Chapter 700.2 - Popular Demand (Part Two)
Chapter 700: Popular Demand (Part Two)
Even after everything was sold out, it was still difficult to stop the enthusiasm of the shoppers. They left comments asking for the product to be restocked, and some of them were working during the day, so by the time they finished work, they had missed the chance and were messaging customer support expressing their desire.
The two major online shopping centers were dumbfounded by the situation.
They were out of stock!
– Dongdong E-Mall –
“Director, Taobao has a store that was selling the products with an initial stock of 100K, and they were also sold out within the first three hours.”
That director’s eyes twitched a bit. “This means that the market demands are not met. Get in contact with those physical stores for me. They are not open for business yet, we need to cooperate with them so we could sell it here first, and we’ll discuss the profit share.”
The customer service person smiled bitterly. “We contacted them after we were sold out, but they refused. Their physical store’s market price is 5% more expensive than online, and this 5% happens to be their extra profit, so if they take it online to sell it, their profit will decrease.”
The director was angry. “These greedy businessmen, they just don’t want us to have any of their profit! It’s because they see the sales booming and they’re not afraid that their stock won’t be sold. As long as the quality and efficacy of the product works, they might even be able to price it higher.”
That was when the office door opened, and the assistant general manager walked in. “Director, the general manager asked you to go to his office.”
The director smiled bitterly and thought, Here comes what I was afraid of.
He arrived at the general manager’s office and knocked on the door as he walked in.
The general manager sat behind his desk with one hand on the desk, and without looking up, he asked, “Do you know what I’m calling you here for?”
The director sucked in a breath and said. “President Liu, I’ll reflect on my mistakes.”
President Liu held a calculator in one hand, quickly calculating something with his head down. “50K bottles. We’ll put aside the difference in net profit with the gold, platinum, or diamond bottles, we’ll just all count it as $88 USD per bottle. 50K bottles would give us a profit of 35 million, and this is net profit in just one day! It’s equivalent to a quarter’s profit for those known cellphone brands in Shangcheng. You were initially responsible for signing the purchase contract, and because of your narrow-minded view of the market, we wasted our chance at this good opportunity. The next order would probably be open at least a week later, and you tell me, how should I calculate the amount of losses for the next six days? An unknown online store next door had 100K bottles in stock, and they were all sold out in the morning, which meant that they made 70 million in profit today! You are a director and you don’t even have their guts, what do you do for a living!?”
The director felt embarrassed. “President Liu, I was afraid that the cost was too high and if we couldn’t sell it all, then it would be a loss for us. I was looking out for the company.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the President slammed the table with a furious expression on his face; it was a loss in money after all!
Just as he was about to rage at him, someone called his office phone.
He picked up to answer and his expression changed a little; after he hung up the phone, he said to the director, “Okay, we’ll discuss this later. Right now, try contacting those physical stores and talk with their owners to discuss a possible cooperation. We could offer them the online platform to sell their products, and we don’t want any profit from them. We just need to maintain our participation in this.”
Director: “President Liu, you don’t need to suck up to those people, since they have been contacting us to sell their products online for a while now. Who were the ones begging for their products to be put online? Now they decided to toughen up?”
President Liu slammed his hand on the table. “If you knew my strategy, you might as well become the CEO. I just received a phone call that our old rival on ACat had already sent someone to talk about a possible cooperation. They didn’t want any profit shares and were fine as long they could get to put those products on their shelves. All they needed to do was to attract the high-end users to their website. Do you know which group of users buy the Revitalization series? If you knew anything about user management, you wouldn’t just be a product operations director! Get out, find me someone to talk to, and if you can’t find anyone, pack up and get lost.”