Fan Rui’s mother could never have imagined that the Tianxing 5 phone she refused, priced at 8,000 yuan, would be bought by a player who rushed over an hour after she left.
The three Tianxing 5 phones on the scene were all sold out on the same day.
Then the market realized something was amiss and began to raise the prices of the Tianxing 5. However, they found that even at 9,000 yuan per unit, they could still be sold out in a short period.
When the merchants in the market excitedly tried to raise the price to 10,000 yuan, they found they could no longer get the goods. The Tianxing 5 phone purchase page on Jiangnan Mall displayed out of stock.
This was the first time the Tianxing 5 phone had been out of stock in the years since its exchange was opened.
Because of Tianxing’s noble and proud demeanor in the past, those who liked it liked it very much, and those who didn’t like it stayed far away. Therefore, even though the stock of each model was less than 100,000 units, they could basically be bought with a little patience.
But with the launch of the Tianxing 5, buyers soon realized that something was not quite right.
In the first half month, those willing to take a gamble would draw blind boxes, and those unwilling to gamble would directly buy them for 8,000 yuan in the market. These Tianxing phones were basically drawn from blind boxes and then resold to scalpers for cash. Hardly anyone would exchange the drawn Tianxing phone directly for Jiangnan coins.
Because if the Tianxing 5 phone was directly exchanged for Jiangnan coins, the official price was 45,000 Jiangnan coins, and if purchased from the exchange mall, the official price was 90,000 Jiangnan coins. And 10 Jiangnan coins = 1 yuan, which was basically the fixed exchange value ratio that everyone recognized.
Of course, one could only exchange yuan for Jiangnan coins, but not Jiangnan coins for yuan.
If one insisted on exchanging Jiangnan coins for yuan, it could only be done through bartering, as Jiangnan coins could not be traded between accounts, preventing scalpers from interfering.
Therefore, selling the Tianxing phone directly to the official website for recycling would only yield 4,500 yuan worth of yuan, while purchasing it would cost 9,000 yuan.
However, if sold directly to scalpers, they were willing to buy them for 7,000 yuan. Although they would resell them for 8,000 yuan, it was still higher than selling them to tourists.
Scalpers were also happy to do such business, as they could make a profit of 1,000 yuan per transaction.
At the same time, the price of 8,000 yuan was difficult to fluctuate, as the Tianxing 5 could be directly exchanged for 90,000 Jiangnan coins on the official website, which only required charging 9,000 yuan. This meant the official price was 9,000 yuan, and scalpers could not sell the goods above this price.
But the official exchange channel was empty. The shrewd scalpers immediately raised the price of the Tianxing 5 to 9,500 yuan per unit, and even then it was out of stock.
Because the Tianxing 5 they had in hand was mostly sold at 8,000 yuan, they hadn’t expected the Tianxing 5 to be this popular. By the time they reacted, only a small number of hoarders had any stock left.
Then the price kept rising, from 9,500 to 10,000, and then to 11,000, now reaching a high of 13,000 yuan.
Logically, this premium was too terrifying, and no buyer would accept it. They might as well go to the store and draw blind boxes.
However, when these Tianxing 5 phone enthusiasts arrived at the store, they found that the Tianxing 5 phones that were used for display were gone, and all the phone blind boxes had been removed from shelves. According to the store staff, all the Tianxing 5 phones from this batch had been drawn, and they were drawn out half a month ago. They had replenished the stock once, but it was all drawn out in one day, and they were completely out of stock.
If they wanted more, they would have to wait for the company to replenish the stock.
Then the price of the Tianxing 5 directly soared to a high of 15,000 yuan. If Fan Rui’s mother had bought the Tianxing 5 for 8,000 yuan, she would have made a net profit of 7,000 yuan by selling it half a month later, getting back several Nokia phones.
This situation not only confused the Tianxing phone enthusiasts but also stunned Boss Huang. When he returned to the country, Hu Jing immediately told him that the shortage of Tianxing 5 phones had reached over 100,000 units, and Boss Huang was being cursed all over the internet.
“I’m being cursed all over the internet? That’s impossible!” Boss Huang was shocked. He had always worked hard to build his image and do good deeds, practically a perfect gentleman. How could anyone curse him?
As soon as he logged into Facebook, Boss Huang found that he had become a celebrity like Lei Mouren, with tens of thousands of people cursing him on Facebook, treating them like monkeys, and saying that Huang He must have been a monkey trainer in his past life, and cursing Boss Huang’s brother to have a length like a monkey… well, like a lemur.
