Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

”I used my intern salary to buy my mom a Qingcheng D1S. She gave me an earful, but she was smiling the whole time.”

”Aww... My mom was the same way. I’m teaching her how to use the Orange C3 right now.”

”How did you all get your phones so fast?”

”Order it on Kuai Pao! It gets delivered in under half an hour!” a user from Yanjing commented.

”Damn it! We don’t even have Kuai Pao here. Another flex from Master Jing,” a user from Xiyue said through gritted teeth.

”I’m in Zhou Lai. I got my Qingcheng D1S at 4:30 this afternoon.”

”Jinling here. The Kuai Pao riders are incredible!”

”@KuaiPaoCEO President Pei Yi, when are you coming to Shencheng City? The Orange Phone Factory is in Shencheng City, but we users here always have to wait until the next day to get our orders!”

As more users joined the discussion, the phrase ”Orange Mobile Phone half-hour delivery” quickly shot to the top of the trending charts.

”Central warehouses, pre-positioned warehouses... turning e-commerce into a delivery model? It’s useless. It only works for specific categories. Setting up so many pre-positioned warehouses is just a waste of manpower and resources, isn’t it?”

Far away in Hang City, Ma Liyun heard the news and had much the same reaction as before, scoffing at the idea.

Compared to courier and logistics speeds in Europe and America, domestic delivery was already fast. There was no need to spend a fortune building thousands of pre-positioned warehouses all over the country just to shorten delivery times.

What he didn’t know, however, was that Kuai Pao’s pre-positioned warehouses were located right inside Clound Speed’s terminal stations. The two companies could share infrastructure, making the costs far lower than Ma Liyun imagined.

In Yanjing, Liu Qiangdong sat in his office, privately wondering if he could reduce Jingdong Logistics’ delivery times to a single day, or even half a day. He could use their fulfillment, transfer, and storage warehouses as hubs and build pre-positioned warehouses around them.

’It should be possible!’

Liu Qiangdong’s face lit up with excitement. But then he had another thought: the costs were too high. Jingdong hadn’t weathered its crisis yet. Another reckless venture might scare off their overseas investors.

After all, Zhao Yingchun had reminded him that OTPP had invested in Jingdong to reap the rewards of an IPO and cover a pension fund shortfall.

”Hah! I can just run pilot programs in Yanjing, Jinling, Hu City, and Shencheng City first,” he muttered. ”If I stick to a few niche categories, the cost of trial and error will be low. It shouldn’t be a big deal.”

After frowning and thinking it over, he still decided to ”copy” Kuai Pao’s delivery model.

Jingdong not only needed good after-sales service, but its delivery speed also had to keep pace.

What Liu Qiangdong didn’t expect was that he wasn’t the first to copy the idea. Someone else had beaten him to it.

In Jin Qiao, Hu City, a rider from Dingdong Community, dressed in a clean uniform, rode an Electric Vehicle. Following the user’s order, he packed up vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs, poultry, flowers, and other products, then delivered them to the customer’s door.

It had taken Liang Changlin four months, with the help of Yaya Network’s technical team, to finally launch the Dingdong Community project.

For now, it only had one station in Jin Qiao, with a service area that could cover more than twenty surrounding residential complexes.

The business focused on neighborhood social networking, lifestyle delivery, and in-home services. Specific offerings included second-hand trading, housekeeping, laundry, flower delivery, cleaning, and appliance repair.

Within just two weeks of going live, the project had amassed 3,000 registered users and was processing over 400 orders a day. This proved the product had market growth potential.

Liang Changlin was ecstatic. He had been meeting frequently with investors, hoping to secure more funding to expand the model nationwide.

When Pei Yi learned of Dingdong Community’s existence, his guard went up immediately.

While Dingdong Community hadn’t yet entered the food delivery market, once it expanded its service area, it could very well start to eat into Kuai Pao’s market share.

’I have to be on my guard!’

After a moment’s thought, Pei Yi dialed Chen Yansen’s number.