Chapter 1001 Upgrading
Wang Jianjun's matter was just an episode for Song Yuanchao. Compared with Li Daqi, Song Yuanchao didn't care about how Wang Jianjun was doing now. As the saying goes, there is a cause and there is an effect. This is how life is. When facing the choices in life, the road under your feet is your own.
However, Song Yuanchao also understood Li Daqi's feelings, so he asked Li Daqi to come today just to give him some advice, so as to prevent this guy from being soft-hearted and doing something wrong. Sometimes being a good person is not the way to go.
The purpose of inviting Li Daqi here today is to discuss the mobile phone business. Li Daqi is the general manager of Shenghua Communications. Since Shenghua first started making programmable switching systems, Li Daqi has been in charge of this aspect of the work. Later, Li Daqi was in charge of Shenghua's paging and the still popular PHS business.
Some time ago, Shenghua Mobile finally got its network access, which made Song Chaoyuan feel relieved. With the network access license, Shenghua's domestic mobile phone business can be officially launched.
At present, the domestic mobile phone brands are mainly foreign ones, such as Motorola, which entered the domestic mobile phone market the earliest, and Ericsson, which appeared a few years ago. This year, the future mobile phone giant Nokia sold its original cable TV and color TV production business, entered the mobile phone market with all its strength, and launched the Nokia 9000 series, thus opening the wave of the Nokia mobile phone empire era.
There are not many domestic mobile phone brands now. Apart from Eastcom, which was the first to cooperate with Nokia and produce mobile phones (actually OEM), there is Panda, which cooperates with Ericsson.
These two companies are now quite famous, but Song Yuanchao knows well that due to various reasons, they will not exist for long. With the astonishing speed of mobile phone updates and upgrades, these two companies without their own technological reserves are just a flash in the pan and will soon be forgotten by the public.
As for the Fighter Bird and other brands in the mobile phone market, there is no sign of them now. They will not appear for two years. Song Chaoyuan's Shenghua is a mobile phone manufacturer that obtained the network access license earlier among its own brands. Moreover, after years of technological accumulation and the success of Xiaolingtong, Shenghua's GSM mobile phone has been successful, and its performance is completely comparable to several current imported brands.
After obtaining the network access license, Shenghua's mobile phones can be officially sold in the country. Song Chaoyuan is not worried about the sales channels because due to the hot sales of Xiaolingtong in recent years, Shenghua already has a considerable sales network in the mobile communications business. To put it bluntly, Shenghua's sales network in the mobile communications business is stronger than that of Motorola and Ericsson, and has a higher coverage rate.
"I'm not worried about domestic sales. Our products are just as good as imported ones in terms of performance and have more complete functions," Song Chaoyuan said confidently. Li Daqi agreed with this. He has compared various mobile phone brands and products on the domestic market. In comparison, although Shenghua is a domestically produced mobile phone, it is not backward in technology. Moreover, Shenghua is a fully Chinese mobile phone. You must know that the mobile phones sold in China now still have English displays.
In terms of the phone's appearance, Song Chaoyuan personally designed the shape based on the development of mobile phones in later generations. The appearance of Shenghua phone is somewhat similar to the later Sony W800 in Japan. The keyboard layout and shape are not much different, except for the smaller screen.
Sony's mobile phones are unique in appearance design. In the future, Sony acquired Ericsson to form a new company, and the Sony Ericsson mobile phones launched by it were once popular. However, it cannot be denied that the Japanese blindly pursued the perfection of functions in electronic products and ignored the essence of mobile phone performance, making a lot of fancy but impractical gadgets, which led to Ericsson, which once shared the market with Motorola and Nokia, gradually losing the market.
Song Yuanchao's requirements for mobile phones are first, performance, second, appearance, and third, quality.
Performance depends on technology, appearance depends on design, and quality depends on manufacturing.
Shenghua is not lacking in these three aspects, and Shenghua currently has a dominant position in the PHS market, which is also Shenghua's advantage.
"I am still considering the overseas market. Shenghua Communications must seize the opportunity as soon as possible. It will be a victory if we can enter the European and American markets. As for the Asian market, it is our largest market, such as Southeast Asian countries, India and even the Middle East. These places have a large population base and great market potential. But one thing is that you must be careful not to be cheated by the locals when entering. Their business reputation is not very good, so you must be especially careful about this."
Song Chaoyuan was worried that Li Daqi might overlook this, so he reminded him. Li Daqi knew that Song Chaoyuan generally wouldn't emphasize one thing, but once he did, he had to pay attention.
For all Shenghua Group companies, Song Chaoyuan paid special attention to the capital chain of the companies, especially the payment for goods related to the capital chain. Even for fast-moving consumer goods companies such as Si Te and Nan Du, including Chaoxian Xieqiao, Song Chaoyuan had special requirements for sales contracts and payment collection, which was rare in fast-moving consumer goods companies, because according to the sales practices of fast-moving consumer goods companies, it was very common to sell on credit, and the payment period was generally at least one month, and sometimes as long as two to three months or even longer.
