20 years of restarting life

Chapter 4038 Response
“Mike, you don’t understand. Right now, the Bay Street store is struggling to ship more than 1300 units a day, and this kind of extreme staff-squeezing approach can’t continue indefinitely. Normally, we only sell about 600 or 700 units a day. In the next ten days, the factory only needs to release less than 6000 of the 30000 6230 units produced to meet the demand here, including the stores in Gotham City. It’s not that there aren’t enough customers, but that there aren’t enough salespeople. So we need to limit the number of customers to within our capacity.”

"The remaining 20000 units can be supplied to the other seven specialty stores and 187 supermarket resellers. They have even fewer employees, and it will take time for them to clear out all their stock. As for the expiration date of the digital card purchase eligibility, if 20,000 cards are issued today, then even assuming a daily shipment of 1000, it will take twenty days to serve new customers. During those twenty days, the factory, at your maximum capacity, can provide 60000 new units. Although it's still difficult, things are progressing slowly. Once the new factory is in operation, these problems will be greatly alleviated, won't they?"

After Zhao Chang'an explained it this way, Mike and Qi Xidong understood the logic in his words.

Although it's not perfect, it's the optimal solution that even they haven't been able to come up with yet.

"The progress of the second phase of the project is too slow; we need to urge them on!"

This was the first time Qi Xidong had expressed his dissatisfaction with the construction progress of the second mobile phone factory. Before this, he and Mike were in complete agreement, as long as it could be put into production next spring.

This is also a huge difference between the habits of the Chinese people and those of these slow-moving countries. Just like the speed of Shenzhen, where a floor is built every three days, this efficiency is something that these Westerners cannot imagine.

In Zhao Chang'an's view, if he were to have Shancheng No. 1 Construction Company build these low-rise factory buildings, it would only take a month and a half to complete. Moreover, while the factory buildings were being built, water, electricity, gas, road network, and large equipment could be brought in at almost the same time.

The new factory should be able to start production in less than three months.

Time is money—this isn't just an empty phrase; it's a real and tangible reality.

The 6230 is already a very mature product, and RIM has also announced that email service will be free of charge. Only by selling more phones can they offset the losses from free email.

The manager hurried downstairs to make arrangements. Zhao Chang'an glanced at the time; it was just past 8 a.m. in the West Fifth District.

This is the time used in Toronto, Gotham City, and Montreal; it's 8:00 AM now.

Houston and Chicago use Central Time, so it was only 7 a.m. It's estimated that the staff at these two stores hadn't arrived yet, since the time was set for 9:30 a.m., which is two and a half hours before Central Time.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver, which use mountain time, it's still 6 a.m., and some of the employees are probably still asleep.

This is why so far only Gotham City has called; apart from the somewhat unusual situation in Montreal, the other seven stores should not have noticed any unusual gatherings of customers at this time.

"I also notified the other stores to check on the situation in Montreal first."

Zhao Chang'an returned the phone to Qi Xidong.

Qi Xidong dialed the phone, which was immediately answered, and he put it on speakerphone.

Large crowds also gathered in Montreal, but around 5 a.m. this morning, the security guard on duty called the manager, and the manager and all the employees rushed over immediately and began to maintain order and have customers queue up.

“We didn’t get off work until after 11 p.m. last night. There were already 30 or 40 people in line. We tried to persuade them to leave, but only a few left. So we bought them blankets and water. I also told the staff on duty to keep an eye on the situation and to call me immediately if the number of people in line exceeded 300.”

“When I arrived this morning, it was only a little past six o’clock, and there were already four or five hundred people in line, and the number was still increasing. In a hurry, we took more than a dozen notebooks and tore them open, writing down numbers from 1 to 1500. We then tore off half of each notebook as a verification document. When the number reached 1500, we stopped distributing the notebooks and used a loudspeaker to repeatedly announce that today’s appointments had ended and that appointments would be made again tomorrow morning.”

The voice on the other end was that of a woman, soft and pleasant. However, when this voice reached Qi Xidong and Mike's ears, it made their faces, which had finally managed to regain some composure, turn bright red again. If they had been a little more alert, or if the staff on duty had been a little more helpful, things wouldn't have been so difficult afterward.

"Hang up first, and talk to her later. You contact Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver now, and tell them to take this approach immediately before a large number of people gather. Call Houston and Chicago as well, and have the security guards on duty use their laptops to do this. It's very likely that there are less than a thousand people in front of the stores in those two places. As for the number of people to be distributed, we don't have to insist on 1500. We can distribute them based on the estimated number of customers they can serve today."

At this point, time was of the essence, so Zhao Chang'an ordered Qi Xidong to carry out the order immediately.

The store manager in Montreal distributed numbers up to 1500, at the cost of them being exhausted today. As a shrewd businessman, Zhao Chang'an naturally approved of and appreciated this kind of overworking and exploitative behavior. However, as a responsible and accountable boss, he couldn't say it out loud, or even hint at it.

However, by tacitly allowing the number 1500 for the Montreal store to be communicated, he had already begun a fierce competition among the seven stores.

“Call Houston and Chicago.”

Qi Xidong gave orders to his secretary, while he himself held up his phone: "I'll call Vancouver first."

"I'll call Diorio. Do you have a phone number for O'Mor, Los Angeles?"

Mike took out his phone and asked his secretary.

"Have."

The secretary also took out her phone and began going through her contacts.

The phone rang incessantly.

"This is truly unexpected, it feels like a dream!"

Mike still felt a sense of unreality and disorientation: "How can there be so many people?"

If it were someone else, Zhao Chang'an would tell him that now is not the time to analyze and lament why so many people came, and that the fact that so many people came is already a done deal, so is it necessary to get to the bottom of the reason?

However, because it was Mike, he was still willing to talk to him a bit more and hoped to break down his mindset of prioritizing technology as soon as possible, so that he could find a more perfect Lagrange point between technological advancement and market practicality.

"This is because we offer free server rental for regular members of our Push Mail email service. Don't underestimate this; the monthly rental fee is quite high. The 6230+ is priced at $695, and the annual service fee is enough to buy a new machine."

"But this means the company will continue to lose money in this area. It's easy to offer it for free, but difficult to charge for it. If the number of terminal servers reaches tens of millions in the future, how will we cover the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses every year?"

As a tech guy, Mike had been the head of the company for over ten years before Jim joined RIM, so he naturally knew how difficult it was to have no money and live a tough life.

So just thinking about the huge losses that free push mail has caused to the company is hard to accept.

(End of this chapter)