The Birth of the Hong Kong Island Family.

Chapter 178 [Be My Puppet]

"Mr. William, long time no see!"

"Mr. Lin, nice to see you again!"

William, a toy dealer whom he met at the British Exhibition, came to the Changjiang Toy Factory for inspection. Lin Zhichao personally received the old friend.

After exchanging pleasantries, the two inspected the production workshop.

Changjiang Toys is divided into two floors of factories: one floor produces springs, gears, trolleys and other toys; the other floor produces plastic doll toys.

In fact, all toys need plastic, so machines such as injection molding machines are purchased in large quantities, and they are all new machines.

William is a 50-year-old veteran toy dealer. He was shocked that Lin Zhichao, who met once, had such a huge business, and toy manufacturing is only one of the small businesses.At the same time, he was shocked by the workshop of the Changjiang Toy Factory. The clean and tidy environment, uniform uniforms, and brand-new machines all shocked him.

He came to inspect the Hong Kong factory based on the idea of ​​'reducing costs', and he already had a preconceived idea in his heart - he thought that Hong Kong's factories were all 'dirty and messy' and 'old-fashioned equipment'.

Unexpectedly, the management of Changjiang Toy Factory is not inferior to that of European factories, and the equipment is also very good.

After picking up the samples and doing various experiments, William asked: "Mr. Lin, your equipment looks like it has just been imported, presumably because of the embargo. But your superb technology and quality are not at all like newly imported equipment. Good manufacturers, what is the reason for this?"

Lin Zhichao said calmly: "Shortly after the inspection in London the year before last, we established a toy department to develop popular toy technology in Europe and the United States. As soon as the embargo ended, we immediately purchased various machines, and our technicians and management I have already prepared enough. Therefore, I contacted you as soon as possible, and I need cooperation."

William gave a thumbs up and said, "You are an amazing businessman."

Ke Yanping and the others at the side showed expressions of pride.

At this time, the Changjiang Toy Factory is still expanding, with more than 300 workers, but it is estimated that it may reach thousands of workers in a year.At that time, the entire Yangtze River Industry may have 4000 employees, which would be spectacular.

At the same time, Lin Zhichao is also considering adding more industrial buildings. Anyway, the Yangtze River Industrial Park has plenty of land, and it can probably build factories of more than 150 million square feet, and there is no need to build high-rise factories (more than five floors).

At the end of the investigation, William had no doubts about the strength of Changjiang Toy Factory, so he said: "Mr. [-] pieces of various toys. The contract can be signed tomorrow, and I can also take the opportunity to visit Hong Kong and see why so many British people commemorate it.”

Although the words made people feel uncomfortable, Lin Zhichao still smiled and said: "Since Manager William is interested in Hong Kong, then give us a chance to be the landlord to entertain you. In this way, I may not be able to accompany you personally because of too much work. But if General Manager Ke and the others entertain you, you will definitely be satisfied."

Accompanying William on inspections already has the friendship of the past, otherwise Lin Zhichao would not have accompanied him in person.For Lin Zhichao, these industries are not core industries, so he fully delegates power to his subordinates.

If you did a good job, everyone would be happy, and he would not hesitate to reward his subordinates with high salaries;

To put it bluntly, everyone is developing in the plan he planned. If you master the general direction, if you can't do it well, then your ability is really poor.

William said indifferently: "I am very familiar with Manager Ke, Mr. Lin, don't worry."

Lin Zhichao nodded and said to Ke Yanping, "Treat Manager William well for me, we are old friends now."

"Okay, boss."

In terms of entertaining merchants, Changjiang Industry has a complete system and guidance: usually eat in hotels, and merchants go to entertainment venues if they are not enjoying themselves.But they will not take the initiative to seek special and vulgar services. Only after the customer makes a request, they will arrange for the customer.

Generally speaking, merchants can still stop when enough is enough, and only a few merchants will not be able to hold back.However, Lin Zhichao's subordinates strictly forbid special vulgar services, especially the use of public funds to satisfy personal desires.

The next day.

Lin Zhichao didn't have time to accompany William, so he took time to accompany Bourne Machinery Gauss and his party, and gave warm hospitality.

In the factory of Changjiang Zipper, Goss watched dozens of machines continuously produce high-quality zippers, with some pride in his heart.

What I am envious of is that he was "acquired" by a product manufacturer because he was engaged in machinery; he is proud that all the equipment of Changjiang Zipper comes from Bourne Machinery, and it can even be said that Bourne Machinery supports Changjiang Zipper.

