The chapter is a note to readers, and it's free!
"Are we there yet?"
"We should be!"
"Why haven't we arrived yet!"
"Hey old man, stop pacing in front of me, you're making me dizzy!" Zhang Yizhou's wife glared at her husband, who was nervously walking back and forth, wishing he'd go to work immediately.
Unfortunately, it was Sunday.
"But the website clearly stated 24-hour delivery in provincial capitals, 72 hours in prefecture-level cities, and a week in county-level cities. We're a provincial capital, so it should be delivered today. I spent 100 yuan and bought 10 boxes!" Zhang Yizhou said anxiously.
"But it hasn't even been 24 hours yet, and it's not even 5 o'clock!" his wife advised. "If it's still not delivered by 8 PM, then you can get worked up. It's not too late!"
"Besides, their announcement just said estimated delivery within 24 hours, not guaranteed delivery within 24 hours. They only guaranteed delivery within 72 hours in provincial capitals, so it's normal to wait a couple more days!" his wife added.
"Then I'll go crazy!" Zhang Yizhou thought, the more he considered it, the more something felt off. He shouldn't have bought blind boxes online. Wouldn't it have been better to just pay cash and get the goods in person offline?
Waiting for the delivery person to arrive at his doorstep was too emotionally taxing.
Just as Zhang Yizhou was too restless to eat or sleep, even foregoing dinner, there was a knock at the door. A deliveryman, drenched in sweat, handed a large box to Zhang Yizhou at his doorstep.
"Please sign for it!" the deliveryman panted.
"Why so late?" Zhang Yizhou asked, a little displeased.
"Sorry, I visited over a hundred households today. There were just too many deliveries!" the deliveryman explained.
"Over a hundred households!" Zhang Yizhou lived on the fifth floor without an elevator. If these deliverymen had to carry boxes up five flights of stairs for over a hundred households a day, they'd truly be exhausted.
"Why bother? Wouldn't it be easier to just sell them in the store? You guys work too hard!" Zhang Yizhou sighed.
"It's the boss's orders; we can't do anything about it!" the deliveryman replied.
"By the way, I was home. But what if you can't find anyone at home? Do you just leave it at the door?" Zhang Yizhou asked curiously.
"We'll stick a notice on the door," the deliveryman said. "If a phone number is left, we'll call first to confirm if you're home and arrange a specific delivery time."
"If there's no phone number, we'll attempt delivery once. If no one is home, we'll leave a notice, slipped under your door. The notice will have the location of our delivery point, and you can pick it up from there yourself!" the deliveryman explained.
"You really work hard!" Zhang Yizhou exclaimed, then he proactively offered the deliveryman water. However, the deliveryman declined, citing regulations that prohibited them from accepting any food or drinks from customers.
"Online shopping is actually quite convenient!" Zhang Yizhou murmured, looking at the box containing ten sets of items at home. He realized that online shopping might actually be a good option; with just a few clicks on the computer, items would be delivered automatically.
Although many urgently needed items couldn't be handled this way, for large purchases at home, buying online seemed like a pretty good choice.
However, Zhang Yizhou's good mood lasted less than two minutes. Because two minutes later, after all ten blind boxes were opened, revealing five t-shirts, ten pairs of socks, four pairs of underwear, and the only rare reward: a wool sweater, his expression turned quite grim.
Fortunately, these items were indeed useful. Socks and underwear were things that needed frequent replacement, and the wool sweater could fetch at least sixty to seventy yuan in the market. So, after a careful calculation, Zhang Yizhou's mood didn't seem so bad after all.
Meanwhile, after delivering to Zhang Yizhou, the deliveryman continued for over an hour, completing the remaining ten-plus orders in his possession, and then collapsed onto his motorized tricycle, utterly exhausted.
But he wore a smile of satisfaction, as he had finished all orders in his jurisdiction before 8 PM. According to the manager's promise, he would receive triple his daily wage for the day.
Furthermore, if the entire provincial capital's express delivery station could complete ten days of work without a single mistake, they would receive an additional month's salary as a bonus.
He roughly calculated that if he completed these ten days of work, his income for just these ten days would reach an astonishing 4,000 yuan. In 2003, this far exceeded that of over 90% of workers, filling him with motivation.
This was actually the true driving force behind his completion of the day's work; otherwise, he would have broken down after delivering to twenty-odd households.
When Zhang Yizhou returned to the delivery point, weary from his day, to settle his daily work, he was surprised to find that most people at the delivery point had completed their work. Three or four deliverymen had exceeded the time limit, but it was said they could still complete their deliveries within one or two hours.
Although they could still receive double their daily wage as long as they completed delivery within 24 hours, they still lost a considerable amount of income.
