Forced Me to Regress, Huh?

When Cheng Zhu saw the images Shen Minglang sent, his first thought was: You pervert, browsing Weibo for girls in the middle of the night, huh?

It was still just 2014, and the livestreaming industry hadn’t taken off yet.

The year 2016 would later be known as the first year of livestreaming, but that was still a ways off.

At this time, influencers were primarily active on platforms such as Weibo and QQ space.

If Cheng Zhu recalled correctly, influencers already had significant influence and made substantial earnings at this time.

Take Weibo for example. If an influencer had a large, highly engaged following, a single ad post could easily net them thousands, if not tens of thousands.

The top influencers on Weibo could charge hundreds of thousands of yuan per advertisement post! They were practically on par with mainstream celebrities!

A single high-profile account could bring in advertising revenue in the tens of millions.

A few dozen million in 2014 was quite impressive.

In his past life, Cheng Zhu had looked into this industry and contacted several well-known companies to obtain their price lists. He was familiar with the rates of many big-name influencers at the time.

When he eventually entered the e-commerce industry, he certainly heard of several famous female e-commerce influencers.

For some top influencers, while the methods of monetizing traffic weren’t as varied as they would later become, there were still plenty of ways to make money.

Opening an online store was one of them.

This was especially true in the women’s clothing industry, where many successful stores were backed by female influencers.

Among them, one of Wang Sicong’s ex-girlfriends was a representative figure. She made a fortune from e-commerce before eventually getting into trouble for tax evasion.

The influencer Shen Minglang showed Cheng Zhu only had a few hundred thousand followers, though this number was likely inflated, with many zombie accounts.

Her Weibo post featured nine pictures, each showing her in Cheng Zhu’s stepmother dress from various angles. She skillfully maintained the right balance, ensuring the pictures wouldn’t get flagged and removed.

She was an experienced woman skilled at skirting the line.

Seven hundred comments isn’t too shabby, Cheng Zhu thought.

He knew that if his designs were good and trendsetting, some influencers would buy them and take photos.

After all, many small influencers were constantly seeking ways to attract attention.

Cheng Zhu suspected that it was a mere coincidence that Shen Minglang had come across this boundary-pushing influencer. There were likely many other small influencers wearing his store’s clothes that hadn’t been noticed.

Moreover, don’t forget that there were many women posting provocative photos online.

As long as our store’s clothing continues to lead trends and has clever designs, they’ll be my free models and provide free publicity. Cheng Zhu had long realized this.

Don’t underestimate the traffic this could bring. After all, some of the perverts who followed them were indeed potential customers.

Take Shen Minglang, for instance. One day, on a whim, he might search for the same style.

Looks like Keep Coming is tapping into more than just in-platform traffic. Cheng Zhu smiled with satisfaction.

He picked up his phone and replied to Shen Minglang. “Cousin, send me fifty yuan as hush money, or I’ll post what you were browsing late at night to the chat.”

“Damn it, you dog. I sent you a report as a frontline reporter, and you’re extorting me!” Shen Minglang cursed. “Go ahead and send it. If you do, I’ll tell everyone whose clothes she’s wearing!”

Through this little test, Cheng Zhu confirmed that Shen Minglang was indeed tight-lipped.

He wasn’t shameless enough to actually want the fifty yuan. Of course, if Shen Minglang did transfer it, he would definitely accept it.

After chatting with this newfound cousin for a while, Cheng Zhu got back to work. Our products never lack visitors late at night. We should be making this kind of nighttime money!

* * *

Several days passed in a flash, and the daily sales of Keep Coming were steadily increasing, with the potential for a sudden explosion at any moment.

Cheng Zhu had already hired two new employees. One of them used to work at an e-commerce company but left to recuperate after being hit by a car on his way to work on his electric scooter.

Wang Anquan was promoted, becoming second only to one person. He was at a management level above the two new employees, wielding considerable authority!

Of course, he still had to handle customer service work.

The two new hires were Zhao Yong and Wang Haitao, both thin and wore glasses.

Initially, they were quite excited when they learned they would be selling sexy lingerie.

For some reason, they were more enthusiastic than when selling other products!

But when they saw their boss in person, they were stunned.

Too young! Their boss looked too young!

But it didn’t matter. With Cheng Zhu’s skills and commanding presence, just a casual conversation left them thoroughly impressed.

Moreover, with the store’s steadily increasing performance laid out before them, the younger Cheng Zhu was, the more impressive he seemed.

