"Raise the standard!" Upon hearing Huang He's words, the bosses present hesitated. Raising the standard would also make things difficult for them.
"If the standard is raised, the price can also be raised!" Huang He said nonchalantly. "If we all work together to make this a national standard, then not only foreign manufacturers but also domestic ones will have to comply with this standard!"
"This will benefit everyone!"
"First of all, this standard applies to everyone, and everyone must comply with it. Then, everyone's milk powder production costs will rise, and then everyone can collectively raise prices. In fact, you won't lose too much!" Huang He said, narrowing his eyes.
When everyone thought about it, it seemed to be the case.
[PS: Let me explain here, the author does not understand whether raising the milk powder standards will have groundbreaking technical requirements. Everyone can just assume that raising the standards will only increase the production costs of dairy companies and will not increase too high technical requirements.]
"And there's another huge benefit, which is to eliminate many small milk powder factories that lack strength. We are all major dairy enterprises, and it is not difficult to reach this production standard. But many small factories may not have this capability. If they cannot meet this production standard, they can only stop production."
"Moreover, with these two incidents, I believe the state will increase inspections of milk powder. Small factories that lack strength and want to falsify will find it difficult to survive, and the only outcome is to be shut down. In this way, the market originally occupied by these small factories can be divided by all of you, which is equivalent to increasing your income and profit!"
Huang He's words made everyone's eyes shine even brighter.
Those sitting at this wine table were basically large dairy enterprises. Raising the standards would only increase their costs, and they were fully capable of producing milk powder with higher standards. However, for those small factories, there was only a dead end.
To be honest, this was indeed a good way to eliminate competitors.
Before, they were worried about raising national standards, thinking it would increase their production costs. But they never expected that raising national standards would actually eliminate a large number of small factories and block the covetous eyes of foreign dairy companies. From this perspective, raising the standards was a good thing.
Thus, this suggestion was soon recognized by many enterprises present.
Of course, this policy would have certain damages to small factories and consumers. First of all, consumers would have to pay more to buy milk powder, which increased their consumption.
However, from a long-term perspective, raising the standards of dairy enterprises would increase the nutritional content of milk, which would undoubtedly be more beneficial to consumers' physical health.
Secondly, although milk powder prices might surge by about 20% in the short term, from 2003 to 2021, the price of a can of infant formula milk powder increased by a full 8 times. This 20% price increase, if integrated into the 800%, would not be much.
Finally, if Chinese dairy enterprises raised their standards, there would be no future incidents, and many Chinese families would not have to spend more money to buy imported milk powder from abroad... In fact, many working-class families, gritting their teeth and taking out 1/3 of their family income to buy foreign milk powder, this itself is a greater consumption cost.
Moreover, from the perspective of market logic, as the market for domestic milk powder increases, the overall production costs will decrease. At the same time, by retaining a large number of dairy enterprises that were not wiped out in the 08 incident, and preventing some dairy enterprises from monopolizing the entire market, and giving full play to market competition, prices might even decrease. It might even be that the increase is less than 800%.
Therefore, Huang He believed that although this policy would lead to an increase in milk powder prices for a time, it would be beneficial to consumers in the long run.
"Everyone, why don't the seven of us take the lead and propose to raise the national standard for milk powder? This is also for the development of the entire industry!" Boss Tian said first, and the other six companies that were found to have sjQA nodded without thinking.
They were already large enterprises, and they could already reach the improved national standard. This was not difficult for them. On the contrary, if they actively proposed to raise the national standard at this time, it would undoubtedly restore their image in the hearts of consumers, which was an excellent thing.
Seeing these seven leading enterprises nod first, even if some enterprises present were unwilling, they had no choice but to bite the bullet and accept this standard increase.
"Boss Huang, how do you plan to dispose of these bags of milk powder?" Boss Tian saw the few boxes of milk powder placed on the table and felt a headache. The other dairy companies also looked at Huang He nervously.
For these dairy companies, the best way was for Huang He to return these milk powders to them, and then pretend that nothing had happened. They would deal with it internally, and this crisis would be smoothly resolved.
But would Huang He be willing to do that?
"Mr. Huang, please state your purpose directly. We can do anything you can do!" Before Huang He could answer the previous question, the boss of Mengniu directly asked, raising a very crucial question.
