The Birth of Shanghai's First Conglomerate

Chapter 116 Further Development of All Product Categories
The development of Tengying is entirely within expectations.

After touring the company, Chen Pingsheng invited Jiang Peiyao to have dinner together.

She turned eighteen a few days ago and is now nineteen. She has never touched the 100,000 yuan monthly allowance she is given.

She is still as beautiful and lovely as ever.

By the way, let's invite Gao Hu over as well. These brothers from our hometown only gathered together at his daughter's one-month celebration.

Gao Hu enrolled in an advanced EMBI management course in Beijing, which cost 28 yuan a year.

Chang Fu even joked that he had just graduated from junior high school and was going straight to postdoctoral studies.

Spend hundreds of thousands of yuan, and you only attend classes a few days a month.

"You don't know anything."

Gao Hu retorted, "That course is pretty good. I didn't know it until I took it. I realized how much I still lack. There are more than 30 people in the class, half of whom only graduated from junior high school. Every one of them is a big boss now. I'm the worst off among them."

Chen Pingsheng also wants to apply, but hasn't decided which school to apply to yet.

Among the top business management programs in China today, the most renowned is undoubtedly Professor Ma's Hubei University.

Secondly, there is Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Shantou.

These are all too far from home, and besides, you need the founder's recommendation to get into Teacher Ma's courses.

To put it bluntly, it's not something you can just buy with money. They don't lack money at all; what they want is a group of students with top-notch resources.

Gathering all these people together is actually quite terrifying.

Gao Hu said, "Old Chen, I think you should enroll in our top-tier class, which costs 680,000 yuan a year. However, there are some restrictions on enrollment. The applicant's company needs to have assets of at least 100 million yuan. There are no industry requirements, so you can enroll smoothly using any company you choose."

These kinds of classes are actually the best way to expand your network.

The kind of class reunion that people talk about in society doesn't refer to your junior high school classmates or high school classmates.

Instead, the CEO training program students, who are selected through a rigorous process and can afford to spend 600,000 to 700,000 yuan a year to study, also have their company information reviewed.

They weren't short of money to begin with.

"Sure, most of us are lacking in education, so it's always good to learn more."

Being over thirty and still having to be a student is a novel experience.

Chen Pingsheng filled in his information online; this kind of class is only held twice a year.

The next event is in early August, so it's just in time for him to register.

With his investment, Chang Fu spent 500,000 yuan to rent a 700-square-meter office building in Shijingshan.

It's not the whole building, just one floor.

They then used another 200,000 yuan to create more than a dozen live streaming rooms inside.

Currently, there are two main live streaming platforms: Douyu and Huya Live.

Most of them attract users with beautiful women. Chen Pingsheng felt that the market was too small. He invested five million to take a 49% stake, but lost interest after watching for a day.

The hottest startup trend in the market right now is mobile phones, which were the most popular a few years ago.

Xiaomi alone defeated them.

Incidentally, it also crushed all the counterfeit manufacturers, and Xiaomi has indeed made a huge contribution in this regard.

The era of mobile phones is over, and the mobile internet has officially arrived. Now everyone is focusing on niche markets.

Like Vancl, which specializes in selling shirts.

And there's also the currently popular "I endorse myself" campaign, which focuses on selling cosmetics.

They all strive to excel in a specific niche before expanding into other areas.

Chang Fu continued with his most familiar business, live streaming, while Yang Qian seemed to have nothing to do. Chen Pingsheng suggested she go to Tencent Entertainment.

Someone like her, who has worked within the system, is very good at dealing with people.

Tengying also needs someone like that. He will formally assign her work after she becomes familiar with Tengying's business.

After finishing his work here, Chen Pingsheng went to work with Zhang Tao to specifically study all categories of fresh produce.

To put it bluntly, he wants to move the wet market into his Tengsheng Fresh Supermarket.

The best-selling item at the market every day is undoubtedly pork.

Secondly, there are various seasonal side dishes, the prices of which fluctuate greatly every day.

It's like a green bean; the price is different at 1 a.m. and then again at 2 a.m.

By three o'clock, the wholesalers knew that they had already ordered most of the goods they needed.

Let's just set off the cannons.

Originally sold for 50 cents wholesale, I'll just sell it to you for 25 cents.

This also greatly increases the difficulty of operation.

To put it bluntly, the cost of goods is difficult to control, and the person in charge of this matter has a lot of room for manipulation.

This is just one type; there are dozens of side dishes, including meat dishes, all of which are like this.

"Taozi, we should manage vegetables and meat separately."

A store manager in charge of fruit is unlikely to be good at managing vegetables.

Similarly, someone in charge of vegetables may not be good at handling meat.

Take pork, for example. In the market, it's all hung up to be cut.

Supermarkets, on the other hand, cut the food up first and then let customers choose, which involves two issues.

