Rebirth is fine, but I get eight hundred dollars right from the start?

"Just leave it here."

Tang Bin clapped his hands, raised his chin, and directed several movers to stack more than a dozen computer towers and accessory boxes in the corner.

The cardboard boxes were stacked neatly, with shipping labels affixed to the corners. Dust floated in a thin mist under the warehouse overhead lights.

He turned his head and gestured to Xu Lang, who was leaning against the door frame, saying, "We need these computers urgently. No matter how important it is tomorrow, you have to arrange for someone to assemble and debug them, and install the system, a one-stop service."

"Alright, alright, don't you trust me to handle things?" Xu Lang waved his hand, subconsciously reaching into his pocket for his cigarette case. Just as his fingertips touched the edge of the cardboard, he caught a glimpse of the white sign with a red cross on the wall and sheepishly withdrew his hand.

He sized Tang Bin up and down, his eyelids narrowing slightly: "Honestly, Lao Tang, you're really audacious. You finally made a name for yourself in the real estate brokerage industry, and then you quit without even blinking an eye, plunging headfirst into this e-sports stuff. I thought you'd been brainwashed by a pyramid scheme."

"Now that you know all about it, do you think I've been brainwashed by a pyramid scheme?"

Tang Bin raised an eyebrow and smiled, a hint of smugness in his eyes: "He has great market potential, doesn't he?"

"You're pretty good."

Xu Lang snorted at his good friend's boasting, his gaze unconsciously sweeping towards the depths of the warehouse.

As someone who manufactures and wholesales digital accessories, he couldn't really give a clear answer as to how promising esports really is.

But some things don't need data to speak for themselves; they're just there to be clear—the young boss Tang Bin works for had his entire club crammed into a row of townhouses just a few months ago.

What now?

They built a spacious villa as their base, complete with security, nannies, and training rooms.

Let's leave aside the salary and benefits for now.

Speaking of Tang Bin himself, his previous job as a real estate agent involved working in all kinds of weather, showing properties to clients with a smile on his face, covered in mud on rainy days and sweat on sunny days.

He transformed into a company manager, overseeing logistics and administration. When he went out to discuss business, people would call him "General Manager Tang." Of course, there's no comparison between a service position and a management position.

Not to mention, this is a potential stock whose valuation has already reached tens of millions in just six months.

Xu Lang counted on his fingers: in half a year, ten million.

In another year or two, will it be several thousand? Hundreds of millions?

He shook his head, trying to banish those numbers from his mind; they were too far removed from his thoughts, beyond his comprehension.

"Dude, I'm not trying to be mean, but..."

During a casual chat, Tang Bin suddenly leaned in half a step, his voice lowered but becoming more energetic, "You own a factory yourself, and you know the upstream and downstream channels better than anyone else. Just selling parts and assembling machines for others, you might earn a meager thirty or fifty yuan per machine. Even if you take over most of the business in Jinling, you won't make much profit at best. What about nationwide? The profit margin is as thin as paper. What good is a large turnover? At the end of the year, you're still working for the landlord and your employees."

He patted the side panel of a computer next to him, the metal vibrating and buzzing: "Have you ever thought about starting your own digital brand?"

"A digital brand?" Xu Lang frowned, his eyebrows furrowing into a deep furrow.

"Yeah, that's right." Tang Bin's tone rose a notch. "Brother, to be honest, with the arrival of the internet age, even the e-sports industry, which involves playing games, has seen a surge in profits, not to mention the devices that support it. Computer components are tough to source; motherboards and graphics cards are too complicated. But keyboards and mice? They cost a few dozen yuan to produce, retail for a few hundred, and the profit multiplies several times over. Isn't that easy?"

Xu Lang didn't rush to reply.

He lowered his eyelids, staring at the factory label on the box on the ground, and remained silent for a while before raising his eyes again: "You mean the peripheral brand?"

"right."

"I've thought about that too."

Xu Lang frankly stated, "But building a peripheral brand isn't as easy as you might imagine. Manufacturing it is indeed easy; the barrier to entry is shockingly low—just a standard circuit board mold, a custom mold for the casing, and you can start churning it out on a production line. To put it bluntly, a few injection molding machines in the factory can do it with a different mold. But the problem is, who will you sell it to?"

"With such fierce competition now, there are tons of various brands and no-name peripherals online and offline. Without sufficient brand recognition, it's hard to achieve enough sales."

"Take online for example. If you open Taobao and search for 'gaming mouse' now, you can find three thousand brands, ranging from tens to thousands of yuan. There are legitimate registered ones, there are unregistered brands, and there are those that sell lighting under the guise of e-sports. Traffic is limited, and the cost of bidding for rankings can wipe people out."

"If a new brand wants to get started, it won't even make it to the first page of search results without spending hundreds of thousands on paid advertising. And then what? What will the conversion rate be? What will the return rate be? It's all a minefield."

"Besides, those offline counters in computer malls and digital shopping centers, do you think they're begging to stock up? Big brands like Logitech, Razer, and SteelSeries have long since locked up their distribution channels, and even the distributors can't get their goods at a price that doesn't reach their cost. The remaining small shops sell no-name brands, picking the cheapest ones, making a profit of only three to five yuan per keyboard, and no matter how many they sell, it's not enough to cover the rent."

"Of course, if you really want to get into this, none of the above issues are problems, otherwise there wouldn't be so many grey market peripherals."

"The key is brand awareness. Consumers are very brand-conscious when it comes to peripherals. If you say your keyboard is better than Logitech's, who would believe you? Do you think I can hire a celebrity to endorse it, or put it on CCTV? That would cost a fortune. I've done the math; just setting up initial marketing channels would cost at least two million yuan to even make a splash. And then sales might not even cover the costs."

"Old Tang, you know me. For us in manufacturing, the turnover looks big, but every penny has to be squeezed out from the wear and tear of molds, the purchase of raw materials, and the wages of workers."

"Blindly modifying production lines and opening new molds requires an initial investment of hundreds of thousands of yuan. If they don't sell, you'll end up with thousands of keyboards and mice piling up in the warehouse, which is called inventory backlog. If you have to change the production line back, you'll have to spend money again. Going back and forth like this is just asking for trouble."

As Xu Lang finished speaking, he touched the back of his neck, his knuckles making a slight cracking sound: "I know you mean well. But in your current industry, people play the game of capital, traffic, and trends."

"As someone who runs a real business, I'm grounded, and if I fall, I'll really get scraped. The peripherals market looks appealing, but it's full of traps. Without tens of millions in capital and a reliable trader, you're doomed if you get in."

There was a two-second silence in the warehouse.

A mover coughed in the distance, and the tape on the cardboard box ripped.

Tang Bin stared at him for two seconds, then suddenly grinned: "Alright, you're an old hand, you call the shots. But what if I said HWG could handle the brand effect? ​​My boss is quite interested in your supply chain, how about we connect?"