The news that Sanpower Group would acquire and control Lashou has attracted extensive attention from all walks of life. Other than acclaims and supportive comments, there are also some speculations which might bring pressure to the management team and employees of Lashou.com. As the new controlling shareholder, Mr. Yuan Yafei, Chairman of Sanpower Group, visited Lashou.com headquarter to have an informal discussion with its key management staff.

        During the discussion, Chairman Yuan clearly and vividly defined the “relationship between Sanpower Group’s off-line retail companies and Lashou.com” as “a relationship of a working couple”, which is independent and cooperative.

        Yuan said frankly to the management staff that he used to describe the relationship of the two companies as brotherhood. But after giving it a second thought, he reckoned that it should neither be a brotherhood nor a father-son relationship. From his perspective, the issue of Internet is a philosophic issue, as the off-line enterprises will not have Internet genes and Internet enterprises will not have off-line genes. So it will doom to be a failure if we ponderously integrate two enterprises with different genes. There are some cases of failure of household appliance giants acquiring and integrating E-business enterprises. As a large modern enterprise that ranks No. 188 among Chinese enterprises, Sanpower Group has never considered developing large-scale Internet business by its sole efforts. Under such a context, Chairman Yuan Yafei chose to acquire Lashou.com.

       Therefore, the relationship between the two sides can only be a “working couple relationship”. Only in this way can it be consistent with the law and logic of development.

       Of course, the traditional off-line enterprises shall also have an Internet mindset. They can also be the entrance to Internet with a relatively low cost, especially for their strong capabilities in supply chain, which is the weakest link of group buying websites at present.

        Chairman Yuan emphasized that the perfect synergy between Sanpower retail companies and Lashou.com will still focus on the local group buying business of Lashou.com. Therefore, Sanpower will keep putting in funds and resources.

        In talking about the developing mode of Lashou.com in the future, Chairman Yuan described it with “Five Pulls”. For example, the subsidiary enterprises of Sanpower sell 10,000,000 mobile phones and 7,000,000 computers annually, and these customers might also become the users of Lashou.com. C.Banner is the second largest shoemaker in China and has a close relationship with Sanpower. It has an annual sales volume of 3.7 billion yuan and over 2000 stores. In the past, no shoemakers were willing to manufacture women’s shoes with a size above 41 and below 34, though there is still high customer demand for shoes of such sizes. Through pre-booked group purchase on Lashou.com, a large-scale customized production of shoes of such sizes has become a reality and can also meet the demands of these special users.

        The group buying business of local life and service can bring a large number of users and very strong user stickiness. So it’s worth our special attention on how to achieve value-added services on this basis. Chairman Yuan believes that while meeting their demands for food, amusement and discounts, it can also stimulate the sale of commodities, where lies the added value of group buying. In fact, subsidiary enterprises of Sanpower such as Hisap, Funtalk, Nanjing Xinbai, Brookstone and House of Fraser can provide a great variety of commodities to Lashou.com, and the mature and strong supply chain will enable them to satisfy the customer’s demand more quickly. Therefore, while developing its core business of group buying, Lashou.com can also build its advantages in “high quality, low price and self-owned brands”, which are different from other group buying websites.

        Therefore, Chairman Yuan requested that retail subsidiaries of Sanpower should understand the business mode of Lashou.com as soon as possible, fully cooperate with and support the operation and development of Lashou.com in the areas such as business and resources. With the deepening of coordination, Lashou.com will have more than 3000 retail companies, which is not found in other Internet company. Chairman Yuan believes that they are capable of building Lashou into the biggest O2O platform in the world. Therefore, he is fully confident to make Lashou.com the first Internet enterprise to be listed in China’s A-share stock market.

        During the discussion, Chairman Yuan told the key management staff that one of the secrets to succeed is to share. He said that the stock option incentive plan of Lashou.com will be launched as soon as possible.

        In the end, Chairman Yuan encouraged the staff to work happily and hard and asked them to cherish this opportunity. He believed that Lashou.com will surely embrace a bright future and all the staff will lead a life with financial freedom and full of dignity.