Chapter 284 The war of the last generation has continued to the present (6.2K)

“Hornbill now will eventually have to transfer to a middle level.

It still needs to rely on intermediary applications such as Pinduoduo, Taobao, and Meituan to complete orders from consumers to merchants.

These manufacturers are likely to find various reasons to refuse Hornbill from directly calling their services.

The easiest thing to think of is data security. "Oraz glanced at Mark after he finished speaking. This point was also raised by a foreign employee of Alpha Technology.

As a Malaysian enterprise, the Chinese are undoubtedly foreign employees.

So Oraz knew very well that Tencent itself was an old hand at this kind of thing, and the other party would definitely understand what he meant.

“Yes, this will be a very big problem.

Do you mean we connect directly with merchants and let them become Hornbill's suppliers? "Mark nodded repeatedly. Yes, why do we still need platforms like Taobao, Pinduoduo, and Meituan? Wouldn't it be better to just get rid of them and let Hornbill serve as a bridge between consumers and manufacturers?
“This will not only get rid of the possible risks of the platform, but also reduce the platform’s fees.

This part of the fee can become our profit." Mark continued.

Any platform has a service fee, which is generally charged according to your sales. Take Tmall, which is owned by Taobao, as an example. In addition to the annual fee, you also have to pay a software service fee based on the proportion of sales (excluding shipping costs).

This service fee will be charged based on the type of goods sold, ranging from 0.5% to 10%.

In addition to service fees, some advertising and marketing expenses are even bigger.

Other platforms are similar and charge similar fees.

So in Mark's eyes, going through these platforms has more disadvantages than advantages.

“Yes, part of this fee will become our cost, and then we can pass on part of the profit to consumers.

With Hornbill, we can definitely provide better service and lower prices," said Oraz.

Mark remembered a classic meme in Warcraft: So what’s the price?

The price, of course, is the loss of the joy of consumption.

However, it is fun for some people and painful for others, and the latter are their best target customers.

“So we need Tencent to help us do this. In the early stage, only China has such a large number of merchants that can provide such a large number of consumer products.

China needs goods from Southeast Asia, and Southeast Asia also needs goods from China.

I will be negotiating with Microsoft soon. The next generation of Hornbill will be promoted globally simultaneously, and we need a large number of products as supply.

Traditional online shopping platforms will likely react within a week and prohibit Hornbill from placing orders directly for users.

Although users can authorize Hornbill, traditional online shopping platforms can technically block Hornbill.

Or they may add a facial recognition process before payment, claiming that this is to distinguish whether the purchase was made by a human or AI.

Therefore, we need Tencent’s help on the merchandise side.”

As representatives of both parties, Mark had a pleasant conversation with Oraz, and Mark accepted almost all of Alpha Technology's demands.

He keenly sensed the opportunity here, the opportunity to help Chinese products go overseas.

China's foreign trade industry has been gradually losing the American market in the past few years, and this trend has been particularly obvious in recent years.

Products from China can go through Southeast Asia, Mexico and other places and pretend that they are not produced in China, but it is useless.

Because the new White House's increase in tariffs is indiscriminate and global, even Mexican goods entering America are subject to additional tariffs.

Commodity categories that Mexico obviously does not have the ability to manufacture and can only purchase from China are the focus of America's tariff weapon.

Europe is also protecting its own industries. In the field of photovoltaic industry, Europe has to choose Chinese products.

Meyer Burger, the largest photovoltaic manufacturer in Europe and a Swiss photovoltaic manufacturer, has been defeated by Chinese companies. It has gradually closed all its factories in Germany and withdrawn its operations back to Switzerland.

If it hadn't been for subsidies from Switzerland, it would have gone bankrupt long ago.

China's new energy vehicles are also squeezing out the European automobile manufacturing market on a global scale. Everyone has to survive, so Europe has to adopt more radical local trade protection strategies for other products.

In the past two years, China's foreign trade has shown an extremely unique structural trend.

Photovoltaics, new energy vehicles, and chips are selling very well, while others are shrinking rapidly.

Mark smelled an opportunity and used Hornbill to help Chinese products increase their export share.

Even with the increase in tariffs, Chinese products remain globally competitive.

What is more important is the brand. Some international brands rely on Chinese OEM factories and can sell products at high prices by putting their logos on them. All the money is earned by the brand.

In a sense, Hornbill can kill brands.

For example, the fabric supplier for many outdoor brands is Jialingjie, a listed company in China. They also had their own brand called Earth Scientist, but it did not take off.

Ordinary users do not have the energy or mind to distinguish what alternatives there are to the brands they often wear. However, this is no problem for Hornbill. Branded clothing that originally cost 500 yuan can be purchased directly from the manufacturer through Hornbill for only 100 yuan. Even if there is a 100% tariff, the price is only 200 yuan.

