When will I have a long tassel?

"May I ask Professor Wang if there are any new research results recently?"

As Tang Zifeng spoke, he walked forward, pulled Wang Zijie up from the office swivel chair, sat down, then skillfully picked up the mouse, opened a browser on the computer, read online news, and read the news at the same time. asked.

Wang Zijie pointed at the screen and said, "This is what I have been studying recently!"

"This?" Tang Zifeng had just opened a news item and was stunned when he heard Wang Zijie's words: "A celebrity cheated on his wife and was caught by his wife... How can you, a dignified economics professor, study such vulgar things!"

"You are the only one who is vulgar! You have been vulgar since you were a child!" Wang Zijie was furious. "Who told you about the content of the news? I mean, I recently studied the Internet economy."

Tang Zifeng turned his head, looked at Wang Zijie with a mixture of surprise and appreciation, and said, "Internet economy? No way, you actually study such cutting-edge things?"

"What do you know!" Wang Zijie walked away from the desk, came to the sofa, sat down and said leisurely: "You know, the 21st century is the information century, and the most promising industry is the Internet. What are you doing? Machine tools are a sunset industry that won’t be around for a few more days. I’m telling you, you’d better stop being the executive deputy as soon as possible, come back and put the company in order, and let’s start the Internet.”

Tang Zifeng smiled and said: "It doesn't matter whether I am the executive deputy or not. Doesn't Professor Wang want to be a professor too?"

"Why?" Wang Zijie said, "On the Internet, content is king. Without me, a professor, to write articles for you, what would you use to fool netizens?"

"So, you are planning to set up an academic website?" Tang Zifeng asked.

"That's not true." Wang Zijie's tone softened a bit, and he said: "Laoba, I'm not kidding you, I really think the Internet is a bit messy. At present, the Internet in China has just started. You may also read If you don’t know the prospects of this industry, let me tell you..."

"No, no, you don't need to popularize this." Tang Zifeng couldn't laugh or cry. It's really ridiculous for a country bumpkin in 1998 to learn about the future of the Internet with a time traveler from the 5G era.

"Lao Qi, just tell me, what are you going to do? The most popular thing in China now is to build a portal website, don't you want to start one too? Xiao Zhang and Xiao Ding are both playing with foreign venture capital. , Our little family really can't stand the trouble." Tang Zifeng said with a smile.

Wang Zijie said: "I have analyzed this issue, and portals are indeed a good direction. I have seen a prediction that by the year 2000, the revenue from information services on the Internet will reach 32 billion U.S. dollars, and every two years thereafter. It will double. Now Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, and Lycos are all spending a lot of money to grab this market. Domestic China Bit, Oriental Netscape, Yinghaiwei, and China Yellow Pages are also squeezing in this door. I heard that Foreign valuations of these domestic websites have reached hundreds of millions of dollars.

"But, you're right. These websites have received foreign venture capital. Now they are burning money like crazy and advertising all over the place. I feel sorry for them. I asked my students to calculate the accounts for them. , some of the most popular websites burn five to six million in advertising fees a month, and our little money is not enough to cover the first half of the year."

"That's it." Tang Zifeng said, "In the final analysis, what these people are playing is a capital game. They rely on burning money to attract venture capital. Once they get the venture capital, they continue to burn it in order to attract more venture capital. What? When the capital chain can't keep up, it will be useless. We are in the industry, don't fool around with these karate people."

Tang Zifeng in his previous life did not experience the domestic Internet boom in the late 1990s, but he knew that by 2020, the best Internet companies in China would not be the ones that were popular in the late 1990s. The early Internet business model proved to be unsustainable after entering the new century. Instead, BAT caught up from behind and achieved great success.

Precisely because he knew this, Tang Zifeng had not paid much attention to the current Internet, but unexpectedly Wang Zijie set his sights on this emerging industry.

"It costs too much to build a portal website. What do you think about us building an e-commerce website?" Wang Zijie asked.

"An e-commerce website..." Tang Zifeng thought for a while, shook his head and said, "It's a bit early, and it will take a few years to do it."

"Why?" Wang Zijie asked.

Tang Zifeng said: "It's very simple. E-commerce mainly relies on two aspects, one is payment and the other is logistics. Only when these two problems are solved can e-commerce develop. In terms of logistics, the current postal service can also be used. But the speed of the postal service is too slow, especially when sending packages. It is not surprising that it takes ten days and half a month. How can customers afford to wait? As for payment, there is also a big problem. Online payment in foreign countries relies on credit cards, but in our country Credit cards are not popular, and we have to wait until... something develops."

