"If you just buy the property directly, there should be no problem. Japanese real estate companies will only welcome us." Zhou Jiayang nodded and said.
Not to mention Japan, which is currently the strongest in Asia, Hong Kong is just a city. The real estate market is basically controlled by local consortiums. For foreign investors, they can only participate in shares or make profits through bank loans. If they want to operate directly, it is almost impossible. It's possible, even if there are a few exceptions, you basically won't make much money.
The same goes for Hong Kong capital going to Japan. People welcome buying things, but it is almost impossible to make money from their internal interest groups. Midea's electronic products can sell well in the Japanese market because its products are new gadgets and have nothing to do with traditional Only when interest groups conflict and have distribution interests with local consortiums can they be considered stable.
"Then I'll leave this matter to you. Hutchison Whampoa won't have much going on in the Mainland and Hong Kong recently. Just go to Japan more often. Not only is the Japanese yen in the hands of Hutchison Whampoa, Midea and Red Bull also have a lot of Japanese yen. Yuan, they have also purchased properties in Japan according to my orders before, but they are not professional after all. You can cooperate with them to purchase some properties in big cities such as Tokyo and Nagoya." Chen Zhiwen added.
Red Bull's drinks are not very popular in Japan, but they have captured a certain market and the profits are not bad. However, most of them are still invested in the advertising industry, but Midea is different. Cassettes, etc., are very popular in Japan, and due to the decline in the cost of arcade machines, Japan has also spawned a new industry that is not available in Europe and the United States - arcade game arcades.
In the past few years, Midea has earned a lot of yen in Japan. However, Chen Zhiwen, who knows Japan's future, has not converted the funds into US dollars or Hong Kong dollars. He has no shortage of both. The yen left in Japan is mainly to buy some properties. Collect rent.
"Can leverage be used?" Zhou Jiayang suddenly asked.
"Okay, you can find a way to establish relationships with some banks in Japan and see if you can get more favorable interest rates and quotas. Just like when we invested in properties in Hong Kong in 1974, it will be fine. I am more optimistic about the Japanese real estate market, etc. In the future, if I have more funds in hand, I will invest additional money. If you go this time, just treat it as food and grass first." Chen Zhiwen said again that by 1985, he would definitely invest in Japan on a large scale, and the amount of funds involved would be very large. Such an investment would be strange if it suddenly entered the Japanese market, but if we start testing the waters this year and gradually increase investment, it will seem natural.
"Okay, I understand." Zhou Jiayang nodded and said. As a veteran who started his business with his boss, Zhou Jiayang naturally knew that in the earliest days, Chen Zhiwen was desperately trying to get leverage.
Hong Kong's economy has been up and down during this period, but overall it is in a state of decline. However, when Hisense Bank announced that it would provide a HK$3 billion loan to Land Group, it still aroused a lot of public opinion. Financial newspapers On the other hand, various in-depth analyzes were conducted on this matter, some of which left Chen Zhiwen stunned, just like Lu Xun would have done if he had seen various analyzes of each of his sentences in Chinese textbooks a hundred years later. Same.
However, it is only 3 billion Hong Kong dollars, and it is still a loan. It basically has no big impact on the real estate market. Even the fame of Chen Zhiwen, the richest man, cannot resist the market trend.
However, because of this incident, many local real estate companies also approached Hisense with the intention of borrowing money. Huo Jianning did his own job and analyzed each one. In the end, he rejected most of them, and only a few were approved. There are hundreds of millions of Hong Kong dollars in loans, and the collaterals are also some properties, and they are guaranteed by other companies or wealthy people.
The only special case was Jianing Group. The information they provided really made Huo Jianning and other Hisense executives think it was acceptable, but it was directly rejected by Chen Zhiwen. This giant liar’s ability to make false accounts is estimated to be rare in the world. There are no problems with the accounting data, which means that Chen Zhiwen knows the history, otherwise he might have been cheated.
In the original history of 1983, the real estate crisis had broken out. The public accounts of the Carnegie Group showed continuous profits. Although the Hong Kong government was suspicious, it had no evidence and could only reject Carnea's stock market financing from a risk perspective. I applied for HK$500 million, but turned around and went to HSBC, and got HK$200 million from Shen Bi. HSBC had already lent money to it, so other banks naturally believed in HSBC. In addition, there were more people depositing money and fewer borrowing money. So the loan was made.
