18: Bonuses are the key.

With the hot sales of the first batch of Red Star Generation 1, when Chen Chen arrived at the company the next day, everyone greeted him from the bottom of their hearts: "Hello, President Chen."

The success of the Red Star Generation 1 gave the remaining employees a new sense of purpose and a renewed love for the company.

In truth, saying all that was just fluff.

The real reason was that Chen Chen had distributed bonuses to everyone.

Even the elderly security guard at the gate received one.

Giving a greeting doesn't cost anything, so why not do it?

As the saying goes, to get rich, have fewer children and plant more trees; as long as the salary and bonuses are in place, every employee will be full of enthusiasm.

Otherwise, even if you preach about the 'blessing' of a 996 schedule every day, it's useless.

As soon as Chen Chen stepped into his office, Lu Weibing followed close behind.

"Good morning, President Chen."

A smile appeared on Lu Weibing's face, and he had switched to using a respectful title for Chen Chen.

"Uncle Lu, have a seat."

Chen Chen brewed a cup of hot tea and handed it to Lu Weibing.

After all, the busiest person in the company right now was indeed Lu Weibing, who was handling everything for the Red Star Generation 1, from marketing to materials to production.

"President Chen, I contacted Foxconn yesterday. Their batch of 200,000 units is ready, and shipping begins today. I will continue to follow up on any subsequent issues."

Then Lu Weibing flipped open the small notebook he carried with him, took out a pen, and said:

"The materials for the second batch are ready and can be put into production at any time. However, our current pre-orders have exceeded 300,000 people. How many units should we prepare for the second batch?"

Chen Chen thought for a moment and said, "With 300,000 pre-orders, and the number likely to keep increasing over the next few days, let's prepare 300,000 units for the second batch. We'll open pre-order purchases once a week."

"300,000 units? Isn't that a bit low? Our pre-orders exceeded 300,000 since yesterday, and it might even surpass a million by the next sale. Won't 300,000 units be too few?"

Lu Weibing was quite puzzled by such a small stock volume.

"Look at Xiaomi; it's been two months and they've delivered fewer than 20,000 units, yet consumers are still waiting patiently. You know the profit margin on this phone. We haven't scaled enough to lower initial costs, so the profit per phone is only a few dozen yuan—the profit margin is less than 2%."

By next month, the price of our components will drop further. Also, by following Xiaomi's example and controlling initial shipment volumes, we can help maintain the phone's popularity."

"Besides, stocking too much would affect cash flow. I have other uses for that money; I plan to develop a true flagship phone."

"Develop another flagship? Xiao Chen, I'm worried that we've only just started to see some improvement. Let's not take too big a step..."

Recalling the 903 series flagship from the beginning of the year still made Lu Weibing break out in a cold sweat. If he hadn't made a prompt decision to stop production, run a clearance sale, and practically beg carriers to bundle some as contract phones, Red Star might have been dragged down by that one model.

Even when Old Man Chen was around, selling over a hundred thousand units of a so-called flagship in a year was considered a miracle.

Lu Weibing was truly afraid of making another flagship.

"Uncle Lu, don't be nervous. Since I have the idea to develop a flagship, it will definitely succeed. Even if sales don't meet expectations, we won't lose money. Rest assured."

"And if we don't make a flagship, we'll never shake off the 'knock-off' label. There are still netizens saying Red Star has been a knock-off brand for over a decade."

Chen Chen continued to reassure Lu Weibing.

However, since Chen Chen had already decided to develop another flagship, Lu Weibing could only carry it out.

"By the way, President Chen, the buzz for our Red Star 1 has already reached the top three on the trending search list. And it's still trending upwards."

Speaking of buzz, Lu Weibing got excited. As long as there was buzz, he wasn't afraid of not having sales.

Even if your phone was terrible, there would always be netizens who refused to believe it.

"Hey, I want to see just how bad this phone is, let me buy one and try it."

It was all about that rebellious streak.

"Having buzz is a good thing. The most important thing now is to package and ship the first batch of phones. Once consumers get our phones, our popularity can be maintained for a while."

The two discussed other company matters in the office for a while longer before Lu Weibing got up to leave and get busy with the shipping.

Imperial Capital

Dami Company

Lei Jun looked at the news that Red Star had sold out the Red Star 1 within 5 minutes. His face, already somewhat haggard from busywork with supplier issues, became even more clouded with worry.

He had worked so hard running around to suppliers for so long.

It had taken an immense effort to negotiate the OEM deal with Nanjing Inventec.

The hype for the da mi 1st generation was currently high, with 100,000 orders already in hand.

Yet now, they couldn't ship the goods due to various issues.

"Yan Kesheng, how long until our factory issues are resolved? Red Star has already sold 200,000 units of ready stock, but our 100,000 orders still haven't been delivered!"

Out of necessity, Lei Jun personally called Yan Kesheng, who was stationed at Nanjing Inventec.

"President Lei, we are doing our best to solve this SMT process issue. Give me a little more time—at most three days—and I will definitely resolve it!"

Hearing Yan Kesheng say it would take another three days, Lei Jun helplessly covered his forehead.

Three days to solve the problem, and then production would start. But with Xiaomi's current output, delivering the remaining 90,000 units would likely take a week's worth of capacity.

Lei Jun guessed that Red Star's production capacity was about 200,000 units per week, and that was without full capacity. If Foxconn went full throttle, they could probably produce over 50,000 units a day.

Fortunately, all of Foxconn's capacity was currently allocated to Fruit phones; they had to prioritize the capacity for Fruit, Foxconn's largest customer.

This was somewhat good news for Xiaomi.

Why was I the one to start the internet phone trend...

...yet you, Red Star, managed to get ahead of me?

In fact, Red Star's production capacity wasn't as high as Lei Jun imagined. Just as he guessed, Foxconn was going all out to produce Apple phones, so even orders from an old customer like Red Star could only be pushed back.

But what Lei Jun didn't know was that Lu Weibing had already negotiated OEM matters with BYD. Currently, Red Star's budget phone, the shining 1, was being manufactured by BYD.

And this was the strength and foundation of an established manufacturer.

Just like in the future, after Huawei's successful transformation, it quickly surpassed Xiaomi in sales and technology through its powerful R&D capabilities, supply chain, and channel integration—even briefly surpassing Fruit before being hit with sanctions.