Chapter 371 Electronic Products Exhibition
A few days later, Zheng Youyuan called Lu Yiming and said to him excitedly, "In two days, there will be an international electronics exhibition in Baiyun City. I think Mingyuan Technology can definitely make a splash there."
When Lu Yiming heard this, he immediately thought it was a good idea: "Electronic product trade show? This is really a good opportunity to promote USB flash drives."
As the saying goes, real gold is not afraid of red fire. Mingyuan Technology has complete patents and core technologies for USB flash drives. With its powerful product functions, it is hard not to be popular.
Zheng Youyuan obviously thought so too, so he attached great importance to this matter: "Many giant companies in the industry will come to participate in the exhibition, not only domestic electronic product brands, but also some internationally renowned brands from South Korea, Japan, and even Europe and the United States. So I was thinking, should we also go to the exhibition?"
In the past, Zheng Youyuan was engaged in OEM, so he was basically not qualified to participate in this kind of trade fair.
However, now that Mingyuan Technology has developed a new gadget, the USB flash drive, which even developed countries don't have, Zheng Youyuan naturally wants to show off and boast about his power.
Of course, Lu Yiming would not refuse this kind of free advertising, and he immediately said, "Of course we have to participate in the exhibition. Participating in the exhibition is a good thing. I fully support it."
The more developed a country is, the more computers it has, and naturally the greater the demand for USB flash drives, which is of great benefit to the development of Mingyuan Technology.
So if you can go, you should go.
Seeing Lu Yiming said so, Zheng Youyuan immediately said enthusiastically: "Okay, I'll arrange it right away."
In the classroom, after finishing the call with Zheng Youyuan, Lu Yiming went straight to Shi Qingxue and whispered in her ear: "Do you have time in a few days? There will be an electronics exhibition. There should be a lot of new things there. I will take people to the exhibition. Do you want to come and have a look?"
Shi Qingxue was not very interested in digital products, but when she heard that she could go shopping with Lu Yiming, she agreed without hesitation.
Li Quanwang, unwilling to be lonely, also came over with a licking face, without the slightest awareness of being a light bulb: "Electronic products trade show, I want to go too."
Lu Yiming immediately patted Li Quanwang on the shoulder and smiled cunningly: "Hey, I was originally worried about where to find a few coolies to help me with the work. Since you have signed up so enthusiastically, I can't bear to let you down. So, you can go over and work when the time comes."
When he heard that he still had to work after that, Li Quanwang's face suddenly fell. He looked so listless, like Tom cat with a drooping face. Even Shi Qingxue couldn't help laughing when she saw him.
On Saturday morning, Lu Yiming, dressed formally, came to the venue with Li Quanwang and Shi Qingxue. As soon as they arrived, they saw a huge crowd of people.
When Lu Yiming approached the door, a female employee wearing glasses saw him from afar, recognized him, and immediately ran over.
"Hello, Mr. Lu. I'm Zhao Na, a staff member here. You can just call me Xiao Zhao. Mr. Zheng arranged for me to come pick you up."
After saying that, she took out the prepared pass and work badge and handed them to Lu Yiming respectfully.
Li Quanwang stood on tiptoe, looked around, and said with emotion : "It's really lively here. I didn't expect it would attract so many people."
He had previously thought that this kind of exhibition would only be attended by big businessmen or something like that, or at least small business owners who came here to purchase goods. He never expected that there would be so many tourists coming to visit, filling the venue to the brim.
Walking into the exhibition center with brisk steps, the three of them saw a group of young ladies in scantily clad clothes dancing hot dance on the stage. The movements of their waists and hips and their long snow-white legs were so exciting that their blood boiled.
Those who had cameras had already taken them out and started taking pictures non-stop. Li Quanwang's eyes widened with excitement, and it was obvious that he was not mentally prepared for the scene before him.
Shi Qingxue was puzzled and walked over to Lu Yiming and asked quietly, "Didn't we agree to an electronics expo? Why is there such a performance?"
Lu Yiming looked back at her cute pouting face, smiled and explained, "It's like this at an exhibition. Most men go to an auto show to see the car models, but few actually go to see the cars."
