wavenovel Chapter 39 Teaching Application
Chapter 39 Teaching Application
The post quickly caught the attention of forum members. This is because Taobao staff rarely create new threads on the forum, and when they do, they are usually full of valuable information. Within minutes of Lin Mu posting, there were replies below the thread.
Someone said, "OP is a good person, I've bookmarked this! I've only been open for a month, and I've had to buy those cheap cardboard boxes from the courier station several times in a rush, it was so expensive. After reading this post, I realized there are so many tricks involved. If I had seen it sooner, I could have saved enough for an extra lipstick."
Another person added: "In the original poster's case, the cost savings on shipping are a bit exaggerated. When negotiating with courier companies, the key is not the daily order volume, but the weight and volume. If you send 30 small, lightweight packages a day, the weight of those packages is less than the weight of 10 large appliances they send a day. The courier manager will not give you a good price. You need to be clear about your bargaining chips."
Below this comment, someone else countered: "City Lord" retorted, "How many stores sell large home appliances on Taobao? If you think the guide I provided is no good, then you do it yourself!"
Then, the two quickly started arguing on dozens of floors.
Half an hour later, the moderator on duty at the Taobao seller forum noticed the post and promptly marked it as a featured post and pinned it to the top.
Besides the arguments, there were also quite a few helpful comments in the post.
One seller shared: "Actually, the ultimate level is that packaging is marketing. Our store sells jewelry, and we haven't used cardboard boxes for a long time. We've customized custom-made tissue paper with our logo and velvet drawstring bags, which cost less than cardboard boxes and foam. Customers find them exquisite when they open them, and the repurchase rate is extremely high."
Another seller who learned from experience said, "The original poster's guide is indeed helpful and saves costs, I wholeheartedly agree. But I've learned this the hard way, so I want to remind everyone: never use cheap, smelly ink for printing on cardboard boxes. These boxes are extremely cheap, costing less than 1 cents each, but clothes will absorb the smell as soon as they're put inside, and one bad review can make you incredibly frustrated. Also, when customers return items and you're refurbishing old boxes, be sure to cover the old shipping label with opaque tape before attaching the new one to prevent the courier from delivering the wrong item. Don't let a small mistake lead to a big loss."
……
Gu Min is a Taobao seller from Pucheng, Fu'an Province. He sells counterfeit shoes from major brands on Taobao.
He started selling counterfeit shoes on Taobao in 2006 and did it for two years. Under his management, he could sell 100 orders of shoes a month on Taobao, with an average order value of over 200 yuan.
At his peak, he sold a pair of shoes for 199 yuan, earning a net profit of 40 yuan per pair sold. Selling 100 pairs a month would amount to a net profit of 4000 yuan, not including income from offline channels. In 2007, he enjoyed a period of good fortune with a monthly income exceeding 10,000 yuan.
However, this golden age didn't last long. After the 2008 financial crisis, competitors, unable to sustain their offline operations, turned their attention to online channels, engaging in fierce competition online. Many even resorted to fraud to make more money, leading to a vicious cycle where bad money drove out good.
As far as Gu Min knew, many of his peers sold counterfeit shoes online as genuine products, at much higher prices, selling them for four or five hundred yuan a pair. Although there were few buyers, the net profit was two or three hundred yuan or more for each pair sold.
This infuriated Gu Min. His colleagues in Pucheng were too shrewd, even overly so.
This reminded him of his peers who openly sold counterfeit shoes in offline shoe stores and authorized franchise stores, creating chaos in the entire industry—they made money but ruined the industry's reputation, leading to a situation where bad money drives out good. Now, they've brought this same tactic online.
To make matters worse, after Taobao staff discovered that there were a lot of sellers in Pucheng selling counterfeit and shoddy products, they tightened the review process for sellers in Pucheng, which caused Gu Min to be caught in the crossfire.
Due to a misunderstanding, his products were suspended, resulting in a significant drop in traffic. After finally being unblocked, Gu Min discovered that due to vicious competition and fierce infighting among his peers, the price of bidding keywords was being driven higher and higher.
In order to survive, Gu Min had no choice but to find ways to cut costs.
Today, he was browsing posts on the Taobao seller forum, looking for ways to save costs or transform his business, when he happened to see Lin Mu's sharing post. This post opened a new world for Gu Min: That's right, express delivery boxes! How could he have forgotten about this? A few years ago, when doing Taobao wasn't so competitive, he made a lot of money, so he didn't bother to save costs in these areas. For convenience, he always bought boxes directly from the express delivery station.
A pair of shoes doesn't need much packaging, and the courier station sells him a box for two yuan, which he doesn't mind.
Now, after careful calculation, he realized he had bought over a thousand boxes from the courier station, costing 2000 yuan just for the boxes. If he had seen Lin Mu's post earlier, he could have saved at least 1000 yuan.
1000 yuan is enough to buy a decent feature phone.
The next day, Gu Min immediately took action. He used his connections to find the warehouse manager of a nearby Yonghui Supermarket, handed him a Zhonghua cigarette, and said, "Brother, do you have any discarded cardboard boxes here?"
The warehouse manager took the cigarette, tucked it behind his ear, and asked, "What's up, brother? You're a junk collector? We already have a regular partner here who comes to pick up goods every month."
Gu Min explained her purpose, stuffed a pack of Zhonghua cigarettes into the warehouse manager's pocket, and said, "Brother, I don't need many. I run a Taobao shop, and we don't have enough boxes to package our products, so I was thinking of getting some from you—do you have any leftover shoe boxes, milk cartons, TV boxes, or similar packaging boxes from your customers?"
The warehouse manager smiled as he received a pack of cigarettes for free. The monthly garbage collection station chief coming to haul away the waste was one of his regular little windfalls, but each time he had to outsmart the chief—for example, he would wet the cardboard boxes to increase their weight, and the chief would lower the purchase price. These back-and-forth negotiations annoyed him. This little windfall wasn't much money to begin with; the cardboard boxes were sold by weight, earning only a few cents per pound.
The pack of premium cigarettes Gu Min gave him was equivalent to all the profits he could make from this matter in a month.
The warehouse manager stopped wasting time and waved his hand, "Brother, what else is there to say! I didn't specifically separate the packaging boxes you wanted. Just go to the warehouse and take all the waste cardboard boxes. There are probably several dozen kilograms in total. By the way, they're all unsoaked, but some might have rotted from improper storage. You'll have to figure out what to do with them yourself."
After thanking him, Gu Min called a tricycle and hauled all the dozens of kilograms of cardboard boxes back to his warehouse, where he began sorting and filtering them. He calculated the costs: these recycled cardboard boxes were more than enough to make 100 qualified packaging boxes, costing only 50 yuan in total; buying them from a courier station would have cost 200 yuan, saving him 150 yuan a month. He could even sell the unused boxes to nearby recycling stations, recouping another ten or so yuan of his costs.
Don't underestimate saving 150 yuan a month; over a year, that can amount to 1500 to 2000 yuan.
To express her gratitude for Lin Mu's sharing, Gu Min returned to the Taobao seller forum, gave Lin Mu a thumbs up, and even wrote a carefully crafted comment: "AAA, Mr. Pucheng Shoes: I've followed the instructions and saved 150 yuan in packaging costs this month. A big thumbs up to you! May you live a long and peaceful life!"