Chapter 293: A Thousand Faults, and All of Them Are President Pei's Fault
Zhang Yuan was a bit confused. "Huh? Then what does President Pei mean?"
Pei Qian chuckled. "Based on the current situation, from the moment a customer places an order to when the goods arrive at their door, it'll take at least four or five days, right?"
Zhang Yuan thought about it. "Uh… if everything goes smoothly, maybe three to four days."
Pei Qian shook his head, clearly dissatisfied. "That's still too slow."
"With the current model, we basically assemble a good computer and place it in Moyu Internet Café as a display unit. When players come to surf the internet, they're essentially test-driving that computer."
"If they think the computer is good and want to buy it, we order the parts online, assemble it for them, and then deliver and provide after-sales support on-site. We earn a little installation fee and service fee. Correct?"
"But here comes the problem: ordering parts online takes at least two or three days even with the fastest logistics. After we assemble it and deliver it, that could take another day. Won't players get impatient waiting that long?"
"This is a big problem!"
Zhang Yuan felt dizzy. "Huh? It's just a three or four-day wait. Nobody's going to be that impatient, right?"
"Those online shops that specialize in selling prebuilt PCs use this exact model. Some of them take a whole week from order to shipping. Ours is already faster."
Pei Qian shook his head. "Being two or three days faster than online shops—how is that a core advantage? Players still have to wait."
"We need to achieve this: if a player comes in the morning to take a look, we should be able to deliver to their home that same afternoon. That is fast!"
"So placing orders for parts after the customer orders definitely won't work. We need to stock all those parts in advance."
"We need to accomplish four things:
Match the delivery speed of physical stores;
Match the after-sales service of top-tier brand manufacturers;
Match the marketing style and product quality of reputable online stores;
Match the 'price-performance ratio' promised by those shameless prebuilt-PC scammers on the martyr wall of deceit!
"Only then will we deserve that shiny, bright brand logo. Understand?"
Zhang Yuan was speechless for a moment. After thinking for a while, he said, "Then we'll need to stock a huge amount of inventory. That means taking on a heavy burden ourselves. What if we can't sell the batch? Once the next generation of products is released, we'll only be able to clear these out by discounting them. The risk of losing money is huge!"
Pei Qian smiled. "There are risks in everything. You can't just avoid doing things because of risk."
"As long as the money we spend brings customers a better shopping experience, then it's worth it!"
"Since we've decided to do this, we shouldn't stay at small-scale operations. I'll give you another sum of money. Use it to rent some spaces around each Moyu Internet Café to use as warehouses and stock up on parts."
"Don't worry about inventory piling up. I'm planning a 1024 Programmer Festival event soon, and we can include the ROF brand in it."
The three were puzzled. "Programmer Festival?"
Pei Qian nodded and explained his idea in detail.
Basically, Moyu Delivery and Against the Wind Logistics would offer various discounts and promotions during the week following October 24th, under the banner of "giving back to customers, increasing brand awareness, and expanding market share."
Of course, the real goal was simply to spend money.
Now that he saw the new PC-building business, Pei Qian decided to include it in the 1024 Programmer Festival as well.
Having only food delivery and logistics discounts during a "Programmer Festival" seemed pretty misleading.
Adding desktop computers into the event—now it fit the theme perfectly!
"ROF's PC-building brand can participate in the event as well, but we need to make some changes."
"First, the current offerings are too limited. We only have one configuration, which isn't enough to meet everyone's needs."
"I think we can launch three configurations, priced at 7,999, 11,999, and 15,999. During the event, we'll run a cost-price promotion and sell all these computers at component cost—basically giving away on-site service and assembly for free."
"We'll also run a free upgrade campaign: the 7,999 tier can be upgraded to the 11,999 tier, and the 11,999 tier can be upgraded to the 15,999 tier."
"The first 100 customers can enjoy a free upgrade; after the first 100, we'll randomly select lucky customers for the free upgrade."
"And Moyu Internet Café can hold regular raffles, giving one lucky user a free desktop computer."
"Of course, all of this only applies during the event from October 24th to October 31st. After the deadline, everything returns to normal prices."
"With a promotion like this, we can boost visibility and build reputation. Spending a little money for that isn't excessive, right?"
Pei Qian wasn't saying this to the three people present—he was saying it to the system.
Sure enough, the system didn't forbid it!
When it comes to "promotions" and "giving things away," the system leaves a vague gray area. As long as it looks like a legitimate promotion—using discounts to gain visibility—the system will turn a blind eye.
Pei Qian couldn't help sighing in satisfaction. Physical industries really were the best!
Games don't allow tricks like this.
After a game is developed, it basically incurs no further costs. The more you discount it, the more you earn.
But physical businesses require high labor and rental costs, and selling hardware cheaply during a promotion counts as normal operational behavior as long as it isn't long-term, and it brings brand awareness and reputation. To the system, that's not considered "malicious loss."
On top of that, he had already decided to stock a massive amount of inventory in advance. After spending all that money, if the stock piled up and didn't sell, then once the next generation of components hit the market, they'd have to be cleared out at discounted prices—another wave of losses.
Perfect!
After hearing President Pei's plan, Zhang Yuan couldn't help giving a thumbs up. "President Pei truly has long-term vision and such a grand way of doing things!"
