In late August 2009, the summer heat still lingered in Hangzhou. On Monday morning, the weekly meeting for the 3C Digital Accessories Group was held in a small conference room on the third floor. A dozen people sat around a long table, with a category data chart projected on the wall.
Supervisor Zheng Haifeng tapped the table with his pen cap.
"Someone explain these numbers to me. Over the past month, the number of accessories sold has gone up by thirty percent, but transaction value has risen by only five percent. The average price keeps dropping, and several established sellers have come to ask me whether the platform's been diverting traffic to other people."
Nobody in the room answered.
Lin Fan sat in the seat nearest the door, a notebook open in front of him. He was the newest person there, having started just two weeks ago.
He'd sat in this conference room countless times over the course of two lives.
He'd joined Taobao in this same year, and this same group. For the first two years, he'd been the guy in the corner taking minutes, too afraid to say a word in meetings. He'd fetched tea, run errands, and done odd jobs, taking every hit a newcomer could.
Later, he'd jumped over to the seller side and joined a small-time entrepreneur. Together, they'd turned a husband-and-wife shop into the top brand in its category. One hit product after another, all managed by him. Every year, the boss had clapped him on the shoulder and dangled shares in front of him. Every year, it had been an empty promise.
As soon as the company went public, the boss had sided with the professional managers brought in by the investors. He'd sidelined Lin Fan, kicked him out, and paid him three months' salary in compensation.
At forty, he'd watched from his rented room as the brand he'd built went public. He'd watched until he died.
When he opened his eyes again, he was back at his desk in his second week on the job.
Zhou Bin was the first to speak. He was the most senior customer service rep in the group, and Lin Fan's mentor.
"I've been keeping an eye on this for a while. It's summer vacation, so students have too much free time and buy cheap odds and ends on a whim. That's dragged down the average price. Once school starts on September first, the numbers will bounce back on their own. I suggest we keep watching for now."
Zheng Haifeng set his pen cap down. "You said the same thing last week. Keep watching."
"You can't rush data," Zhou Bin said with a smile, then left it at that.
Silence settled over the room again.
The answer was right there in Lin Fan's gut. There was no need to guess.
In his previous life, on the seller side, he'd watched this wave of newcomers pour in. When the financial crisis hit, export orders dried up, leaving factories with warehouses full of goods they couldn't turn into cash. The factory owners had simply moved their products online, selling at cost and shipping whatever they could. They'd crashed prices across half the market, leaving established sellers howling.
For the past two weeks, he'd been digging through the back end, turning over every new store in the category. That was all groundwork for this moment.
The question was whether to speak up—and how much to say.
If a newcomer stood out too much, he'd attract attention. His after-hours business couldn't afford to have anyone looking too closely. But he couldn't stay silent, either. His probation review depended on results. He had to hold on to this day job; it was his ticket to learning how the platform worked.
A little, just enough to show the supervisor he knew his stuff. That was all.
Lin Fan closed his notebook. "Supervisor, may I say a couple of things?"
Everyone in the room turned to look at him.
"Students aren't the reason these numbers look like this. New sellers are driving prices down." He opened his notebook. "I pulled data on the new stores that have opened in this category over the last couple of months. More than half ship from Dongguan, Shenzhen, and Quanzhou—all places packed with factories. Most of them went live late at night, listing hundreds of products at once. It's obvious the factories are selling off their own excess inventory. Their export orders dried up, so they need somewhere to move the goods. They're coming in at cost, and established sellers can't beat them on price."
The room fell silent for two seconds.
Zheng Haifeng studied the projection for a moment, then turned to Zhou Bin. "Is he your trainee?"
"I'm mentoring him."
"Good." He nodded. "You two check the shipping-location figures and give me a clear explanation at next week's meeting."
As they filed out, someone behind him muttered that the new guy had opened his mouth for the first time and already started firing shots.
By the door to the break room, Zhou Bin stopped him.
"Xiao Lin, I don't mean to criticize you." Zhou Bin poured himself a glass of water. "When you want to say something like that in a meeting, you should give me a heads-up first. I'm your mentor. If you make a mistake, I'm the one who has to take the blame. You understand?"
"Got it, Brother Bin. I should've thought it through."
"Numbers don't change, but people do. Watch more, say less." Zhou Bin patted him on the shoulder and walked off.
In his previous life, Lin Fan had taken those words to heart. Watch more, say less. He'd watched for two years as the things he'd dug up one by one ended up in other people's weekly reports.
He was choosing to play along again this time. The more ordinary Lin Fan seemed during the day, the safer his after-hours business would be.
A little after three that afternoon, an internal notice arrived in everyone's inbox.
An employee in South China, who'd been with the company for three years, had secretly opened a store on the platform and was selling products from his own category. An investigation confirmed the violation. He'd been fired, all his earnings from the past two years had been reclaimed, and a notice had been circulated among industry peers. His career in the field was basically over.
The office buzzed at once.
"Selling products in your own category? He was just asking to get caught."
"I heard he gave himself away with the shipping address. He used his own home."
Zhou Bin read half the email, then clicked his tongue. "Three years down the drain. What was he thinking?"
Lin Fan shook his head along with everyone else, then read the email from beginning to end again.
He'd memorized the rules long ago. Employees and their immediate family members were forbidden from opening stores on the platform. Get caught, and you got the whole package: fired, earnings reclaimed, and a notice sent around.
He'd received that same email in his previous life. Back then, he'd treated it as gossip. Reading it again now, he felt a chill creep up the back of his neck.
It would've been a lie to say he wasn't scared.
But the guy had brought it on himself. His store was in the category right under his nose, and he'd listed his home as the shipping address. He might as well have written his name across his forehead.
