I want to be emperor

In recent years, funds have gradually entered the refrigeration equipment industry, and it exploded on a large scale during the 40th year of Chengshun. In addition to the original Bell Company and several small manufacturers, there are also many capitals entering the industry.

There are many big companies involved.

However, it is difficult for these latecomers, even large companies, to shake the absolute advantage of Songjiang Bell Company in a short period of time!
For no other reason than because Songjiang Bell Company owns many basic patents in the field of refrigeration... After all, Songjiang Bell Company is a pioneer in the refrigeration industry and has accumulated a large number of patent rights in the early stage.

If latecomers want to enter the refrigeration industry, they need to bypass Bell's many patents.

And the reason why they were able to find opportunities to circumvent patents instead of being completely stuck by Bell is because the steam refrigeration equipment these days is actually developed from air compressors. The core compressor part Bell has no exclusive patents.

Because the air compressor appeared very early, its patent has passed the 15-year protection period and everyone can use it.

Extending to the current refrigeration industry, the most core air compressor naturally does not have any patents. Of course, the patent of this air compressor is limited to the most basic patent, and does not include the latecomers to the air compressor. A series of improvements were made to the compressor, and then technical patents were applied for.

Generally speaking, in the field of air compressors, there are many manufacturers producing them, each with their own unique patented technologies, and Bell Company is just one of them.

However, the improvement and development of air compressors into refrigeration equipment involves many exclusive patents of Bell Company. If other manufacturers want to enter the field of refrigeration equipment, they need to bypass these exclusive patents.

In the early years, it wasn't actually too difficult. After all, the principle of refrigeration equipment had been laid out, and the rest was just a question of how to implement it.

Bell has chosen one way to achieve it, and other companies can naturally choose other ways to achieve the same effect.

The four or five refrigeration equipment manufacturers that have appeared in recent years have taken other ways to achieve it, but the results are not good, and there are also many problems of one kind or another, so there is a big gap in market performance. The total market share only accounts for about 5.00%, which cannot shake Songjiang Bell's position at all.

However, these situations are bound to change in the future, as other capital continues to enter, especially those large companies that are also targeting the field of refrigeration equipment.

Among these large companies, the most eye-catching one is the behemoth Lee's Steel... Of course, it is not Lee's Iron and Steel headquarters that is involved, but its subsidiary engaged in the air compressor business: Lee's Guanhua Machinery Company
Lee's Steel has developed to the present, and its scale is very large, with many subsidiaries. At the same time, the shares of the head office are relatively dispersed. Some are held by institutional capital such as official capital and investment funds, and some are held by cooperative manufacturers, such as It is held by Guangzhou Shipyard, Guangzhou Machinery Company, Huainan Mining, Jinan Precision, Jiangnan Shipping Company and other enterprises.

Although the Lee family still holds a considerable part of the shares of Lee Steel Company and controls the operating rights, in fact the Lee family has lost control of the company in more than [-] years. , the reason why the company can continue to operate the company is just because the main leaders of the Li family are very capable and many shareholders trust them.

Lee's Steel has many businesses. Its core businesses include shipyards, steel, mining, machine tools, textile equipment, and daily hardware.

These core businesses are all doing quite well. Its shipbuilding business includes Li's Shipyard. In addition to two production bases in Guangzhou, the shipyard also has one production base in Songjiang and Liaodong Hekou.

In addition, it also controls Northern Shipyard and Jiangyin Shipyard.

The total production capacity of these three wholly-owned shipyards accounts for about 30.00% of the imperial shipbuilding industry.

This is quite a huge number!

Not only is its production capacity huge, but its technology is also quite good. Li's Shipyard is one of the few shipyards in the Chu Empire that can build large-tonnage warships. It is also one of the main suppliers of civilian [-]-ton giant ships. Julu's market share is second only to Songjiang Naval Shipyard.

In recent years, Lee's Shipyard has begun to compete with Songjiang Naval Shipyard as the largest shipyard in the country...

The shipbuilding business is the core business of Li's Steel, and it is also the cash cow of Li's Steel at this stage, providing the company with a large amount of profits every year.

The steel and mining business is mainly based on investment holding or shareholding, and most of them choose to invest in some large iron ore mines, coal mines and steel plants.

At the beginning, their investment in steel and mining was mainly to ensure their own huge steel supply. It was an act of opening up the upstream industrial chain... It was a dual act of financial investment and opening up the industrial chain.

It just unknowingly grew bigger and bigger, and then inexplicably became one of the most famous steel and mining giants in the country.

