Huang Zhang is still very proud of Meizu's achievements, because the only thing that can attract consumers through crowdfunding is the quality of the product itself.
Moreover, Meizu has opened three phases, and both the first and second phases have collected the maximum number of units supported by the crowdfunding website - 5,000 units.
In the Internet era, products that completely rely on online channels will not be able to continue to gain so many consumers once their reputation is not good.
Like Lenovo, even if its reputation on the Internet fails, it can still rely on offline channels to survive. But for a brand like OnePlus that relies purely on online channels, a bad reputation is half dead.
Manager Zhao, sitting opposite Huang Zhang, obviously understands this truth. He is a project manager under Emerging Capital who is active in the Pearl River Delta region all year round.
The projects he has seen the most are also Internet projects. The reason why he is interested in the Meizu project is because he heard about the Meizu brand when he was talking to the crowdfunding website and the other party introduced their successful cases.
"We went online in September 2002. There was no electronic payment before September. The crowdfunding model was not feasible from the underlying logic. The profits of the crowdfunding website itself were very low.
We have no way to cooperate with the Dianka Alliance like Internet companies such as Tencent, NetEase, and Shanda. Only electronic payment can keep our costs down.
Besides, for some crowdfunding products that cost thousands of yuan, it is a bit unrealistic for you to ask consumers to make 10 point cards through point cards. Consumers who are interested in crowdfunding are essentially impulse consumers when they spend money.
If he recharges through point cards and takes a longer time to pay, this impulsive consumption may subside after completing the point card recharge.
So we have been doing preparatory work in the early stage, promoting it on online forums, polishing our website design, etc.
Fortunately, our revenue exceeded RMB 10 million in the first quarter after going online, and in the first half of this year, our revenue exceeded RMB 50 million. "
After the introduction, the person in charge of the crowdfunding website showed Manager Zhao the top ten revenue of their crowdfunding website partner companies. Among them, Meizu ranked first with a revenue of more than 10 million yuan.
The most emphasis of emerging capital is the sense of smell, which was also Zhou Xinjiao Wu Shiqiang’s special skill back then. Manager Zhao quickly caught this signal. Why can this company called Meizu attract so many consumers to pay?
Three rounds of crowdfunding were launched, raising a total of more than 10 million in funds, which is very difficult for an unknown small business.
"Are you talking about Meizu? This is a very unique company. At that time, they came to us to discuss cooperation. In fact, I didn't want to agree.
Because they are making mobile phones, they hope to price it at 1,000 yuan and then crowdfund 500 units. What is the concept? In other words, they need to raise 5 million yuan at a time.
I have introduced to you before that the business model of crowdfunding websites relies on two points. One is the handling fee. The handling fee itself is very meager. A handling fee of 3%, five million, or a handling fee of 60,000. .
Most of the things sold by crowdfunding websites are physical goods, and we cannot charge a 30% handling fee like Internet companies do. The second is the interest rate difference. After the consumer completes the payment action, the money is in our account. We will only transfer the money to the company after the company delivers the goods.
Therefore, there is an interest rate difference in the middle, and we rely on the interest rate difference and handling fees to make money. But at that time, Meizu wanted us to pay them at least 50% first, otherwise they would not be able to produce.
Both conditions are against our rules, but five million in crowdfunding is very important for a newly established company, including the founder of Meizu. He showed me the concept map they made on the Zhongguancun Forum. Well received.
There were a lot of people wanting to buy it under the post, but in the end we gritted our teeth and made the deal.
The middle was very smooth. Meizu was very successful in marketing on the Internet. I remember that within a week they found 500 users and completed payment on our crowdfunding website.
After sending the money to Meizu, we were very nervous. If they ran away, we would need to advance the two million and a half million to consumers, and we might go bankrupt.
In order to prevent them from running away, we even specially sent an employee to Meizu to work with them. We said that we were giving them free labor, but in fact we were monitoring them to prevent them from running away.
Fortunately, the delivery was successful in the end. We cooperated for three rounds in total. By the third round, there was no need to pay them first. "
Manager Zhao asked back: "If Meizu runs away, will you run away or admit defeat and keep the 2.5 million for yourself?"
