All the distributors signed the contracts obediently. But soon, they realized that Sun Lijie did not sign the contract.
“Old Sun, you signed the contract?” Someone asked.
All of them felt that Sun Lijie’s contract might be different from theirs.
“I do not need to sign the contract with Tai Hua Trading. I will sign it directly with Aiwa Electronics.” Sun Lijie replied.
Sun Lijie was too excited. He had only invested 100,000 RMB. Those people had really developed the pager technology. After some tests, the pager’s quality, signal, etc. were on par with Motorola’s latest model of Pager.
This means that there will be huge profits! Although he took a bank loan to invest more money in setting up a factory, it was nothing compared to the vast benefits!
The initial investment had given him 10% of shares. This 10% shares will provide him with an estimated 10 million RMB returns this year. The estimated number of pagers produce was about 300,000 units. This was also because there were some problems with the factory’s production lines. If not, at least 1 million pagers will be produced this year!
Although there was still a considerable difference from Motorola’s last year sales of 1 million units, Sun Lijie believed that Aiwa Pagers become the market leader next year.
Sun Lijie would be able to multiply his investment within 6 months. He was very grateful that those people were from his hometown, Ningbo. He was fortunate that he had helped Feng Yu a lot and was granted with this opportunity!
In the future, even if he closes down his company, he can still become a multi-millionaire or even a billionaire with these shares! His decision to invest was right!
Sun Lijie swore that in the future, all the tasks given to him by Manager Feng will take priority over all other jobs. His wish of fetching his parents to live with him would come true this year!
All the distributors felt that Old Sun was very lucky. He was the closest to the Pager factory and got to sign the contract first. But all of them did not know that Sun Lijie was one of the shareholders of this pager company!
In the past, all of them felt that Tai Hua Trading was pushing them to hit high sales target. But this time was different. All the distributors felt that the supply was too low!
Now, each distributor could only get 1,000 pagers monthly. Feng Yu told them that the number of pager users in China will reach more than 2 million. But the supply was too low to meet this demand!
Feng Yu also have no choice. Although the construction of the factory started last year, it was hard to find experienced workers. Also, the production lines were semi-automatic. It was still not as advanced as the future years. It was also tough to install a production line. But Aiwa Electronics had taken a bank loan to set up a second factory. The address was still in Ningbo, but it was not located in Feng Hua district.
The leader at Feng Hua district was not happy with this arrangement, but the higher-ups wanted the second factory to be located elsewhere.
Ningbo Government policies were very attractive, good traffic conditions and lower taxes. Feng Yu had no reason to set up the factory in other provinces. But if there were any changes to the policies in the future, Feng Yu will set up his new factories in other places.
Feng Hua district’s leaders were unhappy that the shares of this small company they sold had successfully developed the pager. If they knew the pager could be developed so quickly, they would never agree to sell the shares.
Although the shares were sold for 500,000 RMB and compared to their 100,000 RMB investment, it was 4 times more. However, if the pagers were manufactured and sold in the market, there will be at least tens of millions of profits.
The Daqiao village’s leader was scolded. The leader that had praised him in the past turn around and put all the blame on him. He almost strangled Daqiao village’s Leader: Are all of you idiots?! You have sold the shares of such a potential company for only 500,000 RMB?
But all of them could only resign to their fates. At least this company will still be paying taxes to the district. Feng Hua district also has a factory. If the boss of this company gets pissed, he might shift the factory and all the workers away. The losses will be more severed.
Xu Lihua and the rest had asked Feng Yu, why didn’t he set up a bigger factory? They felt that Pagers were the main form of telecommunication device in the world and the profits were high. With the low labor cost, their pagers can be competitive with the other big brands. They could also work with other countries to develop products with the local languages. They were able to produce English version of pagers now.
But Feng Yu told them a fact. Other than China, no other countries in the world will recognize their patents. Their technology was too similar to the other companies. In China, the licenses of those pager companies were also not accepted. If they were to export their pagers, they would need to pay Motorola to use this technology, and there will not be any profits left.
There were patents for this pager’s exterior design, material, features, internal structures, parts, etc. Although some of these patents had passed the protection period, there were some that were still protected by the patents. If they had miss applying for the usage of one of those patents, they would be sued, and Aiwa’s reputation will be affected.
Feng Yu had decided to change AIWA company’s name to Aiwa company (The author had used AIWA in English characters and Aiwa as Chinese characters. Aiwa’s Chinese characters means ‘Love China’ and had the same pronunciation.) Feng Yu will keep bot AIWA and Aiwa brands, and now, Aiwa’s brand awareness was increasing. He cannot afford any incident to tarnish his brand image.
As such, this Aiwa pager can only be sold in China. They should grow slowly and not rush into it.
Feng Yu also told Xu Lihua and the rest to look into mobile phone technologies. This was to prepare them to enter into the mobile phone market in the future. When they developed any new technologies, even a small improvement, they must apply for patents immediately!
Everything was ready, and Feng Yu called CCTV to replace two Super Fans advertisements to Aiwa Pager commercials. The advertising campaign will start at CCTV!
A pager beep twice and a man pressed a button on the pager. The LCD display a message: Manager Li, please call back immediately. Number: 345678.
Then it was a close up of Aiwa’s logo, and there was a voiceover of the slogan at the same time. It was a simple slogan: Aiwa Pagers, China’s own pagers!
There was no celebrity endorsement, and the actor did not show his face. The whole commercial only showed the pager and a person’s hand. But there was also a big name in this commercial. Feng Yu had invited Zhao Zhongxiang to do the voice over. His voice was easily recognized in China!
Feng Yu had only paid Zhao Zhongxiang 100,000 RMB for a 5-year contract, and he only needs to read this short slogan. Zhao Zhongxiang was also very pleased with this contract. He had asked for only 50,000 RMB, but Feng Yu increased it to 100,000 RMB. Feng Yu was overjoyed! This was too cheap. He thought he would need to spend at least 300,000 RMB!
Feng Yu firmly believed that this commercial and those distributors’ sales networks will allow his pager to enter the market in a short time. After all, the demand for pagers had outweighed supply greatly in China now!
Translator’s note: Xu Lihua, Pu Jie, Xu Xiguang and Sui Bo founded Ningbo Bird and developed China’s first pager. The link below shows the timeline on the history of China’s largest pager manufacturer, Ningbo Bird Company.
http://www.chinabird.com/en/about/history.asp
