Chapter 275: The King Who Makes People Doubt Life (Third update, please subscribe)
The cool breeze blew out from the vent on the door and dispersed in the air. Despite the blazing sun, the room felt cool and pleasant.
Li Yian was looking through a report, but saw that it was full of dense numbers and charts. The report of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry is just like this. Although there is a lot of text, there are more numbers and charts.
While he was looking through the report, Liu Chengyu, who was sitting on the chair in front of his desk, said.
“...Not everyone can understand why trading companies should be given so much power. Trading companies should be a platform that provides business information services, and should not be directly involved in operations, especially If the manufacturer's price is lower than the guide price, it will be considered a breach of contract and will be fined. Who will sell their goods at a bargain price? ”
Li Yian just said "hmm" and then continued to look at the numbers in front of him. What are these numbers? It is about the products, production capacity, profits and other related information of hundreds of factories of varying sizes. None of them are companies invested by the company. They include old companies in North Borneo and new companies invested in.
Although small in scale, these enterprises are an important part of Borneo's economy.
When Li Yi'an was carrying out large-scale investment and construction in the name of his company, investors from the Philippines, Siam and Tangshan also began to invest in Borneo, and even from Java, Singapore and other places occupied by Japan. Escaped.
I have to sigh with emotion that the business sense of these overseas Chinese businessmen who were able to gain a foothold in Nanyang was extremely keen, and they were able to see opportunities even when the war had not subsided.
Turn to the end, and you will see a paragraph written on the last page: In summary, there is reason to believe that Borneo has now become the preferred investment location for overseas Chinese businessmen in Southeast Asia. Since January this year, it has More than 100 million yuan of investment poured into Sandakan, Kuching and other places, 70% of which came from Siam.
After closing the report, Li Yian spoke.
"Who won't cut prices? Those businessmen?"
With a cold smile, Li Yian did not continue, slowly pushed the report away from his eyes, and slowly stood up from the table Get up and pace around the office. He stood in front of the window and stared at the garden of the office outside the window. The lush lawn stretched for hundreds of meters like a carpet.
“Involution!”
Gazing out the window, Li Yian spit out this term that does not belong to this era.
"For businessmen, the most important thing is to make profits, but shopping malls are like battlefields. Competition is the survival instinct of businessmen. In order to sell more goods, they will use various methods to compete with each other, and the simplest The solution is not to improve quality, but to lower prices with each other, or even viciously lower prices. They don’t care about overall profits, only individual profits, and they only need to sell goods to foreign countries when there is profit.”
In another world, as a wage earner, Li Yi'an once worked in a foreign trade company for a period of time. He had heard and witnessed how far domestic manufacturers could get involved, and how they could lower each other's prices to the point of breaking bones.
In the end, the price can be reduced to the point where the profit is only a few cents on a one-dollar product.
This is not the most terrifying thing. He once heard an old foreign trader talk about another group of "Volume Kings". From the 1980s to the early 1990s, due to the shortage of foreign exchange, all provinces adopted a "foreign exchange only theory". To evaluate whether a company's top leader is capable does not depend on its operations, but on how much foreign exchange it earns for the country.
In order to earn foreign exchange, provinces are doing everything they can.
The most famous battlefield is the Canton Fair. Once a best-selling product appears at the Canton Fair and the product shines, companies across the country will swarm to copy it. Everyone thinks that since they are all their own, the wealth will not flow to outsiders. They are all their own companies. It is a good thing to be able to produce more and earn foreign exchange through exports. They have never stopped this.
However, swarming production will inevitably lead to oversupply. In order to sell goods, various exhibitors have started a price war. Some manufacturers even sell at prices below the cost price.
Why?
Because of foreign exchange!
As long as they can bring back foreign exchange from the Canton Fair, they will be great contributors and can add a lot to their resume.
Why can we do loss-making business?
Because those companies could maintain production through loans at that time.
As for the profits of the company, no one cared about it. In the end, the snowball got bigger and bigger...
Later, after entering the new century, domestic manufacturers fully inherited the tradition of lowering prices to each other and were involved in the death. Before, I would try to win the market by exploiting the "advantages" of others, lowering each other's prices, and trapping my opponents. In order to get orders, we often compete to death, making foreign companies laugh to death, and they are also very cheap to foreign companies.