But Shenghua has always adhered to its own principles from the very beginning. It has directly graded dealers (sales terminals) according to the time of collecting payment for goods, and implemented tiered pricing and cooperation methods according to this graded system.
It is precisely because Song Chaoyuan has very strict control in this regard that the triangular debts that troubled domestic companies in previous years did not have any impact on Shenghua, and also made the capital chain of Shenghua's affiliated companies operate very well.
However, there is a problem, which is the disruption of the traditional sales market in recent years.
A few years ago, taking the fast-moving consumer goods industry as an example, the sales market was mainly based on self-owned sales terminals (own stores), supply and marketing cooperatives, tobacco, sugar, fruits, and department stores as the main channels, in addition to the sales channels of large regional wholesalers such as individual stores in rural areas.
However, with the deepening of reform and opening up and the rapid economic development, this structure has been completely broken, and the supply and marketing cooperatives were the first to be affected.
In the era of planned economy, supply and marketing cooperatives were the most important component and the foundation of the planned economy. However, with the advent of market economy, the rigid system and insufficient competitiveness of supply and marketing cooperatives no longer have the ability to compete. With the gradual decline of supply and marketing cooperatives, most of this piece of cake has been replaced by rising distributors and wholesalers. Now, to put it bluntly, supply and marketing cooperatives in many places are now in name only and have long lost their former glory.
As for other channels, tobacco, sugar, fruit, and department stores have not had a good time in recent years, but they still have some commercial advantages compared to supply and marketing cooperatives. In many regions, these enterprises have begun to change. For example, in Shanghai, the "Spark Day and Night" project has been launched. In fact, the Spark Day and Night store appeared more than 20 years ago, but later disappeared for some reasons. Now it has appeared again, and the main reason is a reform and adjustment for these traditional commercial companies.
But in comparison, the biggest impact on traditional commerce was the emergence of the rapidly growing “supermarket”. The term “supermarket” was first known in the Japanese TV series “Oshin’s Story”. When the TV series was popular all over the country, Shanghai established two supermarket companies in just over two years, one called Hualian and the other called Lianhua.
These two supermarket companies were very low-key when they were first established, and outsiders didn't take them seriously at all.
Take Hualian for example. When they were first established, their headquarters was located in the old city of the city. It was an ordinary two-story old building. The first floor was a small supermarket of only more than 100 square meters, and the warehouse was behind it. The second floor was the office, and all the office departments in the company were crowded on the second floor. The third floor above was the general manager's office, which was only less than 20 square meters. Because it was a low attic, it was not only difficult to stand up in it, but also had to bend over to enter and exit. In addition, the conditions were poor. There was no air conditioning when it was hot, and even if the electric fan was blowing hard, the people sitting inside would sweat profusely.
Such conditions cannot be compared with those of large department stores , let alone some central stores selling tobacco, candy, and fruits. Even after its establishment, several leaders personally visited various factories in the hope that they would cooperate with them, and at the same time described the bright future of their supermarkets to the other party, but there were probably very few people who believed them.
It has to be said that a supermarket company that has just started up is facing extremely difficulties. There is not much funding, no space, and even very few companies are willing to cooperate with them.
Under such circumstances, the supermarket leaders could only do it themselves, visiting each cooperative enterprise and impressing them with sincerity. As time went by, some enterprises finally began to try to cooperate with them. It was precisely because of this breakthrough that the newly established supermarket had a rare improvement.
As the largest beverage and instant noodle food company in China, Si Te, as well as Nandu, a subsidiary of Shenghua and an old food company with a certain foundation in Jinling and other regions, plus the not-so-long-established Chaoxian Xieqiao Zhacai, are all well-known companies in the fast-moving consumer goods industry. Supermarkets will certainly not miss the opportunity to cooperate with Shenghua.
When Song Chaoyuan learned that the supermarket intended to cooperate with Shenghua and offered favorable conditions, Song Chaoyuan decisively instructed his subordinates to appropriately lower the standards and cooperate with the supermarket. Shenghua's timely assistance also won the friendship of the supermarket. The two bosses of the supermarket patted their chests and assured that Shenghua's efforts would definitely be rewarded, and they also firmly believed that their business would be successful.
Two or three years passed in a flash. No one expected that after only a few years of listing, the two supermarkets, which were initially inconspicuous, began to grow bigger and bigger. With the support of the parent company, new stores popped up one after another. With the continuous opening of stores, the supermarkets' purchases and sales began to soar, and the shopping habits of ordinary people also began to change gradually with the emergence of supermarkets. When a virtuous cycle began, everything fell into place.
The emergence and success of supermarkets began to break the pattern of the original sales network. Song Chaoyuan was very clear about this and understood that this was the general trend. There are pros and cons to cooperating with supermarkets. Although the cooperation between the two parties is good now, as the supermarkets continue to grow, the cooperation status between the two parties will gradually change. There is nothing that can be done about it. It is an unchanging truth that big stores bully customers. Even Gou Jian, the King of Yue, could only share suffering but not wealth, let alone business matters?
