Reinventing the Millennium

Li Guoqing was born in Peking University. Two years after graduation, he went into business and started publishing books.

Because of this, when he encountered the Internet, he combined what he was good at with the emerging trend and started a book e-commerce business.

Li Guoqing himself has a lot of resources and connections in the book field, and Amazon has a mature model abroad. Therefore, even during the Internet bubble, he and Yu Yu were able to get investment.

In addition, the prices of offline books are indeed relatively high, and online can bring practical discounts to consumers. Over the past few years, Dangdang's book sales have been quite good, and it has gradually gained a reputation as "the best book purchase on Dangdang."

However, Amazon, which first engaged in books and then expanded to department stores, entered the Chinese market aggressively, which forced Dangdang to deal with it carefully.

Li Guoqing and Yu Yu agreed that under the current circumstances, Dangdang must first maintain the rapid development of its book business before considering other areas.

"Amazon is a giant, and Dangdang is definitely out of business."

"Foreign giants came to China and acquired Excellence. They want money and people. How can we fight this?"

When Eastern Amazon encounters the real Amazon, there are unfavorable voices both inside and outside the company.

Such voices have weakened after the Internet Development Conference in Lin'an, and continue to decrease because of the low competitiveness of Amazon, eBay, and Taobao.

It seems that Amazon and eBay are not that powerful.

Under this situation, Li Guoqing started to think of "attacking as defense" and "accelerating expansion". Anyway, the intensity was not strong and the money was not burned, so Dangdang could still play.

He had a phone call with President Yike who was far away in New York, and initially determined the strategic transformation of Dangdang.com, which would further develop from a book e-commerce to a department store e-commerce, and become the largest B2C e-commerce in the country.

Such a transformation will inevitably require a lot of work, forming more teams, and selecting suitable products.

Considering that Dangdang already has a certain amount of traffic, Li Guoqing feels that the extra publicity efforts can be saved a little, and he can focus on the team and product selection first.

In addition, Dangdang's warehouses in Beijing, Shanghai, and Yangcheng have already been expanded as soon as they received Yike's investment in order to cope with Amazon's offensive. Now they can plan the department store product segment.

Judging from current observations and information obtained, in the past two months, the competitiveness of Amazon, eBay, and Taobao has been in the tens of millions.

Li Guoqing feels that the initial 2 million is enough for the team and product selection, and additional amounts can be controlled in the millions later.

At the same time, he also has his own considerations, and plans to use the media's interest in the richest man in the mainland to gain publicity for nothing.

On August 1, the first day of the new month, Dangdang’s website page launched new categories other than books, and a banner expressed its transformation into department store e-commerce.

That afternoon, Li Guoqing accepted an interview with the media and mentioned the market competition and transformation strategies facing Dangdang.

"Amazon and eBay are indeed powerful, but as Fang Zhuofang said at the Lin'an Internet Conference, e-commerce must be won by the party that better understands the domestic situation. We must have this confidence."

"Mr. Fang is very optimistic about Dangdang's development. He is now an important member of our decision-making team at Dangdang."

"Yike Investment and Dangdang have a close partnership. Mr. Fang and I chatted for a long time on the phone and believed that Dangdang needs to take this step of transformation."

Li Guoqing mentioned the richest man in the Mainland in a few words, as if Dangdang had the judgment, endorsement and financial support from Mr. Fang.

This is actually no problem. The situation is indeed like this - Mr. Fang is indeed optimistic about the development of e-commerce and believes that Dangdang has the opportunity to surpass the constraints of book e-commerce. He is also willing to invest funds to indirectly get involved in e-commerce.

However, Li Guoqing's move to use the mainland's richest man as his traffic password for free sex caused a slightly unexpected reaction in the media.

Who is Mr. Fang?

The heads of two major U.S. listed companies, Sina and Yike, ranked first in the Chinese Forbes mainland rankings, and the initiator who frequently attracts tens of billions of budget investments in semiconductors...

In addition, Mr. Fang responded fiercely to Whitman, president of the global giant eBay, at the Lin'an Internet Conference at the end of May, bluntly stating that eBay would not be the first and last giant to fall in China.

Therefore, when eBay's Chinese team saw the media interview, they immediately reported to the United States, believing that Mr. Fang was standing behind Dangdang and wanted to compete head-on.

eBay still attaches great importance to its Eastern market strategy this time. Otherwise, President Whitman would not come to China in person.

As a result, the report quickly arrived at Whitman's desk.

She was deeply impressed by the rich Chinese man with sonorous words by the West Lake, and she quickly gave him permission to fight, focusing on the categories of Dangdang.com.

eBay began to burn funds at an accelerated pace.

As another international giant entering the Chinese market, Amazon is not too concerned about Dangdang's department store transformation. Its current focus is on the transformation of the acquired Joyo.com.

However, when eBay started to subsidize prices through the acquired eBay, Amazon became alert.

eBay is a global giant!

China's e-commerce is such a big deal. If it eats more, won't it eat less?

eBay is burning, so am I!

Amazon began to burn funds at an accelerated pace.

Alibaba, which raised US$100 million at the beginning of the year, was making a splash in C2C with Taobao. Suddenly it discovered that two foreign giants were starting to engage in price wars. It had food in hand and was not panicking. It even felt like it had been gearing up for a long time.

eBay is burning, Amazon is burning, and I am burning too!

Taobao began to burn funds at an accelerated pace.

In just one week, the funds burned by the three companies were close to the expenses of the previous two months, covering both publicity and category subsidies.

Dangdang:?

Yu Yu:? ?

Li Guoqing:? ? ?

Dangdang.com has been really busy for a week. Yu Yu's design team and Li Guoqing carefully selected products, and suddenly they felt that the competitive situation had changed.

eBay, Amazon, Taobao, why have they become so strange?

The company's management discussed it and decided to immediately increase the budget for department store e-commerce and invest another 6 million. Not to mention that the price is higher than that of the other three companies in similar categories, but it must also maintain a similar level.

Dangdang: Double!

Then--

eBay: Super Double!

Amazon: Super Double!

Taobao: Super double!

For a time, in China's e-commerce market, foreign giants and local companies finally began to compete fiercely head-on after two months of restraint.

From August 1st to August 15th, during the half-month period when Dangdang was transforming into a department store e-commerce, the website added 5 new categories besides books and burned 11 million Huaxia coins that exceeded the budget.

Li Guoqing thought about it and called Mr. Fang again in New York.

"Mr. Fang, we Dangdang.com spent 11 million in the past half month."

Fang Zhuo was shocked: "11 million? Huaxia coins?"

Why is it less than 2 million US dollars!

When Li Guoqing heard this voice, he was thinking about how to explain to investors the sudden smoke of competition. He didn't know why it suddenly aroused.

"Too little. Let's wait and see when it becomes US dollars." Fang Zhuo continued.

Li Guoqing: "..."

US$11 million is all the money Yike invested in Dangdang!

"Mr. Li, how can e-commerce be so exciting without the pain of burning money?" Fang Zhuo advised, "Don't worry, I absolutely support Dangdang in burning money to gain market share. Let Dangdang go ahead and do it."

Li Guoqing ended the call, feeling a little uneasy, but decided to follow the competition again.

I’ve made up one chapter, and I’ll make up another chapter tomorrow.