Mark even thought that if Hornbill became popular worldwide, the concept of brand would most likely be completely eliminated.

In the future, perhaps only luxury brands will be able to survive, and they must be high-end luxury brands. Some entry-level brands may not even survive.

Mark smelled the scent of change. This is undoubtedly an opportunity for China, helping China's manufacturing industry to go overseas. For Tencent, profit is secondary. Proving its own value and playing the TZ value are the most important things for China at the moment.

Mark just thought about it briefly and decided to promote this as Tencent's most important project and mobilize all of Tencent's resources.

Tencent is aggressively recruiting field sales specialists, and they sign contracts directly with Tencent headquarters, rather than with third-party outsourcing companies controlled by Tencent.

This news quickly sparked widespread discussion on Maimai.

You should know that Tencent is the giant among BAT that likes to use outsourcing the most. In recent years, even for campus recruitment, many of them have signed contracts with third parties.

Another giant that is famous for outsourcing should be Huawei. In the early years, there was even a saying on Maimai that even outsourcing dogs would not work.

Of course, later on, everyone found that they still had to rush to outsource, and a large number of 985/211 projects did outsourcing, and suddenly the theory of computer crashes became popular again.

"What's Tencent thinking? Seeing that Douyin's local life business is booming, now they want to start doing local life business?"

"But I haven't seen any big moves from Tencent. Could it be that they want to rely on WeChat to develop local life? However, if Tencent doesn't develop local life, it will be like giving up this market to Douyin for nothing, which is a pity."

"Now that Tencent is developing local life, what can it use to compete with ByteDance? Which big boss suddenly came up with the idea of ​​competing with ByteDance in this field?"

"Tencent can recruit a lot of people through the headquarters, which must have been approved by Pony Ma. Without his consent, Tencent would not have released so many positions at once."

"This is a good thing. The Internet has been stagnant for so many years, and the biggest innovation in recent years was made by a Malaysian company. It's a good thing that Tencent has such ambitions."

"Why do I feel that when giants fight, Meituan and Dianping will suffer?"

"It's not that easy. Can an old giant like Tencent really beat ByteDance? I'm afraid it can't even beat Meituan. Look at what happened to Yuanmeng Star. They spent so many resources but didn't even make a splash. The Internet is no longer what it was ten years ago.

Even after Mr. Ma came back, Alibaba hasn't seen any improvement. It's still losing market share to Pinduoduo and Douyin Shopping.

Essentially, their organizational structures are too old to lead the next wave of innovation.”

There was a lot of sarcasm and ridicule on Maimai, and most of the voices were pessimistic.

“Isn’t this funny? When the video account was taking off, there was no iron army of salesmen, and all the sales were outsourced.

Alibaba has its iron army, and Meituan has its offline marketing. When it comes to Tencent, it wants to engage in online shopping, but it is hesitant. The resources for promoting products on its video account are extremely limited, so it completely missed the opportunity to compete with ByteDance.

Now that ByteDance has made local life and live streaming big, and video accounts have been played to death, you want to vigorously promote online shopping and local life, isn't this doing the wrong thing at the wrong time? "

According to Hexun Business, Tencent will focus on two businesses in 2024: video accounts and overseas games.

Video accounts carry Tencent’s new e-commerce dream. Although the old dream has failed several times in the torrent of history, Tencent can no longer sit still today when Douyin and Kuaishou e-commerce are so popular.

Tencent started promoting live streaming sales through video accounts at the beginning of 24. They lowered the threshold for live streaming sales through video accounts to almost nothing: there was no limit on the number of fans for merchants, and the threshold for live streaming sales by individual users was adjusted from 1000 fans to 100 fans.

Tencent tried to deal a direct blow to Douyin's sales through the WeChat ecosystem, but the reality is cruel. The sales data of Video Account is not even a quarter of that of Xiaohongshu's live streaming sales, let alone Douyin.

This reality has led to video accounts selling goods becoming a marginalized business, just like Tencent's Paipai.com in the past. Although it is mentioned from time to time internally, no executive is determined to make a big investment in an attempt to revive this business.

"I can only say that everyone should wait and see. Tencent is serious about e-commerce and local life this time. At an internal meeting of Tencent, it was set as the highest strategy for the entire group for the next five years. Pony is in charge, Mark is responsible for the specific execution, and Tencent's number one and two figures are all personally involved. For Tencent, this is already a project comparable to Xiaomi's Lei Jun's car-making project." Naturally, there were also internal employees of Tencent who came out to reveal the news on Maimai.

"Pony Ma has paid special attention to this project and mobilized a lot of resources. MetaDream Star only used resources from the game-related business groups, but this time all the resources from the business groups will be mobilized to make way for this project. This time Tencent is serious about its e-commerce business."

There was a lot of discussion on Maimai about Tencent's personal entry into the e-commerce field, and the media naturally took notice, especially the financial media.

