祝融说。

Before you turn the first page of this book, I want you to set aside everything you are doing, find a completely quiet place, and -- honestly, like a prisoner walking toward the execution ground reviewing his own life -- ask yourself one question:

Over the past one, three, or even five years, was the money you made on the road of e-commerce due to strength, or due to luck?

If you hesitated, even for a single second, then congratulations -- and, at the same time, my condolences.

Congratulations, because at least you still retain a shred of lucid self-awareness. You have not been numbed into complete insensibility by all those cheap "successology" and "get-rich-quick" courses.

As for the condolences, your hesitation itself says everything: you have been gambling. You are a gambler. You have been sitting at a vast table called "the market," playing one hand after another of Russian roulette -- with a win rate that is pitifully low -- betting your time, your money, your youth.

And I? I never gamble.

This book is written for those of you still struggling at that table. What I want to do is walk up to you, snatch that revolver out of your hand, and tell you: war is not fought this way.

Section 1: Why Do You Work So Hard, Yet Always End Up Selecting a Pile of Inventory?

Let us first paint a picture you know all too well:

Three o'clock in the morning. The city is in perfect silence. Only the light in your study is still on. Dozens of browser tabs crowd your screen: 1688, data analytics tools, influencer tracking platforms, seller research software, Google Trends... Your eyes are bloodshot. Your right hand flies between mouse and keyboard. The coffee on your left has already been refilled for the third time.

What are you doing? You are "selecting products."

You are studying data. Which keyword's search volume is spiking? Which category's growth rate has exceeded 300%? Which influencer sold a hundred thousand units of their product overnight? You are like a greedy prospector, frantically excavating the goldmine of data, hunting for that nugget of gold that will make you rich overnight.

You are "working hard," aren't you? You believe you are more diligent than 99% of your peers. You gave up entertainment. You sacrificed sleep. You devoted all your time to this "great" endeavor. You even feel moved by your own "desperation."

And then what?

You select a product with "perfect data." It possesses the three gold-star indicators: high search volume, high growth, low competition. You are so excited you cannot sleep all night. You contact the factory at once, and with every penny you scraped together from all sides, you place your first order. Thirty thousand units, filling the dim, damp little warehouse you rented.

Full of anticipation, you list the product, run ads, and rope in a few small-time influencers for a bit of promotion.

Day one: three orders. Day two: one order. Day three: zero orders. ... A month later, you stare at the pitiful orders on your dashboard and those thirty thousand units of perfectly motionless inventory, and for the first time you feel a bone-chilling cold. What now pervades your warehouse is no longer the fragrance of dreams of wealth, but the moldy smell of dampened cardboard boxes, mixed with plastic.

Those goods are your monument. And your epitaph.

You begin making excuses for yourself: "It's bad luck." "The platform changed its rules." "A competitor was maliciously placing fake orders." "The macro environment is unfavorable this year."

Stop deceiving yourself.

Let me give you the most brutal, and the most honest, answer: You end up with a pile of inventory not because you did not work hard enough, but because your effort was pointed in the wrong direction from the very start. You were merely using tactical diligence to mask strategic laziness.

What you call "hard work" is nothing more than the lowest form of manual labor. You think you are making business decisions, but in reality you are a data porter, a trend groupie. All of your behavior can be reduced to two words:

Chase. Follow.

You see fidget spinners take off, you rush in. You see massage guns explode, you rush in again. You see camping gear heat up, you rush in once more. You are like a hungry hyena, forever chasing the rotting meat the lions have left behind. By the time you expend tremendous effort and finally snatch a scrap of leftover from the giant's jaws, you discover that morsel is not enough to fill the gaps between your teeth -- and it might even be laced with poison.

Because you are always entering the game in "second time."

Once a product has become public data, once it has become a "hot trend" that every software can scrape, it is no longer an opportunity. It is a trap. A bloody trap prepared specifically for you "hardworking followers."

