You're Selling for 8.80? Then I'll Sell for 7.90!

At eleven Monday night, Ma Le came out after his shower and saw Lin Fan still sitting at the computer. Two windows were open on the screen—his own listing on the left, and the 8.80 one on the right.

"What's this?"

"Someone copied my homework." Lin Fan enlarged the window on the right. "My pictures, my title, and they're selling it for 1.10 less."

Ma Le leaned in for a look, and his temper flared instantly.

"Isn't this straight-up robbery? They're over a buck cheaper. Won't all the buyers go to them? Report them! You took those pictures!"

"Report what?" Lin Fan opened the other shop's homepage. "Let's see who it is first."

The shop was local to Hangzhou. It mainly sold women's clothing, had been open for over a year, and had a two-diamond rating. The Leggings listing had gone up three days ago and had sold only seven units.

Then he checked shipping. They used standard delivery, and they had not even bothered making a size chart for the product page. Everything had been copied from his shop.

By then, he had figured them out.

A small reseller buying from wholesale stalls. They had seen Leggings soaring up the seasonal rankings, gotten jealous, and copied a listing to carve themselves off a piece. Their stock came from Hangzhou wholesale stalls, bought for around five yuan. Add shipping and packaging, and their cost per pair was over 6.50. Selling at 8.80 earned them two yuan a pair. Not a bad calculation.

They just had not calculated his costs.

His wholesale price was 2.90. His total cost was under 4.50. At 9.90, he made five yuan a pair. Even if he sold at 7.90, he could still make three yuan in profit.

Before deciding how to fight a battle, he had to run the numbers. Driving off this copycat was a minor matter. The important thing was setting a rule: this price range and this niche were his territory, and he would defend them to the death. Once the others watching from the sidelines saw that clearly, no second or third seller would dare come crowding in.

He could also make a tidy profit along the way. Sales would only grow during the price cut, and the number of sales and reviews would stack up even further. Once the fight was over and he raised the price again, his foundation would be stronger than before the battle began.

That listing across the way was doomed, and its owner did not even know why.

Lin Fan opened the editing page for his own listing.

In the price field, he deleted 9.90 and typed in 7.90.

He added a line of large text to the top image on the product page: Order today, ship today. Next-day delivery in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region.

Then he pushed several positive reviews with pictures to the very top. More than eight hundred reviews stood there like a wall. Even if the new listing was one yuan cheaper, buyers would have to think twice about whether they dared place an order.

"Are you crazy?" Ma Le sucked air through his teeth as he watched. "He's at 8.80 and you're at 7.90. You're hurting yourself just to hurt him."

"Go to bed. You'll understand tomorrow."

On Tuesday, everything was calm at work. He had not clicked into the women's clothing pages since last week. At noon, he went to the stairwell and checked on his phone.

The other side had followed him down to 7.90.

Fine. They were at the table now.

When he got home that night, he checked the backend first. Two hundred and sixty-eight orders today. On the first day of the price drop, sales had jumped again.

Then he checked the other side. Their sales had gone from seven to twelve—five orders in a day.

Ma Le sat beside the computer on a little stool, watching like it was a football match. One moment he refreshed their shop, the next he refreshed the other one.

"That's not right." He scratched his head. "Same price, same pictures. Why are all the buyers ordering from you?"

"If you were buying something, and two listings were the same price, one had over eight hundred reviews with tons of customer photos and shipped the same day, while the other had barely a dozen reviews and took three days to ship—which one would you order?"

Ma Le blinked.

"Then wasn't he cutting his price for nothing?"

"It's worse than for nothing." Lin Fan typed replies to customer messages. "His cost is 6.50 per pair. At 7.90, he makes 1.40 per order. Five orders a day means he earns seven yuan—not enough to cover rent and utilities. I still make three yuan an order, with more than two hundred orders a day. So who's bleeding here?"

"Then why's he still hanging on?"

"He's betting I'll crack first."

Ma Le mulled it over for a while, then slapped his thigh.

