From Taobao intern to the father of Pinduoduo

Chapter 32 Negative News

For the next period of time, Yang Xiaofang and the new employees worked out together.

She works full-time in customer service, while her aunt is in charge of the packaging work, which requires little skill and only requires careful attention.

Although the auntie occasionally fills in the wrong tracking number or sends the wrong package, Yang Xiaofang herself has worked as a packer and knows that such mistakes are inevitable, so she is tolerant and understanding.

With someone sharing the workload, Yang Xiaofang finally had the time to calm down and properly run the shop.

She went to see Factory Director Mao with sincerity to ask how to create tags and how to do direct traffic promotion. She also received guidance from Factory Director Mao to focus on the hosiery category.

Just as Yang Xiaofang was busy and happy every day, scanning the rankings to catch sellers who stole pictures and reporting them whenever she had a spare moment, watching her income in her account increase day by day, her Taobao chat suddenly beeped.

A buyer sent a message, immediately launching into insults: "Is this the shop that specializes in selling these shameless stockings? You shameless bastards, why don't you go to a brothel? Your whole family must be brothels!"

Even though Yang Xiaofang usually has a good attitude, she couldn't help but blush and feel angry. She immediately started arguing with this uncouth buyer.

What struck her as odd was that throughout the day, several buyers inexplicably came to verbally abuse her. Completely baffled, Yang Xiaofang finally managed to get the answer from a long-time customer.

A long-time client sent Yang Xiaofang a link. Clicking on it led her to the homepage of Sohu's portal website. A striking news headline caught her eye: **Immoral and Immoral: Multiple Women Arrested for Illegal Prostitution in a Certain District of Hangzhou**.

This news was prominently displayed on the homepage of Sohu News. The crackdown on prostitution had caused a huge stir, so it's not surprising it made the front page—the large number of arrests aligned with political correctness and generated considerable buzz.

The accompanying picture on the homepage showed a group of beautifully dressed and fashionable girls with their heads down and faces covered, being escorted away by the police. This wouldn't have been a big deal, but what made Yang Xiaofang's heart sink and her panic instantly was that although the girls' clothes were all different, they were all wearing pearlescent stockings.

This is bad news.

Yang Xiaofang didn't dare to delay and immediately informed Director Mao of the discovery.

……

In a private room, Lin Mu was checking the recent revenue against the ledger, while Factory Manager Mao and Li Zhi sat beside him.

Lin Mu first looked through Li Zhi's account books.

After a strong start with 40,000 orders in the first month, Li Ge's store saw a decline in sales in the second month, dropping to 30,000 orders. In the third month, sales dropped slightly to 20,000 orders before stabilizing and fluctuating between 20,000 and 25,000 orders.

This shows that Brother Li's shop has successfully handled the traffic brought in from Baidu Tieba, maintained user retention, and even turned many customers into regular customers.

Besides the popular silk underwear, Li Zhi has recently launched several new products, all of which have sold quite well, with the combined sales of these products reaching two to three thousand units per month. However, they seem somewhat inconspicuous compared to the dazzling success of the silk underwear.

Brother Li's shop has a monthly turnover of 78 yuan.

After reviewing Li Zhi's ledger, Lin Mu then turned to Director Mao's Spring Diary. The monthly sales of the Spring Diary's water-gloss stockings had surged to 6000 units, while the monthly sales of the pearlescent stockings had reached 10,000 units, bringing the total monthly sales of both types to 16,000 units.

Besides sales to consumers (C-end), pearlescent stockings have also become incredibly popular on the business (B-end). Driven by Yang Xiaofang's Cat Sister Clothing Store, dozens of professional Taobao sellers have come to her for supplies, and countless small sellers offering dropshipping services have also joined in as distributors. Currently, the monthly wholesale volume on the B-end has reached 1 pieces.

Of course, a wholesale volume of 1 pieces is just a drop in the ocean in a physical wholesale market. But this is only the result of less than two months, and the market potential of this category still needs time to slowly unfold.

Lin Mu knew that the stockings sub-category in later generations could reach a market size of around 250 million. Although the market size in 2008 was not comparable to that of later generations, it was more than enough to capture a considerable market share.

He estimates that by the end of the year, the cumulative sales of pearlescent stockings will exceed 100 million pieces.

Factory Director Mao also shared some good news with him: pearlescent stockings have become a hit both online and offline, with many local wholesale merchants coming to him to source products, seeing the popularity of this category. If they can open up channels in the offline wholesale market, convenience stores and supermarkets will follow suit, and these two channels are major distributors.

Lin Mu also receives a share of these offline transactions. However, there are too many intricacies involved in offline business, and countless people want a cut.

Although Taobao's rules are strict, the tricks and schemes of the offline world are far more treacherous than Taobao's, with even deeper pitfalls.

To this end, Lin Mu and Factory Director Mao signed a supplementary agreement specifically regarding commissions on offline sales: Lin Mu would only contribute his creative ideas as equity and receive 2% of the profit sharing rights.

After exchanging pleasantries, the atmosphere in the private room suddenly became serious; it was time to get down to business.

Factory Director Mao's expression was serious as he said in a deep voice, "President Lin, you know about the incident on the Sohu News homepage, right?"

Lin Mu nodded seriously and said in a deep voice, "Yes, I've seen it. This time, we've been caught in an undeserved disaster."

Factory Director Mao gritted his teeth and said, "I asked around and found the editor-in-chief of Sohu. He quoted a price—20 yuan. As long as I pay him 20 yuan, he will give this news a cold shoulder and slowly suppress it."

At this point, she could no longer contain her agitation, her voice filled with indignation: "How is this any different from extortion? So many of us work day and night, and we can't even earn a net profit of 20 yuan a month! And he just asks for 20 yuan right off the bat. This is a business with no investment; how is it any different from outright robbery? I think they're deliberately taking advantage of us!"

After venting his anger, Factory Director Mao quickly calmed down and voiced his most pressing concerns, his tone urgent: "President Lin, this news is too dangerous. If it creates a stereotype that only people in certain professions wear pearlescent stockings, it will be devastating for our product category and our brand. So I want to resolve this matter as soon as possible, not even a day can be wasted, even if it costs 20 yuan. I'm here today to ask for your opinion."

Lin Mu looked at Factory Director Mao, a hint of admiration in his eyes. She truly was a tough woman who had fought her way up in the business world; even without professional crisis management skills, her keen sense of risk was exceptionally rare.