That’s not all. The most awesome overseas companies are really fierce when they develop overseas markets. After using low prices to kill foreign companies, their own volume Even more powerful, it can even turn a business worth 100 million into 10 million. Although these are all legends in the world. But when these scroll kings roll up, they will definitely make everyone doubt their life.
Well, shouting at a loss can make you doubt your whole life. Chinese businessmen have a tradition of raising each other's prices overseas. In order to obtain more supplies, they will raise each other's prices for goods imported from abroad that are very popular in China. They can even charge sky-high prices. In the 2000s, the iron industry was Ore rolled into the sky, and later cherries and avocados were rolled in. The prices were so high that drug dealers switched to growing avocados. Selling avocados was even more profitable than selling drugs. From this you can imagine how ruthless these "Volume Kings" are.
As for cherries being free and durian being free. Who cares. They just need to bring the supply to China.
If you can't afford it and you can't be free, it's probably because you don't work hard. Find the reason in yourself.
Because of this, Li Yian is really afraid of those "Volume Kings". After all, you absolutely cannot use common sense to speculate on what these guys can do.
They are all famous for their rolls.
It can be easy to make you doubt your life.
After turning around, Li Yian looked at the person in charge of the Department of International Trade and Industry in front of him and smoked several cigars in succession. A month ago, after Heidi became pregnant, he picked up the cigarette again, There are just too many things going on.
"In order to compete with their opponents, they will continue to lower prices without any bottom line. So, where do their profits come from?"
Li Yian's rhetorical question made Liu Chengyu think for a moment. , replied.
“Jidding corners and squeezing workers is the simplest way to reduce costs.”
“Yes, this is the simplest way. For a group of guys who only engage in vicious competition by lowering each other’s prices, you Don't expect them to think of other ways."
Li Yian sneered and took another puff of his cigar.
“What is the result of cutting corners and cutting materials? It is the reputation of the Borneo system. One mouse spoils the soup. Once the reputation is damaged, it may not be restored in ten or twenty years. And what about the exploitation of workers? What they are squeezing is not just the wages of workers, but the future of a country. If those workers only receive barely enough wages, how can they have money to consume? If there is no consumption, then companies will not have enough demand to produce products and services. Services, this will lead to business closures and rising unemployment. In the end, it will be a vicious cycle, and the country will inevitably fall into recession. As for factories, they are just sweatshops at best..."
For businessmen to lower prices against each other. Of course, Liu Chengyu, who was born in a tea merchant family, has witnessed it and naturally knows the disadvantages. After all, every year when tea comes on the market, tea merchants will compete to lower the price, but he never thought that this kind of price reduction would affect the rise and fall of the country. .
Walking to the table, he nodded towards the report, and Li Yian said:
"Here, these people, if you don't use some means to control them, they will get involved in business and make you doubt your life. They will take them away." What is it? It is the future of Borneo! We need them, but they need to be the secondary guns and small guns on the battleship Borneo to win under unified command. In the future business war, instead of letting them fight each other on the battlefield, or even kill each other!"
At this point, Li Yi'an admires Japanese businessmen very much, no matter how Japanese trading companies and businessmen compete domestically! , but in the international market, they all cooperate fully and put profits first. Businessmen from other countries should never expect them to lower each other's prices.
Actually, this is not because Japanese businessmen are very self-disciplined, but because there is an organization that restricts competition among them - the Federation of Industry and Commerce, which is composed of large Japanese companies holding shares in each other. They are Japan's backbone enterprises. They formulate corresponding basic rules for overseas operations and require all enterprises to abide by them.
If any company kills each other by lowering prices in overseas markets, it will inevitably be hit by the entire Federation of Industry and Economics, that is, all large companies, or even completely blocked.
Under such circumstances, naturally no company would dare to do nothing and compete for the market by cutting prices at the cost of killing one thousand enemies and losing eight hundred to itself.
What has this overbearing management approach accomplished?
Although benevolent people have different opinions, one thing that is certain is that Li Yi'an will never allow Borneo companies to use up the precious wealth of the country's industrial upgrading in vicious competition - this wealth belongs to the whole society.
Although he can intervene in all this through the Borneo Company, it is not impossible to promote it a little bit through the trading company. After all, the current companies have not left Borneo. Before that, we set rules for them and used various means to force them to abide by them, and then they developed a habit.
He pulled the report in front of him and Li Yian said:
"So, we need some means to prevent them from getting involved in each other in order to get orders, and they end up getting advantage of the gringos. This is for the future of Borneo."
(End of this chapter) )