"Bang!" Seeing no one respond to him, Rob Walton slammed his hand on the table in anger, but the result was unchanged. Those who were afraid still were. Since no one else responded, no one else would step forward.
Helplessly, Rob Walton had to end the high-level meeting that had ended halfway. However, this did not mean that Rob Walton had given up on his idea of operating independently.
Rob Walton was also aware of these high-cost ideas. They were nothing more than having reached a high position and losing the motivation to climb further. But Walmart was not only composed of top brass; there was also a large number of mid-level managers. It was always possible to find one or two ambitious and capable individuals to take charge of the e-commerce business.
But could a mid-level manager really be responsible?
Although those top executives lacked the courage to take over, they were excellent at sabotaging others. Also, what if they failed? Wouldn't he become a joke?
Rob Walton had many ideas, but he could never find a perfect answer. Just then, Rob Walton's phone rang.
Rob Walton looked down and saw that it was a director of the company. Although the director held a small amount of stock, only about 1%, Rob Walton knew that to firmly control Walmart, he could not offend any director who held shares.
Therefore, Rob Walton answered the phone with a smile and chatted with the director for a while. The director then inadvertently revealed his true intention. This fellow had actually come to speak favorably of Jiangnan Group. He was very optimistic about the cooperation between Oriental Amazon and Walmart and hoped that Rob Walton would give Oriental Amazon a chance, and so on.
"Oriental Amazon's connections have reached Wall Street! Didn't they say that Jiangnan Group's relationship with Wall Street was extremely bad?" Rob Walton exclaimed after hanging up the phone. Rob Walton knew about the various struggles between Wall Street and Jiangnan Group before.
Because Walmart itself had been interfered with by Wall Street investment institutions many times, these people wanted to directly control the operations of Walmart Group and obtain more profits from it. For this reason, Rob Walton had fought many battles with Wall Street.
Of course, as long as one was in the US, it was impossible to truly fall out with Wall Street. So, despite his strong dislike for Wall Street, Rob Walton had to maintain good relations with Wall Street on the surface.
Therefore, Rob Walton had always been a spectator in the struggle between Jiangnan Group and Goldman Sachs, never expressing any opinion or taking any action. But this did not mean that Rob Walton was unaware of the situation of this struggle.
Now, people on Wall Street were actually coming forward to speak favorably of Jiangnan Group, which surprised Rob Walton.
What surprised him even more was yet to come. More than a dozen executives from institutions holding Walmart shares successively contacted Rob Walton for chats, all with the intention of hoping that Walmart would cooperate with Oriental Amazon rather than operating its own e-commerce department.
Rob Walton never expected that Jiangnan Group would have so many supporters on Wall Street.
Even worse, Rob Walton was starting to find it difficult to resist the persuasion of these institutions.
These institutions collectively held about 10% of Walmart's shares. The amount did not seem large, but if this 10% of shares firmly stood with Rob Walton and the Walton family behind him, then Rob Walton could firmly control the entire Walmart, without worrying about the Wall Street scoundrels taking away the company's control. Therefore, Rob Walton had to give face to these institutional executives.
So, in the end, Rob Walton took the initiative to make a phone call, to our Boss Huang.
"Mr. Rob, this is truly a pleasant surprise of a phone call!" Huang He said cheerfully on the phone.
"Chairman Huang, you truly make me look at you with new eyes. You have so many friends on Wall Street without anyone knowing!" Rob Walton exclaimed.
"Not at all. Everyone probably feels that our Jiangnan Group has a promising future and is willing to do me a favor!" Huang He said modestly.
"Okay, Mr. Huang, I can agree to the cooperation between Walmart and Oriental Amazon, but I have one condition!"
"Please, go ahead."
"I hope this cooperation is comprehensive, not just a simple distribution partnership!" Rob Walton stated a condition that even surprised Huang He. "Firstly, not only in the US market, but also in the Chinese market, I hope to cooperate with Jiangnan Group's Jiangnan Mall. Jiangnan Mall will be responsible for the distribution and sales of our Walmart products. At the same time, all blind box products and other goods from Jiangnan Mall should also be sold within Walmart supermarkets!"
"Secondly, Walmart has recently been optimistic about online electronic products. We believe these will be the main products sold in the market in the future. However, supermarkets have always lacked the habit of selling online electronics, and we also lack relevant sourcing and brand partnerships. I heard that Jiangnan Group has huge advantages in this area and is even the chairman of the China Electronics Industry Development Alliance. Therefore, we hope that Jiangnan Group will take the lead in organizing a group of suppliers to cooperate with Walmart and jointly sell online electronic products!"
