From Taobao intern to the father of Pinduoduo

Chapter 27 Alibaba Mama

After giving his instructions, Lin Mu stood up from his workstation, turned his neck, and stretched his muscles.

He thought to himself that half a month had passed since the pearlescent stockings were put on the shelves, and the monthly sales of the pearlescent stockings had reached 3000 pieces, and the daily sales were trending towards 300 pieces a day. At this rate, it was not impossible for the monthly sales to reach seven or eight thousand pieces.

This is because the first batch of KOLs cannot immediately drive purchases among their acquaintances; it takes time for the effect to gradually take hold.

Lin Mu reviewed the financial situation and found that the pearlescent stockings alone were generating a monthly revenue of 45 yuan. Driven by the label, the rhinestone stockings were also approaching 4000 units sold per month.

And that's not all; the momentum on the B2B side is also quite good. Because these two products have surged to the first and second positions on the sub-category rankings, they have attracted a number of Taobao sellers to search for suppliers on Alibaba, and several Taobao sellers are now sourcing products from these suppliers to sell.

However, those few scattered sellers were all small-scale operations, and the only one who could be considered to be seriously treating this as a career was Yang Xiaofang.

Therefore, we should focus on supporting Yang Xiaofang, this distributor, like investing heavily in a promising business. If she can succeed, she can boost wholesale volume by at least tenfold.

Lin Mu thought for a moment, wondering if he should teach her how to use keyword bidding.

Then he reconsidered, thinking that this wouldn't work. Keyword bidding is expensive, and if it were to become successful, a bunch of Taobao sellers would compete for those few keywords, which would only drive up the price of the keywords and cause them to bid against each other, resulting in more harm than good.

Are there any other ways to find another marketing channel? Taobao has many marketing channels. In later years, Taobao sellers said that Taobao has a thousand ways to sell traffic and reap the profits from merchants. This trend was already very obvious in 2008.

Just then, two people walked by in the rest area. One of them said to his companion, "Hey, have you heard? Alibaba's Alimama team has been promoting a new product lately."

Another person said, "Is it that Korean-style cartoon T-shirt, 9.9 yuan a piece, sold on Taobao Mall through an Alimama store, distributed to various personal websites, and sold over 800 pieces on its first day?"

"That's right, it's all thanks to Aunt Wu (her nickname). It has nothing to do with those people from Taobao Mall. They're even trying to pat themselves on the back."

In the rest area, the two walked away, whispering to each other.

Lin Mu recalled that in 2008, Alimama was integrated into Taobao. The story of Alimama is quite a legendary one.

In 2006, Taobao and eBay were locked in a fierce battle, and Jack Ma wanted to acquire AdChina, a leading Chinese internet company. The initial offer was $2 million, but AdChina refused and raised the price to $4 million.

At that time, Alibaba only had $6 million in cash in its company account, and the first round of negotiations ended in failure. In the second round of financing, Alibaba had $17 billion in its account, but by then, Goodye had already been acquired by Focus Media. Knowing that Alibaba had just raised funds, Focus Media raised its offer to $10 billion. Jack Ma was furious; if they couldn't afford to buy it, they'd just do it themselves.

So he invested 200 million yuan to have Wu Yongming, one of his eighteen arhats, known by the nickname Wu Ma, create Ali Mama.

According to rumors, Jack Ma told Wu Ma that he would invest 200 million yuan, and Wu Ma and her team could personally invest, holding 30% to 40% of the shares. However, they would have to resign from Alibaba, not hold any positions within Alibaba, and not receive Alibaba's salary or benefits. The entire team would operate independently. If successful, Alibaba Mama would be merged into Alibaba and given high-value equity incentives.

So Wu Ma led her technical team on a difficult entrepreneurial journey.

According to rumors, during the team's most difficult period, team members had a weekly food budget of only 10 yuan and could only stay in the cheapest triple rooms at night.

To save money on servers, they sourced 2700 nearly obsolete servers from within Alibaba, and after some technical integration, they managed to make do with them.

Within just 100 days of its launch, Alimama attracted 150,000 small and medium-sized websites and 300,000 individual bloggers. Later, Alimama was integrated into Alibaba, launching the Taobao strategy and helping Alibaba achieve a balance between revenue and expenditure. At its peak, it provided 60% of the entire Alibaba Group's revenue.

Lin Mu thought to himself, how could he have forgotten such a useful tool? Not only can Taobao sellers become distributors, but the hundreds of thousands of Taobao affiliates on Alibaba's Alimama platform can also become individual distributors.

Lin Mu thought for a moment. First, he asked Factory Manager Mao to study Alibaba's Alimama and discuss with the team a commission rate for Taobao affiliates. Second, he could also teach distributors how to use Alimama to generate revenue.

Compared to using Taobao's direct traffic bidding or keyword bidding, using Alibaba's marketing platform, Alimama, has a significant advantage: it can acquire external traffic, build brand awareness, and make the product category known to the public. This contrasts sharply with on-site marketing, which is confined to the small circle of Taobao and operates relatively independently.

Without hesitation, Lin Mu immediately called Director Mao back.

……

Meanwhile, on Yang Xiaofang's side...

Yang Xiaofang received the optimized copy from Factory Director Mao. Intrigued, she wanted to see what surprises this person, whom Factory Director Mao called an expert, could bring her. Soon, she saw the two optimized titles and slogans that Factory Director Mao sent via QQ. She compared her original title with the optimized new one, one by one.

Old title: New pearlescent stockings, women's thin stockings, disco stockings, for clubbing.

New title: 2008 European style pearlescent stockings for women, thin, anti-snagging, slimming, and versatile for spring and summer.

Old title: Rhinestone stockings, sexy rhinestone stockings, skin-hugging and slimming, new arrival.

New title: Hot-selling rhinestone stockings for women, sparkling rhinestones, non-irritating, a must-have for nightclubs and dates, anti-snagging thin style.

Yang Xiaofang was greatly impressed; the slogan was truly masterful.

After making all the necessary preparations, Yang Xiaofang decisively put the products on the shelves and then waited anxiously for order notifications.

To save costs, she didn't hire a dedicated customer service representative, or even a packing staff. Seriously? With a small business like hers, she naturally had to do the work of three people. She was there to make money, not to be a hands-off manager.

Yang Xiaofang kept Director Mao's instructions firmly in mind, turning the notification sound on Wangwang (a Chinese instant messaging platform) to the maximum and staying in front of the computer for as long as possible, never letting go of any buyer's inquiry.

Generally speaking, buyers with the strongest purchasing desire never actively ask sellers questions; they simply place an order as soon as they see something they like.

The next level of buyers will contact customer service, asking questions such as whether shipping is included, whether the price can be lowered, and whether there are any promotional offers. These buyers still have a strong willingness to pay, and with a little patient communication, a deal can usually be made.

Furthermore, if they hit it off, this customer may become a repeat customer and make repeated purchases.

It's important to understand that when users make repeat purchases, they directly click on the store's order from their past purchases. This saves them money on buying traffic and directly increases net profit.

While anxiously awaiting news, Yang Xiaofang idly read a novel. Entertainment options in 2008 were limited; videos were often choppy due to slow internet speeds, so people preferred reading novels and listening to music online.

Yang Xiaofang is an upright, kind, beautiful and compassionate user of the official website. She loves reading novels on Qidian Reading. In addition to reading, she also comments on her favorite works and votes for the authors with monthly tickets.

Just as Yang Xiaofang was flipping through the book, a crisp "ding-dong" sound rang out, which was undoubtedly a heavenly sound to her.