Bai Lu got scammed, but I became a superstar through e-commerce.

Qingxiao's e-commerce model can be summarized by a quote he once told Afei: "While others are chasing trends, we are laying railway tracks."

The trends change every year.

The Korean style of last year and the year before has been replaced by European and American minimalism this year.

Inman's cotton and linen artsy style was popular for several years, but by 2016 it had begun to be squeezed out by offline brands.

The ethnic style of Libo was once unique, but now it has joined the ranks of those offering low-price clearance sales.

In the entire Taobao women's clothing industry, whether it's top merchants or small and medium-sized sellers, they are almost all competing on the same level.

Whoever has the most eye-catching style and the most sophisticated visual presentation will live two more years.

But style is something that goes out of fashion.

You might be able to make a killing today by relying on the Korean wave, but if the Korean wave goes out of fashion tomorrow, the value of your entire store's fan base will depreciate.

Brands that invest heavily in visual presentation incur alarmingly high costs.

Renting villas, booking hotels, hiring professional photography teams, shooting dozens of outfits in one scene—the shooting cost for a single new product launch can easily reach tens of thousands of yuan, resulting in a very long launch cycle.

A generally accepted pace in the industry is that launching 100 new products a month is considered efficient, and most stores simply cannot reach that number.

Qingxiao doesn't play that game.

SUNSA's visual system was set from day one: showcasing models in plain colors. Not the rigid, ID-photo style with a white background, but rather having models stand in front of a clean background, emphasizing the layers of light, the texture of the fabric, and the cut of the garment.

All information is presented to buyers without any filters or embellishments.

The style, details, and fabric of clothing are far more important than composition and scene matching.

In this way, shooting a new product doesn't require renting a location, building a set, or spending half a day waiting for the golden light.

The model wore it, and photos were taken from the front, side, back, and close-up details.

Is releasing a hundred new items a month considered a lot?

SUNSA now releases forty new products every day.

Qingxiao's goal is to release 100 products a day.

He invested heavily in the supply chain and photography process for this purpose.

SUNSA's photography team was split into two groups, each with its own photographer and lighting assistant.

The first team photographed the new products, while the second team coordinated with the supply chain to synchronize the new product launch process.

The graphic design team edits the images simultaneously, and the operations team uploads them simultaneously. The whole process is like an assembly line, with each link working together perfectly.

Every day, the selection team brings back new sample garments from stalls and markets, and the photography team shoots them directly in the studio, ensuring that no sample garment remains in the sample room for more than 24 hours.

This model was absolutely unconventional in the Taobao ecosystem in 2016, because the mainstream competitive logic of the entire industry was not like this at all.

Other e-commerce companies are scrambling for talent—for top operations experts, top sales drivers, and channel talent with connections to the platform.

A skilled driver on the express train can have their monthly salary increased from 10,000 to 30,000.

An operations director with a good relationship with Taobao staff gets a skyrocketing salary. They go to whichever company offers the highest pay. They might be headhunted by one company and only work for a few months before being poached by another.

But Qingxiao's team is different.

The operations department has eleven people, the graphic designers have six, the customer service staff has twelve, and the warehouse has eleven people, including Xiao Geng's packing team. In addition, there are six people running the supply chain and administrative and logistics staff, making a total of nearly fifty people in the company.

Qingxiao doesn't care about academic qualifications. Some of the graphic designers don't even have a college diploma. Qingxiao poached them from the GG store next to Sijiqing.

Before joining the company, Afei worked as an operations assistant at another Taobao store. He was so nervous during the interview that he stammered. When Qingxiao asked him how to improve the quality score of Taobao Express, he answered clearly.

Qingxiao kept him.

Over the past three years, Afei has become capable of independently managing the advertising campaigns for the entire SUNSA store, with a daily budget of nearly ten thousand yuan, and he also has an assistant under his command.

Qingxiao only looks at the attitude towards doing things and the team's cohesion.

Experience can be accumulated and skills can be trained, but a person's fundamental attitude—whether they are willing to persevere and whether they can hold on until dawn—cannot be taught.

Qingxiao stood in front of the new floor-to-ceiling window, with delivery trucks lined up in a row downstairs.

He thought of his peers from his past life who had worked alongside him on Taobao. Many small and medium-sized sellers, those with good foresight could survive for two or three years, while those with bad luck were eliminated by the rapid evolution of product styles as soon as they got started. It wasn't that they didn't work hard; they just went in the wrong direction.

He doesn't want to be a successful Taobao brand for two or three years.

He wanted SUNSA to become an entity that no one could imitate or surpass in three years.

Because those photography studios you invest in today, those production lines you build yourself, those teams you train from scratch, are not things you can buy with any amount of money.

Time itself is a barrier.

At the same time, in Beijing, on the training floor of Huanyu Film and Television.

Bai Lu came out of the training room and walked along the corridor to the restroom. She pushed open the restroom door, went into the innermost stall, and closed the door.

Just as she was about to take her phone out of her pocket, she suddenly heard two voices coming from the sink outside.

It was Wu Jiayi and a girl.

"How did it feel to talk to her today?" the girl asked.

Wu Jiayi lowered her voice: "It's alright, I guess. They don't understand acting. They can't even use many theatrical terms."

"Then why did you let her ask you more questions just now?"

"We should at least be polite."

Bai Lu tightened his grip on his phone.

"So how do you think she got in?" The girl turned on the tap to wash her hands, and the water gushed out.

Wu Jiayi was silent for a few seconds, then lowered her voice even further, as if sharing a guess she was too embarrassed to say aloud: "Do you believe it? She's just a Taobao model, has no acting training, and she's sitting in this training classroom with us? President Yu's standards for people are sky-high. Either she got in through connections, or..."

She didn't finish her sentence.

"I've looked at her profile; she's only acted in one short film. Song Weilong, at least, is a model, and he's more photogenic than her. What does she have to offer?"

She turned off the tap.

"Give me something else in return."

Her tone was neither angry nor questioning; she was simply calmly sharing what she considered to be a "common sense" speculation.

In this circle, some people rely on their background, some on their connections, and some on their willingness to "give".

She was just making judgments based on experience.

Inside the cubicle, Bai Lu's fingers froze on the phone screen.

She tried to push the door open and go out, but her hand didn't move.

She wasn't afraid to face them; she was afraid that she would lose her composure and start a fight with them as soon as she opened her mouth.

Wu Jiayi just smiled and told her, "Ask me anytime if you don't understand anything," and Gao Yuer also said, "Then you must have a good sense of the camera."

All their politeness was impeccable, without a single fault.

But now she heard the sound of the door closing.

The footsteps gradually faded into the distance.

The water stopped, the door closed, and only the faint sound of the air conditioner at the end of the corridor remained in the bathroom.

Bai Lu leaned against the partition for a long, long time before putting her phone back in her pocket, taking a deep breath, and pushing open the door.

She walked to the mirror, turned on the tap, scooped up a handful of water and splashed it on her face. The cold water cooled her eyes a little.

When I got back to my place that evening, Qingxiao called.

"Little deer, did you have a tough day of training?"

Hearing Qingxiao's voice and recalling the gossip in the bathroom, Bai Lu choked up for a moment, then tried her best to hold back: "Mm."