However, even if it is a giant, its market share is actually not large, because the steel and mining market in the Da Chu Empire is too large and the competition is fierce. Even a behemoth like Li's Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. can hardly say that it really occupies too much of the market. share.

However, the money is not lost, and it is the second most profitable business in Li's Steelmaking.

Machine tool equipment is also a major industry of Li's Steel. In the early years, they suffered huge losses in this area, but they gritted their teeth and continued to spend money. They were surprised to create the second largest machine tool company in the country, Li's. Machine tools...just still don't make much money.

Li's Machine Tool's products cover almost all general machine tool categories, such as lathes, boring machines, milling machines, planers, grinders, drilling machines, etc., but they are all mid- to low-end products with very low profits.

The number of machine tools sold every year far exceeds that of Hantian Machinery Company, but the sales volume is less than half of Hantian Machinery Company, and the profit is only less than one-tenth of Hantian Machinery Company.

In the contemporary machine tool industry of the Dachu Empire, Hantian Machinery Company monopolizes the high-end market, using high-end products to occupy at least 80.00% of the profits of the entire machine tool market, while many other machine tool companies share the remaining 20.00% of profits.

Among other machine tool companies, those that do well are Li's Machine Tools, which can gain a foothold in the mid-range, but they also face huge market competition, and profits are not high. After all, there are other manufacturers involved in the mid-range market, which is more important. The thing is... there is a ceiling for mid-range products... This ceiling is the price of low-end models in Hantian Machinery Company's product series...

That's right, the low-end products of Hantian Machinery Company are the ceiling of the mid-to-high-end products of other machine tool manufacturers. Not only are they priced like this, but their performance is also about the same.

Every few years, when the equipment of Hantian Machinery Company is upgraded and the old low-end products are cleared out, other machine tool manufacturers lament.

Because once the prices of Hantian Machinery Company's low-end products are reduced, even if they are old products that have been replaced, many customer manufacturers will abandon machine tool manufacturers such as Li's Machine Tool without hesitation and rush to buy Hantian Machinery Company's obsolete products!
Not to mention, their obsolete products have better performance than the latest mid-to-high-end models of Li's Machine Tools. Once the prices come down, they can immediately eat up a large amount of the market from manufacturers like Li's Machine Tools.

There is nothing that can be done about it. The technology of Hantian Machinery Company is so strong. Even if the product is eliminated, its performance can still surpass the new products of other companies. This makes other manufacturers very helpless... and the technology wants It’s also very difficult to catch up.

Challengers like Li's Machine Tool, which is also the second largest player in the machine tool industry, have still been unable to catch up in the past 20 years.

In the words of a senior executive of Hantian Machinery Company, the technical gap between the two is at least ten years...

After all, Li's Machine Tool can spend money on research and development, and Hantian Machinery Company can spend more money on research and development... Hantian Machinery Company's profits are very high, and it can use a large amount of profits for research and development every year.

And if Li's Machine Tool wants to catch up with Hantian Machinery Company in research and development, I'm afraid the headquarters will have to invest a huge amount of money every year, and this is obviously impossible.

Therefore, if Lee's Shipyard, a subsidiary of Lee's Steel, can still hope to replace Songjiang Naval Shipyard and become the world's number one shipyard, then don't expect Lee's Machine Tool to even maintain its second place. Easy... There are also a lot of competitors behind Li's Machine Tools.

Hebei Longdong Machine Tool Company, a machine tool company that was established only ten years ago, has made waves in the low-end market by relying on its ultra-high cost performance. Its rise is far faster than that of Li's Machine Tools in the past, and it has already eaten into a large number of companies. Li's machine tool's low-end market share has become the third domestic machine tool company, and it is moving towards the mid-range market.

If this continues, I'm afraid that before Li's Machine Tool can kill Hantian Machinery, it will be pulled down by Longdong Machine Tool first...

Not only is the machine tool business facing huge challenges, Lee Iron & Steel's textile equipment business is also facing considerable trouble.

It was doing pretty well in the early years, but after the textile equipment subsidiary of Hantian Machinery Company launched a new generation of cotton spinning equipment, the cotton spinning equipment of Li's Xuzhou Machinery Company, a subsidiary of Li's Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. Not moving anymore.

Although they quickly followed up and invested heavily in the research and development of new cotton spinning equipment, they were still several steps behind, and the cotton spinning equipment is now half-dead. However, their wool spinning equipment does a very good job and is the leader in the domestic wool spinning equipment market.