To be honest, in the past few years, China's Internet industry has tended to develop towards the American Internet industry, that is, it has become stagnant.

The 3Q war, WeChat vs. MiTalk, taxi war, ByteDance and Tencent blocking each other, etc., in the past, the business wars in the Internet industry have become hot topics on the Internet every year. The final winner can reap the dividends of winning the business war, and self-media and netizens can also get a lot of topics to talk about.

However, after 19, Internet business wars can no longer become a hot topic in public opinion.

This time, Tencent has personally entered the e-commerce field, and the media has smelled the flavor of the Internet business wars of previous years.

"[Alibaba's Hong Kong stocks plummeted by more than 7%, Tencent responded by entering the e-commerce business in person] Alibaba's stock price continued to fall in the afternoon, and the decline has now widened to 7%. Recently, there have been market news that Tencent plans to increase its investment in the e-commerce field and invest the entire group's strength in the e-commerce field. Senior Hong Kong stock trading analysts believe that Tencent's personal involvement may have a direct impact on Alibaba. In response, Tencent said that it would not comment."

Tencent did not respond, but its public actions indicated that they were indeed going to get involved personally.

What’s amazing is that the share prices of Pinduoduo and JD.com did not fall, only Alibaba’s share price fell sharply.

Obviously, the capital market believes that even if Tencent engages in e-commerce itself, it will not be able to seize Pinduoduo's market share. They can only seize the business of A, one of the BAT companies, which is also a remnant of the old era.

Even the capital market does not believe that Tencent can seize JD.com's business.

"The overall change in the environment has forced Tencent to choose e-commerce. This is not only for Tencent's own consideration, but also for the current situation of China's private economy. Tencent's e-commerce will be a good thing for all private enterprises."

Pony Ma’s remarks in an entrepreneur group were leaked. Although Tencent still declined to comment, a well-known entrepreneur in the group came out and said that this was true.

In a sense, not refuting the rumor is an indirect answer.

For a time, the Chinese Internet began to become restless.

Because China's Internet has developed too rapidly and changed too drastically, from the earliest Shanda, Sohu, and Sina to later Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba, and then to Weibo, Tik Tok, Bilibili, and so on in the mobile Internet era, China's Internet giants have emerged one after another.

Let’s look at America, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. They have dominated the market for twenty years, and no other company of this level has been born.

Internet competition in China is much more intense.

This also led to the fact that when netizens saw that Tencent was going to personally enter the e-commerce field, they felt that the war of the previous generation had continued into this generation.

"Tencent is entering the e-commerce business, but I feel like this is news from ten years ago."

"I just want to know where Tencent gets the courage from. Facing Pinduoduo, Douyin and Taobao, they can't even maintain their market share. Why does Tencent think it can get a piece of the pie?"

Of course, Chinese netizens did not feel lonely for too long, because China’s old rival, the traditional American technology giant Microsoft, also announced that it would enter the e-commerce field.

Only then did Chinese netizens realize that something was wrong. Microsoft and Tencent, two outsiders who had never proven themselves in the e-commerce field before, both chose to do e-commerce at this point in time. It was obvious that there was an external force involved.

Soon, the self-media dug out the BBC report on Alpha Technologies. The report was very long and contained a lot of information, but most of it was ignored by the Chinese media.

China really dislikes an obviously decentralized organizational structure like Alpha Technologies.

The opposition to cryptocurrencies is obviously similar to the attitude towards decentralized organizations.

Not to mention remote work from home, where there are no fixed working hours and the company only sets work tasks and does not interfere with what you do. This kind of content is obviously inconsistent with China's national conditions and will arouse dissatisfaction among Chinese netizens, but the Chinese media consciously ignores it.

"According to a BBC report, artificial intelligence giant AlphaTech will enter the e-commerce field. AlphaTech employees interviewed said that their products will subvert the traditional form of online shopping."

This is very clear. These are all obvious information. As the biggest beneficiaries after Hornbill was banned worldwide, Microsoft and Tencent have taken up a large share of the search engine market.

This also means that the cooperation between Alpha Technology and Microsoft and Tencent is very close.

Alpha is going to do e-commerce, and Microsoft and Tencent are also following suit. The latter two are likely to do so based on the technological breakthroughs achieved by Alpha.

Netizens finally understood where Tencent’s confidence comes from. With the support of Alpha, Tencent has a good chance of achieving success.

"Laxative, I agree very much with the current speculation in the market. It is obvious that Alpha has achieved technological breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence and e-commerce. They are limited by the fact that they are just a Malaysian company. If they want to enter the two largest markets in China and America, they can't avoid cooperating with local giants.

Based on the good cooperative relationship in the past, it is reasonable for Alpha Technology to choose Tencent and Microsoft to cooperate.

