Rebirth 1990: I have three golden fingers

More than ten days later,

Time came quietly on October 4th, and the breath of autumn gradually spread. The leaves of several maple trees in front of the office building of Xinghai Technology Company turned golden yellow. The breeze blew, and occasionally a few leaves gently It floated down, making a faint rustling sound when it hit the ground.

A month or two ago, this place was quiet and overgrown with weeds. It seemed that no one had cleaned it for a long time.

Nowadays, the lights in various rooms in the office building are bright and employees are busy working.

The management of Xinghai Technology Company has all reported, and the number of ordinary employees has reported to more than 500 people.

When employees first join the company, there are not many things to do. They are usually arranged to participate in training to familiarize themselves with the new company environment.

Especially when there is no product production yet, workshop workers are arranged to participate in various trainings. In addition to training, they are still training.

The busy atmosphere in the new company is completely different from that in the old company, and the workers feel uneasy.

As a large amount of equipment and raw materials were shipped into the company, the workers became more practical. They were afraid that they would resign after not working for a long time. They were happy for nothing. Most of them quit their iron rice bowl jobs and joined Xinghai Company.

These people see clearly that the original enterprise's performance is not good, wages are in arrears, there is no hope for the house, and the iron rice bowl is of no use.

There is no money in the pockets to buy firewood, rice, oil and salt, and the family is desperately waiting for food. The leader even shouted the slogan, "As long as we stick to our posts, we can survive this severe winter. Everyone must believe in the company, and spring will come soon."

Damn it, it's hard to say whether we can survive the winter or not. Since there is hope, we might as well take a gamble.

When I came to the new company, everyone received two sets of work clothes for free. Although they were not paid, they were given free lunches. I finally saw hope.

Everyone joins the job at the beginning of the month, and the company pays them wages until the middle of the next month.

Before becoming a full-time employee, you can still get 80% of the full-time salary, which is quite a lot.

For all employees and management who are new to Xinghai Group, the company arranges accommodation and goes through entry procedures. They first spend two or three days getting familiar with the company environment, and then begin to understand the company's system, corporate culture and 5S management, and visit the old company's workshops in batches.

The old company was busy with business. After they visited the production sites of the two companies, they had a little understanding of the company's products.

The Human Resources Department arranged for new employees to inspect the Shaxian factory. The factory has been under construction for three months and the prototype has emerged.

In a few months, they will move to a new factory to work. The new factory has new dormitories for employees and various entertainment venues. The new employees are full of expectations for the new factory.

The human resources department is also very helpless. There are no production tasks for the time being, but the workshop personnel have been recruited. The boss said that people cannot be idle and requires various trainings to be familiar with the company environment.

After the workshop workers have been trained, the Human Resources Department arranges various team activities for them.

"Mr. Li, are you really doing something?" Chen Xuemei, deputy manager of human resources of Xinghai Group, asked general manager Li Xiaoyu to confirm.

Chen Xuemei is 35 years old, married with children, and has an employment background in a foreign company. She is now responsible for the company's human resource planning, recruitment, employee training, performance management and welfare policy formulation.

Xinghai Group's personnel management is unified, and Fang Bai recruits an additional deputy personnel manager to be responsible for the personnel management of the new company. Group personnel manager Lai Xia cannot manage it at all.

Li Xiaoyu is 40 years old and has a master's degree. His undergraduate degree is from Jiaotong University, majoring in business administration, and his master's degree is from Columbia University, majoring in business management. He has an MBA. He used to work in a foreign company and now returns to China for development. He is good at cross-border cooperation, market development, and team management. and project planning.

Fang Bai felt that he had good abilities and did not have the problems of state-owned enterprise management. He promised a monthly salary of 10,000, a probationary period of 8,000, an additional 10,000 after becoming a full-time employee, and a year-end bonus of 2-4 monthly salary. The dividend was paid in the first year of employment and in the second year. I didn’t think about it until the beginning, so I didn’t talk about it.

For Li Xiaoyu, with a monthly salary of 10,000 yuan and a car, and a year-end bonus of several months' salary, he is very satisfied with such a salary in China.

As for dividends, the boss will only consider it if he has done very well and has worked for several years, so he has no hope of dividends. There is no company where the boss will give dividends from the beginning. Smart interviewer He didn't know how to ask about this, so he simply didn't ask about it during the interview.

"The boss also said that employees will get tired after participating in training and learning all the time. They can organize activities to enhance team cohesion. Otherwise, they will have no time to do it if they get busy."