Now, Bourne Machinery has acquired 50% of the shares of Changjiang Zipper, and the cooperation between the two companies will be closer. Bourne Machinery has set up a research and development center in Hong Kong, which is located in the Yangtze River Industrial Park.

The R&D center is mainly based on the production of Yangtze River zippers, to provide mechanical research materials, and to deepen communication and exchanges between the two parties; therefore, the five staff in the office are all engineers, and are equipped with English and German language translators.

"Manager Goss, we plan to eliminate automatic rice arranging machines for more than three years, and will continue to do so in the future; at the same time, we expect to purchase at least 25 automatic zipper rice arranging machines every year." Lin Zhichao said confidently.

With the popularization of Western-style clothing, the reduction in the cost of aluminum alloy and copper raw materials, and the opening of the US market to Hong Kong, etc., Yangtze River Zipper is now ushering in a great opportunity for development, and the annual growth rate is expected to be more than 50%.

Gauss said in surprise: "The growth is so strong?"

Lin Zhichao nodded and said: "The global demand for zippers is growing very fast, and zippers are popularized in clothes, bags, boots and other aspects. Therefore, while the market is increasing, our Yangtze River zippers can also usher in explosive growth based on our foundation."

At present, Yangtze River Zipper and YKK Zipper should be equal opponents, and the two are also relatively peaceful, dumping their products around the world.This year's Yangtze River Zipper is expected to exceed 1100 million Hong Kong dollars in profit, and it is expected to exceed 1600 million Hong Kong dollars next year.

In the case of such a large growth, we can only increase investment. The annual purchase of equipment is not less than 500 million Hong Kong dollars, and the research and development costs are also about 200 million Hong Kong dollars; the R&D team of Changjiang Zipper has developed to more than 30 People, specializing in zipper-related research.

Goss said happily: "This is good news. We will also give the greatest support to Changjiang Zipper in the field of zipper machinery and develop various zipper machinery."

This is the result that Lin Zhichao wanted, otherwise Lin Zhichao would not have spent 120 million US dollars to invest in Bourne Machinery. This money basically used most of the savings in front of Changjiang Zipper.

Bourne Machinery has also started research and development in the field of "injection molding machines". Goss followed Lin Zhichao's suggestion. After all, plastic products are a new industry with greater opportunities.

The traditional textile machinery, the competition is too fierce.

After inspecting the zipper factory, Lin Zhichao brought Goss, toy designers, marketing planners and other people from the cooperative toy company to the Changjiang Toy Factory.

After everyone inspected the workshop, they sat in the conference room for a meeting.

Gauss said with a smile: "Mr. Lin, I have to say that your requirements are very high and you are very well prepared!"

A German designer I knew handed Lin Zhichao several designs of 'Bear Lily', and he also looked at it seriously.

"It is a good thing to be demanding. If you have an imperfect product, I believe you will also feel that it will not succeed!"

Goss nodded and said, "Yes! For Bill Lily's design, I also think it is necessary to pursue perfection. Especially in her clothing, it really makes me focus on it."

To put it bluntly, Beer Lily is just a hard plastic to play with. In terms of appearance, it is based on the previous adult dolls in Germany, so the shape is very important.The blond hairstyles and the various outfits are the real gimmicks.

A Bier doll has many sets of clothing and styles, so customers will be asked to buy many of the same Bier dolls, some wearing princess dresses, some wearing lace underwear, some wearing jeans and white shirts and bags, and some Wear evening gowns and more.And from the very beginning, Beer Lily had four styles, and she needed to match them with various dirty jokes for marketing.

And so on - future Barbie dolls will even need to cooperate with clothing companies to design styles.

At present, it is still very difficult to master the production technology of hard plastic dolls, so Changjiang Toy Factory takes the lead with this technology and does not need to worry about competitors in Hong Kong or even overseas.What's more, Changjiang Toy Factory also pursues 'brand', and its 'Barbie', 'Bill Lily', and 'Bond' are all toy brands.

After communicating with everyone for a long time, Lin Zhichao finally finalized Bill Lily's complete plan. The next step is to register the patent first, then organize the production, and plan the marketing plan.

Since the cooperative toy company is far away in Germany, Lin Zhichao can only entrust Goss with full authority to manage the company. He only sent two English-speaking staff to Germany.

After all, Gauss is an outsider, and he has no choice but to cooperate with him. Fortunately, Beer Lily is only a small brand.

