Gu Biao chatted with Ma Feng about the time he had spent drinking three pots of coffee, and finally understood how many detours Ma Feng had taken and how many ups and downs he had suffered in the past two years.

It turned out that after Ma Feng was arranged to go to the foreign trade and economic cooperation port in 82, his experience in the two years was similar to his experience after he went to the relevant department of commerce in 94 years in parallel time and space. In the United States, I have seen the efficient business model that is beyond the times, and then I have opened my eyes and want to return to China to do something big.

"To take the simplest example, I have seen too many such examples in the foreign trade and economic cooperation. For example, because of the opaque information in China, an automobile factory can make its own or find a supplier, but a universal joint will not be made, and I don't know if there are other companies in China that specialize in making this.

Then, it may be necessary to arrange a deputy factory director, a supply and marketing section chief, a lot of technicians and salesmen, the country business trip to find goods, may end up with travel expenses and inspection fees are spent tens of thousands of yuan, just to solve a small problem of 'finding special supplier information', how inefficient is this?

On the other hand, small factories that have the ability to process this kind of parts may not receive a few such needs a year, and they have no money to advertise, so they will gradually have the idea of "this thing is not worth doing specially", and they will not insist on it over time. And if we, like the Americans, have yellow pages for suppliers, not to mention the whole country, at least one province, how much can we save?

The unit that does the Yellow Pages seems to give you a consultation and contact the upper and lower families, and may charge you a few hundred yuan for consultation, or you may purchase a small amount of precision parts, which will be directly added to the single purchase price for you. It seems that some factories feel that the consulting fee is too expensive and cannot afford it, but it is at least dozens of times cheaper than you casting a net all over the world to find a business trip, right?

I also know that I'm not good at math or science, and I'm just an English teacher. You let me engage in high-tech business by myself, I have no drama in my life, we can't learn from Brother Gu, I will be speculative all my life. However, in the United States, I really found out that speculation is not just about making the difference.

Those who bid well are also those who sincerely create value from scratch, create demand, match demand, and increase employment. Some lists, not speculative people guide and discover, may be gone, reselling people, is the endogenous driving force of this kind of business. As a result, my brain was hot, so I fought hard. ”

These words are Ma Feng's outpouring of his original intention.

It is very much in line with the reflection of a manager in business or foreign trade and economic cooperation after seeing the high business efficiency of the United States.

It's just that in this life, he stood on a high place and systematically went out to see the world, 12 years earlier than the original history, so the experience of the investigation has also changed from "Internet-based e-commerce" to "traditional supplier yellow pages, credit system, niche joint customization" and other advanced American models in the 80s.

But the core idea is the same, that is, Ma Feng wants to improve business efficiency and do something that "speculation can also create new demand, new business and new employment".

If Ma Feng said something earlier, it is difficult for later generations to understand because they do not understand the background of the business atmosphere at that time, they can use similar examples in the era of Tmall overseas shopping in later generations.

For example, in later generations, on Douyin, there were some self-report videos of the organizers of the Tmall platform. In one video, the person in charge of the platform proudly said: There is an Italian guest who wants to open a party and needs some rare decorations to shock the guest. Then he found that in China, there are small toy suppliers who can build inflatable dinosaurs several stories high, and he thought it was cool, so he bought it, and finally sent praise across borders.

The transaction itself is very simple, but this video is soured by many people who are hostile to e-commerce on Douyin: Isn't it just a middleman? What is there to brag about? Is the thing developed by you or produced by your family?

The person who says such a thing is obviously ignorant.

Those who use their brains a little know that Tmall is the person in charge of the platform, and the reason why this case is emphasized is to illustrate: some lists, in the era of non-e-commerce, may not exist at all. People with latent needs can't imagine that there is someone in the world who can satisfy them, and people with latent creativity and creativity can't imagine that there are people in the world who need such a niche thing. So there was neither production nor orders at the beginning.

These requirements are created out of thin air by new technologies and platforms that are more efficient and have more centralized resource scheduling. The business model is the primary productive force of this part of the demand, not the technology and capacity.

This is the power of the "long tail effect" discussed by Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine.

The concentration of networks and information can facilitate business opportunities that were previously too small and fragmented to be satisfied.