The newly appointed general manager Li Xiaoyu smiled bitterly. The chairman and scientific researchers were busy trial-producing new products, while the workshop workers were relatively free. From the chairman's tone, it didn't sound like a joke.

Of course, except for the workers, other staff are not idle. If everyone is idle, he, the general manager, will not be far away from being fired.

The probationary period is half a year for general managers and vice presidents, three months for middle-level employees, and one month for ordinary employees.

When high-level executives are parachuted into a new company, those who eventually become regular employees have more failures than successes. The high-level employment risks are high, so the work pressure is very high.

It's easier to become a regular in the middle, unless it's really bad.

Newly hired middle- and senior-level employees do not receive overtime pay for overtime work. They work overtime voluntarily and strive for good performance.

In fact, Fang Bai didn't know that they were working overtime. After he left the company in the afternoon, he was not in the company at night.

He puts all his energy into the research and development of new products, and he still trusts the middle and senior management.

When interviewing mid-level and senior managers, Fang Baidu used his golden fingers to detect the other person's situation and there was no way he could deceive him.

Some people who deceived him were directly eliminated by him and were not hired.

Fang Bai asked his employees to help him purchase CD players from Philips, Marantz, Sony and other brands, and dismantled the equipment with the R\u0026D team to analyze what was done well and what was not done well.

The appearance of a VCD player is no different from a CD player, but the internal core is different.

There are many things to decide on, such as what material to use for the outer casing. The options include plastic, stainless steel, SPCC cold-rolled plate and aluminum plate.

Fangbai directly eliminated the plastic. It feels that the plastic used in the outer shell is too low, and the current technology level is low.

Of course, many VCD manufacturers use plastic, which is cheap and easy to make.

Stainless steel panels generally come in matte, glossy, and striped panels, and their surfaces are easily scratched, affecting their appearance and causing low production efficiency.

Fangbai requires the annual production of millions of VCDs, and has extremely high requirements on product qualification rate and production efficiency, and does not want to use stainless steel plates.

The aluminum plate looks good, but the price of aluminum is five or six times that of the SPCC plate. Although the density is lower, the plate cannot be thin due to the low strength of aluminum.

The advantages of aluminum are corrosion resistance and beautiful surface treatment;

The disadvantage is that welding is difficult. If there is a welding process, Fangbai will directly abandon the use of aluminum plates as the shell.

The bad thing about SPCC cold-rolled plates is corrosion. They need anti-rust treatment, such as galvanizing, blackening or spraying anti-rust coating. They are not as beautiful as aluminum plates, but the materials are cheaper.

If you choose cold-rolled plates, generally choose 0.8-1.0 mm plates, and the surface flatness will be worse.

For aluminum plates, the thickness may be 2.5-3.0 mm. It has good rigidity, much better surface flatness, and is easier to stamp and more refined.

The VCD shell has no welding points, and the locking method generally uses bolts. It is also impossible to design welding points. Once there is a welding process, the production efficiency will be greatly reduced.

The weight of the casing is not much. Fang Bai calculated it and it is about 1.2 kilograms. Compared with the high ex-factory price, the material cost of more than ten yuan is not too much, but it is not too little and it is acceptable.

The process cost and processing cost are not much different, the main reason is that the materials are more expensive.

After comprehensive consideration, Fang Bai chose aluminum plate as the outer casing amid the controversy. There was no way for small manufacturers to imitate it. Since he planned to export and produce high-quality products, it didn't matter if he made less money, but he couldn't ruin the "Xinghai" brand.

Due to the complexity of the operation panel, if the aluminum casting process cannot meet the requirements, the only choice is casting, and the outer shell is wrapped with an aluminum plate.

Not all parts are produced by the company. Most of the parts are customized and purchased from outsourced factories. They are assembled, debugged, and packaged after purchase.

Some people say that some large foreign manufacturers have successively launched small batches of VCD products, because VCD is a transitional product and will eventually transition to DVD based on the MPEG2 standard with higher image and audio quality. Therefore, the output of VCD products is not enough. big. It was not until the domestic VCD market expanded rapidly that foreign countries began to pay attention to VCD.

Fang Bai doesn't know whether this legend is true or false, but he still applies for domestic and foreign patents and sees the review results.

Even if someone has a patent, China has not entered the WTO yet, so it is just a matter of blindly doing it. What are you afraid of? If you can't buy an international patent, you can't export it at most.

Fang Bai is responsible for leading the team to complete product research and development and complete mass production. The general manager is responsible for handling comprehensive tasks such as production, packaging and transportation, publicity, sales and after-sales service.