Of course, there is also a rumor that Jia Ning and HSBC are playing a trick of "repaying the money of the wealthy gentry with a 30-70 split to the common people". First, HSBC provides credit to Jian Ning, and then other banks blindly lend money. There is little evidence.
When the Hong Kong government detained the senior management of Jiani, a professional team of hundreds of people worked hard for two or three years, but in the end they could not seize any important evidence, and in the end they could only be sentenced to a few years in prison.
For such a person, Chen Zhiwen had to admire his ability in this kind of thing, but it was a pity that he was not using it on the right path. All he could do was to avoid him as much as possible.
July is coming soon.
In the past six months, Midea Group's red and white consoles and handheld consoles are still in high demand and are selling well.
The U.S. and Japanese markets where the first batch of releases were released have gradually entered a flat state, and people with a very high demand for games have basically bought them. There will no longer be the queues like last Christmas season, but there is still a huge gap in this market. In its original history, Atari's peak achievement was that every three households in the United States had a game console. In other words, the total market volume in the United States was between 50 million and 80 million. Considering the popularity of its own games, With more playability, this number can be improved, but it will take a few years.
The demand for cassettes for Famicom is even greater. After all, a family or even several families with good relationships can share a Famicom, but it is impossible to play only one game. As long as the economy allows, there is almost no upper limit on the sales of cassettes. , if you get tired of playing the old games, there will be new ones.
For handheld consoles, the price is much cheaper than the red and white consoles, and the market is larger in terms of quantity.
The markets for the second batch of releases, mainly in Europe, are currently entering the initial growth period. Because the production capacity is not enough, even publicity is omitted. After all, when the production capacity is not enough, only people with sick minds will advertise.
The huge markets in Europe, the United States and Japan have made the entire Hong Kong electronics industry take off in a hurry. With the huge order volume, a beautiful industrial city is far from enough. Even if Lei Shengli had made preparations long ago and inspected dozens of projects in Hong Kong and Taiwan in advance, electronics assembly factories, but still cannot keep up with market demand. Finally, we went to South Korea to find new suppliers, which gradually stabilized market demand.
Chen Zhiwen did not blame his subordinates for this. The characteristic of electronic products is that when they are popular, demand will increase exponentially. It is impossible to make any early preparations in time. They can only rely on several years to increase production capacity. Originally, The same is true for Apple mobile phones in history. It was not until 2015 that the lack of production capacity was solved.
Finally, there is Midea’s earliest arcade machine. Although there are arcade game arcades in Japan, it is far less than the market reduction caused by the shrinking US market. There is no way. When Famicom machines begin to enter households, arcade machines will undoubtedly die, unless as in later generations. In this way, we can develop various dynamic games that cannot be experienced at home, but the current semiconductor technology has not yet reached this level.
However, there is no solution at all, for example, releasing a blockbuster game.
On July 6, Chen Zhiwen convened Midea’s senior management for a meeting at Midea’s temporary headquarters in Yuen Long.
"Everyone, first of all, I am very grateful to everyone for their efforts, which have further increased the share of several products of our Midea Group in the global market." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile at the beginning of the meeting.
Although Midea's development to its current scale is largely due to his prophetic golden finger, with strong ideas, it also requires a certain degree of execution to transform ideas into products. In recent years, the entire Midea electronics industry has expanded its production capacity and Stable, these people still have some merit.
"We are just executing various orders from you, Chen Sheng. The real credit belongs to Chen Sheng." Lei Shengli said with a smile.
"Everyone is doing their job." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile: "But we still need to be cautious. Although in the field of games, we at Midea can basically be said to be number one in the world, we must not rely solely on games and home appliances. Although We acquired RCA, but the competitiveness of Japanese home appliances is obviously much stronger than ours. In the field of personal computers, we are not yet ranked globally. In these two markets, we will definitely need to spend more effort to expand in the future.
In business competition, if we don't advance, we will retreat. Once we don't have the will to move forward, we will be defeated by others sooner or later, even in games. "
"We understand, Chen Sheng." Lei Shengli nodded and said: "As for home appliances, several of our engineers went to RCA's factory in Wanwan and discovered a problem, that is, many of RCA's parts are not in the factory. Wanwan localizes its parts and components, instead buying them from the United States and then assembling them in Wanwan. It also needs to pay various patent licensing fees to the American RCA factory. This is why the cost of picture tubes made by Wanwan factory is higher than that of Japan. It’s even higher.”