Where do real opportunities lie? Before the data has taken shape. Before the trend has been named. When most people have never even heard of it, and even scoff at it.

With the "middleman era" pronounced over and price wars turned into a meat grinder, the goal of product selection is no longer "finding a good product" but "choosing the right crowd and redefining the product for them."

I divide product selection operators into three levels:

• Third-rate operators: chase trends. They are the "scavengers" of the market, specialists in handling the leftover inventory of dying hits and the price wars of red oceans.
• Second-rate operators: catch trends. They can enter during a trend's "growth phase," get a sip of soup and a bite of meat. They can make money, but it is exhausting, and they can be crushed by giants at any moment.
• First-rate operators: create trends. They do not care what the current hot topic is. They care only about what the "next" hot topic will be. They are snipers. In the dead silence, they aim at an inconspicuous target and kill with a single shot. They never engage in street fighting. They are the ones who start wars, or end them.

I am that first-rate operator. And this book is meant to transform you from a third-rate "chaser" and "follower" into a supreme player who knows how to "anticipate" and "snipe."

Stop being moved by the lamplight at your study at three in the morning. If your direction is wrong, the faster you run, the sooner you die. Those mountains of inventory are not the market's betrayal of you; they are the market's most just verdict on your "lazy thinking."

Section 2: Farewell to the "Porter" Mentality -- The Difference Between a Product Manager and a Reseller

Let me ask you: What is the essence of business?

If the answer that leaps to your lips is "buy low, sell high, pocket the difference," then I suggest you close this book right now and go find a job at a staffing agency. Because with that mindset, you will be unable to take even a single step in the commerce of the future.

The era of "buy low, sell high" -- what I call the "reseller era" -- has come to an end.

What is a reseller? It is someone who exploits information asymmetry: take something from place A, move it untouched to place B, and sell it to people who do not know the price at place A. Over the past two decades, from Yiwu's small commodities to Huaqiangbei's electronics, countless people completed their initial accumulation on this "porter" model. They succeeded not because they were clever, but because in that era information was walled off. The consumer was "blind."

But now? Now is the era of information in the nude. A consumer can use the smartphone in their hand to look up the factory price of the product you sell on 1688 within three seconds. They might even discover that the retail price on Pinduoduo after massive subsidies is cheaper than your wholesale cost.

Your information asymmetry advantage has vanished without a trace.

Once the "reseller" road was blocked, 90% of e-commerce practitioners were lost. They were accustomed to being porters. Now that they find the goods can no longer be moved, they can only descend into the most primitive, most savage form of hand-to-hand combat -- the price war.

You drop one yuan, I drop one-and-a-half. You offer free shipping, I offer free shipping plus a free gift. Everyone is like gladiators trapped in an arena, stabbing each other until every one of them has bled to the last drop, only to discover in the end that no one made any money. The ones who truly profited were the factories supplying the weapons and the platforms collecting the admission fees.

This is the doomsday of the "porter mentality."

If you want to survive, and survive well, you must complete an evolution of identity: from a "reseller," evolve into a "product manager."

A "reseller" cares about "things." A "product manager" cares about "people."

That is the difference between heaven and earth.

Let me use the simplest example to make clear to you the essential difference between these two modes of thinking.

Suppose your goal is to sell a "cup."

[The Reseller's Perspective] He opens 1688, searches "cup," and sorts by sales volume. He sees a white ceramic cup, wholesale price 5 yuan, monthly sales 100,000+. Looks good. So he contacts the factory and orders 5,000 units. He snaps a white-background photo, lists it in his store with the title "Minimalist Ceramic Mug for Home and Office Drinking Water," and prices it at 15 yuan with free shipping. Then he starts burning through his ad budget, bidding on big keywords like "mug" and "water cup" against his competitors. The result? He finds hundreds of sellers selling the exact same cup. Some sell it for 12, some for 9.9. To grab traffic, he has to slash his price to 9.8. After deducting shipping, packaging, and ad costs, he loses 2 yuan per order. The more he sells, the more he loses.

