Rebirth 05: From Coal Mine Owner to Mobile Phone Tycoon

Lu Yuan readily agreed, but just as Lu Long and Zhou Liren were about to leave, Lu Yuan impulsively added, "By the way, our newly developed mobile phone must be geared towards young people, and it would be best if it were designed to be more fashionable."

Lu Long and Zhou Liren were taken aback at first, then nodded as if they understood, and left with smiles.

Lu Yuan didn't take it to heart at first, but it won't be long before he has to pay the price for what he said.

Of course, this is a story.

After the company was in normal operation, Lu Yuan did not interfere with production and R&D matters. In his own words, professional matters should be left to professionals.

After starting production at the company, I began to work on the opening ceremony and related matters such as having my second and third brothers develop offline channels.

It was only 2005, and online sales were still a long way off. Sales relied primarily on two channels: one was physical stores, where phones were produced and then distributed and sold; the other was television advertising.

But for a newly established small company like theirs, spending a huge sum of money to advertise their company's failure on television is clearly not worthwhile. Although they have money of their own, as the second brother said, none of their money comes easily. Spending money is fine in some areas, but in others, it would just make them look like nouveau riche in the eyes of outsiders.

However, later on, once your company develops a genuine new product that becomes a hit in China, you can then spend money to hire celebrities to promote it on TV, and then there won't be any problems.

Seven days passed in the blink of an eye.

The newly assembled mobile phone was fairly standard, somewhat similar to a PHS (Personal Handyphone System), but it felt significantly heavier in the hand. Most importantly, thanks to the design by Lu Long and the newly recruited engineers, the phone boasted excellent sound quality and included the currently popular MP3 function. Listening to music was fantastic.

Looking at the sample and listening to Lu Long introduce the phone's various features, Lu Yuan smiled and said, "Hehe, for the first finished product, it's already quite good. But in the later stages of development, I still maintain my previous point: it's best to keep up with the times, appeal to young people, and design the phone as stylishly as possible."

Lu Long nodded and smiled, "President Lu, you can rest assured about that. We recently have two new colleagues in our R&D department, and we have already started working on the framework structure of our next mobile phone."

As for this phone, we can start selling it in our physical stores when we open tomorrow. If sales are good, we can then start mass production. After all, we only have one of the three production lines open right now; the other two are still idle.

Lu Yuan replied, "Okay, let's decide on that. By the way, how many of these phones can be produced tomorrow?"

Lu Long stated frankly, "According to the plan that Director Zhou and I have agreed upon, we can produce a total of one thousand finished products tomorrow. In addition, we have already ordered the packaging boxes from the manufacturer that Director Zhou has previously cooperated with, and they will be delivered tonight. The workers can work overtime tonight, and the boxes can be delivered directly to the nearby offline stores by tomorrow morning."

It's clear that Lu Long and Zhou Liren are very concerned about the company's production situation.

A relieved smile appeared on Lu Yuan's face. A thousand mobile phones, sold at the price of 1,888 yuan each as agreed in advance, would bring their gross income to more than 1.8 million yuan.

As for net income, if we calculate it in half, they can earn around 900,000.

On the surface, it doesn't seem as profitable as coal mining. But Lu Yuan knows in his heart that seeing a return on investment right from the start is already quite good. After all, this is a cross-industry investment, and as the old saying goes, "a trade is like a mountain." Even as a reborn person, all he can be sure of is the future market trend; he has absolutely no idea about the manufacturing and research and development of mobile phones.

After a brief discussion, Lu Long had just left when Zhou Liren stepped into the office.

Compared to Lu Long's relaxed expression, Zhou Liren looked much more serious.

Seeing this, Lu Yuan asked with a hint of curiosity, "Director Zhou, we're having our grand opening ceremony tomorrow, and the phones will be going on sale soon too. Why do you look so preoccupied?"

Zhou Liren sat down on the sofa next to him, lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and then said earnestly, "President Lu, I've been feeling uneasy. Ever since our company was established and started production, Puhui next door has been so quiet. I always feel like they might be plotting something bad."

Lu Yuan smiled and asked, "Well, what kind of terrible ideas do you think they might come up with?"

As the former boss of this company, Zhou Liren had been fighting wits with Puhui and many manufacturers in Huaqiangbei for so long that he knew how despicable their methods were.

"President Lu, do you know what happened on the first day of production and sales?" Zhou Liren asked.

Lu Yuan smiled and said, "You know what, I really hadn't inquired about this much before."

Zhou Liren let out another helpless sigh, spread his hands, and said with a wry smile, "Hehe, on the day we launched our first mobile phone, sales were incredibly brisk at first. In just one day, we sold more than 700 phones, which is quite a good result among small electronics manufacturers in Huaqiangbei."

Unexpectedly, this sales boom lasted only two days before trouble struck. All the customers who bought our phones experienced problems of varying degrees. Some had speaker malfunctions, some had short circuits in the electronic chips preventing them from making calls, and some had button problems preventing them from dialing numbers.

In total, we sold over two thousand units, and in the end, as many as seventeen or eighteen thousand people came to us to return the phones and demand compensation. That one time alone left me with hundreds of thousands of yuan in high-interest loans. After that… well, I struggled on until now, but I simply couldn't hold on any longer, so I'm thinking of selling the company to pay off my debts.”

Lu Yuan frowned and asked, "Did you finally find the reason?"

Zhou Liren's eyes flashed with hatred, and he said with slight agitation, "Is there even a need to look for it? It's obviously a competitor's doing. They bought the phones and then used their own factory to deliberately create defects in them. Tell me, how can we prevent this? There's absolutely no way to prevent it!"