Wall Street Legend

Chapter 249 Logistics Management (24)

Bill Campbell is a smart man, and he is clearly aware of the threat Ye Dongqing poses to the current board of directors.

It is precisely because of this that the old man persuaded other people to try to join forces to create problems for him. It was a silent deterrent. At least he felt that it was a deterrent. Tim Cook was just a player in this power struggle. He was just a victim. In fact, Old Campbell also felt that Cook's ability was quite good, but he was too close to Ye Dongqing.

As an independent director of Apple, taking a long-term view is likely to bring them tens of millions of dollars in benefits in the future. As long as the company's performance is good enough, they can arrange shares and cash for themselves within a reasonable range. Who is willing to hand over such tempting power to others? Ye Dongqing may not care about this kind of money, but tens of millions of dollars is not a small amount of money no matter where you put it.

The reason for today's dispute also involves the selfishness of the directors. There are too many independent directors in Apple these days. They care more about their own interests than the interests of the company and other shareholders. It can be considered a part-time job. There are so many noble people who are selfless and dedicated.

Now this group of independent directors is comfortable, and the power lies with the board of directors. As long as there are no internal conflicts, most of Apple's decisions are made by them. Seeing that Ye Dongqing's shares are increasing, , it is normal for Campbell to be anxious. Speaking of which, he is the top decision-maker of Apple. A group of directors like to make decisions according to his ideas. Power is addictive. Every time there is a change of office, he will find a way to make those who like to work against him Guy kicked out, and now the situation is about to be broken.

Jobs no longer agreed with his ideas. As the majority shareholder, Ye Dongqing would not let him control him. Until now, Campbell Sr. was still thinking about how to succeed and continue to limit Ye Dongqing's influence...

I don’t know yet whether the trouble has been resolved or whether Jobs can convince the directors. When Ye Dongqing was in the office earlier, he clearly noticed that Jobs didn’t seem to want the board of directors’ appointment method to be changed.

I don't mean to regard him as an enemy because of this. As a CEO, it's normal to be worried about the expansion of the power of major shareholders. Thinking from his perspective, if he were in the situation that Jobs is facing now, he would naturally not want to balance the situation. Break, just like the separation of powers system in the United States, it is more stable with restraint. However, his idea is different. Ye Dongqing does not want to break the development plan for Apple because of these messy things. He is confident that he can manage it by himself. This will take the company to new heights.

With so many companies in hand, it’s impossible to just focus on Apple.

Far away in China, Boni Ma from Tencent called him in the early morning and told him that he had already thought of a name for the online mall, which was called Penguin Supermarket. It sounded pretty good and the development of the program was already in progress. Ye Dongqing needs to provide a sum of 30 million US dollars in low-interest funds for development.

This was just a small matter. Ye Dongqing immediately agreed and replied that he would let someone from Tamsui Investment Group contact him to discuss the loan procedures. He had told Boni before that he was willing to lend money to Tencent. The development of online shopping business is now just fulfilling the promise made at that time.

After a brief discussion, he called Mr. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon Mall, and asked him if he could send a few experts to China to help with planning, and expressed his willingness to cooperate in the future.

Ye Dongqing’s cooperation with Amazon is much simpler than that of Apple. The Amazon shares he holds do not threaten Bezos. In fact, Mr. Bezos is happy to do business with Ye Dongqing because Facebook The current user base can be of great help to Amazon.

It seems easier for FB to expand the market, just like in the UK. Amazon originally encountered some resistance when opening up the UK market, but since launching a two-week promotion through FB, the number of users has increased by more than 400,000 in a short period of time. It quickly got off to a very good start. Of course, the advertising fees that should be paid should still go to Facebook. Ye Dongqing helped him get a discount. In this way, Bezos owed him a big favor for helping Ye Dongqing. A little busy work is no problem.

In addition, eBay has gone to expand the Chinese market to help support local industries, which can also be regarded as weakening Amazon's current competitor eBay. Considering Tencent's ownership structure, there is nothing to be taboo about. Everyone knows that Ye Dongqing is also Amazon's major shareholder. one.

The matter was finalized in a few words. At this time, Mr. Bezos told Ye Dongqing: Leo, we are encountering some problems now, although the door-to-door delivery speed is much faster than that of the United States Postal Service or FedEx and other transportation companies. , I mean big companies, but customers are still very dissatisfied. They need faster transportation channels, which will cost a lot of money to achieve, and the cost of delivery is not small.

We originally planned to cooperate with FedEx. They have ready manpower and the freight volume is not high, but the price is very high, which means that unless we put in the money ourselves, we will only increase the cost of transportation for customers, but it’s ninety-nine Shipping is free in U.S. dollars, and customers generally won’t pay extra for shipping. Do you have any good solutions?

The two often talk on the phone, and Ye Dongqing can often come up with some good ideas, which makes Mr. Bezos accustomed to asking him questions.

Amazon's main business is to purchase various goods from suppliers and then store them in major logistics centers. Once a customer purchases the goods, they will find them from the warehouse, package them and transport them to the location marked on the order. This link does not Troublesome, but the price is very high. This year, it is expected that consumers will receive about 400 million U.S. dollars in transportation subsidies. Last year, the figure for this link was 240 million U.S. dollars.

The reduction of warehousing and logistics costs is very critical for e-commerce companies. The key factor why Amazon has been able to turn losses into profits in the past two years is also the reduction of warehousing and logistics costs.

From 1999 to 2003, Amazon reintegrated its warehousing and logistics system, causing the proportion of external transportation costs in sales revenue to drop from 13.8% to 9.7%. Order execution costs, that is, call center operations , order processing, warehousing, receipt, delivery and payment system costs accounted for 9.1% of sales revenue from a peak of 15%.

Ye Dongqing is not God. He doesn’t know much about this area. He replied: “Send the data and I will help you think of a solution after reading it. But in my opinion, the only two options are optimizing the cargo management system and using robots to help.” A way to reduce costs. The fewer people you hire, the lower the costs...