Chapter 16: A Reversal Leads to Online Direct Sales, Distributors Weep in the Toilet

Shen Qingqiu was stunned, her high heels instinctively retreating half a step on the concrete floor.

"Fly through the network cable? Lu Jingming, have you been under too much pressure lately? Are you hallucinating?"

Lu Jingming didn't take the bait; he turned around and picked up a piece of chalk from the side.

He wrote four large characters heavily on the old blackboard in the workshop.

"Direct Online Sales." Chalk dust fell in a flurry.

He tossed the chalk aside and brushed the white dust off his hands.

"From today on, Xinghai will no longer supply any offline agents."

"We will build our own official website, let consumers place orders directly online, and we will sell them ourselves."

Old Li was so shocked his jaw nearly dropped, and the electrical tape in his hand fell to the floor.

"Young Master, will this work? We have neither physical stores nor recommendations."

Shen Qingqiu also pushed up her gold-rimmed glasses, pointing out the crux of the matter with surgical precision.

"This is simply impossible."

"It's 2007. When ordinary people buy a big-ticket item, who would dare pay without touching the real thing?"

She crossed her arms, her gaze sharp as a knife.

"Even if someone dared to pay online, online banking is so troublesome right now, and the payment gateways crash every other day. How do you solve that?"

"You're right, so we won't use online payment."

Lu Jingming curled his lips, playing his trump card which he had long prepared.

"Chu Xuan, go contact the people in charge of Shunfeng Express and the Postal Service."

He walked to the metal table and tapped the surface with his knuckles.

"Tell them Xinghai Technology wants to sign a long-term agreement with them to fully implement Cash on Delivery."

Chu Xuan's eyes lit up, and he slapped his thigh as if electrocuted.

"Brilliant! Absolutely genius!"

"The courier delivers the goods to the doorstep, we unpack and inspect the machine in front of them, and then pay cash after verifying there are no issues!"

Chu Xuan was dancing with excitement.

"This not only completely eliminates the customer's fear of being scammed, but it even saves the step of in-store experience!"

Shen Qingqiu's brain raced, quickly calculating the ledger for this model.

No high store rent, no need to give commissions or rebates to those greedy agents.

Even if shipping costs twenty yuan per order, the remaining profit goes entirely into Xinghai's own pocket.

This is practically cutting off the lifeline of the distributors!

The look she gave Lu Jingming changed completely. Where on earth did this kid get so many crazy ideas?

"Leave the website construction to me. I can get the front-end page running in a day."

Shen Qingqiu was decisive and immediately took on the job.

"But once the website is built, in the vast ocean of the internet, how will people know where your store is?"

Chu Xuan held his laptop, his face falling again.

"We don't have money for web ads, nor for buying search engine rankings."

Lu Jingming pulled over a metal chair, sat down, and skillfully opened the browser.

"Even good wine fears a deep alley. You're good at this; go log into all the accounts on Jifeng Forum and several major bulletin boards."

"Post threads. Make the titles as arrogant as possible, don't hold back."

Chu Xuan hurried to comply, his fingers tapping on the keyboard so fast they were a blur.

"Breaking! Exclusive Sale on the xinghai generation 1 Official Website! Kick out the heartless agents, offering brothers the rock-bottom price of 998!"

As soon as the post was made, it included the bright blue, bolded link to the official website.

Lu Jingming looked at the screen and felt it wasn't stimulating enough.

"Add one more line: The first batch is limited to 5,000 units. First come, first served, while supplies last."

Chu Xuan swallowed hard and typed out the line.

In this day and age, no one in the country had ever played with this kind of hunger marketing tactic.

The desire of netizens to buy was instantly ignited by these few short sentences.

No need to go to offline counters to face the cold expressions of salespeople, and no need to haggle with scalpers.

With a gentle click of the mouse, the machine could be delivered to the door, and one could even test it on the spot.

This novel shopping experience, combined with the god-tier reputation accumulated from smashing red bricks, completely exploded the web traffic.

The next day at 10 AM, the Xinghai official website opened the purchase channel on time.

"Boss Lu! They're coming in! IP traffic has broken 100,000!"

Chu Xuan was so excited he nearly flipped the table; the data curve on the screen shot up like a rocket.

Old Li and a few technicians were staring intently at the backend server.

"Orders are being generated! One hundred orders a minute... five hundred... one thousand!"

The fans of the temporarily rented server roared crazily, as if they were about to smoke at any moment.