It's just that the market size of wool spinning equipment is far less than that of cotton spinning equipment. This means that in the large machinery and equipment market of textile equipment, Li's Xuzhou Machinery Company has regressed a lot, and the money it makes is not as good as daily use. There is a lot of business in hardware products.

The daily hardware business is the earliest transformation business of Lee Iron Steel after it separated from the ordnance industry, and the business it relies on for development. Its products are very complex, such as kitchen utensils, farm tools, various hardware tools, and even sewing needles. There are locks, nails and all sorts of other things...

Speaking of which, the main business in this part of the business, the kitchenware business, is also facing competition from Hantian Machinery Company.

How did Hantian Machinery Company start?It's not a machine tool, it's not a hydraulic equipment, but a seemingly inconspicuous thing: an iron pot!

The Hanguo produced by Hantian Machinery Company is very famous. Even today, it is a first-line kitchenware product and contributes a lot of profits every year.

Lee's Iron's kitchen utensils, such as iron pots, are also their advantageous products and are sold at home and abroad. They focus on low-cost and high-quality products, and their production and sales are very large.

Speaking of which, among the many competitors of Li's Steel Company, Hantian Machinery Company is definitely the company with the most business conflicts with them.There are huge conflicts in the major fields of machine tools, textile equipment, and daily hardware.

In other words, Hantian Machinery Company did not engage in shipbuilding and could not affect Li's core business. Otherwise, the two would really fight to the death until one of them fell.

However, Hantian Machinery Company does not engage in shipbuilding. However, Songjiang Naval Shipyard, Luohua Shipyard, Guangzhou Shipyard and other shipyards are not easy to mess with. Although Li's Iron and Steel's shipbuilding business is more profitable and has a large market share , however the challenges are also huge.

Looking at the many businesses of Lee's Steel, especially the core businesses in several major categories, they basically face a bunch of competitors. It seems that the company is big and the business is big, but the challenges it faces are also big.

Furthermore, as a listed company with complex shareholders and the domestic company with the highest market value, its management is also facing huge operating pressure.

If the Lee family, which controls the operating rights, wants to continue to gain the support of many major shareholders and continue to control Lee Steel, a company founded and developed by their family, then the performance cannot be too ugly.

You have to let shareholders have money to take and see the market prospects.

However, as the company grew larger and larger, and the growth space of several core businesses gradually came to an end, Lee Steel's executives were thinking about how to improve business growth points all day long.

Then I looked for projects everywhere and looked for new profit growth points.

Therefore, in the past ten years, Lee Iron & Steel has acquired or invested in a large number of emerging companies every year, trying to find new development directions among many emerging companies and open up new tracks... No matter how bad it is, it cannot be left behind in the new tracks. back.

As a large-scale enterprise, Lee's Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. actually has a very stable mentality when it comes to foreign investment, especially in some new industries.

If others invest, I will invest too... Even if I lose a lot of money, I won't lose much money. But if I don't invest now, if this new industry really develops, I will lose a lot if I don't enter the market in advance.

In the new refrigeration equipment industry, Lee's Iron Company does the same thing!

Lee's Steel is not short of money now, but it is short of a new business that can increase the company's stock price... And if the existing old business is involved, small efforts will have no effect. If you want to become the top three or even the leader, then the difficulty will be too big.

However, new businesses are different. As long as you enter this new market in advance, you can seize the opportunity.

Starting last year, senior executives of Lee's Steel Co., Ltd. saw the rapid development of the refrigeration industry and tried to acquire Songjiang Bell Company.

It's a pity that it didn't succeed... It's not that Li's Iron Steel is reluctant to spend money, but the boss of Songjiang Bell Company is unwilling to sell his own industry, saying that he is only willing to accept strategic investment, and don't expect acquisitions.

Strategic investment is nothing if it is placed in ordinary industries. Lee Steel has invested in a large number of companies, which are financial investments that take some shares and wait for the company to grow, or investments in the strategic cooperation model.

However, when it comes to new industries, Lee Steel's investment philosophy is not simply financial investment or cooperation. What they want is new industries, the core business of the future!
Therefore, it is the same investment, but the gameplay is different in different industries.

After the acquisition of Songjiang Bell Company failed, Lee's Iron and Steel Company changed hands and acquired a start-up company that also developed refrigeration equipment, and then merged it into its compressor business subsidiary, Lee's Guanhua Machinery Company.

Li's Guanhua Machinery Company, this company was actually acquired by Li's Steel more than ten years ago.

In the early years, when air compressors appeared and were gradually used in industry, Lee's Iron Company also acquired a compressor manufacturer to get involved. As a result, more than ten years later, the market size of this air compressor was just about the same. , has never been able to develop.

