Chapter 432: It’s Done, We’re Taking Off

The morning sun slanted through the clouds, heralding a new day.

The group-buying subdivision dispatched vans one after another, filled with workers heading to the frontline markets, particularly focusing on LaShou’s key business district.

Another team was making calls hitting different spots all over the city.

“Boss Tang, do you remember me?”

“You are… Manager Zhu?”

“Yes, it’s been half a year. Our business area has finally expanded, and our deep cooperation agreement is now in effect.”

“…”

The first to sense something was off were the employees at LaShou’s public sentiment department. Their main task was to monitor other competitors’ websites.

On the afternoon of the twelfth, a newly launched event called “Online Food Festival,” marked to start in three days with a 40% discount on everything, appeared on the group-buy site.

Before the festival started, the kick-off event was an online coupon snatch where consumers could grab coupons for additional discounts, post-meal lottery tickets, and even fragments of free meal vouchers.

What do fragments mean?

It means several pieces combined could make up one complete voucher.

However, Jiang Qin’s fragment gameplay wasn’t the same as future methods; these fragments could be used collectively by different people.

Like, if you got three fragments, I got two, and someone else got four… every twenty fragments could count as one full voucher.

If used during a group meal, such a full voucher could deduct 300 yuan off the bill, depending entirely on consumer’s choice.

Lotteries could occur via website pools, Zhihu lottery posts, group-buy fan groups, or messages on the official Weibo and SMS.

The marketing department printed out the event page and submitted it, which seriously annoyed both LaShou and Nuomi.

“Damn, issuing coupons is fine, but fragments? What kind of trick is this?”

Actually, LaShou and Nuomi had similar zero-cost eating and purchasing promotions previously to attract consumers.

But considering the cost, very few people actually got free vouchers, making it hard to maintain interest, unlike the 40% and 30% discount coupons.

No matter how much they racked their brains, they couldn’t envision breaking one voucher into twenty fragments and having everyone rush to get them.

“They’re really making a move.”

“But this is good news. It means their ground promotions are struggling.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“They’re hosting this food festival to draw in users, but they’ve also placed a target for us. Just by offering targeted discounts below 40% to the merchants participating in the festival, their event won’t last.”

“Right, in three days the funds will be in place. Everything is falling into our hands.”

Promotional events are stages for acquiring new customers. Choosing this time for such an event indicates their ground promotions can’t hold up.

Meaning, during the event, they won’t expand their coverage range.

Targeting a static mark is easy as pie.

Yet, what came next was beyond their expectations.

By Wednesday afternoon, the online food festival was at its peak, and the first batch of merchants offering discounts were officially listed.

Unexpectedly, these merchants were not within the current range of the group-buy effort but scattered all over Shanghai, including their key business areas.

“President Luo, something’s off. Things aren’t right.”

“What happened?”

“The demographics of users flocking to the group-buy food festival… we can’t say they’re different from our estimates, but they’re completely unrelated.”

“?”

Managers quickly gathered in the meeting room. The projector turned on, displaying the first wave of merchants on a white screen.

Everyone’s eyes widened, feeling a shock of disbelief.

None of the enlisted merchants were previously within their business scope; they were all new chain dining enterprises.

These chains included local and non-local brands, all popular in Shanghai, with their own outlets in every district and commercial area.

According to the new coupon rules from the group-buy platform, consumers could choose the closest outlet to redeem their vouchers.

This means the group-buy event is extending its reach using these chains, covering nearly all of Shanghai except some remote suburbs.

Now, there’s no ‘your business area’ or ‘my business area’; consumers across all of Shanghai are involved.

“Impossible!”

Robin slammed the table: “How many chain restaurants are there? Over twenty, involving more than a hundred stores. You can’t set this up in half a year. When did they negotiate these partnerships?”

As the head of ground promotions, Wu Peng immediately responded: “In the last week, everyone was running ground promotions. This must be magic.”

“Unless they have a hidden team specially for negotiating with chain brands.”

“Even so, it’s too quick. We spent four months negotiating with Hilton because they initially refused any discount offers that might tarnish their high-end image.”

At this moment, situated on the right side of the conference table, Cui Yiting’s jaw dropped. The words “group-buy food festival” felt like needles piercing into her brain.

She’d seen the group-buy food festival before.

But she could never have imagined it would come back to hit them like a boomerang.

“These partnership brands were negotiated when LaShou initially arrived in Shanghai…”

“?”

