Chapter 175: Chapter 162: Registrations Surpass 10 Million! The Courier Involution War Begins

The deal with Meiters Express was a contract price set by headquarters, but the drivers still got a 10-cent commission per order.

Before, they only picked up a few dozen orders a day. If the company had only given them a 10-cent commission then, they would have cursed their boss and his ancestors for eighteen generations.

But now, things were different!

Meiters was getting tens of thousands of orders a day, for a guaranteed minimum of one million orders a month!

The commission alone was 100,000 yuan!

Split three ways, each of them could take home over 30,000!

Hauling packages back to the sorting center every day required at least a dozen trips. It was exhausting and difficult work, but the thought of the handsome reward instantly filled the three of them with energy.

"Brother Bin, think you can make it to the second floor?" the remaining delivery man asked with a sly grin.

"I could make it to the third! Let’s go. We’ll take this load back to the sorting center first."

Gu Wenbin gritted his teeth and stood up, his limbs feeling as if they were filled with lead and his muscles aching with soreness.

Cloud Speed Express had directly slashed the base shipping fee for e-commerce orders under 2.5 kilograms to just three yuan.

Any client shipping over 100 orders a day could enjoy this special contract price.

This news quickly traveled from Hu City to Hang City.

Taobao shop owners around Yiwu did the math and realized that by switching their partner courier to Cloud Speed, they could save 1.5 to 2 yuan in costs per order.

For a merchant with over 100 orders a day, that meant savings of 5,000 to 6,000 yuan a month.

In 2011, this was no small sum!

For a time, the business volume at Cloud Speed’s Yiwu stations grew explosively.

In a single day, they signed dozens of contract price partnerships and even secured the warehouse and distribution services for Pot King and Huiqisi Department Store. Their couriers were stationed directly in the clients’ warehouses, loading packaged goods onto trucks for the logistics center as soon as they were ready.

Cloud Speed, originally just an obscure little courier company, had ridden Pinbei’s coattails to sudden fame in the e-commerce and logistics industries.

Faced with Cloud Speed’s sudden price drop, the station bosses of the "Three Passes and One Reach," Tiantian, Guofeng, and Speed Peak grew anxious. Most of them were franchisees responsible for their own profits and losses, and now many of their clients were flocking to Cloud Speed.

How were they supposed to make money?

So they all called their respective headquarters, wanting the companies to step in and warn Cloud Speed against this "no-profit, kill-the-competition" behavior.

Soon, Shentong’s boss, Chen Dejun, got Liao Wei’s phone number and called him, fuming. "Boss Liao, you can’t do business like this! If you keep this up, none of us will make any money!"

"Boss Chen, a misunderstanding! It’s all a misunderstanding! The three-yuan price is Cloud Speed’s contract rate for medium-to-large-sized merchants. The people under me misinterpreted it. I’ll put a stop to it right away," Liao Wei said evasively, trying to laugh it off.

He was trying to placate Chen Dejun first, then snatch another wave of customers before dealing with the fallout!

"Boss Liao, I don’t care if you meant to or not, but don’t be the one to stick your neck out! If you touch everyone’s piece of the pie, don’t expect Cloud Speed to have an easy time!"

Chen Dejun didn’t care about any of that. Whether Cloud Speed’s price cut targeted small sellers or medium-to-large merchants, it was, in essence, stealing food from everyone’s bowl.

He couldn’t stand for it!

"Boss Chen, you can’t put it that way. This is just reasonable competition. You all can eat this pie, but I can’t?"

Ever since latching onto Chen Yansen, Liao Wei had grown bold.

Seeing that he couldn’t fool Chen Dejun, his tone instantly hardened.

Shentong might be a minor giant in the industry, but he, Liao Wei, wasn’t afraid. He lacked neither money nor business.

’If Chen Dejun wanted a fight, he’d see it through to the end!’

"Fuck!" Chen Dejun swore as he slammed down the phone.

He then convened Shentong’s senior management to study a corporate strategy to counter Cloud Speed’s price cuts.

But in a price war, the only weapon is price.