That is, why did Huang He bring out these milk powders at this banquet? What was his purpose?
In the minds of many company bosses, this question suddenly popped up.
Upon careful consideration, Huang He had no reason to drop these milk powders at this occasion. Since he did so, he must have his own interests to pursue.
He just hoped to use these milk powders to make the entire industry agree to some of his demands. Then the question arises, what are Huang He's demands? Does he want Jiangnan Group to also enter the dairy industry and ask these industry giants to give him a green light?
Thinking of this, these bosses looked at each other and said nothing, having already reached a tacit understanding.
If Huang He proposed that Jiangnan Group wanted to enter the dairy industry, then they would immediately put aside all disagreements and do their best to stop Huang He's actions.
After all, with the massive scale of Jiangnan Group, if it entered the dairy industry, it would definitely take away the largest piece of the not-so-large pie. This would be fatal to them, these industry giants.
"Everyone, please don't misunderstand. I have no intention of entering the dairy product industry. This industry is also very complex, and my Jiangnan Group does not have the capacity to enter such a new industry. However, your leather can be sold to my Jiangnan Leather Factory, hahaha!" Huang He said with a chuckle.
"Actually, I just want to invite you all to set up official flagship stores in our Jiangnan Mall. Our Jiangnan Mall is currently building a batch of official flagship stores, which are online stores officially opened by various enterprises, where official sales are directly conducted in the stores, and then delivered to users through our Jiangnan Group's e-commerce network!"
"Currently, most of the milk powder sold on my website are from low-level distributors. Although most of these distributors sell genuine products, there are always some irregular products, which seriously affect the product quality of our platform."
"Secondly, following the incident in Fuyang, consumers are not at ease with many small shops. They all hope to have officially opened stores, which will make them feel more at ease!"
"This is my only small request. I don't think you will refuse me!" Huang He said cheerfully.
Hearing Huang He's simple request, everyone naturally breathed a long sigh of relief and patted their chests to assure Huang He that these requests were not a problem. They had long wanted to embrace e-commerce and would immediately arrange for official flagship stores to open within a week.
This was the truth. No one was stupid. They could all see that the e-commerce channel would eventually be used, and they had actually thought about entering e-commerce for a long time.
After all, e-commerce eliminated the intermediate agent link. Although Jiangnan Mall would charge 5% of the total sales as network service fees, the entire distributor network would take away nearly 30% to 50% of the sales.
Compared to this, how much more profit would be made!
However, if they entered e-commerce, it would inevitably affect offline sales. Many offline agents were very opposed to their own e-commerce.
The reason was simple: once a company opened e-commerce, a significant portion of sales would definitely shift to the e-commerce channel, and their sales and income would decrease.
Therefore, as soon as a company proposed to open e-commerce, it would be strongly opposed by the distributors below, or even threaten to collectively withdraw from being distributors.
Or they would continue to be your distributors, but they would promote milk powder of other brands, causing the sales of milk powder to plummet.
Such threats were very powerful, so major dairy enterprises dared not take the lead.
At this time, major dairy enterprises across the country were simultaneously opening e-commerce channels. Even if these distributors wanted to revolt, they could not do anything.
After all, if all dairy enterprises had e-commerce now, if you didn't sell for this one, which one would you sell for?
In the end, they could only obediently accept this fact.
So, as soon as Huang He's request was made, everyone immediately agreed, and they were afraid that Huang He or others would go back on their word. They were about to implement this matter immediately!
"Thank you all for your favor and support!" Boss Huang said with a smile, then looked at the few boxes of milk powder placed on the table, and then stated the question that everyone was most concerned about: "As for these milk powders that have been added with sjQA, my idea is very simple, that is to publicize them. This matter cannot be kept secret!"
Just kidding, Huang He would not help these guys hide the sjQA matter.
The reason was very simple: if Huang He helped conceal it today, then according to the nature of these enterprises, they would definitely erase the entire matter and pretend that nothing had happened.
But in this way, ordinary Chinese people would not know about the existence of sjQA, and in the future, milk farmers might still die by their own actions, allowing sjQA to resurface.
And the most crucial point was that if the entire dairy industry was not cleaned up and educated from an official level, these people would absolutely not learn their lesson!