Shi Qingxue put her hands on her hips and glared at Lu Yiming : "Okay, what about you? Are you the majority here?"
Lu Yiming quickly denied it: "No, no, no, a handsome guy like me who is young, rich, and suave is of course a minority among the minority. I am one of a kind."
Shi Qingxue giggled when she heard this: "How can you be so shameless? Who would praise themselves like this?"
While chatting and laughing, the three of them, with their work badges hanging around their necks, strolled around the venue casually.
Li Quanwang and Shi Qingxue were watching the excitement, while Lu Yiming was looking at the various information hidden behind the exhibition and even the official policy direction.
The first Baiyun International Electronics Fair was held in 1998, with an exhibition area of only 10,000 square meters. Not many manufacturers participated in the exhibition, and there were even few original domestic brands. Exhibitors in the core area were basically internationally renowned large companies from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan showing off their muscles.
Among them, there are thirteen companies from Taiwan alone, which can be said to be a group coming to the mainland to make money.
In comparison, the mainland's electronics industry started late and had a low starting point. Even though it was almost the 21st century, a large number of mainland manufacturers were like Zheng Youyuan, doing the hard and tiring work of OEM for others. They had few brands of their own and even fewer core technologies developed independently.
But Lu Yiming could see that the government held this kind of exhibition with the intention of encouraging private enterprises to carry out technological innovation, hoping to keep the core technology in their own hands so that they would not have to rely on foreigners all day long.
Although the results are not obvious at the moment, Lu Yiming knows that this is the only right path.
But the road ahead is long and arduous. I wonder how many of the Xia companies participating in the exhibition today will survive in twenty years after the great test of time.
Once you take the wrong path, even if you can make some quick money, it will not last long and you will be eliminated sooner or later.
Lu Yiming is very clear that in the next 20 years, the domestic electronic product industry chain will become more and more perfect, and if an enterprise wants to survive and develop in it, it must find its own position in advance, and then calm down and work hard in the field of technology.
For a moment, Lu Yiming couldn't help but immerse himself in his own thoughts.
Shi Qingxue followed him around for a while and noticed that Lu Yiming looked deep and thoughtful, so she asked, "What are you thinking about? You are so absent-minded."
Lu Yiming smiled, but did not talk about these heavy topics with Shi Qingxue. Instead, he asked, "Do you have anything you are interested in? The electronic products that can be sent here for exhibition basically represent the most cutting-edge technology of this era."
Shi Qingxue shook her head and said, "There's nothing I want to buy."
The way women feel about electronic products is probably similar to the way men feel about cosmetics: no matter how advanced or fancy they are, they just can't get the point.
Then, Shi Qingxue asked curiously, "Where is your Mingyuan Technology booth? Why didn't we see it along the way?"
Lu Yiming said helplessly: "This is the core exhibition area. Those with registered capital of less than 60 million cannot enter."
Although Mingyuan Technology’s total investment reached 200 million yuan, its registered capital was only 10 million yuan.
Registered capital refers to the total amount of capital registered by a joint venture with the registration authority, and is the sum of the capital contributions already paid or promised to be paid by the joint venture parties.
There is a big difference between the concepts of registered capital and registered funds. The former is the amount of property granted by the state to a corporate entity for operation and management or the corporate entity's own property.
Therefore, the fact that Zheng Youyuan and Lu Yiming jointly invested 200 million yuan to establish Mingyuan Technology does not mean that the registered capital of Mingyuan Technology is 200 million yuan.
Shi Qingxue was a little surprised and asked, "Where is the Mingyuan Technology exhibition area?"
Lu Yiming said: "Outside, let's go take a look."
According to the evaluation criteria of the Electronic Products Expo, companies with registered capital of less than 60 million yuan are basically classified as small and medium-sized enterprises. They can forget about the core exhibition area and can only find a corner in the peripheral exhibition area.
However, in the current situation, it is good enough for Mingyuan Technology, as a local technology company, to come.
The three of them went back outside and found the Mingyuan Technology booth. The booth was very small, probably less than 20 square meters, the size of a storefront, which was quite unpresentable.