Fangbai's requirements are not low: after it is put into production, the production capacity should exceed one million units in the first year and reach three million units in the second year. When a product is put on the market, it is required that domestic, Hong Kong, Southeast Asian regions and countries can achieve simultaneous sales and be able to promote and sell the product.

Within half a year, the vice president of sales must complete the terminal sales channel layout. For example, in Shanghai, it is necessary to investigate which stores can sell VCDs, the contact information of these store owners, and when the products are launched, these store owners are willing to put them on the shelves.

Instead of just relying on advertising after the product comes out, customers will passively come to your door.

Regardless of whether the product sells well or not, at least the terminal sales boss must know that there is a new product called VCD, where it can be purchased, what the sales profit is, and whether there are provincial agents who are willing to help promote it.

Only in this way can we seize the market as quickly as possible and sell slowly, so there will be more competitors.

Patented inventions can only be used abroad. At home, Fang Bai feels that it is really difficult to use invention patents to protect his own rights and interests in this era.

But if there is patent infringement, you should still file a lawsuit. Find the source of the factory in the market and sue each one you find.

At least it can ensure that formal companies dare not infringe, and only small workshops can do it secretly.

At present, except for the management and R\u0026D personnel, other employees have no idea what the company is currently developing. They only know that the general direction is an electrical appliance, and it seems that there are also computers and so on.

The VCD scientific research project is in full swing, with analysis of CD drives, movements, video unpacking circuit boards (video decoding), audio unpacking circuit boards (audio decoding), etc...

Time passed quietly, and soon it was the end of October, and the leaves on the branches of several maple trees in front of the office building of Xinghai Technology Company were almost falling off.

There are a few golden maple leaves falling on the roof of the Daben in front of the company's office building.

Wang Dakai and Li Xiaolong maintain their cars clean every day and wear white gloves when driving.

The two said that as the company has grown, they have to keep up with its development and not look too amateurish. They said that this is what professional drivers in Hong Kong movies do.

The two of them witnessed Fang Bai's sudden wealth and the company's growth along the way. They went from being penniless to being worth hundreds of thousands of yuan, all thanks to Fang Bai's support, and they no longer have to worry about life for the rest of their lives.

At present, Fang Bai and his team have finally figured out the structure and principles of VCD, have a great grasp on trial production, and decided to start trial production.

Most parts of the CD player can be used on the VCD player and can be directly applied.

The current goal is just to assemble a VCD player, not to redesign or even invent everything.

Although there are ready-made CD players, it is still very difficult to assemble a VCD player because there is no reference. After all, Fang Bai has only seen VCDs, but has never developed or produced them. Everything is starting from scratch and learning from materials. Explore with the R\u0026D team.

In addition, Fang Bai doesn't remember the specific parts, and what brand and model they are used. After buying them, most of them will not match other parts, so they will have to be rectified. If they are not suitable, they will have to be customized in small batches by the factory.

Only after assembling a VCD, Fang Bai will consider using golden fingers to optimize the parts that can be optimized, redesign them, and then let outsourcing factories customize them instead of reinventing them. Invention is very difficult.

It can be said that the components that have been designed and optimized by ourselves are better than the original ones, and the assembled VCD will definitely have better overall performance.

At present, Fang Bai and his team still encounter many difficulties.

About three weeks later, it was mid-November.

Fang Bai led the team to finally assemble the first VCD machine, which was very lucky.

Of course, many parts have been pieced together and rectified, and there are many problems, and the design still needs to be optimized.

But no matter what, assembling the first VCD machine already shows that the trial production was successful.

Counterfeiting is easy and may only take a few days.

But starting from scratch will take a long time. If you don’t have a clue, you may not be able to figure it out in a few years.

After the trial production was successful, Fang Bai was extremely happy. This was completely a gamble for him.

No wonder the original creator hates knockoffs.

At this time, a relatively clear video picture was displayed on a color TV in the laboratory. This video was played using a VCD that was assembled by oneself.

"Chairman, congratulations!" The scientific research staff saw the smile on Fang Bai's face and congratulated him.

"There is still a long way to go, this is just the first step, and everyone still has a very heavy task.

However, everyone has worked hard during this period, and I see your efforts. "Fang Bai clapped his hands and continued to encourage everyone and recognize the employees' efforts.

"This is what we should do." The employees were very happy when they were recognized.

They have already received their first month's salary, which is a penny, and they also receive overtime pay. The boss did not fool them. This is why they work hard and respect their boss.

Next, that is to optimize the design!

Then start small batch trial production. If there are no major problems, then it will be finalized and mass production can begin.

