What's wrong with me being a rich man?

Chapter 189 Never happen again
September is the start of the school year.

Yu Xing suddenly realized this when he saw someone mention internships on his own website. Then, he recalled that the last time he mentioned the back-to-school season was because it would have a significant impact on Guiai.com's business.

From the last school season to this one, Bai Xiaosheng has been established for almost a year.

As a workplace platform, Bai Xiaosheng is actually quite friendly to college students. On the one hand, the community operates regular graduation season activities. On the other hand, those newcomers to the workplace who have received help and the senior colleagues who have seen this happen have become a relatively active user group in this regard.

Of course, the most active people among Bai Xiaosheng are those who just watch the show.

Thanks to the several outbreaks of the website mechanism, everyone is accustomed to discussing issues between themselves and their competitors in the community, including but not limited to business, salary and other situations, but... As time entered mid-September, Bai Xiaosheng faced the second lawsuit from Vancl after the lawsuit filed by Jiahan Forestry, which became an important topic for many days.

Everyone can eat any kind of melon, and this time it's Bai Xiaosheng's turn, so he doesn't miss it.

"Bai Xiaosheng is now a moderately large website. I heard that it has already exceeded 100 million users, but they haven't released any news. Are they worried about this?"

"In principle, Vancl is suing the price comparison website owned by Bai Xiaosheng, and it has nothing to do with the paparazzi community."

"With so many users, it's hard to hide it. How come the posts about Chi Mei Electronics' massive job-hopping last week suddenly disappeared? It seems like there's external pressure."

Vancl sued Bai Xiaosheng on September 9, claiming that the price comparison website it operated used crawlers to capture data and information on its own website, infringing on Vancl's legitimate rights and interests such as its trade secrets, causing economic losses and reputation damage, leading to reduced traffic and user loss, and demanding that Bai Xiaosheng immediately stop the relevant behavior, make a public apology and claim 14 million yuan in compensation.

Bai Xiaosheng gave a public response one day later. First, he believed that "the product prices of e-commerce are public information", second, he emphasized that "the company has complied with the robots protocol on Vancl's website", and third, "Vancl's user loss and traffic reduction have nothing to do with Bai Xiaosheng, and he should consider his own business operations more."

The robots protocol, also known as the crawler protocol, is a website regulation that stipulates which pages can and cannot be crawled, but it does not have enforceable power and is a customary rule.

All in all, Bai Xiaosheng had a small interaction with Vancl.

Vancl is the second company to sue Bai Xiaosheng. It is also the second e-commerce company to criticize price comparison after Dangdang.com. It is worth mentioning that Liu Hao, who recorded "If You Are the One" on behalf of Yu Xing, had a fierce quarrel with Vancl's Chen Nian on the show.

Regardless of whether it is a lawsuit or a quarrel, the most important reason why Vancl is so angry this time is that the price comparison website owned by Bai Xiaosheng has gradually shown its effectiveness.

In fact, the price comparison website did not receive much budget for publicity. Although the financing was successful, Bai Xiaosheng mainly focused on the promotion of its own platform and recruitment business, and only allocated a part of the advertising revenue. After all, the main website is the core.

However, Vancl's popular products are low-priced products represented by T-shirts, and its target group is young people, who are active on the Internet. However, the price comparison website focuses on comparing the prices of similar products of Vancl with those of Letao.com and Vipshop.

Vancl was founded in 2008 and its brand power is not strong, while the leftover goods handled by Letao.com and Vipshop still have certain brand power, such as PPG.

Vancl achieved a revenue of 1 million last year and is aiming for 10 billion this year. It is targeting the market of PPG, an industry leader.

PPG is a clothing brand founded in 2005, and it takes the path of online direct sales to provide high-quality and low-priced products.

However, PPG's business strategy had problems and its supply chain management also made major mistakes. From last year to this year, it has gradually been overtaken by Vancl, and there have been news reports of suppliers publicly demanding payment for goods.

With a tight capital chain, serious inventory backlogs and declining market share, PPG has been surpassed by the up-and-coming Vancl.

What solution?

Letao.com, which had transformed from selling shoes to handling leftover goods, came to the door at this time.

Serious backlog?

I'm looking for you because you have serious backlog!
Difficult to recover payment?

My payment terms are the fastest on the Internet!
PPG and Letao.com hit it off perfectly. The former provided discounted goods, while the latter advocated undiscounted quality. The former no longer had funds for advertising, while the latter was in the investment stage of promoting its website.

In addition, there was an active group of young people who knew all the details and noticed the prices of similar products from price comparison websites. LeTao.com sold products like this for a while, and even the boss of PPG, who was said to have run away, reappeared.

Did the PPG owner run away?

It seems that they have run away, and even the senior executives have resigned.

But he has resurfaced now and is actively trying to appease suppliers, and it seems that he has the urge to try again.

It was precisely because of the intervention of the boss of PPG that Vancl, which imitated this brand, was naturally extremely unhappy. It was obvious that its competitor was dying, but the resource diversion of PPG+LeTao.com+Bijia.com+Bai Xiaosheng helped it recover.

