The Industrial Giant Reborn

The time soon came to July. After more than a month of hard work, the teams of Taohua Datong and Red Bull successfully made dozens of potato chips with different flavors in the laboratory.

"This tomato flavor is not bad, but it feels a little worse than Lay's." At this moment, in the conference room of Xinghe Building, there are many different boxes of potato chips on the conference table, and there are many different brands of potato chips. Potato chips are also among them, mainly based on pleasure.

At the same time, there were more than a dozen people in the conference room, all of whom were in charge of several major companies under Chen Zhiwen. After the weekly meeting, Chen Zhiwen asked the engineers from Taohua Datong to deliver potato chips of various flavors. , Let's taste it together.

"This taste seems a bit heavy, I still like a lighter taste." Xu Jinhong of Galaxy Group said.

"That's because you're old, and young people like strong flavors." The Zhou family Yang who was on the side laughed.

"I'm younger than you." Xu Jinhong countered.

Lin Yanming, the person in charge of legal affairs, took a bite of the red potato chips, his face almost changed, and said, "Why are these potato chips so spicy? Does anyone want spicy potato chips?"

"There are really many people in the US who like to eat spicy potato chips. I found this from the previous sales data of Costco, and I also asked some colleagues in the United States. Many Mexicans in the United States People like to eat spicy potato chips, and many people in the northern part of the United States also like spicy food. In the entire US market, almost 5% of potato chips are spicy, so I specifically asked the engineers of Taohua Datong to develop Spicy potato chips." Xu Weishan, who is in charge of Galaxy Trading, explained.

"It's so perverted." Lin Yanming quickly took a sip of water and eased his mouth.

"Normal, just like we like to eat hot pot and drink iced Coke. There is no dinner party culture in the United States, but we like to eat snacks at home, while eating spicy potato chips or other spicy snacks, and drinking cold beer , It's also very cool." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

Hong Kong generally does not eat spicy food, only a few people have this hobby, and Chen Zhiwen is one of them, so he often finds some spicy food to eat, but only if he likes it a little bit, and he does not like spicy food very much People, but in the previous life, as far as he knew, there were many people who used Laoganma as a snack and wrapped pancakes with raw garlic. Just thinking about this way of eating, he felt spicy, but in fact, there is nothing better than this. A more extreme way to eat spicy food.

However, due to the consideration of developing the market, extreme spicy will not be made, but ordinary grades are still not to be missed. After all, Costco also has actual demand.

"The customer is God. If he wants to eat sour potato chips, we will do it too." Lin Yanming said with a smile.

"These flavors are the result of months of hard work by the engineers of Taohua Datong. They will make a batch in a few days and distribute them to all employees of your companies. Everyone has to receive a different brand. Then we arrange the personnel department to count the results of everyone's feedback, and Taohua Datong will change the composition according to the results of the feedback." Chen Zhiwen continued.

At present, the combined number of employees in several major businesses under its umbrella has exceeded 30,000, making it the largest employer in Hong Kong, even Jardine cannot compare. After all, Midea Industrial Park alone has 20,000 employees.

In the Midea industrial park, the biggest demand for labor is to make fans. With the highest cost performance and the layout in the supermarket market in the past few years, Midea fans have successfully entered many supermarkets in Europe and the United States, and because the feedback from the market itself has been very good over the past few years. Yes, many supermarket customers who have never communicated with Midea will actively contact Midea to seek fans, and there are even many non-chain supermarket customers.

In the first half of this year alone, Midea received orders for more than 7.35 million fans. In the second half of the year, there will be fewer orders, but it is estimated that there will be more than 10 million units in the whole year. Only these fans, including assembly, motor production and injection molding, need 11,000. employees. If it hadn't been for moving to the Midea Industrial Park, putting all the supporting facilities together, and greatly increasing the area of ​​the workplace, the production capacity would definitely not be able to keep up with the demand.

Others are arcade machines, radios, air-conditioning refrigerators, auto parts business, beverages, etc. The sum of these is not as high as the number of fans that fans need for employees. Of course, the value is much higher. Fans are just walking Quantity, provide employment for Hong Kong and the mainland in the future, and promote your own brand.

In addition to the other businesses of Hutchison and Xinghe, with so many people, it is easiest to use it for testing. Otherwise, it would be very expensive and time-consuming to invite tens of thousands of strangers to taste the taste of food, because it requires extremely strong organization ability.