Since everyone was assigned roughly the same number of orders and covered similar geographical areas, no one could claim there was any issue with the distribution. It was a matter of working as hard as possible and resolving to be faster the next day.
Concurrently, on that same night, the second batch of 1 million boxes of "Water Sky Color" blind boxes was also snatched up within 10 seconds. It was even faster than the first day's sell-out. After all, many people had learned from the first day's experience and decided to wait by their computers the next day.
However, many people on various forums vowed that the frenzy wouldn't last for days, as each account was limited to purchasing only 10 boxes in total, meaning a large number of accounts would have their purchasing opportunities restricted daily.
It seemed they had forgotten that after Jiangnan Group announced the lifting of registration restrictions for Jiangnan Mall, allowing any account starting with "00" to register and make purchases. If one truly intended to buy, they could simply keep registering new accounts and find ways to deposit money.
In essence, although Jiangnan Group seemed to have set many restrictions for this online public sale, in reality, apart from scalpers, ordinary customers were hardly restricted. They could break through the limitations with just a little effort.
Time gradually passed, and by midnight, Zhang Yizhou was fast asleep. However, Boss Huang, uncharacteristically, was still awake. He remained in his office, reviewing the delivery situation summary sent overnight by Jiangnan Express. Standing before him was Dai Tiejun, the person in charge of Jiangnan Express, who hadn't had a full night's sleep in three days.
"Old Dai, you're something else! You managed to hold the line in all the provincial capitals nationwide!" Huang He exclaimed, seeing the report stating that the 24-hour delivery rate in provincial capitals nationwide reached a remarkable 89.72%.
"This is just a small success. The real test of Jiangnan Express's stress tolerance is yet to come!" Dai Tiejun said.
"For the next ten-plus days, we'll be transporting the same quantity of blind boxes every day. And currently, we've only succeeded in provincial capitals. We've deployed significant manpower in each of these cities, with at least 30 delivery personnel responsible for transportation in every city, so we can barely cope!"
"But once we reach the prefecture-level cities and county-level cities across the country, it might be a different story. We are still very short on personnel in these areas. Some cities even have only one delivery person. Although the order volume in these regions is also lower, if it's all loaded onto one person, it's a terrifying task. I'm worried the most grassroots points might collapse!" Dai Tiejun expressed his concern.
"Don't be afraid of collapse!" Huang He shook his head. "Tiejun, let me tell you, what you saw today is nothing. It's only 120,000 items per day. The days when we'll be handling 100 million, or even 2 billion, 5 billion items per day will come. For our future selves, this is just a minor event!"
"Boss, are you joking with me!" Dai Tiejun's eyes widened. The delivery of 120,000 items a day had already pushed the entire Jiangnan Express to the brink. Let alone 100 million items a day, even 300,000 items would likely make Dai Tiejun faint on the spot!
"No, this is not a joke. Online shopping will inevitably become a nationwide trend in the future. When you recall today's experience and my words to you in the future, you'll find history to be a very interesting thing," Huang He said calmly. "Tiejun, do you know how to face such a situation in the future?"
"Then our personnel will need to be expanded at least tenfold... no, a hundredfold! And we'll need to set up points even in small towns, otherwise, we simply won't be able to handle such a task!" Dai Tiejun gritted his teeth. Jiangnan Logistics already had over 6,000 employees, and expanding that by a hundredfold, to 600,000 people, was an unimaginable number in 2003.
However, Huang He merely shrugged. This Dai Tiejun was still underestimating the future.
"In conclusion, this is a stress test for you, and also an opportunity to examine the current express logistics system. You must use this rare opportunity to identify all areas in the system that can be improved and implement these improvements as quickly as possible!" Huang He instructed.
"Also, expand manpower and locations as much as possible. Don't be stingy with money. If you can expand the scale by more than double within a month, I will personally reward you with 1 million RMB!" Huang He added. It was already mid-April, and only about half a month remained until the historical period of nationwide lockdown.
"Chairman, I understand what you mean!" Dai Tiejun nodded, then hesitated and couldn't help but ask, "Chairman, if I may be so bold, what exactly are you doing this for?"
"Our operations for just one day have cost nearly 2.5 million yuan in total. This adds up to a logistics cost of a quarter of the selling price of each blind box. Although I don't know the profit margin of a blind box, a reduction of 2.5 yuan in profit per box is something the company simply cannot afford!"
"Chairman, why don't you charge for shipping?" Dai Tiejun asked the question he most wanted to ask, as he simply couldn't understand why Huang He was making such guaranteed losses.
"When did I say I wouldn't charge for shipping?" Huang He smiled slightly and patted Dai Tiejun's arm. "Free shipping... oh, no, free shipping is only for our own Jiangnan blind box products. This is to maintain the competitiveness of the company's products. And we can earn these expenses from others!"