Sail across the sea

Chapter 416 Don't wait until you're hairless to feel empty sorrow.

Gao Fan had promised Chen Xingquan that he would develop water-based coatings.

Xinglong Coatings Company made a lot of money from reflective coatings, but its business momentum has shrunk somewhat.

As the scale of highway construction in China continues to expand, the demand for reflective coatings is also increasing daily. However, despite this increased demand, Xinglong Coatings' business has actually shrunk, which seems somewhat illogical.

The reality is that as the reflective coating market grows larger, many companies have seen this business opportunity and have entered the market one after another, naturally turning this blue ocean market into a red ocean.

Xinglong Coatings Company has a certain first-mover advantage, with high brand awareness and relatively advanced technology. However, highway construction is a matter for each province. Once a province is capable of producing reflective coatings, the highway bureau will naturally prioritize companies within its own province—a matter of keeping the benefits within the family.

Chen Xingquan called Gao Fan several times and asked Gao Min to pass on a message, the core of which was that he hoped Gao Fan could find another new product for Xinglong Coatings Company.

Xinglong Coatings Company started with its unique technology, so Chen Xingquan attaches great importance to technological research and development. The company now has a technical department composed of more than a dozen technicians. In addition to providing technical support to customers, they can also improve existing products and develop new products.

There are many categories of coatings. According to function, they include anti-corrosion, anti-fouling, waterproof, anti-wear, decorative, reflective, etc., as well as special categories such as photoresist and stealth coatings. According to the application scenario, they include various categories such as construction, engineering, vehicles and ships, machinery, and furniture.

Xinglong Coatings Company has also developed several new coating products, including interior wall coatings, but these are oil-based coatings.

Oil-based paints, also known as solvent-based paints, are paints that need to be diluted and dissolved with organic solvents before use. Organic solvents contain a large number of volatile organic compounds, many of which are toxic. Therefore, oil-based paints are less environmentally friendly than water-based paints.

In those days, most workplaces and households simply used lime to paint their walls. The only advantage of lime was its low price, while its disadvantages were that it easily rubbed off and wasn't waterproof. If a lime wall got dirty, it couldn't be washed with water, because wiping it would only make it dirtier.

Some wealthy organizations or individuals who had become rich first started painting their walls. Paint is water-resistant, easy to maintain, and also comes in colors, serving a decorative purpose. Traditional paints are oil-based coatings, and the pungent odor you can smell when painting is the odor of organic solvents evaporating.

There are many domestic manufacturers of oil-based wall coatings, but Xinglong Company's coatings have no advantage over other companies. The brand effect it has gained in the reflective coatings market cannot be transferred to wall coatings, so the sales of this type of coating are somewhat unsatisfactory.

Chen Xingquan contacted Gao Fan mainly to ask two questions: First, whether the wall coating market was viable; second, if so, whether Gao Fan could help develop a competitive wall coating.

Gao Fan is certainly confident about the wall paint market. He believes China's real estate boom will begin in the next decade and continue for 30 years, only cooling down in the 2020s. However, this cooling down will not mean that no one is buying houses.

Where there are people buying houses, there is a market for home renovation, and wall paint is an essential component; how could this market be bad?

As for developing wall coatings, Gao Fan does have ideas, but he feels it would be a bit difficult to do.

Gao Fan knew that water-based coatings would definitely dominate the wall paint market in the future. This was because, as people's living standards improved, they became increasingly concerned about environmental protection, and water-based coatings had an unparalleled advantage in this regard compared to oil-based coatings.

Gao Fan has a general idea for developing water-based coatings: find water-based polymers, such as acrylic resin, styrene-acrylic resin, and vinyl acetate resin, as film-forming materials, and then add color fillers and various additives to improve workability and stability. He can give a general overview of which materials meet which performance requirements and how they are matched, but he struggles with the details.

Some formulas that appeared in later generations are not applicable in this era because some of the materials required do not yet exist, or although there are products that have been synthesized in the laboratory, they have not yet been industrialized and therefore cannot be used.

Gao Fan needed to find an experienced engineer to conduct experiments according to his ideas, determine the ratio of various materials, and control the temperature and concentration during synthesis. This was a very tedious task, and Gao Fan simply didn't have the patience to do it.

The anti-fouling and reflective coating formulas he had previously provided to Chen Xingquan were not perfect, but these two types of coatings were used in engineering projects where users did not have high requirements for details. As long as they met basic performance requirements and were inexpensive, users accepted them.

Wall paint is for residents. Everyone sees the paint on the walls every day, and observes it closely. Even a little bit of paint chipping or fading, or a fingerprint left by a wet hand, will be criticized by everyone.

Currently, the domestic wall paint market is indeed in a state of low-level competition, but several foreign paint companies have developed wall paints with excellent performance. They are just waiting for wealthy Chinese to accumulate enough wealth before they enter the Chinese market in a big way.

In this situation, Gaofan naturally wants to launch a coating whose performance is at least not significantly inferior to that of Japanese and German companies, in order to first seize the market. This way, when the "wolf" comes, domestically produced coatings will still have a fighting chance.

Whenever a new product needs to be developed, Gao Fan deeply feels the scarcity of talent in this era. There are some talented people in research institutions at all levels, but it is difficult to persuade them to come out of retirement.

He used his status as a Peking University student to trick a group of Peking University faculty and students into helping him. But by focusing on just one student, he ended up practically fleecing the entire Peking University Chemistry Department.

Now that a top student from the University of Science and Technology of China has come knocking on his door, how could he let this opportunity pass him by?

As the old saying goes, "A shrew is easy to exploit, so seize the opportunity while you can, lest you regret it when you're all hairless."

While Gao Fan was making his plans, Xu Yun timidly asked:

"Gao Fan, you want to hire me to develop products for your company. How much are you going to pay me?"

Honestly, Xu Yun really didn't want to ask such a question because talking about money was too embarrassing.

However, Gao Fan's previous threats to him were also very real. Without money, you can't pick up girls.

Upon hearing this question, Gao Fan was full of confidence and patted his chest:
“Name your price, and in the blink of an eye, I’ll change my name to Van Gogh.”

(End of this chapter)