I had suspected that there was some conspiracy behind this before. Even an old hand like Tencent is unwilling to make large-scale investments in video sales. These are just routine actions. When Paipai still had some popularity, I didn't see them invest much resources in it.

This time, the headquarters actually directly recruited a field sales team, and Pony Ma even came out to make the announcement personally. It was impossible for the news to be released in the internal group chat without Pony Ma's consent.

So guys like Tencent, who won't release their chips until they see the rabbit, obviously have something that can impress them, so they choose to follow up with the chips in their hands.

Now it is clear that if Alpha can subvert the search engine industry, then they can subvert the e-commerce industry. Tencent and Microsoft have obviously experienced this, so they are determined to follow Alpha Technology.

I just don’t know what chips Alpha Technologies has that can make Tencent and Microsoft work so hard to believe that they can overthrow the dominance of Alibaba and Amazon.

In addition to the content discussed by the self-media, I also observed a very interesting phenomenon, that is, Tencent is quietly selling off the stocks of JD.com and Pinduoduo.

This is enough to illustrate Tencent's confidence. In addition to selling these two companies, they are also reducing their holdings in Meituan.

Therefore, I seriously suspect that Tencent is not only doing e-commerce business, they also want to extend their tentacles into Meituan’s business model, that is, local life.

This is an all-round crackdown on TikTok. In short, there will be something interesting to watch this year.”

"It reminds me of the golden age of the internet, when everyone was fighting each other, and I had eight pack abs, but now I have just a belly.

No matter where Tencent's confidence comes from, I am very happy to see that some companies and entrepreneurs still have an innovative spirit. Fighting is good for the industry, consumers and the majority of merchants.

It is obviously impossible for Tencent to follow the same route as Pinduoduo. There is no need for it to follow that route, and it is impossible for it to do better than Pinduoduo.

I think Tencent can only take the boutique route similar to JD.com and Tmall. This is also consistent with what Pony said in the group that Tencent's e-commerce will be a good thing for all private enterprises.

The existence of Pinduoduo represents consumption downgrade and represents a rollback. Enterprises have no profit and even lose money in Pinduoduo. Tencent's high-quality route allows everyone to make money, which is a good thing for all private enterprises.

I look forward to seeing the vitality that Tencent will bring to the entire market. I am also curious about how Tencent can make users accept its boutique strategy in this era of consumption downgrade.

Starbucks can’t stand up to the pressure from Luckin Coffee and Kudi, and Tmall is powerless to fight back against Pinduoduo. What trump card does Tencent have that makes them so confident? "

The above are the answers with the most likes on Zhihu.

The Chinese Internet is rife with voices about Tencent's exit from the e-commerce sector.

This is a rare major event after the Internet has been silent for so many years.

Many veterans of Alibaba’s Iron Army and Meituan’s field sales force have received poaching calls from headhunters.

“Hello, I’m Kelly, a headhunter responsible for recruiting field sales specialists. It’s a pleasure to talk to you/meet you.”

I am contacting you because we are working with a top company in our industry and they have a very attractive position and I think your experience and skills are a good match"

Zhang Chao hung up the call before he even finished listening. It was another headhunter.

As a veteran field salesman who has worked for Alibaba for more than 15 years, he has risen from an ordinary front-line field salesperson to middle-level management. Alibaba has not treated them unfairly over the years, so Zhang Chao has never thought about running away.

After receiving the call from the headhunter, he listened to the familiar opening remarks. At first he asked if it was Tencent. Then the other party, as if a mechanism had been triggered, started praising Tencent and how bright the prospects of Tencent's e-commerce were.

Zhang Chao also believes that cooperating with Alpha and relying on artificial intelligence whose specific details are unknown will definitely have prospects.

Tencent’s executives are not fools. If there were no prospects, they would not make such a big bet.

But having a promising future doesn't mean he is willing to go. Zhang Chao is very satisfied with his current life and has no intention of moving.

Until his old leader came to ask him: "Zhang Chao, do you want to move?"

Yu Jiawei, his former leader, is a veteran who joined Alibaba in 2000 and can be said to be the front-line commander of Alibaba's iron army of sales.

He worked his way up from frontline sales to vice president at Alibaba. Alibaba's B2B team had about 1 people, and he managed more than 2 people. Then he jumped to Meituan to do sales and participated in the most intense Hundred Group War, leading Meituan to become the number one in group buying market share.

After leaving Meituan, he switched to Hillhouse Capital and successfully landed a job.

Compared to investment, marketing is a tough job. Zhang Chao couldn't understand: "Boss, you were also poached by Tencent?"

"You are as smart as ever, yes, I have already negotiated with Pony, the entry procedures have not been completed yet, but it should be this month.

Tencent is going to make a big move this time and is in urgent need of manpower. Are you interested in joining me and doing something big together?"

(End of this chapter)