I want to be emperor

Chapter 1159 Returning to the hometown to start a business

After a reception banquet, John and his team started their work, but they did not conduct market research immediately, but met and visited many of the company's customers one after another, that is, many kerosene retailers and small wholesalers.

European Straits Trading Company actually did not establish retail channels themselves. They followed the path of large wholesalers.

The main reason is that simply establishing retail channels is very complicated and costly.

After all, you can't set up a store specifically to sell kerosene, right?

Kerosene is a very basic daily necessity and is sold in high frequency and small quantities in the retail market. Therefore, the main retail locations are actually various grocery stores deep in the countryside and neighborhoods.

Based on the characteristics of kerosene, the terminal sales of kerosene rely on wholesalers at all levels to establish channels and then sell the kerosene to a large number of grocery stores. These grocery stores that penetrate into the public complete the final retail sale.

Therefore, the sales model of European Channel Trading Company is to set up offices in various regions. This office is actually a major wholesale location.

Through this office, kerosene is sold wholesale to many small wholesalers, large or chain grocery stores and other terminal places in the area.

This is also a common model adopted by many industries in Chu State in overseas vassal states, which is to focus on regional wholesale and generally not personally participate in small-scale wholesale and terminal sales in small areas.

These terminal sales to consumers are often completed by indigenous business groups.

This is true for cloth, daily hardware, tea, non-staple food and even grain, etc.

However, this is only the majority. In addition, in some industries or special areas, Chu people will also personally get involved in the retail industry, such as in the city of East London next to the London Concession.

This city has the largest population and the most developed economy in the Kingdom of England. Because it is close to the concession, and the population and economy are not bad, many Chu businessmen have seen profits, so there are also many Chu people in East London. Invest in various industries.

For example, the Sun Department Store opened the year before last. This store is located in the downtown area of ​​East London. As soon as it opened, it became the most luxurious high-end department store in England and even in the indigenous vassal countries of Europe. It was founded by the Sun Department Store, a large department store chain in the Dachu Empire. The company invests in construction and directly operates it.

Sun Department Store owns more than 200 chain of mid-to-high-end department stores across the country. It mainly sells mid-to-high-end products and has huge annual revenue.

The Sun Department Store in East London was also the first department store they invested in and built in an overseas vassal country. It was an attempt by the company to go overseas and cultivate the market in the vassal country.

But the result is not very good...

This is known as the most luxurious department store in the entire European vassal country. It is well-known and loved by the rich and powerful in the British area. So far, it is still in a state of loss...

Because the operating costs of department stores these days are actually very high, and they also mainly deal in mid-to-high-end products.

This is not the same concept as the cheap shopping malls or supermarkets that people in later generations are familiar with. The department stores in the Dachu Empire were based on the high-end from the beginning, and later moved to the mid-range field.

But until now, the concept of department stores in the Dachu Empire still belongs to the concept of mid-to-high-end shopping malls. Almost all the stores opened in them are big brands or even luxury brands, and the products are expensive.

Contemporary department stores mainly sell mid-to-high-end products and even luxury accessories, as well as food and entertainment items.

This kind of department store is often very large in scale, covering an area of ​​tens of thousands of square meters in multi-story buildings. It is equipped with escalators and elevators. Electric lights and even colored lights are used in the mall, and the floors are made of high-end ceramic tiles that can illuminate people.

Even in the Dachu Empire, this thing is not a place where ordinary people at the bottom can go to consume it. Those who can go for daily consumption are at least middle-class families.

The shopping mall invested and opened by Sunshine Department Store in East London also focuses on high-end... In order to maintain the uniqueness of its global high-end brand, Sunshine Department Store stores are based in the mid-to-high-end field wherever they are opened. They are very luxuriously decorated and sell The products are also extremely expensive.

You ask them to cut prices, or you ask them to open low-end supermarkets... you might as well let them go bankrupt.

The business principle of Sunshine Department Store is to rather die than to bargain. For example, in the category of fruits and vegetables with a very short shelf life, they would rather destroy all kinds of expensive fresh fruits and vegetables purchased at high prices after they expire, rather than sell them at a reduced price to promote the expired products. !