"Chen Sheng, is the taste of this American customer different from that of Hong Kong?" Zhou Jiayang asked.

"It's not the same, but we are all human. At least everyone will like delicious food, and they won't like bad food either. This has little to do with different tastes, at most it's just different choices." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile : "Moreover, after the test in Hong Kong, these potato chips will also be sent to Costco, and the Costco clerk will come forward to invite customers to try, and then invite customers to buy, which will finally allow customers to spend money to buy potato chips. , is the final winner.

But Costco’s labor costs are not cheap, and there are dozens of supermarkets, the number of tests will not be large, and it will take a long time, so I want to try it in Hong Kong first. After we screen it out, Then send it to America. "

"Understood, then I can take some here and give them to my suppliers. They also have a lot of employees." Xu Weishan, the general manager of Galaxy Trading, said.

"Supplier? That's fine." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said, there are not many direct employees of Galaxy Trading, maybe only a few hundred people, but these hundreds of people have to process tens of millions of overseas orders every month, and look at the trend Soon there will be hundreds of millions.

With so many orders, plus Galaxy Trading’s short payment cycle and timely payment, in the eyes of many small factories in Hong Kong, they are the best customers. Just helping to try potato chips is very simple, and, The number of workers in these factories is quite a lot, and the sum may not be lower than the number of employees in the Midea Industrial Park.

"That's how it is. Everyone will collect the data and give it to Angel. Red Bull will select three flavors and send them to the United States. This is also a new business of our group." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

Tokyo, Japan, Sony Headquarters:

"咚咚咚" In a luxurious office, an old man with white hair and dark glasses was looking at the materials. After hearing the knock on the door, he said without raising his head: "Please come in."

The door opened from the outside, and the person came in and closed it. Then he walked up to the old man softly, bowed 45 degrees and said, "President, hello."

"Inoue, have you come back from the United States?" The old man raised his head and said with a chuckle, "During this time, you have worked hard to develop new business for the company in the United States."

If any contemporary Japanese social animal is here, you will be able to recognize it at a glance. The person in front of you is Shoo Morita, the founder of Sony Corporation in Japan, and one of the three business gods in Japan today.

After hearing this, Inoue quickly bowed again with a wider angle, and said in a tone that almost cried: "President, Inoue is ashamed of your great love. Our three arcade machines have completely failed in the United States."

"What kind of failure?" Morita Shofu said without any change in expression, still smiling.

"It can't be sold at all. Americans don't play our games at all. Even when I launched a free event, they just played for a few minutes and stopped playing." Inoue said a little disappointed.

"Is the gap so big? No one plays for free?" Morita Shofu said with a sigh.

"Yes, at present, the entire American arcade market is completely monopolized by Hong Kong's Midea Company. Their previous Magic Cubes are found in almost all the bars of a certain size that I have been to, and there are many people playing them. Moreover, recently, they have A new game called "Space Invaders" has been launched, and the popularity is higher than that of Magic Cube." Inoue said.

"It's not your fault." Shoff Morita shook his head and said, "I also know a lot of people in the United States. As far as I know, many American electronics companies have also made arcade machines, but basically they are useless. And then, even giants like HP are the same. There is only one small company called Atari, which has a certain market. In the entire United States, almost 95% of the arcade market is occupied by Midea. This is really a terrible statistic. "Shoo Morita said with emotion.

The United States is now the largest electronics market in the world. Except for traditional home appliances, all participants in the high-tech electronics industry currently rely on this market to make money, and only after the king is rolled out in this market, this product can be sold. Swept across Europe, Japan, South Korea and even other developing countries.

The reverse will not work, because only the United States needs the highest level of technology and products, and winning here is considered a victory. The demand for high-tech electronic technology in other Europe and Japan is more than a generation behind that of the United States.

The attention of all electronic companies is in the United States. When the arcade machine appeared, it was small and no one cared about it. But when the arcade machine "Snake" appeared, it quickly occupied bars in every state in the United States and dominated the world in less than half a year. . Later, the same company launched "Magic Cube", further controlling the field.

The price of arcade machines, all the bar owners who spend money know that it is impossible for these tens of thousands of people to keep secrets. After calculating the cost, the relevant personnel will know how terrible the gross profit is. It is not tens of percent, but hundreds of percent.

Such a high profit naturally made many electronics companies jealous. They saw the motherboard structure of the arcade machine, so easy!