"So that's the case, it's normal." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said.
Domestic joint venture car companies of later generations like to play this kind of game. In the 1980s and 1990s, the country lacked foreign exchange and needed to develop the local parts industry, so each joint venture car company was required to localize the production of parts. However, after joining the WTO , plus foreign exchange is no longer tight, there will be much less control over many joint venture car companies.
As a result, the overseas headquarters of these car companies began to charge high licensing fees, as well as a large number of simple parts, which were produced locally and then shipped to China. This is also one of the reasons why domestic joint venture cars are expensive.
In this way, a large amount of domestic property was taken away overseas. Until the rise of domestic brands, these joint venture car companies had no choice but to make every effort to localize parts and components.
"If the licensing fee is removed and various components are produced locally in Asia, I am confident that the cost of RCA's color TVs will be lowered than that of Japanese brands. In this way, at least in terms of price, we will have an advantage." Lei Shengli said.
"Okay, then push this matter forward as soon as possible and try to produce in Hong Kong, Bay, or the Mainland. If it doesn't work, you can also choose South Korea." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said. Most of the factories in Europe and the United States are efficient and low-cost. Only by moving these to Asia can we succeed in the field of color TVs.
"Sheng Chen, in terms of white home appliances, since we have the RCA channel, orders have increased 3-5 times. Currently, our factories in Shekou, Shenhai City and Yanjing are already in full production, and we are also building new factories. expansion, coupled with the localization of some parts and components, we have also calculated that the manufacturing cost in the mainland is much lower than that in Hong Kong, which is enough to make our white goods highly competitive in the international market." Responsible for domestic He Guoyuan from Home Appliances continued.
"OK, keep it up. Although it's a little low, we are trying to grab business in a mature market. Relying on low prices is the easiest way. When the market is established and the reputation is established, we can then improve it by establishing a new image or new products. Value." Chen Zhiwen said.
Everyone wants to make high-end products, but the market is obviously not friendly to latecomers. Without brand positioning and historical heritage, consumers generally will not accept expensive new brands casually. Only low prices can open up the market. Once the market is established, we can then attack it. High-end, like Xiaomi phones in the future, will be low first and then high. Although it did not succeed in the end, if it were the other way around and high first, the brand would no longer exist.
"Understood, Chen Sheng." He Guoyuan said. In the whole of Midea, only the home appliance business is not hugely profitable, and even many of them are not profitable. The profits from the game market are also regularly subsidized to the home appliance business for various research and development or advertising, which is enough It can be seen that the boss attaches great importance to the home appliance business.
"In the game business, I know we are developing very well. However, with the development of semiconductor technology, the image quality interface is getting clearer and clearer. This will definitely allow more game companies to join this market in the future, and our pressure will also increase." Not too small." Chen Zhiwen paused and said, "So we need to prepare to develop another game. Its name, I plan to call it Super Mario."
"Super Mario?" Lei Shengli and the others looked at each other. This name sounded like a person's name.
Chen Zhiwen continued: "Our current games have a big problem, that is, the interface is limited. No matter how fun it is, the background world is only the size of one screen. Over time, players will feel bored.
The most fundamental reason why our [Tank Battle] is so popular in the arcade and Famicom markets is because it has countless possibilities, that is, countless new interfaces, and even the Famicom allows players to design their own designs. interface.
This can indeed meet the needs of many people, and it is also the reason why [Tank War] is the most popular, but over time, people will still dislike this model. Our customers, they need more complex interfaces, but they can get rid of them no matter how complicated they are. The previous interface cannot be replaced, so my idea is that, similar to a scroll, we can design a very long interface, and as the game characters move, the interface will move to different positions. In this way, the richness of our interface will be There has been exponential growth. "
Super Mario, why is it so famous around the world? In addition to its playability, the most special thing is that it pioneered the horizontal axis game, allowing the character to move from the left to the right, and the internal interface also followed. Changes have occurred. Compared with games before the early 1980s, this innovation is unparalleled. It became an instant hit as soon as it was released.
"Scroll design? What a good idea." Lei Shengli couldn't help but exclaimed. This idea is easy for people to understand, but if no one proposes it, he will never come up with it.
"The content of the game is very old-fashioned, that is, the warrior rescues the princess caught by the evil dragon. During the rescue, there will be various rewards." Then, Chen Zhiwen took out several A4 papers with some simple words on them. Paintings, together, form a very long world.
(End of chapter)
