Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
On the second day after the Little Star product launch, Zhen Ker Shin rushed to work. With her head bowed, she went into the office and handed over an envelope. “Miss. Liang, I want to resign.”
Liang Ying, who was sitting on the office chair, raised her head and looked at her for a few moments. Then, facing the few documents on the table, she said, “Take these documents to Mr. Ling and ask him to sign on them.”
“Miss Liang!” Zhen Ker Shin stomped her foot. “I have no face to keep going, I actually can’t even recognize my boss.”
“Many people at the headquarters can’t recognize our boss, what’s the big deal, go ahead and start working.”
“My case is different! Let’s not mention about how many times I have met him before, I regarded him as Mr. Ling’s personal assistant… I-I was so rude, he must have hated me, I… have no face to stay here.” Zhen Ker Shin’s eyes were red, feeling like she had made a grave mistake.
“Silly lady, if our boss hated you, I would have reminded you that he’s our boss, it was he that asked us not to tell you, haven’t you got it yet? Throw away that resignation letter and start working.”
“What?!” What Liang Ying said stunned her. After some thought, it seemed that her boss certainly didn’t hate her. In fact, he even added her on WeChat and talked with her frequently. Right, through WeChat, I must ask him why he hid this from me!
During her free time, she took out her phone, opened WeChat, and typed out long passages in an attempt to put the questions within her heart forward. However, she couldn’t seem to send them out, and ended up deleting them over and over again.
Near noon, her phone dinged. She received two messages. The sender was “Assistant Chen.” The first message was the “Trick” emoji. The second message was, “How was it? My hosting skills are not bad, right?”
Ah! At that moment, Zhen Ker Shin felt utterly ashamed and it was driving her crazy. It was on purpose. That guy must have done it on purpose!
…
At noon on the 16th, The “Little Star First Gen” learning machine launched its official website for pre-selling. The first batch of stock was one million units. After customers made their orders, it would be delivered within 10 days. However, sales were not as fervent as predicted. From the moment it launched until six in the afternoon, in six hours, pre-orders for the “Little Star First Gen” learning machine passed just over half a million units. Over half a million units within six hours!
For products of other companies, it would definitely be considered as a hot-selling product. But for Xing Hai Technologies, it can be said that it was very far from their expectations. However, aside from Chen Jin and the technical team lead by Song Bo Jun, the other higher-ups in the company all said that it was quite good.
“We succeeded, Mr. Chen, there will be no problem for the sales of ‘Little Star First Gen’ to break the one million mark within 24 hours. This is a pretty good result.”
“The funds we used in this project were much less than what we anticipated. Even just selling two or three million units will cover our cost.”
“This project is actually not bad. The learning machine is also better than what we imagined. It is impossible for us to experience loss in this. But considering that this is mainly for primary schoolers, the product audience is not big. It will be considered a great success even if we just manage to sell all five million units.”
“But there is no need to increase our orders to 10 million units. It is estimated that it will already take a long time for us to sell all five million units.”
“We should focus our efforts on the robots. Summing up the number of personnel in the learning machine and chip development teams in our company, their numbers have already exceeded 2,000. Our expenditure of 200 million per month in R&D is too costly, and sales are not that optimistic either. If this goes on, we might very well lose money.”
The company’s high executives were not very optimistic about the learning machine project. How good would it be to just work on household robots? With one robot for each family, its market was worth over a hundred million dollars. What about the learning machine? Selling over ten million units would be considered good enough. But the learning machine also required a lot of funding into its R&D, the input-output ratio was simply too low.
Besides, in the market of household robots, Xing Hai Technologies was monopolizing the market and they had almost zero competitors in the field. In the field of education, however, the competition was harsh. There were innumerable training institutions, learning devices, and applications. Money could not be earned easily.
All the higher executives wished for Chen Jin to focus on robots and not to forget the watermelon just to pick a mango.
…
During dinner time, Chen Jin did not have much of an appetite. He held his phone in his hand, refreshing the Taobao product interface from time to time. He realized that the amount of orders for the ‘Little Star First Gen’ learning machine was not rising after hitting the 550 thousand mark, as if it was stuck.
Not even mentioning people panic-buying it, it had become a problem for the first batch of one million units to even be sold within two or three days,
“Chen Jin, your learning machine is very well made, after watching your product conference, even I bought one… how can it not sell well?” asked Su Yun, who was sitting across from him.