For example, if a small town has a population of only 100,000, and the average cosPLaY enthusiast in the population is only 1 in 1,000, then the total population in this town for cosPLaY is only 100 people, and they can't run a comic show, and their needs can only be ignored.

But if in a city with a population of 10 million or more, such as Qiantang or Hujiang, even if the population of cosPLaY enthusiasts is still only one thousandth, but the city can have 10,000 enthusiasts, at this time, open a comic exhibition to sell tickets, you can have the opportunity to return to the cost, and people who have the ability, technology and art to run a comic exhibition will come to do this business. In this way, new demand and new supply are met and profitable.

If there is a two-dimensional comic station like niico, then even a small African black uncle country with only 3 cosPLaY enthusiasts can be satisfied.

This is also why the more international and concentrated the metropolis, all kinds of niche avant-garde needs can be commercialized.

Whether it is the Internet, TV shopping, or supplier yellow pages, each generation of new business information exchange platforms and transaction platforms, their most righteous value is to let "the niche needs that are not worthy of being met in the previous era because of the lack of concentration of resources and needs".

And what advantages such as "fighting price wars, relying on online without rent" and grabbing the business that can be done offline are just by-products. It's just that because the by-product is aimed at the needs of the masses, the scale and turnover will be larger after doing it, but this is not the original intention of every new business model that appeared back then.

In Ma Feng's life, he can be regarded as a successful person in advance. When they went to sea in 84, they already had a net worth of millions.

At that time, under the level of domestic consumption power, I already felt that the millionaire's money could not be spent in a lifetime.

What's more, Ma Feng can be regarded as following Gu Biao to enjoy the various dividends brought by the country's first resumption of the college entrance examination, and he is still very grateful to the country and has a very correct outlook.

In this case, a person who can't spend all his life money, and the agency does not wait to resign and go to the sea, must really want to do something big to change the world, not just for money.

And he also knows the boundaries of his ability, and he can only show his talent in the field of sales in this life.

In the mid-80s, in the emerging private economy, doing sales was indeed an easy job to make money, but the Chinese's disdain for sales work was far from being reversed.

The word "speculation" is at least ten years away from the public, and it is enough to have media, and as for the delivery of books, it is a big deal to send an additional paid expedited mail package for the postal service, and things like books will not be sent. ”

Ma Feng vomited bitterness and complained about the number of whimsical roads he had opened in the past two years, and the process of gradually retreating and advancing.

Gu Biao vaguely felt that he, a "niche industrial product demand matching platform", had a tendency to degenerate from pure publishing consulting.

Isn't it going to end up being a business information magazine and an Amazon/Amazon model?

Indeed, if you have to do this kind of business with the help of traditional media such as TV shopping and yellow pages in the era when the infrastructure is not perfect and there is no Internet, you can really only be a businessman who sells knowledge.

This thing does not require logistics, and the communication cost is low. As long as there is an exchange of whether there is a need to discuss the major rights and wrongs of demand, there are not so many non-standard twists and turns.

Historically, it is not unreasonable that Amazon could only sell books and consulting information in the United States at first.

"Then did you get your publishing house?" Gu Biao couldn't help but ask after listening to all of Ma Feng's complaints.

If you want to get the index of a publishing house, it is not a small favor, and before 92 years, it is estimated that you will not have the opportunity to get a publishing house with pure private capital.

At best, it's worth a lot of money if you get a few book numbers each time.

In these years, the publisher's annual book number indicators are all planned resources of real money. It's like a bank that gets a license and even doesn't do anything, just relying on the license qualification and licensing rights, you can get a lot of money.

"Almost, after all, I have been in the foreign trade and economic cooperation for two years, and I have some friends. At present, there are not many professional publishing houses in China that specialize in international trade and business information and technology introduction books, and there are always opportunities.

However, at present, the preliminary agreement is to find a unit to be affiliated with, and the collective shares still have to account for a few percent. But it doesn't matter, and I don't expect to make much money from selling books themselves. It's just a tool for me to realize my business vision. Qiantang is unable to get the target locally, and the target of the initial goal at present is to solve the problem in Hujiang. ”6