"You want to appoint me as the president of the US Priority Fund!" Bezos was stunned. If it were him a few years ago, he might have disdained such an invitation, as working for others is never as good as working for oneself.
However, with his career in ruins and assets wiped out, Bezos suddenly felt his future brighten. This was truly a super surprise.
But Bezos was also filled with doubt, asking, "Why me?"
"Because we found that our current president is full of a sense of self-superiority in his daily life, does not respect the dignity of other ideologies, and has also engaged in certain workplace bullying behaviors. Therefore, we have decided to dismiss such an individual!" Madam Versailles said.
"Uh..." Bezos paused for a moment, then smiled bitterly and asked, "I'd like to ask, why are you willing to choose me as the successor to the president?"
"Because Mr. Bezos, your performance in all aspects has been outstanding. My team recommended a total of 12 candidates, and I believe you are the most outstanding among them. That's why I specifically invited you to join our US Priority Group today!" Madam Versailles said.
"There were 12 candidates?" Bezos was surprised and then tentatively inquired about the names of these 12 candidates. Madam Versailles was very straightforward and listed them all, which made Bezos even more shocked.
"Madam Versailles, please forgive my bluntness, but 11 out of these 12 candidates have stronger business performance than I do. In the past two years, they have all grown and strengthened their companies, achieving significant improvements in performance and profit. Only I managed to ruin my company, and today it was just announced that the company is entering bankruptcy proceedings. I truly don't understand why you would choose someone like me!" Bezos asked earnestly.
"Because the fault is not yours!" Madam Versailles replied with equal seriousness. "I spent a month traveling to read all the files of your 12 candidates, and I discovered that you are actually the most dazzling and eye-catching one among the 12."
"The achievements of the other 11 people, while truly excellent, were due to the prevailing circumstances. The times created them, not that they achieved the company."
"But you are different. I can see that you tried very hard to save Wanbaoge, even preparing to build your own logistics. Unfortunately, you had a pig teammate, and it was Goldman Sachs that ruined your efforts, not your personal failure!"
"In fact, I specifically spoke with Qiangdong Liu, the president of Southern Amazon, and he said that if he were in your position, he couldn't have done any better. He was just fortunate that his backing was Jiangnan Group, not Goldman Sachs!"
Madam Versailles' words brought tears to Bezos' eyes. He never expected to find a kindred spirit at such a time.
Indeed, although Bezos had failed, he never believed it was his own failure. Instead, he felt he was betrayed and ruined by his pig teammate, Goldman Sachs, and the facts did support this.
Although Bezos was caught off guard by Oriental Amazon's combined supermarket strategy, it must be said that the combined supermarket approach essentially opened up a completely new e-commerce channel and attracted many users who normally didn't engage in e-commerce. It did not significantly impact Bezos's original customer base. Wanbaoge's core foundation remained solid, and in legitimate e-commerce channels, Wanbaoge could still outperform Oriental Amazon.
Moreover, Bezos was not a stagnant person; he was actively learning from his opponents' strategies and soon launched his own combined supermarket platform, actively attacking the opponent's territory.
Therefore, throughout 2006, Wanbaoge could be considered to have the advantage, being the undisputed number one e-commerce company in the US. Oriental Amazon wasn't even considered second; it was merely ranked third.
How did Wanbaoge collapse completely in just three years and be forced into bankruptcy?
In fact, in terms of operational strategies and company management, Wanbaoge was not much worse than Oriental Amazon. With the strong support of domestic enterprises, Wanbaoge should have been the one to emerge victorious from any perspective.
But Wanbaoge ultimately lost, and the reason for the loss was precisely the phrase "pig teammate."
Wanbaoge's first pig teammate was the cooperating supermarkets; at least, that's how Bezos himself saw it.
Firstly, after forming supermarket partnerships, Wanbaoge actually had more outlets than Oriental Amazon.
This was because Oriental Amazon had signed an exclusive cooperation agreement with Walmart, with both parties cooperating only with each other and not engaging with any other companies.
Wanbaoge, on the other hand, did the opposite, reaching cooperation agreements with almost all major supermarkets except Walmart, providing them with network delivery services. As a result, Wanbaoge's supermarket outlet count was a staggering 4.5 times that of Oriental Amazon, and the number of covered customers was about 2.3 times higher than Oriental Amazon. From this perspective, Wanbaoge's start could almost be considered a god-like beginning.
