this man is not calm

Chapter 437 End of Year Promotion
Another tricky problem is that the company is expanding too fast, and the training of independent executives cannot keep up. It is difficult to recruit people from outside, and they may not be suitable. It takes too long to get used to them.

Most of the backbone members who once started a business with the boss Jin Shang are now all-rounders who manage many businesses.

As the company's reputation grows, it can recruit many young and talented people, but it is too early to expect them to be able to stand on their own.

The middle and senior management of the parent company were all promoted step by step from the grassroots level. Later, the management of merged and newly established companies was not so smooth.

The listed company CSSC Electromechanical has been out of direct control. This kind of heavy industry manufacturing is too professional to be managed in every detail. It is enough to leave it to trusted executives to run.

Jinxi Video is quite different. This is the main business that the company spent a lot of money to purchase. It is related to the construction foundation of the cultural and creative sector. The development of many large IPs must be carried out around it. Not only is the chairman of the board of directors personally served by Jin Shang, but the general manager, secretary of the board of directors, chief financial officer, art director and online video business director are all appointed by the parent company or approved by Jin Shang himself.

In addition to investing part of the money raised from the IPO into data centers, a lot of money was also spent on purchasing copyrights, creating self-produced dramas, and developing the peripheral value of IP.

Online videos, which relied on the expansion of the Internet cafe alliance, now have basically no money-making effect and are basically supported by the profits from the rental and sale of chain bookstores and audio-visual products.

Judging from the draft financial reports of listed companies this year, the growth rate of non-net profit reached about 35%. With the support of e-commerce, the shipment volume of book printing products has more than doubled. The annual dividend is temporarily set at 30%. Although this proportion is very high, considering the extremely high price-earnings ratio, the dividend yield is so low that it is not acceptable. It is slightly better than a symbolic dividend, but not much better.

The secondary market is still optimistic about the new business model of traditional chain bookstores and chain audio-visual product sales going online.
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It's the end of the year, and it's almost time for all business entities to settle their accounts. Jinxi Culture is no exception. Cash flows are becoming more frequent, and accounts are being settled everywhere.

Taking into account the need to pay the first installment of interest on the huge personal loan due on January 1 next year, Jin Shang's personal financial management company's cash flow back speed is even more astonishing, and the nearly 5 billion yuan reserve account will soon have to be fully prepared.

In this busy but not chaotic scene, time has entered December. In one month, 1997 will be over.

On December 1st, Jin Shang calmly walked into the office, poured himself a cup of refreshing tea, and saw the morning newspaper placed on the desk by his assistant. He flipped through it and saw the headline of the film and entertainment section, "The domestic box office of the horror blockbuster "Resident Evil" has exceeded 70 million, and is expected to become the fourth theater movie to exceed 100 million this year." Below were several discussions and comments on the popular TV series "Journey to the West", which was becoming increasingly popular.

"A classic is a classic. Even in a different world, it can still create an extraordinary sensation."

The strategy of transplanting the successful experience of the past life and then localizing it is correct, and Jinxi Culture does not completely rely on Jin Shanglai to be the "porter" to make it in the film and television industry. In the past two years, many novels and comics have been successfully adapted into film and television, and many talents have been cultivated. It still requires hard work to produce hit dramas. With the right time, place and people, it is still possible to mass-produce a batch of high-quality works.

As usual, a monthly summary meeting was held in the morning. After listening to everyone's work reports, it was almost eleven o'clock before Yang Qi came over with statistical data to discuss things.

"The first batch of laptops have already been pre-sold for over 50,000 units? That's 500 million yuan in sales. It took only a short while to get this data. That's not bad. There are still many rich people in China."

The estimated retail price of a laptop computer was over 12,000 yuan, but was forced down to 9,999 yuan by large subsidies. The price difference of 2,000 yuan is really too good to be true.

Subsidies are distributed in the form of coupons, which can be used to purchase goods on e-commerce platforms, redeem discount coupons in supermarkets, or to become members of online applications such as gaming platforms, online videos and online music.

There are many cross-platform decentralized applications with Jinxi Coin as the core, and basically everyone can find what they want.