This is also the reason why Lee Iron & Steel has so many messy subsidiaries. They basically see new industries come out and then invest in them. However, most of them do not develop well. Either the market size is too small or the market size is too small. There was no competition... Some ended up being resold, some went bankrupt, and some managed to stay afloat.

Guanhua Machinery Company, which was acquired in the early years, has good compressor technology, has many leading exclusive patents, and is a supplier of Guangzhou Locomotive Company!

Provide air compressor products for the train braking system manufactured by Guangzhou Locomotive Company.

One of the core equipment in the refrigeration industry is the air compressor, so it is normal to merge the newly acquired refrigeration equipment into Guanhua Machinery Company.

In this way, Guanhua Machinery Company became a wholly-owned subsidiary responsible for the refrigeration equipment business of Lee's Steel.

It’s just that some of the technologies of the purchased refrigeration equipment are not very good. Although the refrigeration equipment can be manufactured, the performance gap with Bell Company is too big, and the market share is only about two percentage points at most!

If you want to gain a foothold in the new industry of refrigeration equipment, you will need huge subsequent R&D investment from Lee Steel.

However, Lee's senior executives believe that the problem is not big, because in the field of refrigeration equipment, there are no too critical core technologies that are monopolized and patented, especially the core field of air compressors, which is restricted by no patents.

Although there are patent restrictions on other technologies, if you are willing to spend money on research and development, you can always make it.

As for Li's Ironmaking, there is not much else but a lot of money!
Coincidentally, after Lee Iron & Steel used its subsidiaries to get involved in the field of refrigeration equipment, it also attracted the attention of other large companies.

These large companies basically pay attention to each other. It is difficult to talk about things that are too secretive, but investments in this strategic direction cannot be hidden.

As a result, it didn't take long for the management of many large companies to know that Lee Iron & Steel wanted to enter the refrigeration field.

Many large companies have begun to study this field carefully to see what the future prospects are, whether it is the right time to enter, what the opportunities are, etc.

However, some corporate executives are too lazy to conduct these so-called surveys and just follow up...

Corporate competition is similar to an arms race. It doesn't matter whether a weapon is powerful or not. What's important is that if the enemy has it, you must have it too. Not only must it have it, but it must have more than the enemy!
Of course, this is also related to the fact that the current refrigeration industry is too small and the investment does not need to be too large. After all, the leading company in the refrigeration industry, Bell Company, was just listed this year, with revenue in 39 of only more than 30 yuan. , revenue mainly comes from ship-based refrigeration machines and warehouse refrigeration machines.

The scale of the overall refrigeration industry is still very limited.

Under such circumstances, it actually doesn’t cost much to invest in the refrigeration industry...especially for these large companies with a market value of tens of millions.

An investment of hundreds of thousands is a casual matter.

Ever since... In the second half of the 40th year of Chengshun, such a situation has emerged. The total market size of the refrigeration industry last year was actually only more than 30 yuan. It will increase this year, but even if it doubles , but it is unlikely to exceed one million Chu Yuan.

This figure of one million yuan is talking about market size... not profit.

However, capital from all parties, especially those large enterprises, has invested more than one million yuan in the field of refrigeration...

This made the people at Songjiang Bell feel helpless... These large companies are really shameless. In an emerging industry with a market size of less than one million, they directly invested millions.

However, Songjiang Bell Company is not afraid. As a pioneer and leader in the industry, they have sufficient technical advantages. At the same time, this listing has also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds.

As stated in the prospectus, these funds will be invested in the research and development of the next generation of refrigeration equipment. Soon they will launch a new generation of central air conditioners on the market to meet the needs of professional factories, high-rise buildings, shopping malls and other places. The demand for air temperature refrigeration...is mainly the demand of factories. Now many advanced textile companies have consulted their companies about the use of special air-conditioning equipment to control temperature and humidity in factories.

Even though Li's Steel is a super large enterprise with a lot of money in their hands, in the field of refrigeration, if the technology is not good, it is not good.

Even if you spend a lot of money to catch up, it is not that easy.

After all, the Songjiang Bell Company in front of them has built a lot of patents in the field of refrigeration. It is not that easy to bypass the patents and catch up with its performance at the same time.

It can even be exaggerated to say that as long as Songjiang Bell Company does not develop some core patents in the field of refrigeration, other companies can only go around and come up with specious refrigeration equipment that everyone will despise if they are used. kind……

Songjiang Bell Company, which holds many core basic patents, naturally occupies an absolute leading advantage.