Wall Street Legend

   Chapter 249 Logistics Management (24)

  Bill Campbell is a smart man, he is clearly aware of Ye Dongqing's threat to the current board of directors.

It is precisely because of this that the old man persuaded others to try to join forces to create problems for him. It is a silent deterrent, at least he thinks it is a deterrent. Tim Cook is just a cog in this power struggle. It's just a victim. In fact, the old Campbell also thinks that Cook's ability is quite good, but he and Ye Dongqing are too close.

As the independent directors of Apple, with a long-term perspective, it is likely to bring them tens of millions of dollars in benefits in the future. As long as the company's performance is good enough, they can arrange their own shares and cash within a reasonable range Who is willing to hand over this attractive power to others? Ye Dongqing may not care about this kind of money, but tens of millions of dollars is not a small amount of money no matter where it is placed.

The reason for the dispute today is also the selfishness of the directors. There are too many independent directors in Apple these days. Compared with the interests of the company and other shareholders, they care more about their own interests. There are so many noble people who are selfless and dedicated.

Now these independent directors are comfortable, and the power is on the side of the board of directors. Under the premise that there are no internal conflicts, most of Apple's decisions are made by them. Seeing that Ye Dongqing's shares are getting more and more It is normal for Campbell to be anxious. Speaking of which, he is the top decision-maker of Apple. A group of directors like to make decisions according to his ideas. Power is addictive. Guy kicked out, and now the situation is about to be broken.

  Jobs no longer agrees with his ideas, Ye Dongqing, as a major shareholder, will not let him manipulate, until now, the old Campbell is still thinking about how to make himself successful, continue to limit Ye Dongqing's influence...

  For the time being, I don’t know if the trouble has been resolved, and I don’t know if Jobs can persuade the group of directors. When Ye Dongqing was in the office earlier, he clearly noticed that Jobs didn’t seem to want the way the board of directors were appointed to be changed.

It does not mean that he is regarded as an enemy because of this. As a CEO, it is normal to be worried about the expansion of the power of the major shareholder. Thinking about it differently, if he is in the situation that Jobs is facing today, he will naturally not want the balance to be suppressed. Breaking, just like the separation of powers system in the United States, is more stable when it is restrained, but he has a different idea. Ye Dongqing does not want to break the development plan for Apple because of these messy things, and is confident in his own management. Take this company to new heights one after another.

  With so many companies in hand, it is impossible to just focus on Apple.

Far away in China, Pony Ma of Tencent called him in the early morning and told him that the name of the online shopping mall had already been thought up, called "Penguin Supermarket", which sounded pretty good, and the development of the program was already in progress. It needs Ye Dongqing to give a low-interest fund of 30 million US dollars for development.

It was just a trivial matter, and Ye Dongqing agreed immediately, and replied that he would let people from Danshui Investment Group contact him to discuss the loan procedures. He had told Boney earlier that he was willing to lend money to Tencent The development of online shopping business is now only fulfilling its promise at that time.

  After the brief talk, he called Mr. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon Mall, and asked him if he could send some experts to China to help with the planning, and expressed his willingness to provide cooperation in the future.

The cooperation between Ye Dongqing and Amazon is much simpler than that of Apple. The Amazon shares he holds do not threaten Bezos. In fact, Mr. Bezos is still happy to do business with Ye Dongqing, because Facebook The current user base can be of great help to Amazon.

FB seems to be easier to expand the market, just like in the UK, Amazon originally encountered some resistance when expanding the market in the UK, but since launching a two-week publicity through FB, the number of users has increased by more than 400,000 in a short period of time. It quickly got off to a very good start. Of course, the advertising fees that should be paid still have to go to Facebook. Ye Dongqing gave him a discount. In this way, Bezos owed him a lot of favors, and he helped Ye Dongqing a lot. A little busyness is naturally not a problem.

In addition, eBay has gone to expand the Chinese market, helping to support local industries, which can be regarded as weakening Amazon's current competitor eBay. Considering Tencent's shareholding structure, there is nothing to be taboo about. Everyone knows that Ye Dongqing is also a major shareholder of Amazon. one.

The matter was finalized in a few words, and Mr. Bezos told Ye Dongqing at this time: "Leo, we have encountered some problems now, although the speed of delivery to the door is already much faster than that of transportation companies such as the US Postal Service or FedEx. , I mean big companies, but customers are still very dissatisfied, they need faster shipping channels, which cost a lot of money to achieve, and the cost of delivery is not small.

I originally planned to cooperate with FedEx, they have ready-made manpower, and the freight volume is not high, but the asking price is very high, which means that unless we pay for it ourselves, otherwise we can only increase the cost of the customer in the transportation link, but ninety-nine Free shipping in US dollars, customers generally do not pay for additional shipping costs, do you have any good ways to solve it? "

  The two often talk on the phone, and Ye Dongqing can often come up with some good ideas, which makes Mr. Bezos used to asking him questions.

Amazon's business is mainly to purchase various products from suppliers, and then store them in major logistics centers. Once a customer purchases a product, it will be found from the warehouse, packed and shipped to the location marked on the order. This link is not It is troublesome, but the cost is very high. This year, it is estimated that about 400 million US dollars will be given to consumers in the transportation subsidy. Last year, the figure for this link was 240 million US dollars.

  The reduction of warehousing and logistics costs is very critical for e-commerce companies. The key factor why Amazon has been able to turn losses into profits in the past two years is also the reduction of warehousing and logistics costs.

From 1999 to 2003, Amazon re-integrated the warehousing and logistics system, which reduced the proportion of external transportation costs to sales revenue from 13.8% to 9.7%. Order execution costs, that is, call center operations , order processing, warehousing, receipt and delivery, and payment system costs accounted for the proportion of sales revenue, which dropped from 15% at the peak to 9.1%.

Ye Dongqing is not God, he didn't know much about this area, so he replied: "Send the data, and I will help you figure out a solution after reading it, but in my opinion, the only way to optimize the cargo management system and use robots to help you A way to keep costs down, the fewer people you hire, the lower your costs..."

  (end of this chapter)