And the patent of "Barbie Doll" belongs to Lin Zhichao and Audrey Hepburn. After Hepburn finishes filming this movie, Lin Zhichao will have to sow the seeds for her; so even if Hepburn changes his mind in the future, it will at least belong to his children.

On the evening of the weekend, Lin Zhichao took his family to the Hong Kong Hotel on Pedder Street for dinner.At present, the business here is not as good as before, after all, there have been more mid-to-high-end restaurants in recent years.

And every time Lin Zhichao came to the Hong Kong Hotel, he always thought about its land.

You must know that the land of the Hong Kong Hotel is a first-class prosperous land, and later generations were built by Xu Aizhou's family as the "China Construction Building", which became one of the representative buildings for the Chinese to enter the core area of ​​Central.

The land is surrounded by Lane Crawford headquarters, Gloucester Tower, Royal House, including the Bank of East Asia, and No. 10 Ice House Street in the hands of Lin Zhichao.Later, Lane Crawford's headquarters was exchanged for the "Jardine House" across Pedder Street, so the famous Landmark Plaza (shopping center + first-class building) was built in this area.

Lin Zhichao is naturally keen on Landmark's properties, but if he can place a beautiful building around the heart of Landmark, it is obviously very good.

At the same time, after Global Shipping collected the rent in November, the cash flow on the account has reached 11 million US dollars, which is the amount after excluding operating costs.Following this trend, we will have a disposable cash flow of US$470 million by the end of the year.

So Lin Zhichao was thinking that he should take over the current property rights of the Hong Kong Hotel (Peder Street) so as not to rise several times in the future.

香港大酒店的地皮面积在2.5~2.6万平方尺左右，若是按照目前的市价，怕是在800~1000万港币，也就是300~400每平方尺。

The key issue is that the Kadoorie family may not be willing to sell. The first is that the hotel can continue to make money. The second is that many people now predict that the land price in Hong Kong will rise. After all, the war is over.

In any case, Lin Zhichao felt that if he tried to get in touch with the Kadoorie family, even if the price was a little higher, he would accept it; if he spent money, he would try to spend it for a year or two.

After all, according to Lin Zhichao's speculation, the average annual increase in land prices in the past few years will reach 50%; while residential property prices will not rise too much, and will still only fluctuate in the range of 20-50 Hong Kong dollars per square foot.

It is still the norm that land is expensive and buildings are cheap. There are many reasons. The first is the "development to high-rise" in the following year and the development concentrated in the urban areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon.

In this way, if the land of the Hong Kong Hotel is purchased in the mid-to-late 50s, the price may be 3000 million Hong Kong dollars.No wonder it is called "Ship King Landing (Xu Aizhou)". Adding the construction cost, it costs 4000 million a building. After 1957, Xu Aizhou invested in several buildings in a row, and the funds for going ashore are probably 8000 to [-] million Hong Kong dollars.

Lin Zhichao doesn't know about other properties, and he doesn't envy him, except for the land of "China Construction Building", which he really wants to win, which is the heart of Central.Compared with Lin Zhichao's land at No. 77 Des Voeux Road, it has a better location and a larger area. It is a rare treasure.

"What are you thinking?" Tang Caiyun beside her reminded Lin Zhichao.

Lin Zhichao came back to his senses and looked at his whole family, two wives, a mother, a younger sister, three sons, plus Tang Caiyun's five-month-old child, there are already nine people.

It can be called the 'Lin Zhichao family'!

Because of this, Lin Zhichao now also asks Tang Caiyun to intervene in the real estate development of Cheung Kong Industries, and communicate with his subordinates how the properties under the company will develop in the future.

It's called being prepared!

Rent-collecting property is one of the magic weapons to ensure the longevity of the family.

"I was wondering if it's time for me to be the owner of this hotel." Lin Zhichao said with a smile.

Everyone cast concerned eyes, and Tang Caiyun immediately said, "Could it be that the Kadoorie family will sell the hotel to you? Isn't this cultivating a competitor?"

She thought that Lin Zhichao was going to open a hotel. After all, the Miramar Hotel had opened recently, although there were only fifty rooms in total.

Lin Zhichao said with a smile: "It's not about opening a hotel, but I plan to buy it, build high-rise buildings in the future, and rent out office buildings."

"Oh"

Afterwards, Lin Zhichao said to Xu Caiying: "Let's go to the Universal Company to make a name, do some light work, and attend some meetings. From next year, there will be more overseas business, and we need you to be a symbol of the Lin family in the company." people."