"But I do have a small suggestion."
"Although 1024 is celebrated as Programmer's Day, if we use that as the slogan, the promotional effect might not be ideal. After all, our target audience is everyone—not just programmers."
"In my opinion, we should call it the '1024 Digital Festival' instead. It would appeal to a broader audience and spread more easily."
Pei Qian nodded. "Mm, that works!"
He also felt that calling it "Programmer's Day" wasn't quite appropriate.
Originally, the event only included discounts for food delivery and logistics, so calling it a "Programmer Festival" was already somewhat forced.
Now the event covered food delivery, logistics, and desktop computers—calling it the 1024 Digital Festival made it much more memorable.
The more locals in Jingzhou paid attention to it, the more money he would lose.
And during the festival, labor costs would skyrocket. That was another large sum of money to burn.
Zhang Yuan looked extremely excited, brimming with fighting spirit.
President Pei was so generous!
He trusted him so much!
Previously, Zhang Yuan had only planned small operations—half following the prebuilt PC online shop model, piggybacking on the popularity of Moyu Internet Café, targeting rich customers, and earning a bit of pocket money.
But President Pei turned out to be this bold and supportive. The level of trust was genuinely touching.
"Don't worry, President Pei. I will definitely handle this perfectly!"
Pei Qian nodded. "Mm. Same as before—don't be afraid to spend money, understand?"
President Pei had also seen through things now. Getting stabbed in the back by employees was something he'd never be able to avoid.
As the business empire expanded, he couldn't personally oversee everything. And subordinates couldn't possibly report every little thing. Reports would only come in periodically, and the resulting time gaps and information gaps were perfectly normal.
With so many people working under him, there would inevitably be employees full of enthusiasm and ambition, overeating and getting ideas about "achieving something great"…
After all, President Pei provided such generous benefits. With everyone's livelihood secured, it was natural that some people would start desiring higher-level fulfillment—wanting to achieve something in their careers.
So in the matter of everyone wildly backstabbing President Pei, President Pei himself was partly to blame: he let everyone eat too well.
If life holds no worries, then of course people start thinking about how to accomplish something grand.
Pei Qian could only sigh—of all the thousands of possible mistakes, every single one was President Pei's fault.
But this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It all depended on perspective.
Pessimistically, all these people seemed determined to push him toward ruin. But optimistically, their reckless fussing around might actually create opportunities for him to lose money.
As the saying goes, "Blocking is worse than guiding."
Take this situation for example: originally, Zhang Yuan's plan was small-scale. He wanted to borrow the popularity of Moyu Internet Café and the convenience of Against the Wind Logistics to create a PC-building brand. The profits wouldn't be huge, but losing money would be extremely difficult. The most likely outcome was earning a small amount.
But after Pei Qian's "intervention," he immediately turned this into a situation where a large sum of money could be spent within the same cycle.
Wasn't this turning a bad thing into a good thing?
Pei Qian chuckled. Good thing I'm a genius—otherwise I really might've had my mentality wrecked by these employees!
After making some simple arrangements, preparations for the 1024 Digital Festival's pre-event publicity were about to begin in full force.
…
October 14th.
Terminal Chinese Web.
The collaboration event with Turn Back Before It's Too Late was ready.
The preparation efficiency was extremely high, mainly because Ma Yiqun understood perfectly well that the recent explosion of traffic on Terminal Chinese Web was thanks to riding the popularity of Turn Back Before It's Too Late.
That popularity might not last long. The sooner the event launched, the sooner they could stabilize these new users.
"It's about done. Make the announcement."
Ma Yiqun coordinated briefly with Li Yada, and both sides released their announcements simultaneously.
The announcement detailed the contents of the collaboration.
Terminal Chinese Web would run a seven-day login event. New users could complete simple tasks to receive rewards such as full-site access and the disguise pill item from Turn Back Before It's Too Late.
Meanwhile, Turn Back Before It's Too Late also released an announcement telling players that all Tengda accounts were now interconnected—players could directly log into the website to claim rewards.
In addition, Ma Yiqun instructed the editors under him to contact the authors.
Traffic has exploded—everyone, start updating like crazy!
Ever since Terminal Chinese Web launched, Ma Yiqun had been personally guiding the editors. The editors had been working nonstop to select promising manuscripts from among the bottom-tier authors who posted daily for minimal pay.
Later, Terminal Chinese Web awarded extra manuscript fees to a batch of outstanding authors so their income would match the rates on major platforms. This greatly boosted their motivation.
Now, with this wave of massive traffic, more chapters meant more money. Naturally, the entire author base was full of high spirits and adrenaline.
Quite a few authors had even stocked up chapters in advance, waiting for the collaboration period to unleash them all at once—to push their rankings and boost their novels' visibility.
"We've got the traffic, and we've got a decent lineup of works. Whether we succeed or not depends entirely on this!"
Ma Yiqun was both nervous and excited.
He had already given up on the web novel industry once, until President Pei placed full trust in him and handed Terminal Chinese Web over to him.
More than three months had passed. Ma Yiqun had worked diligently and wholeheartedly, and he had finally found an opportunity—an opportunity to repay President Pei and help the site turn from loss to profit!
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