Chapter 153: Snow Brings Group Buy Online

After the heavy snow fell, the taste of winter immediately intensified. The temperature in Linchuan dropped sharply, and many students who still had classes wished they could just wrap themselves in blankets to go out.

Those without classes opened the window for a cold blast of air and instantly abandoned any thought of going outside.

Even the romantic expert Old Cao curled up in the dorm, hesitating repeatedly before deciding not to venture out.

Firstly, he didn’t want to go out, and secondly, Ding Xue had scolded him all morning, saying, “It’s so cold out, and you still want to date? Are you trying to freeze me to death?”

On this snowy day, Jiang Qin’s group-buying platform went live precisely at 7 a.m., simultaneously opening registration and ordering portals, linking to the Zhihu forum’s internal system and occupying half of its homepage ad space.

In an instant, the originally sky-blue forum homepage, matching the group-buying platform’s theme color, turned a bright yellow.

This color shift was the most obvious change.

Everyone was used to the sky-blue forum, so when they logged in and saw the homepage’s new color, they were bound to be curious about the reason. The prominent group-buying ad easily caught everyone’s attention—this was the most basic way to attract traffic.

“Brothers, it’s too cold outside. No classes today, I don’t even want to leave my blanket. Let’s order food through the group-buy, and I’ll just stay in tonight!”

“Damn, one blanket is clearly not enough. I’ll freeze to death tonight! Let me order an extra blanket on the group-buy, it’s 20% off!”

“It’s my girlfriend’s birthday today, and I didn’t have time to order a cake. I just placed an order through the group-buy!”

“It’s way too cold. Let me order some cotton shoes on the group-buy.”

“The group-buy delivers at 8 a.m., noon, and 8 p.m. every day. Brothers, hurry up and place your orders, they won’t wait!”

“New users get 20% off when registering. Wow, they even deliver to the dorm buildings, this is so convenient!”

In the Entrepreneurship Base Room 208, the clacking of keyboards never ceased.

The content team organized by Lu Feiyu had emptied their brains, using different accounts on the forum to constantly boost the group-buy’s presence.

Since they had already warmed up the group-buy delivery service, forum users were easily drawn into the discussion once guided.

“Is the group-buy finally going live? So soon?”

“They really deliver to the dorms?”

“Damn, it’s so cold, and I don’t have a partner. Why bother going out? Let me order lunch and give it a try!”

“I just registered, and there’s a coat in the mall that I saw before, discounted by a hundred yuan. Is that for real?”

“Can we even buy sanitary pads? Our dorm is too far from the supermarket, this is really life-saving!”

“They’ll really deliver? And with discounts? That sounds a bit far-fetched.”

“Let me just order some instant noodles and find out!”

As the marketing progressed, the number of registrations on the group-buy backend also began to rapidly increase.

Su Nai kept refreshing the backend data, reporting the traffic situation to everyone in Room 208.

The entire office was bustling with activity, and seeing this, Cao Xinyue, Hong Yan, and Tang Lin couldn’t help but feel a bit excited.

They came to Room 208 partly to “bask in the hype” and partly to work on their PPT presentations, unrelated to the group-buying project.

So apart from being driven by the others’ enthusiasm and feeling a little anxious, they were also slightly curious.

“Online shopping, will people really be willing to try it?”

“In this weather, I think quite a few people might be willing to give it a shot.”

“That’s true. I didn’t even want to leave my blanket this morning. If food could really be delivered to my door, I’d definitely try it.”

Tang Lin said in a low voice, then started working on her PPT presentation seriously. But after typing only a couple of words, she couldn’t resist and secretly opened the group-buy website on her computer.

At the same time, Jiang Qin stood by the window, looking at the white campus scene. Although not as excited as the people in Room 208, his mood was also slightly fluctuating.

Ye Ziqing’s group-buying model had students collectively select recommended products and use their bulk purchasing power to negotiate prices.

But Jiang Qin treated the pedestrian street, academy supermarket, and Wanzhong Mall as a whole, consolidating all orders by area for the merchants to stock up and have delivery staff distribute.

Under this sales model, procurement and delivery couldn’t be compared to true food delivery in the future.

Instant delivery on demand wasn’t possible.

So Jiang Qin set three delivery times: 8 a.m., noon, and 8 p.m., to accommodate the three main meal times.

For orders placed from the previous day until 7:30 a.m. that day, the academy supermarket and pedestrian street owners would start stocking up. Delivery staff would collect the orders, check the items, and then hand them over to the dorm aunties along with the order lists.

Other time slots followed the same process, with deliveries made within half an hour after each slot’s cut-off time.

Additionally, since the Wanzhong Mall was farther away, only one delivery was scheduled per day at 8 p.m., handled by the mall’s logistics department.

