The appearance of the leather jacket completely ignited the entire market. Not to mention the child who pulled out the leather jacket was kissed and hugged by his father, his face covered in slobber. The surrounding customers were all like hungry wolves. They truly never expected these boxes to actually contain leather jackets.
In 2001, leather jackets were still quite expensive. The cheapest one cost over 500 yuan. In many people's minds, leather jackets were synonymous with luxury!
This is evident from the fact that the cost of a leather jacket required 40 yuan, which was absolutely high. In fact, apart from clothes made from natural animal materials, the cost of any garment did not exceed 10 yuan.
The clothes I am referring to include the so-called Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Dior, and the like. Their cheapest items, even those costing thousands of yuan, had a production cost of less than 10 yuan.
Of course, this refers to pure garment production costs. If marketing costs were included, then it would indeed be more than ten yuan.
Furthermore, since leather jackets were not commonly worn on many occasions, the market sales were very low. This would further drive up the prices, because only by making the unit price more expensive could the cost of the leather jacket production line be offset.
In short, everyone implicitly believed that leather jackets were very expensive. To buy one for 10 yuan was definitely making a fortune!
In an instant, the crowd erupted. The onlookers stopped watching and rushed forward to queue up, waving their banknotes.
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"Brother-in-law, do you really think those workers can sell all of our backlogged inventory?" After forcing Huang He to sign numerous unfavorable treaties, Leng Zhiruo finally stopped pestering him about the younger sister issue and asked curiously.
She always felt that this blind box concept was a bit unreliable. If the goods couldn't be sold, the company would lose another million yuan, and she would also lose her house. After all, the money for all the blind box packaging and the workers' train tickets was taken from this one million yuan.
"Don't worry, not only can we sell all the backlogged inventory, but the factory will even reopen in a few months!" Huang He said with great confidence. He understood the customers' mindset too well.
In his previous life, Huang He was an employee of a multinational corporation, working for Bandai China. His main responsibility was to manage Bandai's flagship stores on Taobao and JD.com.
He worked at Bandai for three years and discovered that unless there were very rare limited-edition items available, the sales for both stores were quite dismal. Sometimes, not even a single order was placed in a day, which was truly abysmal.
However, on a few fixed days each year, Bandai's stores could make a fortune, selling tens of thousands of items in a day. Sometimes, the products would be sold out within a minute of being listed.
These fixed days were Bandai's store anniversary, Spring Festival, Double Eleven, and other major promotional events. During these times, Bandai's official flagship stores would sell their own blind boxes or lucky bags.
Tens of thousands of blind boxes and lucky bags were sold out in minutes, and half of the year's sales targets were completed!
So why did Bandai's blind boxes sell so well?
The secret was very simple: Bandai's blind boxes or lucky bags never resulted in a loss. Every blind box was profitable, and quite significantly so.
A Bandai blind box priced at 200 yuan could yield products with an official guide price of at least 300 yuan, and sometimes even items worth 1,000 yuan.
Of course, such blind boxes were rare, with only one in ten thousand.
This drove all customers into a frenzy. Whenever Bandai's blind boxes were released, they would be snapped up instantly, selling as fast as they were stocked, without exception.
Meanwhile, Pop Mart, which had once created the blind box craze, was declining. Blind box sales continued to decrease, and its market capitalization fell by half.
Comparing these findings, Huang He concluded that for blind boxes to truly sell well, they must contain products with a value greater than the actual cost, ensuring that every blind box is profitable, thus leading to huge profits.
In the past, when Huang He shared his findings with those around him, he was mocked. It wasn't that they thought he was wrong, but rather that he was stating the obvious. Of course, guaranteed profitable blind boxes would sell well; it was common sense. However, this meant losses for the merchants, and merchants were seen as fools.
Huang He also felt foolish at the time and abandoned this idea. It wasn't until now, more than a week ago, looking at the warehouse full of accumulated goods, that Huang He suddenly realized.
He had truly been foolish to believe what those fools had said.
Whether a blind box is profitable or not depends not on the selling price of the goods, but on the actual cost of the goods.
Taking the popular Gundam models that Huang He sold in his previous life as an example, a Master Grade Sazabi Ver. Ka had a minimum selling price of 500 yuan on Taobao, and the official Taobao store's price was 900 yuan. So, when a Sazabi was pulled from a 400 yuan blind box, many buyers would exclaim about the great profit.
But in reality, the Japanese retail price was 7,500 yen, which converted to 440 yuan. However, Bandai China's procurement price was only 300 yuan. The actual production cost of Bandai was reportedly less than 30 yuan.
Therefore, was Bandai China truly losing a lot by putting a Master Grade Sazabi Ver. Ka, with a minimum Taobao selling price of 500 yuan, into a 400 yuan blind box?
In any case, Huang He remembered that Bandai sold nearly 400 million yuan worth of lucky bags during last year's Double Eleven, making a profit of at least 300 million yuan. However, the evil capitalist didn't give him a single cent raise, even though he had been working overtime since October 15th for Double Eleven.
The same logic applies to Jiangnan Leather Factory.
Leather bags, belts, and leather shoes, although the cheapest had a market retail price of 20 yuan and customers' expected price was also 20 yuan, the cost of these three items did not exceed 10 yuan. Putting these items in blind boxes was definitely not a loss!
The only item that incurred a loss was the leather jacket, which cost 40 yuan. A blind box would lose 30 yuan. However, Boss Huang had issued an order that one leather jacket would be placed in every 100 blind boxes. This meant that one had to buy 1,000 yuan worth of blind boxes to get a leather jacket that cost 40 yuan.
Among these, there would be 60 wallets, 30 belts, and 9 pairs of leather shoes, with a combined cost of 340 yuan. Including train tickets and other costs, it would not exceed 400 yuan. The remaining 600 yuan would be the pure profit from the blind boxes.
Tsk tsk, Boss Huang was truly bleeding from losses!