Chapter 1 The First Day of 2008

The first day of 2008.

Su Yehao's phone kept ringing with New Year's greetings.

His inbox was also flooded with new emails, mostly from foreign executives and business partners. He asked Linda Yun to help respond while he sat by the floor-to-ceiling window, basking in the sun and gazing at the sea to the west.

A hazy mist obscured the view, so it wasn't very clear.

Jiang Yu sidled up to him, put her arms around his neck, and said excitedly, "Happy New Year! I want something tasty for breakfast. Let's go to the food street on the basement level. I saw a store selling dorayaki yesterday. Let's go early before other customers arrive."

"It's the grand opening of the mall. The basement is also a subway transfer station, plus it's a holiday. How could it not be crowded? We'll be surrounded. I'm not in the habit of being watched while I eat."

After Su Yehao finished speaking, he subconsciously glanced at Linda Yun.

Anticipating his thoughts, Linda Yun immediately complained, "Today is my legal holiday. I only came to visit the Qianxin Building's opening and am just staying at your place for the night. It's one thing to pull me in as labor to help reply to emails, but don't expect me to go downstairs to buy you breakfast."

Su Yehao said decisively, "I didn't say anything. In that case, let's take advantage of the fact that the mall hasn't opened yet and quickly go browse around..."

In order to avoid headaches for his bodyguards, he hurriedly got ready and went downstairs.

Because it was a private elevator for the apartments, it didn't stop at other floors. With a height of several hundred meters and the use of new technology, the descent was very fast.

The dorayaki that Jiang Yu wanted to eat wasn't open yet, so they settled for egg waffles.

As a result, when they returned to the first floor to shop, Nangong Tian complained incessantly, saying with a wry smile, "I give up. Haven't you had enough egg waffles in Hong Kong? I didn't expect to eat them in Pengcheng too. I'd rather be in the new house, frying a couple of eggs. At least I could sit and eat comfortably."

Su Yehao shrugged, eating as he said, "There's no way around it. This stuff is made relatively quickly. Now that you're pregnant, if the news gets out and we get mobbed by others, it'll be risky."

It was only 8:10 in the morning, and many stores hadn't opened yet.

Near the escalator on the first floor, Su Yehao saw the Lao Shanghai Watch store next to Rolex. The logo had been redesigned, and the black and gold style was quite tasteful.

He went in to take a look. The main product this time was a diving watch, also mainly black, with different colors for the dial and ceramic bezel, which looked fashionable and novel.

A pure black watch with gold trim quickly caught Su Yehao's eye. While trying it on, he said, "Actually, Champagne, Lancôme, and the like are all place names. Foreign monks are better at chanting scriptures. It's the same everywhere. Letting them develop abroad might make it easier to capture market share."

The watch on his hand was priced at 12,888 yuan. The store's treasure was a business watch with a tourbillon, priced at only 88,888 yuan.

If you say they're good, consumers won't buy it.

But if you say they're bad, if you change the logo to Rolex, perhaps people will praise it to the skies.

If you don't break this psychological barrier of being born a dwarf, in Su Yehao's view, it will be difficult to truly achieve industrial upgrading.

Taking the appliances of the Midea Group as an example, cheap, ordinary goods sell well, but if they launch a series with better performance and higher costs, consumers will not buy it and will instead choose Japanese and German goods.

Without consumer support, companies have no motivation to develop high-end products, thus falling into a vicious cycle where the high-end market is monopolized by imported products.

Of course.

The reason for this situation is multifaceted. The development time of domestic high-end manufacturing is indeed relatively short, and the image of those foreign brands is indeed deeply rooted.

If Su Yehao wants to break this situation, he needs to come up with excellent product quality and service, and slowly prove reliability over time. Midea Group's appliances, the Huang Diamond brand computers, and the Black Diamond phones are all successful examples.

After listening to the store clerk's introduction and learning that the daily error of the diving watch on his hand was controlled within six seconds and that the accuracy needed to be adjusted regularly, Su Yehao expressed his approval. For an automatic mechanical movement watch in the ten thousand yuan range, the performance was already quite good.

Nangong Tian, along with Jiang Yu, injected 300 million RMB when acquiring this company. At the same time, experts from Audemars Piguet provided some support in terms of movement technology.

The previous product line has been discontinued. Strictly speaking, the new products, compared with the old products, have achieved a certain degree of leap, transitioning from large-scale volume to intensive cultivation.

In fact, in the research and development center established in cooperation with Shanghai Seagull, there are highly paid experts who are trying to develop a top-level tourbillon perpetual calendar minute repeater watch, which Nangong Tian specially ordered as a secret birthday gift for Su Yehao.

As for when it will be successful, it remains to be seen.

Continuing to browse the Black Diamond phone retail store, the store was already pre-selling smartphones equipped with the Pangu operating system, providing sample machines for customers to try out. Although the performance was average, the software was simple enough and ran relatively smoothly.

In order to prevent the smoothness of the operating system from being dragged down by the junk programs of third-party developers, thereby affecting the reputation of the entire industrial ecosystem, Su Yehao launched the Pangu App Store from the very beginning, ensuring that only programs that have been reviewed and meet the requirements can enter the app store. At the same time, the benefits of using certified programs are popularized in the novice guidance program.

He looked around casually, with his hands in his pockets, and said with emotion:

"If you want to cultivate a successful brand, you must find a way to gain enough users and embark on a virtuous cycle model. Otherwise, no matter how much you invest, it will be in vain. Many mobile phone brands have seen the situation and have wisely joined my camp, while companies such as Motorola, Nokia, and Sony are not recognizing the situation and still think they can fight me to the death. They seem to be phones, but smart phones and feature phones are already two different products. I really don't know what their executives are thinking."

"What else can they think? They're blinded by the afterglow of a commercial empire. How dare they compete with Brother Hao? It's like an ant trying to shake a tree, humiliating themselves."

Such a simple and straightforward compliment, which sounded so matter-of-fact, of course came from Nangong Tian.

Over the years, she has not only not restrained herself but has become increasingly skilled in this way, mainly because Su Yehao has never disappointed her in business.

If there was a little bit of flattery in the past, now it is more like a matter of course.

Su Yehao, who has never been defeated in the business world for more than ten years, has indeed accumulated the foundation for people to blindly believe in him.

Even in the face of the current stock market crash, many fund investors firmly believe that Su Yehao, who sensed the wrong trend in advance and cashed out on a large scale, must be hiding a great move to turn defeat into victory.

Especially many private equity investors are even more convinced that as long as they hold on long enough and get through the current cold winter, they will definitely continue to rise sharply.

Therefore.

Many people choose to withdraw their investments, but there are also many ambitious fund investors who are preparing to buy the dip and increase their positions. They are waiting for Su Yehao to release a signal that they can enter the market.

Having been flattered by this little flatterer for more than ten years, Su Yehao has long been accustomed to it, and asserted:

"If they continue to delay like this, at least their mobile phone business will definitely be finished. I like their kind of unruly, mysterious self-confidence, which will hand over the market to me for nothing. I didn't want to make the relationship strained, and even actively invited Motorola to join the Pangu camp. Now everyone is very proud. It seems that I have no choice but to take the market that originally belonged to them..."