So, they all participated in it and developed a game that they thought was definitely better. When they were about to make money in this market, they were beaten by contemporary "Snake" and "Magic Cube".

HP is one of them, and Sony, which is thousands of miles away, is also one of them. According to rough estimates, an arcade machine can make a net profit of at least tens of millions of dollars within a year. Such a large profit, even IBM would have to Jealousy, let alone Sony, you know, with so many products and so many high-tech products of Sony, the net profit is only about 200 million U.S. dollars a year, which is already the ceiling of Japanese companies, and even American companies except IBM. up.

Morita Shofu personally ordered the establishment of an arcade game department at the beginning of this year, but there are only two popular games on the market. Sony's department pondered for a long time, and came up with a game based on the falling of an equilateral triangle, which is actually an imitation "Magic Cube", its name is "Magic Triangle".

There is no way, there are only two popular games on the market, and Sony's engineers just want to make some other types and have no idea.

I originally thought that with this game, I could more or less finish the soup in this new industry, but unexpectedly, it was not recognized by the market at all. There are many ways to play the magic cube, not this inexplicable triangle, and the matching There are always problems.

And after "Space Invaders" was launched, even the tired "Magic Cube" was severely squeezed, and the arcade machines of other companies were even more dead. Only Atari, relying on small arcade machines, Reluctantly, it is still maintained, and because of the continuous losses in the arcade market, Atari is already developing a new home game console.

"This "Space Invaders" is too popular, and its gameplay is completely different from the previous Magic Cube and Snake. After I played it, I really want to continue playing." Inoue said again.

"Now it seems that Midea's continuous success in the arcade market is not accidental. Their company must have a deep understanding of the game market." Morita Shofu said: "In the past six months, our Sony team has also Many other games have been developed. Although they were not sent to the United States for testing, they also found many passers-by in Tokyo to play. The result is that it is very difficult to let these passers-by play our games for free, let alone let users There’s a huge difference in difficulty between spending a few dollars a day at a bar and grabbing a machine, but we can’t even do that for free.”

"Yes, their game, we think it's just like that at first glance. It's easy to write the program, but how to come up with such a game is the most difficult." Inoue also said, although the reason for the defeat, he also thinks It's not about me, but I was still very worried that the president would blame me. You know, in a Japanese company, if you fail once, if you are held accountable, your life will basically be over. Now the president's attitude has made him feel all pressure is gone.

"Just like this screw, it looks simple, but people who invented it more than 2,000 years ago are really geniuses." After taking a screw from a similar music player beside him, Morita Shofu said with emotion .

Inoue asked again: "President, shall we develop the next game now?"

"Do you have an idea?" Morita Shofu asked.

"No." Inoue shook his head.

"I don't have either. Maybe we don't have tens of thousands of employees at Sony. It doesn't make sense to blindly develop new games." After pondering for a while, Morita Shoff said: "You can arrange the external room and ask them to contact the Midea company in Hong Kong, which is Morita Schoff would like to visit the company."

"Are you going to Hong Kong? Although this Midea has made some achievements in the arcade market, it is mediocre in other aspects. It is nothing more than a home appliance business, and it is still a very low-level one." Inoue said a little surprised. However, one of Japan's business gods is second to none in the global electronics industry, and he is also the guest of the presidents and prime ministers of various countries. He has also checked the information of Midea company a long time ago. Although there are some achievements, it is not as good as Sony. too far.

"It's very ordinary. Who should we compare? Our comparison with Sony and IBM is actually very ordinary." Morita Shofu said with a smile: "For a company that has only been in business for a few years, this Midea has already developed rapidly. In this life, I have never seen such a fast development speed, and even if it is an arcade, you know that their annual profit exceeds 100 million U.S. dollars. Looking at the whole world, how many companies have a yearly net profit of more than 100 million U.S. dollars? $100 million?

This is just a company that has been established for less than five years. In another ten years, do you know what this company will develop into? And even if it's just the scale it is now, it's worth a trip, I'm really curious how they managed to make three video game hits in a row. "

Morita Shofu has already checked out Midea's information, and even Midea's owner Chen Zhiwen's information. He also knows that if Chen Zhiwen's company is a Japanese company and continues to develop, the absolute popularity of the company will not be lower than his in the future. .

"I'm afraid the other party won't reveal this kind of secret." Inoue said cautiously.

"I know." Shoffo Morita smiled and said, "But it's still worth a visit."

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