When he said the last sentence, he almost didn't say Bao Bao's name, and the words came to his mouth with a sudden slur, which was regarded as vague. Wang Zijie has been dating Tang Zifeng for a long time, and has become accustomed to thinking about what Tang Zifeng said, so he won't care about what Tang Zifeng said. He praised: "That's right, Lao Ba, your understanding of e-commerce is already deeper than most of the professors in our school. I also thought about it for a long time before I figured out these two issues, and you actually understood them all at once. Speak out."

"Meat eaters are despicable, what do those professors know?" Tang Zifeng unceremoniously demoted all the professors, and then said: "Now that you understand this, why are you so anxious to start e-commerce now? You won't be able to do it in a few years. ?"

Wang Zijie said: "I was actually inspired by my dad about this. He is now in charge of the company's sales. Some schools in Beijing wanted to buy our books. I asked him to send them to the post office, but he said it would be better for him to drive there. Now he has three people who are responsible for delivering books to various schools in Beijing. Because he delivers them in time, many schools ask us to help purchase teaching aids. As a result, he now takes more time to deliver other teaching aids than to send us himself. There’s still plenty of time for books.”

"I bet, Uncle Wang is planning to set up a courier company." Tang Zifeng laughed.

In fact, Tang Zifeng also heard his father Tang Lin talk about Wang Zijie's father, Wang Chongshou, delivering books to various schools, but he didn't know much about it.

Feihai's previous flagship product was the "53" product for senior high school students. Later, on this basis, it developed other teaching aids for other students, which can be regarded as specifically serving the market of primary and secondary schools.

Feihai Company's books are sold nationwide. Some of the sales in other places are sold directly by the company, and more are sold through the channels of Xinhua Bookstore. In the capital, it is completely direct sales, that is, primary and secondary schools place orders directly with Feihai Company. The company then ships to these schools.

The company's delivery methods are: one is for the school to pick up the goods, and the other is to send them through the post office. For the former method, many schools said it was too troublesome, while for the latter method, there was a problem of delayed delivery by the post office, and there were even cases where the post office lost the package.

Seeing this situation, Wang Chongshou proposed that he drive himself to deliver goods to various schools. He originally learned to drive a tractor when he was farming in his hometown. After arriving in the capital, at the instigation of Tang Zifeng, he and Tang Lin took the driver's license test together. They each bought a Jetta and drove them to and from get off work every day.

People who have just learned to drive are very addicted to cars and wish they could do something that requires driving. Delivery is something that happens to require driving. Wang Chongshou proposed this plan not so much to solve the company's difficulties, but to find a reasonable excuse to indulge in car addiction.

In this way, Wang Chongshou and three people became the company's delivery boys. When schools call to place orders, Wang Chongshou drives his car to deliver the goods. At the fastest time, less than an hour after the customer put down the phone, the book here was delivered, which gave the customer an unexpected surprise.

After discovering the advantages of Feihai's timely delivery, some schools tried to find out if they could help them purchase some other teaching aids from bookstores in the Book City. After all, the largest bookstore in Beijing is on Haidian Street. For some schools in the east and south, it is more troublesome to go to Haidian.

Of course, Feihai will not refuse such a request, because this kind of effort will help consolidate customer relationships. Over time, Feihai Company actually became a professional purchasing agent for many schools, and Wang Chongshou's logistics business also became quite famous.

After Wang Zijie introduced the background to Tang Zifeng, he said: "I heard from my dad that buying books on behalf of others is actually profitable. Bookstores offer huge wholesale discounts, and most of these discounts must be reserved for the school. However, if we deduct a small amount, such as 10%, the school will agree to it. After all, we have also put in the work. The 10% discount may not seem like much, but if the scale becomes larger, it will be very considerable. .

"In addition, some schools don't know what new teaching aids are available in the bookstore. Sometimes my dad will take some samples from the bookstore and show them to those schools. Those schools will see which books they like, and then ask my dad and them to come back and purchase them. I I was thinking that it would be most appropriate to do this kind of thing through the Internet. We can take photos of the books in the bookstore and put them online for various schools to choose.

"If they like it, we will help them buy it and send it to them. Payment and other issues will not be a problem, and the logistics problem will be solved. Do you think this is e-commerce?"

"This is really a good idea!" Tang Zifeng's eyes lit up. Isn't this the business model that Brother Qiang did in later generations? Build your own logistics system and speed up delivery. This alone can leave behind all the budding e-commerce websites in China.