This kind of business philosophy is still pursued by many people within the empire, especially in the economically developed East Asia. The shopping malls of Sun Department Store are often the core buildings of some medium-sized cities and are also important business districts in big cities.

But after arriving in Europe, it seemed a little acclimatized... Sun Department Store overestimated the spending power of hundreds of millions of Europeans!

Although they learned from previous market surveys that there are many rich and powerful people in Europe, this can be seen from the fact that they have ordered tens of thousands of mid-to-high-end cars in Europe.

There are a lot of really wealthy people in this place!

Their plan is to start in East London, an indigenous city with the most developed economy and relatively convenient transportation in Europe, and then include these upper-class groups in Europe as their customer base.

But... after they actually started doing it, they discovered that they had overestimated the spending power of these Europeans.

As for the Sunshine Department Store in East London, although it is smaller in scale and has fewer product categories, its overall investment and operating costs are several times smaller than those of the Sunshine Department Store in China... but it still cannot make ends meet, and is still losing money to this day.

There is no hope of getting your investment back!

Sun Department Store, as the first pioneer to set foot in the high-end retail market in the vassal country, has already faced a shameful failure!

As for the reason?

What else could be the reason? The natives are too poor!

Although the top-level natives are rich and can afford a luxury car worth one or two thousand yuan, the number of these people is too small, and the real main consumers are those middle- and high-income groups... Well, in the eyes of Chu people, the middle- and high-income groups, This is probably the group whose annual income ranges from a few hundred Chu Yuan to several thousand Chu Yuan.

These groups are the main customer groups of Sun Department Store.

But unfortunately, these people are too few among the indigenous groups in Europe.

In fact, the income structure of many vassal states in contemporary Europe is shaped like a nail.

The top group, that is, the royal family, the great nobles, wealthy businessmen, etc. are very rich, and there are many who are worth hundreds of thousands of Chu Yuan or even millions of Chu Yuan.

Then there are the small rich and high-income groups in the traditional sense... Normally, these people tend to be much more than the top rich and powerful groups, but this is not the case in these indigenous vassal countries. Their population proportion is very small, and There is not much more than the rich and powerful at the top.

Next comes the middle-income group. Logically speaking, this group of people should account for 20 to 30 percent or more of the total population. For example, in the Great Chu Empire,

However, in European vassal states, the proportion of the population of these middle-income groups is often only a few percentage points. The population structure of most European vassal states is that the middle class, high-level people, and top-level people combined only account for single-digit proportions of the total population.

The remaining 90% are all low-income groups.

From a socio-economic perspective, this is a very unhealthy state... But speaking from conscience, this is the result of various social and economic reforms in Europe over the past ten years and its integration into the global economic system of Chu.

Before the Chu people arrived, they were even worse...

Except for nobles, they are serfs...

To be honest, the arrival of the Chu people actually brought a better life to the people at the bottom of the vassal states in Europe, West Asia, India and other countries.

This can be seen from the fact that the population of each vassal country continues to soar.

However, even the economic structure and population structure of Europe, which has been developed for more than ten years, still cannot support the mid-to-high-end retail industry like Sun Department Store, which is specifically targeted at middle and high-level people.

Therefore, the Sun Department Store has suffered huge losses, and their company is already thinking about closing the shopping mall in East London, and then using the shopping mall building for other purposes or renting or selling it to recover the losses.

We can't keep losing money like this.

The failure of Sun Department Store in East London also gave other Chu businessmen a lesson, that is, not to treat the vassal country market based on domestic experience.

Therefore, the Chu enterprises that later entered the East London retail market all focused on mid- to low-end retail...

Among them is the An's Department Store invested and established by An Tongxuan, a wealthy man who started his career in the mining industry. Its main chain of British supermarkets is small, comprehensive, and economical and cheap!

Well, it is actually a grocery store, but it uses huge funds to build a procurement and logistics supply chain to reduce costs and conduct unified operations.