Chen Nian could no longer tolerate this and directly filed a lawsuit, the main purpose of which was to cut off the revival of his direct competitor.

According to his original judgment, PPG, the industry big brother, would completely disappear by the end of the year at most.

Unfortunately, Bai Xiaosheng would rather respond to the lawsuit than give up.

What’s more troublesome is that PPG seems to have learned its lesson and is instead learning operational ideas from Vancl.

Chen Nian never expected that such an incident would occur in the second half of the year, nor did he expect that the Bai Xiaosheng website would have such a wide reach.

On September 9, when Chen Nian was pondering over market changes in his office, his assistant took the opportunity to deliver a document to provide evidence of the influence of the Bai Xiaosheng website.

"Mr. Chen, Yu Xing has more than 20 followers on Weibo. Do you want to register one too?"

Chen Nian was stunned and asked, "What is Weibo?"

"It was created by Sina. It's a platform that shortens the content of blogs. It was launched last month." The assistant reported, "Yu Xing registered an account at the beginning of this month. Now, in just half a month, he already has 20 followers."

Chen Nian frowned and shook his head to refuse, "What a fancy thing, Yu Xing just likes to do these messy things, and Bi Sheng, he also follows suit!"

Chen Nian felt very uncomfortable that his old friend Bi Sheng helped his competitor.

Although business competition is business competition, Bi Sheng’s LeTao.com is still using its original office address!

The assistant fell silent. The boss really didn't like this.

Unlike Chen Nian, Yu Xing took his fans exceeding 20 that day very seriously and specifically mentioned the matter at a company meeting.

"I registered this Weibo account just for fun, and posted two pieces of content casually. I didn't expect that there would be so many new followers in the past few days. The company should pay attention to this aspect of publicity."

"Kong Huilin, take a look at the resource docking of the Weibo platform and invest in it if necessary."

"In addition, we also registered an account for our price comparison website and the review we will do at the end of the month to see if we can use the iPhone to attract the attention of potential smartphone users."

Bai Xiaosheng's evaluation team prepared for a while, and the first product chosen for evaluation was Apple's iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G, which China Unicom announced to introduce last month, and its official sales date is October 10.

Because the mainland version is not available for the time being, Bai Xiaosheng will present the overseas version of iPhone 3G at the end of the month, and will make the mainland version of iPhone 3GS when it is officially released.

Liu Hao, the vice president of recruitment who was attending the meeting, listened to these contents and asked curiously: "Is Mr. Yu optimistic about the iPhone?"

"It's not that I'm optimistic about it, it's actually already popular in the overseas market." Yu Xing shook his head, "Compared to Nokia, the experience brought by smartphones like the iPhone is indeed different."

He added: "Weibo has simplified the content of blogs, the iPhone has been introduced to the mainland, and the 3G licenses have been issued this year. I feel that the mobile wave is approaching. This is an opportunity we need to seize."

At this time, Lv Haiying said, "Mr. Yu, I think Sina Weibo seems to be using celebrities to attract users."

Yu Xing smiled and said, "So, I am also a celebrity?"

"Yes, look at your Weibo, there are many users who hope that you will continue to record "If You Are the One."" Lu Haiying said seriously.

She browsed through her senior's Weibo and found that most of them were young viewers of "If You Are the One", and some were from the famous Bai Xiaosheng website, but the latter were obviously weaker than the former.

Yu Xing looked at Liu Hao: "Boss Liu just had a quarrel with Chen Nian a few days ago, and they will have to quarrel again if I go."

Liu Hao laughed and said, "This is what this program likes." Yu Xing nodded slightly, it was indeed the case.

He thought for a few seconds and said, "Not this week. This week is an event for young entrepreneurs in Shanghai. Maybe next week. It will be good for the website to maintain some popularity."

Yu Xing had previously signed up for the "Nongshang Cup" youth economic figure selection, which was hosted by the Shanghai Youth Entrepreneurs Association and media such as Wenhui Daily and China Business News, and the channel was the resources of Today's Capital.

He was not sure whether the activity notified this time was due to the easing of relations caused by the parents' team-building, but it did appear after Liu Jiankai called him again.

It seems that Mr. Xu's anger has eased.

Anyway, on Yu Xing's side, if you don't have it, then don't have it. If you do have it, then go. There's no need to be embarrassed.

The meeting ended and everyone dispersed. Some were busy with recruitment, some were busy with operations, and some were busy with promotions.

Yu Xing took a detour before returning to the office.

A few seconds later, Secretary Zhang Yangxu placed the hot tea on the desk.

Yu Xing smiled at him and felt that he liked this two-faced man more and more.

He drank a few sips, a little distracted, and subconsciously asked, "How is Paulson doing recently?"

As soon as I said this, I suddenly felt something was wrong, as if I shouldn't have asked this question.

Zhang Yangxu was not too surprised. He just felt that his boss was concerned about him. Instead, he replied with a bit of gratitude: "Paulson's fund lost a lot of money because of the fraud of Sino-Forest. The day before yesterday, I saw a news report about him saying that he was optimistic about the price of gold. Bloomberg also reported that Paulson's fund was long gold."