Now that they have raised their sons, Xu Caiying can no longer be lazy, and soon Xu Caiying also practiced in Oxfam for a long time.

As soon as Xu Caiying heard Lin Zhichao's tone, she knew that it was okay to be lazy. Now that the family business is huge, this man also has anxiety; and as Lin Zhichao's woman, she should stand up, even though she doesn't like tedious work.

"Well, I'll follow your arrangement!"

Seeing that Xu Caiying has gradually learned to share the family's worries, Lin Zhichao also said with satisfaction: "Don't worry, work is easy, you can take care of your family, and you still have time to socialize."

Xu Caiying said: "I also don't want to be with those foreign ladies, it's just too boring, every day the nobles and nobles, it's really uncomfortable."

Lin Zhichao laughed. There are no nobles in Hong Kong, but those foreign ladies are just self-righteous.Fortunately, Xu Caiying is a friend of Ge Mulian, and she was not directly despised by others, not to mention that Lin Zhichao is also considered a top rich man.

At the beginning of a new week, in the management meeting room of Global Shipping, Lin Zhichao announced the formation of the compensation committee and appointed Xu Caiying as the chairman.

Xu Caiying suddenly felt a lot of pressure. It turns out that the compensation committee has great powers-evaluate the performance of the managers, formulate and supervise the compensation plans of the managers, and give opinions on the company's employee compensation plans.

In the future, there will be benefit plans such as employee pensions (there is no official pension in Hong Kong, but some companies will develop internal pension opportunities to encourage employees to contribute to their old age).

And all the managers also immediately paid attention to Xu Caiying, the wife of the boss. Obviously, their future income and evaluation will be supervised by Xu Caiying.

Seeing everyone's expressions, Lin Zhichao understood everyone's thoughts and said, "I will select 4-6 members of the management team as a part-time job as a member of the compensation committee. In fact, because we are not a listed company, the salary The committee in general is a good thing for all employees, and the compensation committee is my direct management."

The management of Global Shipping, with a little peace of mind, thought that the boss felt that the salary for everyone was too high, so they set up such a department.

Their salaries are really high. The salary of the core executives of Global Shipping is already one suite a year, that is, 2 to 3 Hong Kong dollars.

The management of Swire Pacific is closer to the British mainland, with an annual salary of 600 to 3000 pounds, which is already the highest annual salary of Hong Kong foreign firms.

As a large shipping company, Global Shipping has an annual salary of 400-2000 pounds for management and technical elites (6400-32000 Hong Kong dollars); therefore, Global Shipping has a large number of operational and technical talents in its network.

On the other hand, Swire & Co., Shiyock originally advocated that no matter Chinese or British, they should be treated equally.However, when his idea was implemented by white-collar workers, it went smoothly; when he was about to implement it to the blue-collar workers, Shiyock found that Taikoo could not afford the huge expenses, so he had to give up.

Global Shipping does not have this problem. Lin Zhichao is good at "shipping cycle". It is like two companies with the same tonnage of ships. Global Shipping does not know how much more they will make. Therefore, the salary expenditure has not yet found that it has a great impact.

By the mid-80s, Global Shipping must have laid off most of its employees.

Feng Yongfa was the first to say: "Having such a department is not only conducive to the enthusiasm of the company's management and employees, but also can formulate systematic and long-term remuneration. We must keep up with the excellent management system in the West.”

Immediately, everyone expressed their support.

In fact, Lin Zhichao placed Xu Caiying in this position to establish her power and influence.

Later, Lin Zhichao arranged for Global Shipping to recruit an exclusive female assistant for Xu Caiying, and her company status was officially confirmed.

After the meeting, Xu Caiying changed from her previous lively and nervously followed Lin Zhichao to the office.

After no one was there, Xu Caiying said: "Husband, will I delay the matter? The remuneration committee has great responsibilities and rights, and I am not a business material."

Lin Zhichao took her hand with a smile, still feeling nervous, and said, "Just treat yourself as my 'puppet'. I am actually involved in the work of the compensation committee. So, you don't have to be nervous at all."

Sure enough, Xu Caiying's expression changed, and she said happily, "Really?"

Lin Zhichao said helplessly: "Really! But you still have to study the management affairs of the company seriously. People always have to find something to do."

Xu Caiying nodded and said, "Well, I understand this, and I must study hard." With her own man watching, she would not feel pressured.

(End of this chapter)