Cui Yiting took a deep breath and promptly opened a compressed file saved on the D drive, containing data from the Suixin Group era.

She found the folder marked with the latest time period and hurriedly opened the photo library, then picked up the laptop and connected it to the projector.

The screen switched to a photo displaying the massive group-buy food billboard.

“When LaShou first entered the Shanghai market, led by President Kang’s team, their entry strategy was similar to the current group-buy, but because the surrounding university towns were under group-buy’s jurisdiction, they targeted it.”

“At the time, President Kang tried to sweep through this area, dispatching many specialists to negotiate with merchants.”

“They helped these merchants deliver goods and set up booths, only to realize later that they were actually aiding group-buy’s offline food festival.”

“President Kang… probably felt too embarrassed to speak out, and only those of us involved in the front-line market knew about this.”

“I even mingled at the food festival at the time. Group-buy provided the venues and advertisements free of charge, and many brands signed their food festival partnership agreements for the student market.”

“Later, as LaShou and Nuomi continually targeted Suixin Group, group-buy took advantage of the university towns to hold three food festivals.”

After sharing what she knew, no one in the room was not baffled.

The direction of the world is dynamic and multi-directional, not singular. Cui Yiting’s words were simple, “You guys didn’t really think that during Nuomi and LaShou’s targeting of Suixin Group, group-buy just sat in the university towns doing nothing, did you?”

Three minutes later, the stunned managers regained their composure, looking at each other, speechless.

That is to say, group-buy had organized an offline food festival, using the overall spending power of the university town to attract many chain dining brands.

From fast food chicken to large restaurants and hot pots, all actively approached them.

Why?

Because although students are generally poor, they truly dare to spend.

After the food festival, each participating brand saw a rapid increase in customer base, tasting success.

Moreover, group-buy didn’t sign with them under the online group-buying name but rather with the food festival as a separate project.

Now, the food festival has moved from offline to online, and all offline outlets have become their online channels.

Wu Peng suddenly lifted his head: “This makes it tough to hit them now…”

If group-buy’s business area remained small, a campaign costing 1.2 million could have severely impacted them.

But now they’re dispersed in every corner, how do you strike? Fighting a price war across all of Shanghai, what could 1.2 million possibly achieve?

“We can only wait for their event to end.”

“After the event ends, their ground promotion team will have rested and pushed aggressively again. Are we just going to wait another week? Then we might as well hand over the market.”

After a long silence, Robin spoke: “Actually, we don’t need to follow group-buy’s steps for our arrangements. What do you all think?”

After a moment of silence, Cui Yiting spoke: “Indeed, there’s no need to focus closely on group-buy’s new business areas. Our activities just need to block their key business areas.”

Wu Peng nodded: “Yiting is right, let’s act like this event never happened. Focus on Yangpu and Huangpu like we initially planned.”

“Correct, we still have a chance. Just hit hard on their main business areas, and group-buy won’t be able to keep up.”

“After all, it’s just a small site. They initially confused us with their speed, but as long as we focus on their core, we can still achieve a decisive victory.”

After the afternoon meeting, everyone stopped focusing on group-buy’s movements and instead fully planned a decisive strike to heavily impact group-buy.

But soon, something even more unexpected occurred.

They realized they had no opportunity left.

On Friday evening, just as the food festival began, the activity of collecting free meal vouchers started trending among the white-collar group.

Group-buy had signed many merchants in the early stages, and at this moment, they finally launched a targeted promotion for their user base.

But what caught LaShou off-guard was the number of group-buy’s merchants continued to surge, showing no signs of stopping. In just two days, the number of participating stores in the online food festival exceeded two hundred.

Plus, aside from the food sector, group-buy’s basic platform continued to expand endlessly.

For instance, several main shopping districts in Xuhui, which had always been under tight control by major sites, saw some of the hottest stores mysteriously close down, with several even returning their entry fees.

Simultaneously, several cinemas and KTVs also abandoned their cooperation with LaShou and Nuomi and officially joined group-buy.

After receiving this news, people at LaShou were completely dumbfounded.

In a complete commercial district, dining and entertainment are vital because they drive customer flow. Without them, customer traffic could drop by more than half.

For group-buying sites, these stores are also key to boosting daily active users.

They were prepared to deal a heavy blow to group-buy, but what came instead was a severe setback for themselves, completely unexpected by everyone.

You thought group-buy’s activities were slowing down? No, they were preparing for a grand leap, like a spring uncoiling.