However, after actual operations, Bezos discovered that this beginning was a hellish one.
Since Oriental Amazon only needed to cooperate with Walmart, their connection was unidirectional. All orders came from one place and were distributed to different locations, like a large water pipe connected to themselves, which then connected to hundreds or thousands of faucets. Although the number of faucets was large, they only needed to manage this one large water pipe.
But Wanbaoge was different. It was connected to over a dozen large water pipes, which then connected to thousands of faucets. This meant they had to manage and maintain over a dozen large water pipes, which was very troublesome and consumed a lot of costs.
The complexity of creating a platform management system that could simultaneously manage over a dozen large supermarket chains is one matter. What was truly fatal was that for every additional cooperating supermarket, another dedicated personnel was needed to handle order picking within the supermarket.
Generally, Walmart only had one to two supermarkets in the same town, so Oriental Amazon only needed to set up one outlet and station about two order pickers in each supermarket to directly handle orders from the supermarkets.
But Wanbaoge was different; it had many cooperating supermarkets, and these supermarkets might have their own chain stores in a region.
In one particularly extreme small town, Wanbaoge's cooperating supermarket outlets reached an astonishing 12.
This meant that Wanbaoge had to place at least one order picker in each cooperating supermarket to receive and package orders. Thus, one city required 12 order pickers.
In contrast, its competitor Oriental Amazon only needed two order pickers. This alone resulted in a six-fold increase in labor costs.
If the labor cost could be exchanged for corresponding work output, it would be acceptable. However, the problem was that Walmart, which single-handedly defeated all other competitors, might have the combined orders of 12 supermarkets equaling only the order volume of two Walmart stores.
This meant that the performance of Wanbaoge's 12 order pickers was equivalent to only the work of Oriental Amazon's two order pickers. Could a capitalist tolerate such a situation?
Wanbaoge certainly could not tolerate it, but it could not find a solution.
If this were the terminal era in the future, they could directly recruit a large number of riders, dispatch orders through a mobile system, and have the riders deliver directly to the users, solving the problem very efficiently.
In 2006, this was impossible. For Wanbaoge, the best solution would be for the major supermarkets to send their own staff to deliver orders to designated Wanbaoge outlets, and then Wanbaoge's staff would deliver them to the buyers.
However, those supermarkets were unlikely to do this, as it would mean increasing their own labor costs. Why should they? So, Wanbaoge had to bear it all.
Fortunately, at this time, Bezos demonstrated his capabilities. He led his technicians and spent a month working on a solution, developing an intelligent order distribution calculation system that allowed delivery personnel to also serve as order pickers.
Specifically, after completing a delivery, the delivery person would go to the supermarket, pick the goods themselves, package them according to orders, and then deliver these packaged orders to the users.
The entire delivery route and process were calculated by the system to find the optimal route, and all delivery personnel were directed via mobile text messages to act according to the commands.
In this way, at least half of the labor costs could be saved. Therefore, the final labor costs were still higher than the competitors, but they were within an acceptable range.
Bezos had indeed implemented the best execution plan he could devise. However, when this plan was put into actual operation, all sorts of unexpected problems arose one after another.
For example, due to road construction, red lights, or traffic jams, they were unable to arrive at their destinations on time, causing overall time delays, which further led to the entire set time chain becoming chaotic.
They also encountered various unforeseen issues, such as the phone battery dying and being unable to receive text messages.
There were also cases where users were not at home, or the residential compound did not allow entry.
And then there were situations where a particular item was out of stock, but the supermarket continued to sell it, making it impossible to deliver. However, these were minor issues that could be handled with persistence. The most voluminous and difficult problem to solve among all the issues was: not being able to find the goods!
Yes, this was the biggest problem. While allowing delivery personnel to double as order pickers could save the most labor, a delivery person might have to deal with several or even a dozen supermarkets, and the warehouse layouts of these supermarkets were all different. Asking a delivery person to find the required items in the warehouse within a short period according to customer orders was extremely difficult.
Only experienced employees working for over a year could skillfully find what they were looking for in the warehouse.
The problem was that Wanbaoge had no delivery personnel who could work continuously for more than three months. They would leave as quickly as possible after enduring about three months of inhuman experience, leaving faster than Foxconn employees.