However, although the booth was small, both Lu Yiming and Zheng Youyuan attached great importance to this exhibition. From the moment they obtained the qualification to participate in the exhibition, they led the construction team to start various decoration arrangements. They even directly asked for several of the most popular "Future Technology" series computers from Jianlai Technology. The cool black chassis, coupled with the sci-fi style booth, was really eye-catching.
Therefore, although the area is small and the location is average, in terms of coolness, it is far better than the surrounding booths.
This also caused the owners of the next few booths to complain wildly. They thought that Mingyuan Technology was simply crazy. They only used a temporary venue for ten days, but spent so much money to renovate it. Was it crazy?
Mingyuan Technology didn't think too much about it at the time. This was the first exhibition, and there were very few mainland technology companies, so they naturally worked very hard. Apart from other things, the decoration cost alone was 100,000 yuan.
But this would make the surrounding exhibitors uncomfortable.
Everything is afraid of comparison. If Mingyuan Technology stands out from the crowd, then won’t we be made into weaklings by you?
Especially for Aotian Technology, which is right next to the Mingyuan Technology booth. The boss, Long Aotian, came here to sell floppy disks. His products had no special features and he earned all his money through hard work. Now, compared with Mingyuan Technology, his situation has become even more difficult and he feels like crying but has no tears.
After all, the manufacturers exhibiting in the peripheral exhibition areas are basically small and unknown manufacturers, and their working capital may not even be 100,000.
However, Lu Yiming directly spent 100,000 yuan to decorate a booth that only took ten days, 10,000 yuan a day, which made the surrounding small exhibitors envious.
Soon, Mingyuan Technology attracted the attention of many tourists with its sci-fi elements that were purchased with krypton gold. Many tourists stopped in front of the booth.
"When did a company called Mingyuan Technology appear in China?"
"Cool, how about we go in and take a look?"
“This booth is so cool.”
At one time, many tourists came to the small exhibition hall.
Someone asked, “What do you sell here?”
Immediately, a beautiful staff member in professional attire appeared and enthusiastically took out a cartoon-shaped USB flash drive and said, "Hello, customer. This is our product USB flash drive. This one is our classic animation series. This USB flash drive is a product independently developed by Mingyuan Technology and has obtained an international patent . Its function is to replace the floppy disk. Plug this thing into the USB port of the computer, and you can copy the files in the computer into it at will. Plug it into another computer and copy the files there. It is very convenient."
While giving the verbal introduction, the staff member also personally demonstrated the use of the USB flash drive on the computer.
Everything is afraid of comparison. Compared with a USB flash drive, a 3.5-inch floppy disk not only carries less information, but is also afraid of being squeezed, vibrated, and aged.
To sum it up in two words - garbage!
What’s more, this junk is sold at a very high price. An imported zip floppy disk costs one thousand two hundred yuan!
It is two or three times the monthly salary of an ordinary worker!
Although localization was achieved in the 1990s, making floppy disks very cheap, the quality was still very poor and they could not be read at any time, so that "easy to break" became one of the inherent properties of floppy disks.
In contrast, the USB flash drive is small, sturdy, portable, and resistant to bending, and is plug-and-play. Compared with the floppy disk, the difference is simply like the evolution of species.
After watching the staff demonstrate the use of the USB flash drive, someone was immediately tempted and asked impatiently: "How much is this thing?"
The staff member said: "At present, our USB flash drives have two specifications. This one has 8M memory and is priced at 488 yuan. There is also a 16M one that is priced at 888 yuan."
"Good stuff, good stuff."
There was a man who was an electronics dealer. He immediately saw the potential of the USB flash drive and asked, "I sell electronics. Can we talk about cooperation? I want to buy a 100-yuan product and see if it sells well."
Another one was also engaged in the distribution of electronic products. When he saw that his peers had taken the lead, he immediately said: "I have a store in the computer city, and I also plan to import a batch of goods."
Seeing the large order coming in, the clerk did not dare to neglect it and quickly called Zheng Youyuan for instructions.
People tend to follow the crowd, and as several orders were completed, more and more people came to the Mingyuan Technology booth to watch the excitement. For a while, the staff at the booth were so busy that Lu Yiming had to bring Shi Qingxue and Li Quanwang to help receive guests and maintain order.