"I don't know, I really don't know. I definitely have to pay from a perceptual point of view. If I don't pay this money, the reputation of the crowdfunding model in China will be bad and it will hit the entire industry.
From a rational point of view, I don’t want to pay because it’s too big of a trap. Fortunately, nothing like this happened that tested my humanity. "
The other party was both excited and scared when he mentioned Meizu. This made Manager Zhao interested in Meizu, so he came to visit.
After Huang Zhang introduced the company Meizu, Manager Zhao was a little disappointed, because companies that only rely on industrial design to survive are companies that focus on mobile phone manufacturing. To be honest, they don't have much value.
There are too many mobile phone companies on the market now, and the entire market is dotted with manufacturers of all sizes. If you take a look at them, you will find that almost all of them are chips from New Core and MediaTek.
After Xinxin launched integrated mobile phone chips, MediaTek quickly followed up, giving Xinxin little time to breathe.
Integrating all chips onto one motherboard and providing a package of solutions was the earliest thing MediaTek did. Before Xinxin launched mobile phone integrated chips, MediaTek had already initiated this project internally.
After the new chip was launched, MediaTek even suspected internal leaks, so they worked overtime to launch their integrated mobile phone chips.
Due to its first-mover advantage and its support from Zhou Xin, Xinxin Technology occupies 70% of the market share, while MediaTek occupies 30%.
Although Xinxin Technology occupies the majority of the market share, MediaTek is growing rapidly and is waging a price war in this field, trying to gain market share with its price advantage.
Xinxin Technology is somewhat forced to follow the price reduction, because if it does not reduce the price, it will lose the market. For these companies, they do not care about the quality of the technology, only the price.
Of course, Xinxin is not without its advantages, because Xinxin Technology is more famous among the consumer group. Although it is a Chinese company, consumers will subconsciously think that it is a Silicon Valley company.
And Xinxin is the supplier of Mphone. When I buy a mobile phone equipped with Xinxin technology chip, I am buying an Mphone. This is somewhat of the meaning.
Therefore, Xinxin Technology’s mobile phone integrated chips can still enjoy a slight premium.
Manager Zhao asked: "Mr. Huang, I just heard you talk about the specific situation of your company. I want to hear your future development strategy.
We all know that with the launch of mobile phone integrated chips by Xinxin Technology, China's mobile phone market has fallen into a competitive situation, and all companies want to get a share of the mobile phone market.
Whether it is making color TVs, refrigerators, televisions, or even pig-raising companies, they want to get involved in the mobile phone industry. What do you think Meizu’s advantages are? "
Huang Zhang replied: "I actually think the two problems are one problem. Meizu will transform in the future.
We all know that the new president personally started the era of smartphones. Now in Silicon Valley, giants in the mobile phone field, such as Nokia and Motorola, their executives always refer to smartphones.
He said that he would make a smartphone in the future, and the three elements of a smartphone are screen, operating system and mobile phone processor.
I think Meizu’s future development direction must be to make smartphones, and it must have certain innovations in these three elements.
It is precisely because Meizu wants to transform and make smartphones that Meizu needs financing.
If we continue to innovate in industrial design, we will first sell mobile phones to consumers through crowdfunding, wait until a certain amount of precipitation is completed, then open some offline stores, launch our own official website, and slowly develop into a company with channels all over the online and Offline mobile phone manufacturers.
In fact, I don’t need external financing at all, but if Meizu wants to enter the smartphone field, then we must provide external financing.
We need to find suppliers to cooperate with and conduct certain research and development, which requires a lot of funds. "
Manager Zhao said: "This step is too big. There are many companies on the market that can provide mobile phone processors, such as Samsung, Texas Instruments, Intel, Xinxin, etc., but they are all expensive without exception.
Moreover, the operating system of a smartphone needs to be deeply adapted to the mobile phone processor. From the selection of the mobile phone processor to the creation of the operating system, there are countless difficulties to overcome.