There is a reason why pre-sales are started in advance and such big discounts are offered. It's the end of the year and the peak consumption season has arrived. Not only are people preparing for New Year's goods, but sales of electronic products and home appliances are also rising steadily.

Laptops costing tens of thousands of yuan are also selling well due to the super high discounts.

For example, MP3 players sold units in less than a day during a limited-time % discount promotion. In addition to personal use, this fashionable item can also be given as a present.

It would be a shame not to boost sales at the end of the year.

"Boss Jin, our Technology Center and Strategic Development Department have jointly conducted a survey and research. Laptops are a big item... It is estimated that it will be difficult to reduce the price below 8,000 within five years. As for the price of desktop computers, 6,000 is already very low. In the next ten years, it will slowly drop to around 4,000. In the short term, there is not much hope of significantly suppressing prices."

"Why? Logically speaking, as the technology becomes more mature, the cost of mass production will become lower and lower..."

"Technology is upgrading too fast! The laptop I bought for 15,000 yuan two years ago has been halved this year, but the mainstream configuration is still around 15,000 yuan. The old model is a bit outdated now."

"That's it!"

On second thought, Jin Shang felt that it seemed normal.

In an era of rapid technological development, it is a loss to keep up with the latest IT equipment.

Just use it if it's suitable, don't waste money on piling up configurations.

Once you buy it, it becomes obsolete, and this will become the norm in the next twenty years.

Upgrade configuration to ensure price, coordinated development of software and hardware, the computer you bought two years ago may not be able to run the latest version of large-scale client applications this year.

This phenomenon will not change until Moore's Law is close to failure.

They chatted about some light topics, including Yang Qi's predictions for the future of the IT industry. Jin Shang also gave some key points from time to time.

"The first batch of 50,000 units is still too few. The purchasing power of domestic consumers is beyond our expectations. Everyone is talking about the sluggish consumption. Without good quality and low price products, people can't buy them even if they want to!"

"What Mr. Jin said is true. IT electronic products are still too expensive."

From early morning till now, nearly twelve hours, the total sales volume is 860 million yuan, which looks scary, but in fact it is just losing money to gain publicity, and the discount difference is basically used in a way similar to spending money on advertising to attract customers.

In the long run, there is no loss, but now it is obvious that there is a deficit of nearly 120 million.

Among them, laptops equipped with the latest Bai Ze 98 system have the largest discounts and have "lost the most blood", followed by game consoles. For this product, Jin Shang has actually decided not to make money by selling machines, but to make profits from commissions on game development and game platform distribution.

Another big spender is the "free mobile phone for free" promotion for PHS, the cost of which has been reduced to less than 700 yuan. There are promotions every now and then, and this time is the most generous. If you charge 500 yuan, you can get a free PHS. To outsiders, it is simply charity. Other promotions are not as big as this, but they are also very good. The sales of home appliances, clothing, books, paper pants, milk powder and sanitary products have also increased significantly.

As for offline distribution, it is not included in the statistics for the time being. We need channel partners to provide feedback on data to get accurate results.

"That's right... Mr. Jin, relying solely on our own assembly efficiency, it would be very difficult to assemble 50,000 laptops. Should we find a large manufacturer to do the work so that we don't run out of stock every now and then?"

Pre-sales are a last resort. Insufficient production capacity is one aspect, and how to ensure the quality of OEM is also a problem.

Fifty thousand laptops will be shipped in batches, which is also the fuse for the battle for market share at the end of the year. For hardware equipment manufacturers, sales of 500 million yuan is not a small amount, but it is not particularly much either.

Spending money is the most unskilled thing, who can't do it?
"Xiang Zhuang dances with a sword, aiming at Pei Gong. If we sell one more machine now, others will sell one less. Our underlying operating system and... the alliance with the reduced instruction set are the key. Other things... browsers, email, office software, games and audio and video are not unimportant, but they do not play a decisive role."

In the battle between operating systems and chip routes, Jinxi Culture is currently a pioneer, triggering the biggest head-on confrontation at the end of this century.

This time, it is not a fight between chip manufacturers, nor a competition among system service providers, nor a race in the fields of browsers and email, but an alliance conflict between several large manufacturers.

To put it simply, it used to be like a fighting match, with one-on-one fights, but now it's group fights, and the "excitement" of the two is completely not on the same level.