[The Product Manager's Perspective] He does not start by searching for "cup." He first asks himself a few questions:

1. To "whom" am I selling this cup?
2. In "what scenario" will that person use this cup?
3. What "problem" or "desire" does that person encounter in that scenario?
4. How does my cup "solve" that problem, or "satisfy" that desire?

After a round of research and deliberation (I will elaborate on the specific methods in later chapters), he locks onto his target user: "refined white-collar women" aged 25-35 in first-tier city office buildings.

Now, let us revisit those four questions:

1. User: Refined white-collar women. Their traits: decent income, a pursuit of quality of life, attention to appearance and ritual, intense work pressure, prone to forgetting to drink water, and their desk is the place where they spend the most time every day.
2. Scenario: At their desk, covered with a computer, documents, plants, and figurines, from Monday to Friday, from 9 AM to 9 PM.
3. Problem/Desire:
   • Pain point: They get so busy they forget to drink water, leading to dry skin and suboptimal health; ordinary cups tip over easily, soaking important documents and expensive keyboards; cups that are too large look bulky, while ones that are too small require constant refilling.
   • Itch point: Ordinary cups are too ugly; they do not fit the persona of a "refined beauty" and cannot be shown off on social media or lifestyle platforms.
   • Pleasure point: A cup that is both beautiful and reminds them to drink water, while expressing their personality and taste, would be absolutely wonderful.
4. Solution: Based on these insights, he begins to "define" his product, rather than "hunt for" one.
   • Material: Not cheap ceramic, but more textured bone china or high-borosilicate glass. Lightweight, translucent.
   • Design: A Morandi color palette -- minimalist, yet not plain. A slogan printed on the body of the cup, such as "Drink water, save your life" or "Another day full of vitality." The lid can be designed in the shape of an adorable cat paw or a cloud.
   • Function: Time markings printed on the cup, from 9:00 to 18:00, reminding her how much water she should drink each hour. A non-slip silicone pad on the bottom. The lid is sealed and leak-proof. The capacity is neither large nor small; set at 450ml, enough to cover half a day's hydration.
   • Packaging: Wrapped in a beautifully designed gift box, with a sense of surprise upon opening, so she feels she is "unwrapping a gift" rather than buying a daily necessity.

Now this product is born. Its production cost may have risen from 5 yuan to 15 yuan. But its price is no longer 15 yuan; it is 58, 68, or even 98 yuan.

Its title is no longer "Minimalist Ceramic Mug," but perhaps "Office Desk Beauty Champion | Water Drinking Reminder Wonder | Ins-Style Healing Graduated Straw Cup." It no longer competes against the motley crew of 9.9-yuan free-shipping brands, but against Starbucks city mugs and the cultural and creative products of various designer brands. The user who buys it is no longer buying a mere "container for water." She is buying a "solution for a healthy lifestyle," a "label of refined self-discipline," a "sweet psychological consolation amid tedious work," and "a social currency she can post on social media."

Do you see the difference?

• The reseller sells physical attributes, earns money through hard labor, and is forever held hostage by price.
• The product manager sells solutions and emotional value, earns money through cognition, and holds the power of pricing.

"Product selection is people selection" -- this is the true meaning of that phrase. Whom you choose to serve determines the form, the value, and the profit margin of your product.

While you complain that the market is hard to crack and your margins are thinner than paper, countless "product managers" are quietly and elegantly creating one high-margin hit after another in corners you cannot see, earning profits far higher than yours through deep insight into human nature.

So, from this moment on, shatter completely that assembly-line model of "find the goods, list them, sell them" in your mind. What you need to build is a brand-new operating system: "understand a group, define a scenario, propose a solution, create a product."

This is difficult. But it is the only way out. This book is your system installation disk.

