a writer every day, but you need to have substance to back it up. The New Concept Writing Competition has been running for several years now, but how many of them have actually become writers? Take 'Those Things About the Ming Dynasty' for example, could the average student write that?"

"I also read the preface written by a professor from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who said that although the book is written in a simple style, there are no historical errors to be found. There's also the preface by Professor Wang from Peking University, who said that Chen Guiliang was busy with his business and teaching, and still found time to go to the library to read the 'Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty.' Do you know how many characters are in the 'Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty'? Professor Wang said it has more than 1600 million characters. And it's all in classical Chinese!"

"They became famous because of their talent, not because they dreamed of literature every day. They didn't write books in their senior year of high school; they were seriously studying for the Peking University entrance exam!"

The parents' words made many of the contestants feel ashamed.

This was unanimously agreed upon by other parents.

Because they all have kids with literary dreams, they didn't know how to persuade them before, but now they can use Chen Guiliang as a role model. Chen Guiliang is such a good writer, and he studied hard in his senior year of high school. Are you guys even better than Chen Guiliang?

"Master Chen has arrived!"

This person is clearly a die-hard fan of Chen Guiliang, as he even knows his nickname from high school.

Hu Weishi stood smiling and watching. Last year, Chen Guiliang was just a contestant here. This year, however, a whole bunch of people were waiting to get Chen Guiliang's autograph.

(End of this chapter)