"I get it. He knows he can't win, but he can't bear to leave the table. So he's betting you'll chicken out before he does."

The kid really had a talent for watching drama.

On Wednesday, another payment came in—just over two thousand yuan. That completed the payment for the remaining thousand pairs, and he transferred it to Yiwu that same day. Old He's text messages came chasing after it ten minutes later: Payment received. Loading tomorrow. Boss Ma is mighty!

During the day at work, chatter drifted over again from the neighboring team. They said that dark horse shop had started a price war with someone. Even at 7.90, it was still crushing the competition. The more they looked at it, the less it seemed like some small-time seller.

Talk all you wanted. Keep talking.

On Thursday night, the other side moved first.

They quietly changed their price back to 8.80. After a whole day at that price, their sales did not budge.

Another day passed, and the listing could no longer be found at all. It had been taken down.

From listing to retreat, eight days. They had sold just over twenty pairs in total, making a little over one yuan per pair. They had wasted eight days, only to end up stuck with a batch of wholesale-stall stock in their hands.

Ma Le refreshed three times to make sure the listing was really gone. He folded his arms and clicked his tongue.

"They just slunk off like that? I thought they'd last half a month."

Before his words had even faded, two new reviews popped up in the backend.

One star.

"The pants bleed color and shrink. Don't buy from this unscrupulous seller."

"The quality is awful. They pilled after one wear. I regret it."

The two accounts had both been registered only in the past few days. Each had bought one pair, left a bad review on the day they received it, and then a message came through Wangwang from a burner account. Just one sentence.

"Just because you get your stock cheap. You wait."

Ma Le leaned over for a look and sprang up.

"They're taking a bite on their way out? That's shameless. Reply to him! Curse him out!"

"Why would I curse him out? That's exactly what he's waiting for."

Lin Fan opened the two bad reviews and typed into the seller response field, one character at a time.

We support inspection in any form. Our shop's Leggings come directly from the factory. Feel free to compare identical products. More than eight hundred buyers' photo reviews are below for your reference.

After typing that, he messaged several repeat customers, politely asking them to add a few follow-up reviews when they had time. He gave each of them a pair of cotton socks as thanks.

By nightfall, follow-up reviews from old customers had piled up beneath those two one-star ratings.

"I've bought these three times already. No color bleeding. Don't listen to the nonsense above."

"My whole family wears this shop's stuff. What's going on with those two reviewers?"

Two rat droppings were swallowed up by a whole pot of porridge.

Lin Fan closed the review page and went over the battle from beginning to end in his mind.

Eight days. The other side had lost money for nothing, while his own sales had never slowed. At 7.90, he had gained more than three hundred additional reviews. Tomorrow, he would raise the price back to 9.90. It was like running a promotion for free, while also putting up a sign: this niche had an owner, so think carefully before coming here.

The copycat listing was not what he truly needed to worry about.

Small wholesale-stall resellers like that came by the dozen and died by the dozen. What he had to fear were the big players with factories and capital in their hands. Those could not be worn down in eight days. Fortunately, the big players were busy with autumn clothing for the moment, and their eyes had not turned this way yet.

Every peaceful day was another day to drive his roots deeper.

At ten Friday night, they finished packing up for the day. A red notification dot glowed in the site messages.

He opened it. It was a scheduling notice for the seasonal event page.

The event he had applied for had been approved, and the schedule was confirmed. At eight tomorrow night, his listing would be placed in a sub-venue of the seasonal promotion event.

What did an event page mean? He had seen the data at work during the day. The number of visitors to the special event page in one night could match nearly half a month of organic search traffic.

Tomorrow at eight, that flood of traffic would pour into his single listing.

"What are you looking at? You're grinning like you secretly got married." Ma Le walked past, rubbing his hair dry.

"Don't go out tomorrow night. Stay home and pack orders."

"Huh? It's Saturday, bro."

"You still need to be here on Saturday." Lin Fan closed the laptop. "After tomorrow night, think of today's two hundred-plus orders as nothing more than a warm-up."