In mid-spring and April, birds are singing and flowers are blooming in the north, but in the tropical Orchidland, it seems to be like this all year round.
Although the climate has not changed much and is always so hot, the mentality of every Lanfang person is unprecedentedly prosperous.
In the past six months, every Lanfang person has felt that the environment around them has improved slightly almost every month. Tourists from the north have also become more dense, and the city's luxury shopping malls are getting fuller day by day.
Those companies in which Gu Kun holds large shares or at least tens of percent of the shares belong to France and Italy on the surface. In fact, a considerable part of the money earned belongs to Gu Kun's big luxury brands, and his sales performance in Lanfang is also the same.
With each passing day, performance increases every day.
From August last year to now, for eight full months, this growth has never stopped.
It can only be said that China has joined the WTO, Lanfang has secretly relaxed the financial review threshold for visas to China, Lanfang's oil fields and oil ports have been officially put into commercial operation to create the concept of a petroleum tycoon country, and a bunch of high-end cultural and tourism facilities in Lanfang have been completed and put into use...
…The power of this four-stroke combo is really too great.
April 1st, April Fool's Day, is also a Monday.
Gu Kun hugged his little lover Lin Ying and had just finished reading the freshly released financial briefing for the hotel industry and luxury shopping malls for the first quarter of this year in the conference hall of the Burj Al Arab Hotel.
Lin Ying now helps Gu Kun manage the Burj Al Arab Hotel and also manages several jointly owned luxury shopping malls. When she saw such excellent data, she couldn't help but praise her with emotion:
“The effect of relaxing financial visas for wealthy self-employed people who originally did not meet the visa conditions was amazing. At first, I thought that the growth in the fourth quarter of last year was due to us and Alipay organizing users to participate in groups.
Only now do I know that even if our officials don’t personally organize it, there are still so many wealthy people from all walks of life in the North vying to become Alipay users and spend their own money to play.
In the second half of last year and the first half of last year, our tourism performance in the 12 months was that we received more than 4 million tourists from northern countries. In the second half of last year and the first quarter of this year, in 9 months, we have easily surpassed the results of the previous 12 months.
Already, there are 5.5 million people. If the results from April to June are added in the future, the minimum number will be 7 million. This growth rate has increased by 75% in one year."
Lin Ying's tone became more and more emotional as she spoke, and her expression was filled with wonder and admiration.
Of course, accounts cannot be calculated like this. No company or country will calculate tourism performance according to the cycle of "the second half of the previous year plus the first half of this year."
The reason why Lin Ying subconsciously made this statistics is because last July was the time for China to join the WTO. In addition, Lanfang Oilfield officially produced oil and relaxed visas, which were all boosting measures launched intensively in the next one or two months. Therefore.
If calculated this way, the growth looks very exaggerated.
In fact, according to natural year statistics, Gu Kun predicts that Lanfang's total tourism and luxury shopping turnover in 2002 is estimated to be about 60% higher than that in 2001, which is definitely not what Lin Ying said before.
75% of the statistical caliber is so exaggerated.
Of course, even a 60% growth is already extremely exaggerated. If other small countries in the world that are established in the tourism industry hear this data, they will be envious.
After hearing his little lover's emotion, Gu Kun was very calm, with a look of calmness brought about by being well-informed. He calmly analyzed a few data and said calmly: "What's so surprising about this? A rich man is just a man.
A good introduction to medicine. As of the end of last year, there were just over 100,000 Alipay users. Now? There are already 350,000.
Only three more months have passed, which shows that Ma Feng is really capable. I helped him with the first push, and after turning the flywheel, he could roll the subsequent snowballs by himself.
I dare say that most of the 250,000 new Alipay users in the first quarter have come to Lanfang to play.
We have discovered a huge segmented market of "rich but not social status". We can only say that compared to Lanfang, Huaxia is really too big. As long as we seize a precise segmentation of China, what was originally considered
The wealthy class that is ignored can release such huge purchasing power."
Lin Ying only cares about hotels and shopping malls. She doesn’t know much about the Internet business and doesn’t like playing games, so she doesn’t understand Alipay’s growth logic. After hearing Gu Kun’s words so matter-of-factly, she couldn’t help but humbly ask:
"Isn't Alipay a software for Internet cafe owners to run recharge services? How can so many people install it? I believed you when you said there were tens of thousands of users at the beginning, but in three months it skyrocketed from hundreds of thousands to thirty or forty thousand
Wan, there aren’t that many Internet cafes in China, right?”
In Lin Ying's impression, it is very good to have one Internet cafe for every two to three thousand people in a city. In fact, China in early 2002 was still not able to reach this average level. It is estimated that the density of Internet cafes in first- and second-tier cities can be close to this level.
