dognovel Chapter 78 Pirate Shops
Chapter 78 Pirate Shops
A week later, the video on Tudou.com successfully surpassed 100 million views.
In 2009, a phenomenal video titled "A Bloodbath Caused by a Steamed Bun" was released, garnering tens of millions of views across the internet, while the views of most popular videos are between 20 and 50.
The fact that Xiao Yang's videos were able to climb from the cooking category all the way to the main ranking of the entire site and even break into the mainstream is quite an impressive achievement.
Meanwhile, the dozens of packing workers hired by the Three Little Bees flagship store gradually had some free time and were huddled together, chatting and smoking. One of them said, "Business has been so booming lately, the boss must be making a killing."
Another person chimed in, "It's definitely more than that." Yet another added, "I heard there's another Taobao store that sells similar bread recently, and its sales are pretty good."
In stark contrast to the leisurely atmosphere of the packaging area and the express delivery line, the customer service area was bustling with activity. The customer service staff's fingers flew across the keyboards, almost leaving afterimages, and many of them had empty coffee cups on their desks.
Boss Gu's eyes were bloodshot, his hair was greasy, and he looked somewhat dazed. Only one thought occupied his mind: Insufficient production capacity! Insufficient production capacity! Severely insufficient production capacity!
He and Lin Mu had anticipated that the video would become a hit and bring about a significant increase in sales, but they never expected the growth rate to be so astonishing. In just four days, 15000 boxes of stock were sold out, and even the 5000 boxes that were urgently produced in those four days were sold out. Now there is no stock left in the warehouse to ship.
He offered higher wages to the contract manufacturers and asked the workers to work overtime to catch up on production, but the demand still couldn't keep up with the supply.
Currently, the store's daily sales are around 2000 orders. At this rate, if production capacity is sufficient, monthly sales could reach 6 orders, almost overwhelmingly securing the top spot in the online food and fast-moving consumer goods sector.
However, the current daily production capacity of the contract manufacturer is only 1000 boxes at most. It is not impossible to increase the production capacity to 2000 boxes to make up for the shortfall, but adjusting the production line will take time, and this time difference cannot be made up at all.
Mr. Gu, clutching his greasy hair, was filled with anxiety. He had so much money in front of him, but he could only watch it slip away. What other way was there to quickly increase production capacity?
Just then, an operations manager rushed over in a panic, saying, "Boss Gu, something terrible has happened! Pirated shops featuring our products have appeared on Taobao Marketplace!"
"What the hell?" Boss Gu had been working tirelessly for days, already exhausted from dealing with countless trivial matters. Hearing about this unexpected incident, his anger flared instantly. He immediately yelled, "What are you waiting for? Quickly gather evidence and report it to Taobao! This kind of pirated shop won't survive 24 hours!"
The operations manager said with a strange expression, "Boss, I've already reported it, and I received a reply from the backend in less than two hours. Taobao's customer service representative said that this does not constitute infringement."
Boss Gu was taken aback and quickly went to the computer in charge of operations to check the pirated stores.
These shops had different product images, different bread packaging, and different background images, but the titles clearly stated "Same style as Little Sheep Cuisine," and they were selling them openly.
What's even more infuriating is that he saw some shops photoshopping Sheng Mingyue's picture onto their products, making it seem like they had hired Xiao Yang as a spokesperson and that they were genuine official stores.
Boss Gu was so angry he felt like vomiting blood. He couldn't make money because of insufficient production capacity, while these low-quality competitors took advantage of the situation to make a profit.
He glanced at the monthly sales figures of these counterfeit shops, which ranged from a few dozen orders to as many as two or three hundred.
If any problems arise from consuming these counterfeit breads, these shops can simply pack up and remove them from the shelves and disappear.
Since Taobao Marketplace doesn't charge deposits, they can scam as much as they can. In the end, the three little bees will have to clean up all the mess, since consumers trust their brand.
"Outrageous! Absolutely outrageous!"
Left with no other choice, Boss Gu had to take out his phone and contact Lin Mu.
He rarely sought Lin Mu's help, as it would make him appear incompetent if he asked for assistance at the slightest difficulty.
After the call was connected, Boss Gu hurriedly explained the situation. His core demand was the issue of pirated shops on Taobao Marketplace: he wanted to use Lin Mu's connections on Taobao to speed up the process, shut down these pirated shops as soon as possible, and prevent such incidents from happening again.
……
Inside the Tmall project department at Alibaba headquarters.
After receiving a call from Boss Gu, Lin Mu immediately went to Taobao Marketplace to check out those pirated shops.
This is clearly an infringement, but Taobao is not taking any action. How can they support the development of brands under such circumstances?
Immediately, Lin Mu personally drafted a letter of complaint, attached various pieces of evidence, and sent a copy to his colleagues in Taobao's rights protection department.
An hour later, he received a reply, and after reading it, he almost laughed out of anger.
The reply in the letter stated: "Soft white bread does not have trademark attributes. Regarding the issue of defamation, we have not received any complaints from the copyright holder of Little Sheep. In summary, the relevant stores you reported have no infringement issues."
This is clearly biased!
After a moment's thought, Lin Mu figured out the reason: Taobao strictly enforces KPIs in all departments, and employees who rank in the bottom 10% multiple times in a row will be demoted.
These pirated shops may be managed by the same operations team, who may be protecting them to maintain their own performance.
Lin Mu didn't want things to get too ugly and cause departmental conflict, so he wrote another email, copied to Zang Feng, asking him to help communicate and move things forward.
After some time, Zang Feng replied: "This matter is quite difficult to advance. Those shops are handled by colleagues in another group. Their group has good performance and considerable influence in the review department. They have rejected many similar complaints before. If you want to resolve this, I suggest you take the upper management route and have senior management coordinate, break down departmental barriers, and also clean up the historical issues of this group."
Lin Mu realized after reading the email that the other party was a repeat offender. No wonder the operation was so "professional"—the main image and title were so well done that they avoided any overt violations.
However, this behavior is extremely short-sighted and does not conform to Alibaba's "Six Core Values" at all. It is entirely for the short-term interests of the department, sacrificing the long-term interests of the company.
He also noticed a chilling problem: the Three Little Bees flagship store had sold 2 orders in less than 10 days, a feat that had already made it a star project in the operations department. The fact that the other party dared to take advantage of the situation right under everyone's noses showed that they were quite powerful.
Since that's the case, then let's just report them. Lin Mu compiled the contents of the previous emails into a summary email, which he then copied and forwarded to Zhang Yong and Xiaoyaozi.
Near the end of the workday, he received a reply: "Okay, I'll handle it right away and resolve it for you within 24 hours."