At this time, Fang Bai had not thought about independent research and development of the core components of the VCD machine. He wanted to finish what he could do first.

He has read the Rebirth novel, who TMD said that assembling a VCD is easy!

I’ve never seen it before, so I opened my mouth and said it’s easy to do it, and it’s easy to make money.

Moreover, it is also troublesome to rectify the parts.

A copycat, pieced together here and there, the level of difficulty is not at all the same!

No matter what, Fang Bai finally led the team to assemble it.

The workers waited for a month or two and finally got something done.

After the product is finalized, it then applies for domestic and foreign patents, entrusts factories to customize parts that it does not produce, assembles and produces them, and prepares for publicity and sales.

In September 1993, Jiang Meng and Sun Yan, scholars studying in the United States, built the world's first VCD player, but the development time was only December 1992.

Boss Wan Yan invested a lot of money, with R\u0026D investment of 16 million US dollars before and after the launch, and advertising investment after the listing reached 20 million RMB.

It's a pity that the 1,000th VCD produced was almost used as a prototype for dissection by various home appliance companies around the world and domestically, but Wanyan Company did not register a patent.

It is already November 1992, and there are still ten months left before the original producer makes it. The patent registration is completely in time, and it does not necessarily require authorization and approval.

This is a relevant data record. Fang Bai's impression is a bit vague. He doesn't know the specific situation. He only knows that he has to hurry up and apply for a patent as soon as possible to market it before 1995.

Fang Bai plans to use half a month to optimize and then apply for domestic and foreign patents, so that there will be no more problems with the two international students.

Hey, I'm sorry!

However, Fang Bai also has his own concerns. VCD has two cores: decoding chip and laser head.

There are also some important components that are imported, namely the video decoding circuit board is from Panasonic, the audio decoding circuit board is from Philips, and the servo motor is from Toshiba.

The laser head is one of the two cores of the VCD machine. It is purchased from Panasonic. It is very difficult to develop and can only be imported for the time being.

Servo motors are not big and not worth much. The problem is that they are not available in China. It would be very troublesome for Fangbai to develop them. Currently, he plans to import them;

For the video decoding circuit board and audio decoding circuit board, Fangbai has optimized the latest designs, which can be OEMed by manufacturers in Hong Kong City or Bay Province.

In 1956, the country had begun to develop circuit boards. By the 1980s, advanced single-sided, double-sided, and multi-layer printed board production lines had been introduced. However, the technology was still inferior to that of manufacturers in Hong Kong City and Bay Province.

Therefore, Fang Bai is not worried about circuit board restrictions, only the chip cannot be produced domestically for the time being!

There is no domestic manufacturer of wafers, the raw materials for chips.

The decoding chip on the decoder board CL-480 circuit board is from Chouguo Scopa Company and also needs to be imported.

Of course, if you have the ability to make a decoding chip yourself, that would be even better.

Even though a chip the size of a fingernail and one or two millimeters thick is not very good, China currently does not have the capacity to produce it.

Today, Fangbai has organized relevant technical personnel to develop its own decoding circuit boards to reduce costs, but the decoding chips still have to be imported.

According to history, in July 1994, the domestic Tianli Company launched its own series of decoding circuit boards.

This decoding circuit board can be used not only on VCDs, but also on CDs and computers. In 1995, Tianli relied on this to achieve a turnover of 150 million, occupying 40% of the domestic decoding market share.

In addition to the above tasks, Fang Bai also needs to solve two very important things.

The first thing is to buy the film and television copyright of a movie to make a disc, buy the song copyright from an audio-visual publishing house and make several karaoke discs. When selling a VCD machine, it must come with a film and television disc and a karaoke disc. disc.

If a customer wants more, they have to pay for it.

Purchasing the copyright may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and currently popular Hong Kong movies and pop songs are quite expensive.

If you really want to save money, you can make a love short film yourself, but it will affect the promotion of VCD, and you still have to spend money.

Fang Bai doesn't want to deal with more film, television and audio-visual discs. When VCDs become popular, people will naturally make pirated discs.

The second thing is that next year, before planning the marketing, Fang Bai plans to invite famous celebrities to shoot commercials, and he plans to broadcast the commercials on Y TV.

In 1995, Aido Company, a company that produces VCDs, spent 4.2 million yuan to hire Cheng Long to shoot an advertisement, and spent nearly a million yuan on post-production manufacturing. It jumped into YTV and became the winner in the VCD machine market.

Next year, Cheng Long's popularity will not be as high as in 1995. It was only in 1994 that he successfully entered Hollywood with the movie "Red Zone". Maybe he doesn't need to spend so much money to invite Cheng Long, but one or two million yuan is probably needed. , now famous.