Not to mention, the business of this thing is much better and more profitable.

After An Tongxuan tried the benefits of this small supermarket chain model in England, he had already begun to raise funds to prepare to return to East Asia to start his second business in his life, and to build a large-scale supermarket chain in the country. .

As for the British and even European markets... they are all small businesses, and the market capacity is always limited, so no big companies can be cultivated.

Having achieved success overseas, and then returning to East Asia with experience, technology, and capital... This is not only the choice of An Tongxuan, but is actually the choice of most businessmen who have achieved success overseas.

This is not sentimental... It is purely because the economy of East Asia, especially the eastern coastal provinces, is too developed and the market capacity is too high.

North American cars are considered the leader in the automobile industry overseas, especially in the Americas. At the same time, they are also well-selling car brands in Central Europe and many other overseas regions.

But they still want to expand into the local market in East Asia, especially the markets in several eastern coastal provinces.

Because no matter how successful it is in other places... it is not as good as increasing the market share by a few percentage points in several coastal provinces of East Asia...

why?

Because the automobile market in several provinces along the eastern coast accounts for more than 80% of the global market share!

Out of one hundred cars sold, at least 80 were sold in the eastern coastal provinces.

This is why North American automobile companies have tried their best in recent years to expand sales in several eastern coastal provinces, capture more market share, and enhance their brands, regardless of losses.

The same situation applies to most industries...whether you are in consumer goods, industrial equipment, or even various service industries, such as finance, accounting, business information, advertising, etc.

If you want to develop in a real sense, become an industry giant, and become a truly big company... you cannot get around the markets of several eastern coastal provinces.

If you give up this market, you are cutting yourself off from the possibility of becoming a truly big company.

As a businessman with ideals and ambitions, An Tongxuan also wants to return to East Asia and make a living!

Since he went overseas twenty years ago, he has done a lot of business. After accumulating a small fortune in the early stage, he took advantage of the Chu State's large-scale invasion of Europe to acquire several coal mines and iron mines in the newly established Kingdom of Wales. , relying on mining coal and iron, began to move towards the true sense of the road to wealth.

After more than ten years of development, his mining industry has spread throughout the UK, and he has also established a small steel plant in Dover in partnership with other companies to enter the steel industry.

But by this time, his mining industry actually encountered a bottleneck. Some of the easy-to-exploit coal, iron ore and even copper mines in the British area were basically covered by other Chu State mining companies.

As for the European continent... there are also other mining companies involved, and if you don't have enough connections, it will be difficult to move forward.

Therefore, in the past few years, he has embarked on the road of industrial diversification and made a lot of various investments, but what is truly successful is the low-end supermarket industry.

After having this successful experience, An Communication felt that this industry had great potential, especially when he learned that there was currently no relatively large-scale supermarket chain in East Asia that mainly catered to the general population.

He had a hunch that this was an opportunity, an opportunity to truly make himself a rich man and an influential entrepreneur.

Therefore, he did not hesitate to transfer and sell the mining industry that had no success, and withdraw funds on a large scale. After withdrawing the funds, he did not expand and build supermarkets in Europe... The markets of these indigenous vassal countries were too small.

Instead, he returned directly to China with more than one million yuan in cash to prepare for his second entrepreneurial gamble in his life!

Of course, it was said to be a big gamble, but in fact he did not invest all his wealth in it. He still retained some relatively profitable minerals in the British area, as well as some local commercial real estate and other assets, which were worth fifty or sixty. Ten thousand.

Even if his second business venture fails and he loses more than one million in cash, he can still rely on these fixed assets to provide himself and his family with a prosperous life.

An Tongxuan brought his family back to Songjiang City to start his second business. This is also a microcosm of an era!

There are countless people who come to Songjiang City with their own dreams and pursue their ideals...but most of them fail in the end, and only a handful of them succeed.

But it is these losers who have brought a large number of high-quality talents, mid- to low-end labor force, as well as a large amount of capital, experience, technology, etc. to Songjiang City.

Eventually, Songjiang City developed into a super city with a population of over 10 million and an active economy!