It should be noted that this methodology of "profile the crowd -- define the scene -- propose the solution -- create the product" is not invented from scratch. It is an extension of the RC theoretical system (Process Realism: Observational Convergence and the Generation of Certainty) into the domain of product selection: a "trending hit" you can already see in data software corresponds to "observational consensus" in RC -- certainty already locked in by mass observation, leaving no available margin, and therefore no opportunity. Users' "cursing" and complaints, by contrast, are traces of "observational disagreement," marking a space of possibility not yet converged -- the entrance to re-convergence. The power perspective behind "selecting goods is selecting people" draws on its order theory's analysis of power hierarchy and assessment alienation: when platforms and giants monopolize the right of assessment, the small seller's way out is to bypass public consensus and speak directly to concrete individuals. And the book's repeated emphasis on MVP testing, stop-loss, and "the right to fail" is the product-selection expression of its practical theory of "sustainable decision-making" and "fault-tolerant buffering." Readers interested in the philosophical foundations may trace back through this entrance.

Section 3: A Composite Case -- The "Ugly" Thing Many People Overlooked

The following composite case is told in the first person to demonstrate how complaints can become a product hypothesis. It is not the author's résumé or a verifiable transaction record. Its period, platform, amounts, quotations, and outcomes are teaching assumptions and cannot establish market size or a success rate.

That was about ten years ago. I was still a poor young man. What was the mainstream in the e-commerce world at the time? It was the rise of "Taobao brands." Countless people were pouring into Korean- and Japanese-style women's clothing, one after another; countless others were flipping all manner of novel 3C digital accessories from Huaqiangbei, fighting bloody battles. Everyone was fixated on those glamorous, seemingly "high-end" categories.

Back then, like you now, I too was lost in the ocean of data. I tried selling phone cases, only to find I could not even afford the mold costs. I tried selling clothing, only to find the pressure of inventory could crush me in an instant. After several failed attempts, I had only a few thousand yuan left in my pocket for living expenses.

I realized that by running with the crowd, I would never have a day in the sun. I had to find a road no one had walked.

I shut myself in my room for a full week. I did not open any data software. I did not browse any wholesale markets. I did only one thing: like a ghost, I wandered through every corner of the internet, observing what ordinary people were truly "suffering" and "complaining" about.

I abandoned shopping platforms like Taobao and JD.com, because they were full of commerce and pretense. I went to the still-primitive Douban groups, to Baidu Tieba, to various local life forums, to the comment sections of Weibo.

What I was looking for was not what people "wanted," but what people were "enduring."

It was in this process that I kept encountering a seemingly insignificant yet extraordinarily frequent complaint, especially from young female users: "The bathroom drain is clogged with hair again. The water won't drain. It's disgusting!" "Is there any way to clean the hair out of the drain? I'd throw up if I had to fish it out by hand, and I'm afraid commercial chemical cleaners will corrode the old PVC pipes." "Hiring a worker to unclog it costs over a hundred yuan, more than my entire week's food budget. What a rip-off!"

Those scattered, negative, emotion-laden words struck me like a bolt of lightning.

I saw a perfect "product manager" model:

1. Target audience: Extremely precise. Mostly young women who rent and have long hair. They are price-sensitive (unwilling to spend over a hundred yuan to hire a worker), value cleanliness (cannot bear the disgust of fishing it out by hand), yet lack the experience and the tools to handle such problems.
2. Scenario: Extremely specific. Standing in a bathroom with standing water after a shower, gazing at the foam and hair floating on the surface -- that feeling of irritation, helplessness, and disgust is real.
3. Pain point: Extremely intense.
   • Physical pain: The disgust, the filth.
   • Psychological pain: The irritation, the helplessness.
   • Economic pain: Professional drain-clearing services are too expensive.
   • Safety pain: The fear that chemicals will damage the pipes. This is a perfect need -- high frequency (long hair sheds every day), rigid demand (once clogged, it must be cleared), and intense pain (multiple pains compounded).
4. Market gap: The most critical point -- why, with such a strong need, was there no mature solution on the market? I searched Taobao at the time, and found only industrial drain snakes and highly corrosive chemical powders. The former was complicated to operate; the latter was risky. There was simply no product tailored specifically for "home female users."