This is the first time that Jinxi Culture has been involved in such a large-scale IT business competition since its establishment.

"In the past, we were just small ants, or at most small rabbits, hiding in the bushes and fishing in troubled waters. No one would pay attention to us. Now, we are almost turning into giraffes, rhinos or elephants. It is impossible to keep a low profile and pretend to be a pig to eat the tiger. Every move we make is being watched by others."

The data center issue has been delayed for more than a year, involving many aspects and billions of dollars in investment. Who can't see that Jinxi Culture is going to make a big move?
"Let's show our cards now. Stop pretending and show our true colors openly and honestly."

"Isn't it too early?"

Yang Qi said with some concern,
“Although there are only 50,000 units, experts will know what we want to do once they get the product and do a little research. The technical moat has not been built yet, and if the production capacity cannot keep up, there may be trouble.”

"It's not that I want to do hunger marketing, but that's how it works online. Internet marketing requires spending money, and whether the money-spending method is clever or not is the key to determining the success or failure of a large company."

"So should we also do something to speed up the promotion of our software sales?"

"Of course! Let's discuss with Liu Yanqing on how to do it. The end of the year is the period when the number of Internet users increases the fastest, and the traffic in Internet cafes will also surge."

After arranging some specific matters and seeing Yang Qi off, Jin Shang finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The company is growing bigger and bigger, all businesses are on track, and everyone is organizing activities at the end of the year.

Not only IT Internet, there are also many offline affairs. With the arrival of the first batch of 500 Panda cars, a special management and maintenance subsidiary was established, and then assigned to various subsidiaries, among which Jinxi Mall and offline life occupied the most, and a lot of newspapers and magazines also needed to be supplemented.

The number of new cars allocated by the headquarters is the smallest because the demand is not great.

Except for a group of business cars used for reception, most small and medium-sized trucks are running in the city and are used frequently. Without a dedicated team to maintain them, it is estimated that these high-priced vehicles will not be able to perform their functions.

Jin Shang also tried flexible-fuel vehicles and dual-fuel vehicles. The cars that burn pure ethanol have very strong power. When running at full speed, it feels like a Formula One car, but the consumption is too high.

No wonder drivers generally report that ethanol gasoline does not burn easily, but that too high an ethanol content causes the driver to drive too fast.

There is some truth in using ethanol as a fuel or important additive in aerospace and a few racing fields.

As for dual-fuel vehicles, there are not too many inconveniences, especially trucks that use a mixture of compressed natural gas or liquefied petroleum gas and diesel, which feel similar to ordinary vehicles.

I asked the technician to fill it with filtered compressed biogas and combine it with diesel, and it worked as expected, with pretty good performance.

"Panda cars don't cut corners. They are expensive, but worth it."

For private car owners who can't use more than two tanks of gas a year and start their cars only a few times a month, this type of car is not suitable. But for company cars that are used almost every day and have a mileage of at least 300,000 kilometers a year, it can save a lot of money on gas, parking fees and tolls, which is quite worthwhile.

"A closed loop has been formed, with biogas/natural gas or compressed petroleum gas combined with diesel dual-fuel vehicles. If it works well, it can be promoted on ships."

In fact, everyone knows whether this thing is economical or not.

In the early years, Beijing’s buses used modified “top bag buses” for a period of time. These were ordinary buses with a large air bag on the top, and the buses used compressed natural gas as fuel. Older people may still have some impression of them.

Not only buses, but even taxis have been modified to run on gas in order to save fuel and operating costs. They were once very popular, but were later eliminated due to safety hazards. Some cities have not completely eliminated these "oil-to-gas" taxis until now.

Although it is convenient to use, it still causes many inconveniences for private car owners.

This type of new concept car is very friendly for public use, but it is a bit difficult to use it for private use.

"Yes, with these trucks, the logistics and transportation lines in the Gyeonggi region will be opened up."

In the past, due to insufficient transportation capacity, we always had to rent other people’s cars, which cost a lot.

At the end of the year, a large number of small and medium-sized trucks with green license plates began to travel through the streets and alleys of Beijing, without attracting much attention.

(End of this chapter)