With this model, Jiang Qin required far fewer delivery staff while greatly increasing efficiency.

This community group-buying approach relied on the natural advantages of the university town.

“Boss, we’ve got orders on the backend!”

“Yeah, keep an eye on it. I’m going out for a bit.”

“Got it.”

Jiang Qin left Room 208 and went to the gate of the Entrepreneurship Base to check the snow conditions.

The snow wasn’t too deep, so delivery shouldn’t be a big issue, and the weight on his heart gradually lifted.

He had specifically chosen this time to take advantage of the snowy weather’s inconvenience, forcing students to try online shopping while coupled with various opening day discounts for a compounding effect.

This should count as having the right timing, location, and circumstances, right?

Snowy weather, university town, no one wants to go out—could there be a better time to launch?

But weather forecasts couldn’t accurately predict snowfall amounts, so starting the previous night, Jiang Qin had spent about 60% of his time worrying that the snow might be too heavy and disrupt deliveries.

Fortunately, the current snow accumulation wouldn’t pose too much difficulty for deliveries.

But this didn’t come without a cost.

To motivate the delivery staff in such adverse conditions, Jiang Qin had Wei Lanlan give them an opening bonus in advance, transferred directly to their accounts.

Money wasn’t everything, but once they got through today’s challenges, the future would be smooth sailing.

The group-buy’s first launch, first delivery, first cash-on-delivery, first time putting everything together…

Jiang Qin took a deep breath, scooped up some snow, and forcefully threw the snowball onto the ground, splattering snow everywhere.

In the blink of an eye, time flew by, and the 11 a.m. alarm rang.

Tian Xiaojia, a part-time university student from the Civil Engineering Department, arrived at the pedestrian street, parked his three-wheeled cart, and stood under the awning, spacing out.

He came from an impoverished mountain area, with an older sister and a younger brother still in elementary school.

To pay for tuition and living expenses, he had been doing part-time jobs since his first year.

He had handed out flyers, worked as a cafeteria server, even moved goods in the city during breaks—anything to earn money, he did it.

But recently, the weather had gotten colder, and odd jobs were harder to find. He had planned to take it easy during this period, reward himself with some sleep and novel reading, but then the part-time club happened to be recruiting delivery staff, offering good pay. Just today’s bonus alone was enough for his weekly living expenses.

Plus, apart from the cold, this job was actually quite relaxed.

All he had to do was collect the goods according to the order list, check them, and then deliver them to the three dorm buildings he was responsible for—way more comfortable than the moving jobs he had done before.

But would people really be willing to shop online?

Tian Xiaojia wasn’t sure himself, so he could only wait and space out.

Buzz—

Half an hour later, his phone suddenly received a long message listing various products and quantities.

Tian Xiaojia instantly perked up, put on a thick cotton hat with a yellow baseball cap over it, and wobbled off on his three-wheeled cart into the street.

There were more than a dozen people with the same setup, and they couldn’t help but greet each other when they crossed paths.

Passing by the target merchants, Tian Xiaojia loudly reported the order code from the message, and the owner immediately handed over the packaged goods. After confirming everything was correct, they completed the first step.

“Dorm 7: six cotton quilts, eight wool blankets, thirteen pairs of cotton slippers…”

“Dorm 8: three cotton quilts, one wool blanket, eight pairs of cotton slippers, twenty pairs of thick cotton socks…”

Tian Xiaojia muttered to himself, then after reciting the list, he put his phone in his pocket and left the general merchandise store, heading to the next one.

Meanwhile, inside the academy supermarket.

Jiang Zhihua watched as three hat-wearing part-timers came in and took away package after package of goods, her expression becoming extremely complicated.

Based on her many years of business experience, sales were always worst during heavy snowfall because the cold weather deterred students from going out.

But today, when she received the order list, she was genuinely shocked.

Instant noodles, cola, cigarettes, lighters, sausages…

Especially the newly stocked hand warmers—she hadn’t even had a chance to put them on the shelves before those delivery guys in yellow caps carried the entire boxes away.

Although she only made a small profit selling these items at cost, the scene made her see infinite possibilities.

People were just getting lazier and lazier. Once they experienced something convenient, they wouldn’t be able to live without it later.

Some say technology changes life, but in reality, technology caters to laziness—it’s human laziness that truly changes life.

If the time and space barriers to shopping were reduced, and people only had to move their fingers to get what they wanted, it wouldn’t just be a change in the sales model but also a multiple increase in sales volume.

“Jiang Qin got me good, but it doesn’t seem like a bad deal…”

“So many people want to drink cola on a snowy day?”

“We’re running out of instant noodles, I need to call and restock.”

Jiang Zhihua muttered to herself, and as she passed by the milk tea bar, she noticed a stack of cups with Jiang Qin’s name on them, her expression becoming even more complicated.