Maybe some people hate this person, but no matter what, he is a superstar in this era, and it is very effective for advertising.

Of course, if there are other better ways of publicity, Fang Bai doesn't have to invite them.

Recently, Fang Bai also learned about the advertising costs of YTV.

Recently, a policy has been adopted to increase the advertising fees of various news media, led by Y, from 1993 onwards.

The leading TV station's advertising fee per second at around 19:34 during prime time increased from 10,000 yuan to 25,000 yuan;

Around 20:04, the price increases from 10,000 yuan to 23,000 yuan every 30 seconds;

The two programs "On the List" before 19:00 and "Well-deserved" before 21:00 rose to 19,000 yuan and 13,000 yuan per 30 seconds respectively.

The fee here refers to one day's fee and does not include 365 days in a year.

For example, in the 19:34 time period, if an advertisement is inserted and played for 10 seconds, the advertising cost is 250,000 yuan, which is more than 90 million yuan for one year of broadcasting.

Of course, if you buy so many days of playback time, there must be a preferential price, and that is the annual price!

Not currently, but there will be one in the year after next.

On November 2, 1994, Kongfu Yanjie won the first Y-TV advertising bidding with 30.79 million yuan. The advertising period included 12 months, instead of dividing the year into 6 periods in later generations, and each period was 2 months. Bid for the shares.

The huge influence of "Biao Wang" made Kongfu Yanjiu's sales revenue reach 270 million yuan in the first two months of 1995, while the full-year sales revenue of the previous year was only 350 million yuan.

Since then, YTV's advertising revenue has increased year by year.

Two weeks later, the VCD trial product was finalized, and Fangbai planned to purchase a large number of imported components such as decoding chips, servo motors, and laser heads to start mass production.

As for the decoding circuit board and other circuit boards, Fangbai has optimized the design and asked the Gangcheng manufacturer to customize it, and has received samples for testing.

The time node at this time has also reached November 25, 1992.

Fang Bai's personal wealth has risen to 840 million yuan, and he is not far from getting a middle finger upgrade.

The number of his connections has increased slowly. It is currently 135, which is still 25 short of upgrade.

At this point in time, Fang Bai is even more worried. As long as domestic VCD sales are booming, companies such as Panasonic, Toshiba, Four Star, and Philips will definitely want to carve up the VCD market cake. This is not Fang Bai's worry, but history. That's how it works.

Since laser heads, servo motors and decoding chips all need to be imported, domestic manufacturers have encountered joint blockades from foreign companies, and these importers have occupied 60% of the domestic market share. Of course, this is also related to the high quality of the imports, but they are still selling well. Too expensive.

A large company like Fangbai, which occupies most of the market pie, will most likely be targeted, and when the time comes, even those with money will not be able to buy imported parts.

Fortunately, the decoder chips are not from island countries or stick countries. Scobo will not join the VCD competition and will not impose any chip sales restrictions. Anyway, you will fight to the death and end up buying it.

However, there is still a risk in case of being targeted, so arrangements must be made in advance.

He is now breaking it into parts, planning to import core components every month, continue to stock up on VCD machines, and will not publicize or expose the layout for the time being. He plans to put it on the market in early 1994.

The cost of imported parts is not cheap, but the price becomes lower when the quantity increases.

He originally planned to hoard one million units. The CIF price of a set of three imported parts is about 20 US dollars. Among them, the decoding chip is the most expensive, and the laser head and servo motor are relatively cheap. One million units will cost 20 million US dollars. US dollars, Fang Bai cannot afford so much foreign exchange imports.

The foreign exchange he can currently obtain is only three million US dollars in foreign exchange at most, and he can only prepare 150,000 VCDs, which is far from enough.

Even if he can get tens of millions of dollars in foreign exchange, there is a high probability that foreign businessmen will restrict his purchase of core components after discovering the VCD market, and Fang Bai will still be unable to continue playing.

For the first time, he strongly felt the discomfort and humiliation of being choked by a foreigner. This was not just his fault!

Therefore, Fang Bai gritted his teeth and finally decided to spend his own money to develop the core components of laser head and servo motor!

Of course, he still purchases imported core components. If he can't develop them, he will just sell them.

If you can develop all the core components of the laser head and servo motor yourself, you can save more than 20 yuan on a VCD machine.

When domestic manufacturers produce VCDs, Xinghai Technology Company can license relevant technologies and sell core components such as laser heads, servo motors, and decoding boards. Only then can it really make big money. (End of chapter)