In just half an hour, the stock of 5,000 units was wiped clean.

The purchase button, which had been lit up, turned into a gray "Out of Stock" status.

Netizens who didn't manage to grab one were wailing all over the forums.

"Holy crap! I just went to take a leak, and it's gone when I got back?"

"Is Xinghai's production capacity even working?! I have my money ready, and you tell me it's out of stock?"

Some even offered an extra 200 yuan, begging in the forums to buy someone else's order.

Shen Qingqiu looked at the long order list in the backend, her palms sweating.

She took a deep breath, her voice trembling slightly.

"After deducting shipping fees, we earned 128 yuan more per unit than we would have offline!"

"Just in this half hour, we've made over 600,000 yuan in pure profit!"

A deafening cheer erupted in the workshop.

Niu Dazhuang waved his pipe wrench, grinning so wide his back teeth were showing.

Meanwhile, in downtown Donghai City.

In the major offline mobile phone stores, it was as quiet as a haunted house today.

The bald agent who had led the charge to return the goods was sitting in his counter, boredly swatting at a fly on his thigh.

Fatty Xu's new Wave flip phone was placed in the most prominent position, but no one was interested.

"Boss, do you have that xinghai generation 1 that can smash walnuts here?"

A young man with dyed yellow hair poked his head in and asked with anticipation.

The bald man waved his hand impatiently.

"No, no, that crappy brand was taken off our shelves long ago. Look at the new Wave model."

The yellow-haired youth curled his lip in disdain.

"Who would buy that plastic shell Wave? Forget it, I'd better go home and grab one online."

After speaking, he turned and left without looking back.

The bald man was stunned.

He hurriedly opened the bulky computer in the shop and searched for the Xinghai official website.

When he saw the glaring "Sold Out" label and the rows of requests to buy underneath.

He felt as if someone had punched him hard in the chest; even his breathing stopped.

He picked up the landline and dialed the numbers of several peers with trembling hands.

"Old Wang, how many Waves did you sell today?"

A long sigh came from the other end of the line, mixed with the sound of things being smashed.

"Sell my ass! Everyone online is scrambling for Xinghai; we don't even have anyone asking about prices at the counter!"

"Fatty Xu is pushing us into a pit of fire!"

The bald man was so angry he smashed the landline receiver on the floor, the plastic casing shattering into pieces.

They didn't sell the ready-made hit product, and to suck up to Wave, they offended the real god of wealth.

[Ding! Detected that the Donghai City agent group is filled with regret; Mental Defense Value + 3000!]

[Ding! Wave mobile offline sales plummet, Fatty Xu loses his composure and smashes his office teacup; Mental Defense Value + 5000!]

The system's notification sound chimed happily in Lu Jingming's mind.

He leaned back in his chair and leisurely took a sip of the iced mung bean soup that Former Canteen Chef Wang Chunhua had just brought over.

This channel revolution, essentially getting something for nothing, was a complete success.

Not only did it kick out the blood-sucking middlemen, but it also thoroughly disgusted Fatty Xu.

Shen Qingqiu walked over in her high heels, holding a newly prepared financial plan.

"The online channel is completely open, but we can't get too happy too soon."

She pulled over a chair and sat down, her brows slightly furrowed.

"Currently, this batch of goods relies entirely on Old Li and the others manually modifying scrap motherboards from Huaqiangbei."

"The scrap will eventually run out. The fully automated production line you redeemed must be equipped with brand-new motherboard blueprints to operate."

Shen Qingqiu stared at Lu Jingming, a hint of undisguised worry in her eyes.

"We don't even have a proper R&D team in the factory right now."

"Relying on Old Li and those old masters who used to repair radios, what can we use to handle the underlying architecture design of the new generation?"

When this was said, Old Li rubbed his hands awkwardly on the side and lowered his head.

Indeed, letting him hold a soldering iron to do point-to-point wiring was fine, but designing chips and motherboard architecture was work for academicians.

Lu Jingming put down his enamel tea mug, a mysterious smile curling his lips.

"Who said we don't have an R&D team?"

He stood up, brushed the dust off his hands, and a glimmer like that of an old hunter flashed in his eyes.

"Chu Xuan, go fill up the borrowed Santana outside."

Chu Xuan raised his head from behind the computer screen, looking blank.

"Boss Lu, where are we going at this critical moment?"

Lu Jingming strode out of the workshop with his long legs.

"We're going to the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences."

"I'm going to trick a genius girl into coming back and working for Xinghai for the rest of her life."