Why was there none? Because this thing is "not dignified." It is associated with words like "drain," "hair," and "grime." All those self-styled "business elites" are gazing at the stars, discoursing on consumption upgrades, chasing the wind. Who would be willing to stoop down and study the miserable business of the gutter?

Their "dignity" was my "opportunity."

I sprang into action at once. What I needed was not high technology; I only needed a simple tool that could hook the hair out of the drain. I even sketched a few crude drawings myself using wire and plastic strips. In the end, on 1688, I found a factory that made industrial plastic products, using a keyword like "plastic pull strip."

I sent them my idea and my sketches. At first they refused. Their exact words were: "Young man, do you think anyone will buy this? Ugly and cheap, it feels so beneath oneself."

You see, even the factory owner thought it "could not be shown in public." This only strengthened my conviction. A market that everyone -- from users to the supply chain -- has branded with the label "undignified" is precisely a genuinely clean blue ocean with almost no competition -- within this composite case's teaching setting.

After several rounds of negotiation, I used my last few thousand yuan to persuade the factory to open a simple mold for me. The first batch was produced: a long plastic strip with barbs along its length. Cost per unit: a few cents. I gave it a name: "Drain Hair Removal Hook."

I had no money for promotion. The only thing I did was dig up all those complaint posts I had collected earlier and reply beneath them in the voice of a consumer: "Ladies, I used to be driven crazy by this too. Then I discovered a little miracle on Taobao called the 'Hair Removal Hook.' A few yuan each. Insert it, pull it out, and the whole clump of hair comes with it. Super satisfying! Tried it myself, works like a charm. You're welcome!"

I even filmed an extremely crude yet extremely authentic video: the clogged drain, the hook inserted, then pulled out, a long strand of grime-covered hair dragged along with it, and finally the water gushing smoothly away. The process was full of visual impact. The first half made you queasy; the second half left you immensely satisfied and relieved.

It detonated overnight.

The orders on my Taobao store began to grow exponentially. From a dozen a day, to dozens, to hundreds. Favorable reviews poured in like crazy: "Oh my god, it's a miracle! It saved me!" "So satisfying! The moment I pulled it out, I felt my soul ascend." "Why did I not discover this sooner? Already recommended it to all my long-haired sisters!"

I sold it at 9.9 yuan each with free shipping. Later I upgraded to a 19.9 yuan three-pack, and then launched a 29.9 yuan "kitchen + bathroom" combo set. Something that cost a few cents carried an astonishingly high gross margin.

While everyone else was fighting to the death in the red oceans of women's clothing and 3C, I earned the first million yuan of my life in just a few months, with this ugly plastic strip that everyone looked down upon -- the outcome figure set for this composite teaching case, not a promise of reproducible returns.

The story of this "Drain Hair Removal Hook" became the "origin point" of my product selection career. It made me fully grasp a supreme truth, one that is even more effective in today's era than it was ten years ago:

Product selection is not about choosing a glamorous "commodity"; it is about choosing a "trouble" that urgently needs to be solved. Wealth does not live under the spotlight; it lives in the dark corners. The more a problem makes people feel pain, embarrassment, hassle, or even disgust, the more stable and lucrative the business opportunity hidden behind it. Because these needs are the most genuine outpouring of human nature. They cannot be disguised, and they cannot be suppressed.

From that day on, I stopped looking at "hot product rankings." My product selection radar forever scans the "uninhabited zones" and "contaminated zones" on the map of human nature. I never chase trends. I chase pain.

This book will not teach you how to chase the next fidget spinner. What I will teach you is how to find the "Drain Hair Removal Hook" that is your very own.

Opening this book is opening the new destiny of your product selection career. From this moment on, bid farewell to being a gambler. Become a hunter.