Before 5:00 PM that day, all Shentong stations nationwide received a notice: for clients with over 500 daily orders, a three-yuan base shipping fee would be implemented, matching Cloud Speed.

This was an attempt to stabilize their large and medium-sized key account clients!

When companies like Huitong, Yuantong, and Yunda heard the news, they had no choice but to follow suit.

The cutthroat involution of the express delivery industry, stirred up by Chen Yansen, had actually begun seven years ahead of schedule!

At this point, it all came down to who had more capital, more stations, and greater business volume. After all, the more packages you picked up, the lower the per-unit cost, and the more pronounced your advantage.

「Meanwhile.」

Chen Yansen walked out of Building 8 and entered Building 6, where Pinbei was located. He held a short meeting with the heads of various departments, and finally looked at Xu Xingxing and said:

"Talk to the park management. Have them rent out that empty half of the cafeteria to us. The administration department can hire a team of chefs. From now on, Pinbei and Orange Technology will handle their own three meals a day."

The food in the Science and Technology Park’s cafeteria was terrible. Except for a few employees who weren’t picky eaters, most people took the shuttle bus to eat at the East Gate of Xuyuan.

But as the number of employees grew, the restaurants there had long lines every day at noon, wasting a lot of time.

"Understood, President Chen." In a formal setting, Xu Xingxing didn’t dare call him "Class President" anymore, switching to the more appropriate title.

As for the suggestion of running their own cafeteria, employees had actually brought it up long ago.

Xu Xingxing left the conference room and immediately went to find the park manager to discuss it.

"Alright, but you’ll have to get all the relevant permits in order. Otherwise, if something happens, I can’t take the responsibility," the park manager reminded her in a low voice.

The fire safety, environmental protection, health, and food service permits—not a single one could be missing.

Given the influence of Pinbei and Orange Technology in Xucheng, the park manager didn’t dare refuse. Otherwise, if they moved to another park, he’d have to find a new tenant for the empty office building.

"Great, it’s settled then. I’ll have our legal department send over the lease agreement." Having received a satisfactory answer, Xu Xingxing left the park manager’s office with a smile.

"Sigh! Those idiots in the cafeteria. They don’t even know how to make money when it’s right in front of them."

After Xu Xingxing left, the park manager couldn’t help but complain.

Even college students couldn’t stand it, which just went to show how terrible the food at the Science and Technology Park’s cafeteria was.

At 6:00 PM sharp, the official Weibo account of the "21st Century E-commerce Evening News" suddenly published a sales report on Pinbei’s first day online.

million registered users!

1.8 million orders!

Over 100 million in single-day sales!

This news instantly sent shockwaves through the industry.

Many people knew Pinbei was launching, but no one expected it to achieve such brilliant results right out of the gate.

The top-level access points on QQ and WeChat certainly drove massive traffic, but it still required a quality product to convert that traffic into such performance.

’Over 100 million in a single day?’ Liu Qiangdong felt a sour taste in his mouth when he heard the news. He had struggled for over a decade just to barely get Jingdong’s daily sales to 300-400 million.

Ma Liyun of Ah Li frowned when he learned of it.

At the time of the FoxTao acquisition, sixty percent of the mid-level managers had chosen to resign.

But most of them were sophomores, juniors, or recent graduates. He hadn’t thought much of them at all.

The acquisition agreement stipulated that Chen Yansen was not to enter the shopping guide e-commerce sector for five years.

He never expected the kid to pivot to vertical e-commerce and do so well with it.

However, after mulling it over, Ma Liyun didn’t pay it too much mind.

After all, Pinbei’s current scale was too small. Compared to Ah Li, it was like a tiny, insignificant ant.

Meanwhile, inside Pinbei, at 10:00 PM that night, they were celebrating a new milestone: cumulative registered users had surpassed 10 million, and single-day sales had broken 200 million!

This time, new users brought in by group buying and the "zero-dollar bargain" feature accounted for 30% of the total. The share from QQ and WeChat channels dropped to 47%, with the rest coming from paid advertising.