“What did you buy the Little Star learning machine for? You are not a primary schooler.” Chen Jin gave her a weird look. He did not understand what was going on in her brain.
“It was too good, so I couldn’t help but to buy one.” Su Yun gave him a naughty smile as she stuck her tongue out.
Chen Jin shook his head and began mumbling to himself. “I’ve done it wrong since the beginning of the conference! I should’ve massively sent out invitations and invite the parents and teachers of the primary schoolers over. Or I should have invited the primary schoolers themselves and let them listen to my product introduction. I should not have turned it into a shopping carnival for ordinary netizens. Why would ordinary netizens buy it? The netizens themselves are not feverish about it. In the family of the netizens, not much of their kids are primary schoolers. As for those uncles and aunties, they are not even familiar with the internet, not to even mention swiping Weibo and shopping online… with so many factors combined, no matter how good the Little Star learning machine is, the majority of the primary schooler parents will still be oblivious about its existence.”
Unless they used intensive advertising methods like what Bubu Gao Company was doing, for example brainwashing through TV programs, going “A little press on Little Star a little problem solved” every day, only then would it be possible to get the parents attention and bring up their desire to buy the product. At the same time, they had to prepare a large number of offline stores and conduct large-scale offline distributions to give the primary schooler parents the chance to purchase the Little Star learning machine.
But this sales model had no difference with the sales model of Bubu Gao Company’s learning machine, which would create a hefty distribution cost. Just on TV ads, it would cost more than a million dollars every year! The main issue was that Chen Jin was reluctant to sell his Little Star learning machine that way, he hated bombardment and brainwashing advertising methods! Besides, the Little Star learning machine’s profit margin could not be too low as well.
But without advertising and conducting sales offline, how would the potential users of the Little Star leaning machine learn about it and get their hands on it? In short, this was a very conflicting, troublesome, and headache-inducing problem.
“Dad, mom, I’m full. I have some things in my mind. I’ll go downstairs to rest now.” Chen Jin placed his bowl and chopsticks down and returned to his room with a glum face.
…
After Chen Jin went downstairs, He Li and Chen Gang also finished eating. They placed their bowl and chopsticks down.
“Director, I’ll do the dishes!” Su Yun stood up and took the initiative to clean the table.
“No need, I’ll do the dishes,” He Li called to her, but Su Yun had already entered the kitchen with the dishes. After a while, the sound of scrubbing and rinsing could be heard.
“He Li, come out here for a little while.” Chen Gang dragged his wife to the balcony outside the living room. He lowered his voice and with a solemn face, he whispered to her ear, “He Li, why did you call Su Yun over? What are you thinking about letting her spend three to four nights at our house in a week? Su Yun is still an innocent, untouched lady. What will people say about her if they get to know about this? How can Su Yun lift her head outside if it were to happen?” Chen Gang thought that his wife was getting more and more ridiculous. She never thought of the consequences, and always brought her female subordinate to stay at her own house.
Especially after his son bought a villa, his wife’s actions further intensified. She freed up a guest room, tidied it, and called Su Yun over to stay for the long-term. She said that it was for work convenience. But who would believe such a lame excuse? Chen Gang could not bear to watch this. He thought that He Li was crossing the line.
“What are you even aware of?” He Li glared at him. “Do you really hope that our son gets married after 30? Do you really desire to not have a grandchild even after we are retired?”
“I’m retiring at 60, why do I need to feel desperate?”
“You are not desperate, but I am! This kind of thing must be prepared in advance!”
“So, you dragged Su Yun to stay at our house without even asking for her consent? He Li, no matter how desperate the others are, the most that they will do is to urge their children to go on blind dates, who does things like you?”
“Stay out of this, he is my son, everything shall be arranged by me alone!” She glared at her husband for a moment, asking him to mind his own business and shut his mouth.
How could you possibly understand my plan? Our son is now a billionaire and will get even wealthier in the future. There will be countless ladies from rich and prestigious households that will want to marry our son. Can he resist temptation? Will our future daughter-in-law be easy to bond with? Everything is unknown!
The ideal daughter-in-law in her mind would be either the “perfect match” in her context or the obedient type… anyways, she must not steal her son away from her!
“You—…” Facing his overbearing wife, Chen Gang was unable to have a say.