After hearing this, Yu Xing didn't know whether to comment for a moment, as he was now a know-it-all.

"Mr. Yu, do you think I should buy some gold?" Zhang Yangxu asked a small question at this time.

Yu Xing pondered Paulson's operation as a weathervane for a while, and then said after a pause: "Simply put, the economy is not good, and the price of gold will definitely rise in the future, but to what extent will it fall back? This is the question."

"The economy is recovering now, and we can see this from the upward trend of our recruitment business. The rebound in advertising prices is also a signal. It's like a duck knows first when the river water warms in spring."

He glanced at his secretary and smiled, "Of course, you can buy it. It will definitely be cost-effective in the long run. I just wondered about the issue of Paulson's dynamics you mentioned and his views on the price of gold."

Zhang Yangxu asked: "He claims to be the best hedge fund expert, but he doesn't seem to be that amazing. Otherwise, how could he not see through such a crude scam like Sino-Forest?"

He had recently been collecting information as required, and had a comprehensive understanding of Paulson's current situation. He also knew about the Sino-Forest scam, so he felt that this man's halo seemed a bit exaggerated.

Yu Xing smiled and shook his head: "For someone like him who can gain a foothold on Wall Street and has such a reputation, do you think he can't do it? Well, I don't really understand it either. It would be good for you to learn about it when you have time."

Zhang Yangxu nodded silently, thinking that his boss was really kind.

Yu Xing took another sip of tea, stretched his back, and said with a smile: "With the arrival of Mr. Liu, my work pressure has been reduced a lot. Now I need to take care of the reputation of the website."

Zhang Yangxu asked with concern: "Is there no impact on Chimei Electronics' job-hopping?"

Yu Xing shook his head and replied briefly: "Nothing, the department asked me to do it."

The large-scale job-hopping at Chimei Electronics was suppressed with a simple call, but this kind of call from the administrative department must be executed. It is said that the reason is related to the development of the domestic panel industry.

After receiving the call, Yu Xing did not ask any further questions, nor did he show his stubbornness in this regard.

However, this is still a small reminder that Bai Xiaosheng and he personally still need to further improve the threshold of being able to deal with emergencies.

This hidden risk was mentioned when Today Capital first came into contact with it, and it is still very relevant today.

On Sunday morning, Yu Xing did not bring anyone else, only Chairman Song Yufeng, to attend the youth entrepreneurship sharing event. On the way, they were still talking about the shaping of corporate and personal image.

"It seems that I don't have a speaking session today." Yu Xing sat in the passenger seat, thoughtfully, "I called to ask and had a chat, but they didn't give it to me."

Chairman Song Yufeng, who was driving, said with a smile: "There has to be some interaction, and when we interact, let's see how to grab the spotlight."

Yu Xing groaned: "How to steal the spotlight?"

"Scold Chen Nian? Scold Jiahan Forestry?" Song Yufeng suggested, "How about scolding Xu Xin?"

Yu Xing frowned: "What a bad idea you have, I'm not that kind of person."

Song Yufeng complained in his heart, I could never have thought of such an idea before I met you.

Yu Xing thought about it and hinted, "Think of a solution for me when you get to the scene."

Song Yufeng almost laughed out loud: "Brother Xing, what can I think of?"

Yu Xing could only say: "Didn't you charge for travel expenses before?"

Song Yufeng: “…”

This was indeed a title that I had received before I met Brother Xing.

He pondered and said, "Then I'll give it a try."

Half an hour later, the two arrived at the scene.

Song Yufeng first ran out to get some budget, and then went to the hotel front desk to ask for a few red envelopes, but he still felt that this was too simple and crude.

"Brother Xing, who is protecting us here?" Song Yufeng entered the venue and found the boss.

"Director Liu over there, I just talked to him again and wanted to go on stage to speak, but he still couldn't." Yu Xing gestured to the person in front, and then pointed to the host and media director next to him.

Song Yufeng locked onto the target, put on his work badge, and slowly walked over to look for an opportunity to see the target alone.

After about five minutes, he saw Director Liu alone and quickly approached him.

"Hello, Director Liu. I am Song Yufeng, the chairman of Bai Xiaosheng." Song Yufeng shook hands warmly and introduced himself.

Director Liu just said "hmm" softly, knowing that he was here to speak again.

He had just met the president of Bai Xiaosheng, but today's speeches were already arranged and there was no need to make any adjustments.

Director Liu remained calm and planned to reject the person in front of him after listening to a few words.

Some connections have already been used, so what else can I say?

It may be about the significance of youth entrepreneurship, or it may be about supporting graduates’ entrepreneurship.

Or maybe, just keep pestering me.

Hey, no, why are you forcing this red envelope into my pocket?

Director Liu frowned, reached out and patted the man on the shoulder, and said seriously: "Don't do it again next time. At most, I will give you two minutes to adjust. Just say a few words and let everyone get to know each other. That's it."

It’s not easy for young people either. Forget it, I won’t do it again.

(End of this chapter)