"Finally, I personally am very optimistic about the future development prospects of Jiangnan Group, and the Walton family is willing to cooperate more deeply with Jiangnan Group. We can exchange equity at a ratio of 3:1. I can use 10% of Walmart's equity to exchange for 30% of Jiangnan Group's equity, thereby enabling the two companies to achieve complete cooperation!" Rob Walton presented not one, but three conditions, each of which made Huang He exclaim that Rob Walton was an old fox.
The first two conditions seemed to be Rob Walton proactively seeking cooperation with Jiangnan Group and offering benefits to Jiangnan Group, but this was only on the surface.
First, cooperating with Walmart in China. Please, the Chinese market is almost monopolized by Jiangnan Group. For Walmart, cooperation with Jiangnan Mall and Jiangnan Blind Box, both industry-exclusive leaders, might indeed increase some sales. However, these sales are estimated to not exceed 3% of the total.
But the cooperation between Walmart and Jiangnan Group is different. Walmart currently has about 110 stores in China, while its main competitor, Carrefour, has over 400 stores in China.
Therefore, the real dominant player in the Chinese supermarket market is Carrefour, not Walmart. Walmart has always been suppressed and battered by Carrefour.
And if Walmart can achieve cooperation with Jiangnan Group, then by leveraging Jiangnan Group's immense advantage in distribution capabilities, Walmart's sales could double.
But Walmart's own store numbers would not increase, which would essentially double Walmart's revenue while keeping operating costs unchanged. This would be an immense profit.
Then there is the cooperation on online electronic products. This cooperation appears to be mutually beneficial, but if one thinks about it, if Walmart wants to stock online electronic products in its supermarkets, would these electronics manufacturers be willing to refuse such an opportunity and market?
If Rob Walton were to make such a request in any public forum, the manufacturers wanting to cooperate with Walmart would line up from New York to California. Walmart would have no shortage of cooperative merchants.
But why hasn't Walmart sold a large number of online electronic products to date, and even supermarkets worldwide rarely sell such products?
The reason is simple: supermarkets extort too much from online electronic products.
Many people may not know that a bottle of Coca-Cola sells for three yuan on supermarket shelves. This seems like a very cheap price, as small shops outside sell it for 3.5 yuan.
However, the actual procurement cost for supermarkets is only about 1.5 yuan per bottle, meaning the supermarket makes half the profit from the product.
Because supermarkets have numerous fee items, the first is the entry fee. Any product wanting to enter a supermarket requires a one-time payment of a large entry fee.
In addition, there are anniversary fees, which are charged annually during anniversaries. Similarly, there are holiday fees, which must also be paid during holidays.
There are also promotional fees, advertising fees, poster fees, display fees, single item surcharges, promotional staff salaries, etc. These are all fees charged by supermarkets for advertising offline products.
Do you think that's all? No, next are deductions (commissions deducted from sales), additional deductions (deducted again after checkout), conditional rebates (if the supermarket meets the company's sales targets, the company must provide rebates to the supermarket), unconditional rebates (if the company cannot meet the supermarket's sales targets, the supermarket will deduct rebates), year-end rebates (rebates given to the supermarket after the settlement of the company's annual sales), product designation (fees for suppliers to purchase designated materials from supermarkets), and losses from expired products (costs incurred by the supermarket due to product shelf life expiration).
These more than a dozen fee items are enough to give countless suppliers a headache. Through these items, supermarkets can easily reduce procurement costs to below 50% and increase gross profit margins to above 50%.
The problem is that for traditional supermarket goods like vegetables, fresh produce, daily necessities, and packaged foods, their prices have already taken into account the supermarket's shelf listing costs and can afford such costs.
At the same time, these products follow a low-profit, high-volume route, requiring large-scale shipments. Such conditions can only be met by large supermarkets. Therefore, these traditional supermarket products must enter supermarkets, even if they have to bite the bullet.
But expensive electronic products are different. If you dare to deduct half of the selling price of any electronic product as profit, these electronics companies will go bankrupt instantly.
In addition, electronic products and online electronic products are difficult to sell in large volumes. Their sales scenarios should be in various city CBDs, with elaborately decorated display cabinets or shops. Placing them in supermarkets would actually reduce the brand value of the products.
Therefore, unless these electronics manufacturers have gone mad, they would never agree to list their products in such a hellish place as supermarkets, unless supermarkets can distribute profits according to the profit distribution model specified by the manufacturers. But this is unacceptable to dominant supermarkets.
So, for this second condition, Rob Walton truly has to beg Huang He, otherwise, even Walmart cannot achieve this.