What's more important is that the patent for mobile phone screens is in the hands of Matrix. Other suppliers have not yet conquered this field. You still have to invest in research and development, which is unrealistic. "
As a project manager of emerging investments, Manager Zhao has a very good understanding of the mobile phone industry. Because the key projects of emerging investments in the past two years include inspecting companies in the upstream and downstream of the smartphone supply chain.
Mphone has a number of suppliers in China. Emerging investments need to select suppliers with technical content for investment. Many of these suppliers are in the Pearl River Delta region. Manager Zhao has visited many companies and has also seen them in the internal knowledge base of emerging investments. A lot of information.
He knows very well that after entering the era of smartphones, most of the current mobile phone companies will be eliminated. Smartphones are simply not something that small companies can play well.
He came to see Meizu out of curiosity, but now he regrets it because Huang Zhang's idea was too unrealistic.
Huang Zhang explained: “These technologies sound complicated. As smartphones develop, suppliers will provide solutions. All Meizu needs to do is choose the appropriate solution among these solutions.
In my opinion, the only difficulty that cannot be overcome here is the screen, because for the time being, no supplier can provide a solution for screen technology similar to the Mphone2, or even a sample.
The screen solutions I have come across in the Pearl River Delta are all, without exception, far inferior to the Mphone2 in terms of sensitivity. The only supplier that comes close to the Mphone2 screen has extremely high costs.
This cannot be solved for the time being, but there are ways to solve it for processors and operating systems. For processors, we can talk to New Core Technology. We can’t use A-series chips, but we can ask New Core to help us design other mobile phone chips. .
If Xinxin Technology is not good, we can also look to Samsung and Intel. Operating systems There are also some open source mobile operating systems that can be used for transformation.
We can launch a smartphone similar to Mphone1 first, and then launch a mobile phone similar to Mphone2 after the touch screen technology on the market matures.
In my plan, if I get financing, I will also make samples, do marketing, establish an official website, and sell it in batches like Mphone2, and sell it on the official website.
I have had countless ideas about the product itself after seeing Mphone2. The cost of the phone itself is not very high. What needs to be spent is to transform the operating system. We need to recruit a large number of development engineers.
We select and then modify the operating system. At the same time, we also build the Meizu official website, which needs to cooperate with the operating system to create some applications. "
From this perspective, there may be a feasible way to go, Manager Zhao thought.
Due to the Mphone fire, the first industry to collapse was handheld computers. Mphone2 could do everything a handheld computer could do, with a price similar to that of a handheld computer, and also had communication functions. This caused handheld computers to completely lose the market.
In the first half of 2003, almost all companies involved in handheld computers announced that they would ax this business, and companies whose main business was handheld computers all chose to transform.
To transform the original handheld computer operating system into a smartphone operating system, some companies have chosen to open source it, such as Palm OS.
This is why Huang Zhang said that operating systems and processors are not difficult problems because there are already solutions on the market.
Huang Zhang continued: "I want to find emerging investments because, as an investment institution under the New Corporation, Emerging Investments has participated in Xinxin Technology, Xiaomi, Yongxin Technology, etc."
Yongxin Technology is a joint venture company established by Cao Yongluo and Zhou Xin. Zhou Xin holds shares in it through emerging investments and is also one of the suppliers of Mphone.
Since Yongxin Technology is a supplier of Mphone, they have received a large number of orders from the same industry and have gradually become the leader in the field of mobile phone assembly. They are basically copying Foxconn's rise to power with Apple's support.
"Xinxin Investment has a strong voice and deep understanding of the upstream and downstream suppliers in the mobile phone industry. If we cooperate with each other, Xinxin Investment can play a big role.
For example, Xinxin Technology only sells its mobile phone processors to Matrix. If Meizu wanted to talk to them, given Meizu's size, they would probably ignore it.
But there are emerging investments acting as middlemen, and I believe they are at least willing to listen to our appeals. "
After Huang Zhang finished speaking, Manager Zhao became a little interested, because proposing an idea and being able to break it down into subdivisions are two different things. Huang Zhang’s answer at least demonstrates feasibility.
(End of chapter)