His own store was a hundred thousand li away.
It was under Ma Le's name. The real-name registration and bank card were both Ma Le's. Not a single character of his own name was attached to it. He was selling women's clothing accessories, which had nothing to do with the digital accessories he managed, and the customer service agent replying on Wangwang was a different person from the new guy sitting in the office by day.
He'd kept every line separate, one by one.
The email that afternoon spelled out exactly what one wrong step would cost.
As soon as it hit six, he locked his computer, grabbed his backpack, and left.
Someone behind him muttered that they'd never seen a newcomer in the group leave so early.
Zhou Bin spoke at a volume that was neither loud nor soft—just enough for him to hear. "Young people these days. They really don't have a care in the world."
Let them talk. Every minute of his evenings was precious.
At seven that night, he was on the sixth floor of an old residential building in the west of the city.
The apartment belonged to Ma Le's family. Ma Le had the master bedroom to himself, and Lin Fan rented the other room at a discount for a friend. That was also why Lin Fan dared to put the store under Ma Le's name: they knew each other well.
When he walked in, the TV was on, and Ma Le was sprawled on the sofa, eating watermelon.
"You're back." Ma Le didn't even look up. "That junk computer in your room's been ringing all afternoon. Ding, ding, ding, like a woodpecker."
Lin Fan paused halfway through taking off his shoes.
All afternoon.
He went into his room and woke the computer. The Wangwang icon was flashing in a row. He opened the store back end and leaned in to look for a couple of seconds.
Fourteen orders.
The store had been open for five days. It had sold just three pairs in the first four. Last night, he'd changed some words in the title, moved the listing times to the busiest evening traffic window, and dropped the price to 9.9 yuan. In one day, fourteen orders.
At the weekly meeting, nobody would've given a number like that a second glance. But for a leggings listing that had been up for only five days, it meant the search terms were pulling in traffic and the conversion rate was holding up. His approach was working.
When mid-September came and the weather cooled, searches for leggings would shoot up. That was exactly how it had played out in his previous life. For now, he was building up a dozen or so orders a day—sales and reviews. By the time the off-season arrived, his listing would already be near the top. Anyone who wanted to squeeze in after that would have to spend serious money.
Seven or eight buyers were pestering him on Wangwang.
"Shop owner, are you there? If I order today, can you ship it tomorrow?"
His fingers settled on the keyboard, and his tone changed.
"Hi there! I'm here. We'll ship all orders tomorrow morning. If you're in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region, it'll arrive the day after."
He typed it out one character at a time, quick and friendly. He didn't sound anything like the newcomer who sat in the corner during the day.
Once he'd replied, he started packing. He dragged the cartons out of the corner. Four hundred pairs of leggings sat neatly stacked inside. He'd brought them back from the wholesale market for two thousand yuan—nearly half of everything he owned.
He opened the bags, sorted the sizes, packed each order, and filled out the shipping slips. On the sender line, he carefully wrote Ma Le's name. The phone number belonged to a newly purchased SIM card.
As he tore tape for the seventh or eighth parcel, Ma Le walked in holding half a watermelon and leaned against the doorframe.
"Seriously, what's the point?" Ma Le looked down at the floor. "You're a white-collar worker at a big company, and after work you're squatting down here taping boxes for a buck or two a pair. Does that even cover your taxi fare?"
"Just making a little pocket money."
"And you're acting like some kind of undercover agent while you're at it. Using my name, getting a separate phone number. Does your company control what its employees do after work now?"
"Side gigs are against the rules. It wouldn't look good if someone found out." Lin Fan didn't even look up. "Starting this month, I'm raising your fee for letting me use your name to 250 yuan."
"Why not make it 300? Two-fifty sounds like you're calling me an idiot."
"Fine. Three hundred."
"Now that's more like it." Ma Le took a bite of watermelon and mumbled, "All right, get back to work. I won't keep you from making your fortune."
He wandered out.
It was perfect that Ma Le thought this was just a little side hustle.
Ma Le was the only one in the apartment who knew about the store. And all Ma Le knew was that it was a small leggings shop, bringing in a few hundred yuan of pocket money a month. Once the shop grew, Lin Fan would have to keep this secret even more carefully.
The real work lay ahead.
The goods from the wholesale market came at a secondhand price: 4.5 yuan a pair. At 9.9 yuan, after postage and packaging, he wouldn't clear even two yuan. That was just a way to test the product. It couldn't build a business. To scale up, he'd need to buy directly from the source. He already had a good idea where to find suppliers, but there was no rush. First, he had to handle the current wave of orders.
And after that, there was November.
That November, the platform would hold its first Double Eleven promotion. Almost nobody at the company took it seriously yet, but he'd seen the results. That day would leave everyone stunned. Year after year, it would grow by leaps and bounds until it became a whole festival.
His first real windfall would come that day.
Before then, his store needed sales, he needed money for inventory, and his identity had to stay hidden. He couldn't afford to drop the ball on any of the three.
This kind of opportunity would last only a few years at most. In his previous life, he'd watched this door slowly close with his own eyes. Traffic had gone from dirt cheap to fiercely contested. No matter how capable you were, if you came along later, you could only work for the platform and the investors. He'd been one of those people in his previous life. At least this time, he'd arrived early.
He packed until around ten. Fourteen parcels sat in two neat stacks by the door, and the courier was scheduled to pick them up at seven the next morning.
He straightened up and thumped his lower back twice. The computer dinged again.
He leaned over for a look. Another order.
The weather hadn't even cooled down, and the orders were already coming in on their own. Once the weather cooled in mid-September, he'd be able to add a zero to that number. He'd seen it happen with his own eyes in his previous life.
He set his alarm for six, crouched back down, and kept taping boxes.
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