Can there be 500,000 Internet cafes across China? Absolutely not. Then where are the 300,000 to 400,000 Alipay users?
Gu Kun smiled when he heard this, and he explained easily: "Your ideas are too outdated. You should pay more attention to new technology information. When Alipay was first born, its functions were indeed relatively simple, and it could only recharge points and use it as Dangdang.
A payment tool for buying books online. But those were all old trends from October last year.
Ma Feng is very methodical in his work and will not rest on his laurels. Half a year has passed and the functions of Alipay have been slightly upgraded a few versions. In addition, there have been more stress tests, more running-in, and the advancement of security technology, the installation threshold has become lower.
It's complicated.
Some of the new users now are not Internet cafe owners, but just upstart self-employed people with money but no status and insufficient formal status, as well as unexplained rich people. However, we must still assess the qualifications of the franchisees.
Regarding performance, if you are just a bastard, you will probably have to pay some usage fees."
After saying this, Lin Ying understood it roughly, and after asking for more details, she finally figured out what was going on.
The security of online payment tools needs to be improved, both through technology and through trial and error.
Historically, the security technology required for Alipay was not met until 2004, but this does not mean that this time and space will still have to wait until 2004 to create Alipay that "does not rely on MAC address binding and can be installed by anyone."
Because early technology iterations have accelerated, earlier commercialization means more opportunities for trial and error and feedback. With the blessing of this kind of positive feedback, product iterations will also accelerate. Gu Kun estimates that it will be by the second quarter of 2003, or at most 2003.
By the middle of the year, we will be able to launch products that are as secure as Alipay's historical products at the end of 2004.
In other words, the birth date of Alipay's "complete body" will be advanced by about 18 months. This is a relatively safe layout, and Gu Kun believes that it can be achieved.
However, even if it has not been achieved yet, at least the current security and convenience of Alipay are much better than the version in October last year, and the cost of installation for users has been greatly reduced, at least.
More than half.
This leads to the fact that "even if a user fails to sell many point cards and the locals come to help him install Alipay and provide technical support," he will not lose much money.
In fact, starting from January this year, as the demand for new Alipay installations increased, Ma Feng also knew that some people did not want to open Internet cafes or really use Alipay to do business, but just became early users of Alipay and enjoyed "traveling to Lanfang".
Financial exemption” privilege.
Therefore, Ma Feng also adjusted the threshold for newly installed users of Alipay. He informed Gu Kun about this, and Gu Kun thought it was good, so he agreed.
The specifics are this: In 2001, if you wanted to be one of the first users of Alipay, it was not something you could just install if you wanted to.
Early users are so noble. Do you think you can become a high V if you want to be a high V?
At that time, every user had to sign a paper service agreement in black and white with Alipay's local sales staff in person. It was not like other Internet companies' products where just clicking "agree" online counted.
After Internet cafe owners join Alipay, they all have the task of purchasing and selling point cards. For example, they must use the Alipay system to sell more than 5,000 yuan of game point cards every month in order to be free of software usage fees.
Of course, if you sell more, you can increase the rebate ratio in the future, and there are other benefits. If you fail to complete the task, you may be fined one to two hundred yuan every month, which will be deducted from your Alipay balance.
In other words, every Alipay user in 2001 was equivalent to an online game point card dealer, unable to play without some useful information. Those who joined were all elites at the forefront of the Internet economy, very high-class.
But fortunately, for people who run Internet cafes at home, selling point cards worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars through recharge every month is just like playing. The task is easy to complete, so no one cares about this clause.
Constraints, everyone thinks Alipay’s constraints are very conscientious.
However, as 2001 passed and Alipay's users grew, the high-quality customer group of early Internet cafe owners was almost discovered, and user growth entered the deep water zone.
At this time, Ma Feng saw that someone wanted to join Alipay for the visa convenience of users, so he had an idea and made a change, lowering the "liquidated damages for failure to achieve sales performance" and changing it to "it doesn't matter whether your new user is an Internet cafe"
The boss is here.
Anyway, as long as you are interested in e-commerce sales, online payment, or want to engage in other new Internet economic activities, you can become a new Alipay user. The only condition is that after passing the other qualification review, if you cannot sell every month
For point cards worth more than RMB 5,000, you will have to pay a monthly fee of RMB 30.
It is equivalent to Alipay, a service that requires a monthly card to be used.
Needless to say, although this move is not sustainable, it is still very helpful in attracting new users in 2002, because there are still many high-end social elites who have not joined. They can afford this money and are willing to spend 30 yuan a month.
The monthly fee increases the value of your passport and reduces the difficulty of getting a visa to Lanzhou, speeding up the visa cycle and improving convenience.
It is equivalent to users in 2002, who can directly increase V by paying one point card every month.