The traditional method of hanging one side of the pork for on-site cutting and selling is good, but it greatly affects the aesthetics of the entire supermarket.

To put it bluntly, it lowers the perceived quality. This has nothing to do with price; it's about customer psychology.

So all they can do is cut the pieces.

Cutting pork is a skill; if it's not cut properly, it can easily lead to a lot of waste.

They want to offer a full range of fresh produce, and it can't be as dirty and chaotic as a traditional wet market.

The best approach is to continuously research and evolve.

Fortunately, Tengsheng Fruit already has money, so it can plan ahead before doing anything.

At Tengsheng headquarters in the suburbs of Shijingshan, Chen Pingsheng announced the establishment of a fresh vegetable department and a fresh meat department.

Then, using 500 square meters of space, we first created a mock-up model room for Tengsheng Fresh Supermarket.

How to arrange fruits, where to put vegetables, and how to place meat must all be clearly studied in this model room first.

Only then will they actually open the first one.

Old Guo also introduced him to two people who had been working in the wholesale market for over ten years.

First, have the two of them sort out all the fresh produce that Tengsheng wants to handle.

Regardless of the purchase price for now, what we need to do is to figure out a clear plan for the arrangement and management of the vegetables.

Chen Pingsheng stayed here for more than ten days.

A model room can be set up in a day, from the placement of the incoming vegetables to the weighing by the customer.

Problems were identified one by one and then improved, followed by the freezing and cutting of meat.

Almost everything is constantly being improved.

Chen Pingsheng said, "People who buy vegetables in the morning usually come very early. After the vegetables arrive, it takes two hours to sort them before they can be presented to customers in a beautiful and clean manner. The vegetable and meat department works in three shifts: one shift at 3 a.m. to 10 a.m., another shift at 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and then another shift at 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.."

"The salary for the early morning shift is set at 8,500, the midday shift at 6,500, and the evening shift, which is the easiest, is set at 6,000."

"The year-end bonus depends on the store's performance."

After more than ten days of research.

Chen Pingsheng not only set specific standards for the arrangement of side dishes and meats, but also created detailed procedures for the daily tasks of his employees.

He hired four people to do what could have been done by three people in two hours.

The extra spending on personnel serves two purposes: firstly, it reduces the workload for employees, and secondly, it enhances the customer experience.

These days, at least seven or eight senior executives from headquarters have been accompanying him here, constantly researching and improving the situation.

Only after everything is ready will we begin recruiting and training people.

Then invest another 10 million yuan in the Third Ring Road area and open five super-large Tengsheng Fresh Supermarkets at the same time.

Tengsheng officially announced its entry into the full-category fresh food market.

The reason for recruiting and training people in advance is that it's better to spend more money before opening the store than to be caught off guard and in a mess after the store opens.

He wants to standardize the weighing and cutting process for every fish.

There's no need to worry about employees having objections to training; wages will be paid as usual.

The same vegetables and fruits are still being consumed every day.

According to the standard opening procedure, you also need to undergo a month of comprehensive simulation training here.

During this training process, we continuously identified and improved upon problems.

Of course, training without customers is ineffective.

Therefore, Chen Pingsheng notified the surrounding residents and small manufacturers that they could come and collect fresh produce for free every day.

There's definitely no need for fruit; we've already been trained on that.

Judging from his attitude, headquarters could easily guess that he was focused on improving his vegetable and meat products in order to expand into all product categories.

Otherwise, if he's such a big boss, would he really need to spend every day studying how to arrange side dishes and how to cut crucian carp with you?
Which big boss would do that?
Generally, those who have a lot of money can sit in their office and remotely direct anything they want to do.

Let the people below do it.

He himself would only come to visit occasionally, unlike Chen Pingsheng who focused on studying with them.

There were certainly some who were involved throughout the entire process.

That would be one in a thousand.

Even the big boss himself came to help kill fish and cut pork. Which other senior executive would dare to just sit in their office and listen to reports?

Producing all kinds of fresh produce, including vegetables, chicken, duck, fish, and meat, is inherently dirty and tiring work. Anyone who just wants to sit in an office, put their hands behind their back, and give out proposals is a jerk.

None of them can be fixed.

This requires the full involvement of all senior executives to truly give them a concrete and profound understanding of the entire product category.

To put it bluntly, although Chen Pingsheng wasn't very educated, he was absolutely willing to endure hardship and do things himself.

Because he knew that without his own involvement, the project would likely only achieve a mediocre result.

As the saying goes, once people have money, they won't want to touch the things they used to have.

After starting my job in an office, I would never again think of personally cleaning fish and preparing side dishes every day.

If they can't achieve this, they won't be much different from other supermarkets.

He has so many things to do, yet he still insists on doing research here every day; one can only imagine how much more others do.

Anyone who only wants to sit in an office will be sent down to the grassroots level.

(End of this chapter)