Meanwhile, Old Cheng and Xu Yun became increasingly busy after renting the small supermarket space, beginning the initial preparations for the fresh food supermarket.

This type of store didn’t require overly elaborate decor.

After days of effort, the store was finally starting to take shape.

As for the name of the fresh food supermarket, Xu Yun had chosen it—You’s Family Supermarket.

The name had almost nothing to do with Cheng Zhu, showing the family’s strong preference for their daughter over their son.

In the afternoon, Cheng Zhu received a package from Guanyun at the studio.

It was a sample sent to him by the factory owner, Chen Bin.

This batch of products incorporated a lot of Cheng Zhu’s creativity and ingenuity. Building on some classic designs, he had added new elements to make the products more… playable?

He sat on a chair in the studio, confidently holding them up in front of his employees, carefully inspecting every detail, touching here and feeling there, completely focused.

As time went on, he even made a video call to Chen Bin. He held up a pair of ‘ragged’ underpants and pointed out a design flaw that could cause friction, potentially affecting the customer experience and leading to misfires.

Chen Bin listened to the comments, dumbfounded.

He even began to wonder, Has he already tried the sample himself? Young people are full of energy!

Wang Anquan watched Cheng Zhu gesticulating busily and thought, Where did Brother Zhu get all this experience? It doesn’t feel like he’s just talking on paper?

Huh, talking on paper? Isn’t this the true depiction of people like us who waste paper?

He looked at Cheng Zhu, who stood up with his phone and walked out the door. It was clear he was going to have a more in-depth discussion with Chen Bin.

Outside, Chen Bin said to Cheng Zhu, “Boss Cheng, let me tell you something. A lot of factories here are making this stepmother dress now. The trend has already taken off.”

“Brother Bin, I can’t control what the other factories do. Just don’t sell this to anyone else,” Cheng Zhu said while lighting a cigarette.

“Of course. Our factory’s top priority right now is to supply you, Boss Cheng,” Chen Bin said.

Even though Cheng Zhu called him Brother Bin, he wouldn’t go along with it and call him Brother Cheng—he always addressed him as Boss Cheng.

The client is giving you face. Don’t really think just because you’re a few years older, you’re suddenly his brother.

Of course, Cheng Zhu didn’t really want to call him Brother Bin either. Every time he saw this name, he was tempted to call him Abin and ask him how his high school grades were. (TL Note: Abin is the name of the main character of a relatively famous adult novel.)

Chen Bin was clearly telling him that many merchants were now jumping on the bandwagon. Everyone wanted a piece of the stepmother dress market!

Cheng Zhu had realized this long ago.

Take the advertising work he was doing on ZTC for example—he couldn’t even secure the stepmother dress keyword anymore. The price of this keyword was becoming more and more absurd by the day.

Although Cheng Zhu had coined the term stepmother dress, he couldn’t stop others from spending money on it.

Since others were willing to spend big, when people searched for stepmother dress on Taobao, the top ads were all other people’s products.

Fortunately, Cheng Zhu had already accumulated a substantial amount of sales. His monthly sales and other metrics were impressive, and the business was now in a positive cycle.

In addition, he was a master at black hat tactics, so he didn’t need to worry about traffic generation for the time being.

During the call, Chen Bin could hear the calmness in Cheng Zhu’s voice.

I wonder if it’s because young people lack a sense of crisis or if he really isn’t worried at all? Chen Bin thought.

Since opening his factory, this was the first time he had encountered a client like Cheng Zhu.

He had no idea what was going on in Cheng Zhu’s head.

After ending the call with the factory owner, Cheng Zhu finished his cigarette and stood by the window, gazing into the distance for a moment.

Then he took out his phone and prepared to send Yezi a message.

Speaking of which, he had been so busy lately that he had to carve out time to chat with Lin Lu and the others, which meant he had neglected Yezi.

But the more indifferent he was towards Yezi, the more eager she was to find him.

Once the invisible whip appeared, her true nature was exposed. It seemed as though she had fallen into a strange cycle.

Moreover, Cheng Zhu had once joked he was into the masochistic type, but he had made up this kink. Yet Yezi believed him without question!

Cheng Zhu typed, “I’m shooting a few new products in the next couple of days.”

Yezi replied almost instantly, sending three emojis in one go.

The first and third emojis were identical, both showing confetti.

The one in the middle, however, was different.

It was a text emoji that read—”As you command.”