Looking at the various messages on the internet that were cursing his family, Boss Huang felt very uncomfortable. He had never been cursed so badly in his life, not even during the 315 period. Yet, because of a Tianxing 5, he had completely exploded.
“How can the shortage of this phone be so large?” Boss Huang asked Hu Jing, puzzled.
“Because it’s so beautiful, even I, a woman, can’t help but want one!” Hu Jing glanced at the Tianxing 5 in Boss Huang’s hand.
“Since that’s the case, then let Tianxing produce at full capacity, replenish the stock as quickly as possible, and tell everyone not to buy Tianxing 5 from scalpers!” Boss Huang said very calmly. He wouldn’t immediately increase the production of the Tianxing 5 just because of the curses on the internet.
Firstly, as the most advanced technological phone, the Tianxing 5 has some parts that can only be produced by Tianxing’s own production lines. For some parts, like the screen, they still need to wait for supply from Samsung. The production capacity cannot be increased just by saying so.
Also, Boss Huang actually felt that the current situation was quite good. The Tianxing 5 was always in a state of insufficient supply, which was the best. Because only in this way would the Tianxing 5 continue to generate buzz and spread among the public.
Didn’t you see that because of the curses on the internet, many traditional media outlets were reporting on it, and some nascent self-media outlets were also complaining.
On Facebook, the discussion volume for the term “Tianxing phone” was around one million… Note that this was accumulated over more than two years since Facebook was founded.
However, in the past half month, the discussion volume had exceeded 3 million, surpassing the accumulation of the previous two years in just half a month. The total number of users participating in the discussion also surged from just over 20,000 to about 300,000, and the number was still increasing daily. Many people who were originally not interested in Tianxing phones came to join the fun and curse Boss Huang.
Well, regardless of whether they needed a phone or not, the important thing was to curse Boss Huang.
This was actually the most classic and explosive marketing method for mobile phone manufacturers.
Back then, Apple phones were not very popular in China. Why did they suddenly explode and become street-level phones? Many young people even sold their kidneys to get an Apple phone and regarded Apple phones as a symbol of refined girls.
That was because of the crazy queues to buy Apple phones in China at that time, and news of scalpers adding tens of thousands of yuan to the price.
In fact, during the era of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s, Apple phones in China did not need to be rushed to buy; they could be bought at any time with money, and there was no situation of insufficient supply.
As a result, when the iPhone 5 was released, there were indeed crowds queuing to buy phones in front of several Apple stores in Yanjing and Magic City. Then the news was reported by the media, and Apple was surprised to find that after the media reports, the situation where only some areas were sold out had evolved into the entire China region being cleared out.
So Apple people had a stroke of genius and started a three-month hype, with media reporting every day about which Apple store had long queues, or that someone ran to set up a tent three days in advance to queue for the third batch of phones. As a result, the iPhone 5 was directly out of stock for three months.
Later, when Apple launched the gold color, and with limited supply, the gold color, originally priced at over 5,000 yuan, was scalped for 12,000 yuan. As a result, Apple’s new models once again had explosive sales across the board.
Of course, the most successful marketing was the death of Steve Jobs. With Steve Jobs’ death, this already extraordinary person was completely deified. Some called him “Job the Leader,” while some idiots revered him as “Job the God” or other disgusting titles like “Job the Immortal.”
Well, it was about that kind of method.
Later, Xiaomi also followed suit with its hunger marketing, and coincidentally, with the shocking effect of the full-screen phone launched by Xiaomi MIX 1, Xiaomi miraculously managed to get this phone scalped for over ten thousand yuan, and it was also out of stock.
Then Xiaomi successfully entered the high-end market with MIX. Although later Xiaomi was too foolish to try to make the MIX series capable of mass production.
You know, once a phone aims for mass production, it is destined to abandon many low-yield high-end components and use those that can be mass-produced. The result is that it will inevitably lose the top-tier capabilities of the phone, and also lose the scalper prices generated by hunger marketing, ultimately leading to the collapse of the entire brand.
The simplest illustration is how much the price of MIX 4 has dropped now. The launch of MIX 1 was an unsurpassable glory!
So, in response to users’ calls, Boss Huang decisively instructed not to expand production and to maintain the current situation. After all, after a few months, when the subsequent phones are produced, these people will all be able to buy their Tianxing 5.
And the difference in treatment between those who buy the phone after enduring several months and those who buy it directly from the store, or even get a discount of a few hundred yuan, is obvious.
Anyway, by the time they buy the Tianxing 5, the more they cursed Boss Huang before, the more they will fawn over him, because they now have the noble Tianxing 5!
However, Boss Huang never dreamed that foreigners would get involved here.