98: Gaotong changes its person in charge

The 'General Manager Zhou' mentioned by Shen Rou is fully named Zhou Niyun, the CFO of Red Star. She is crucial to Red Star, though she keeps a low profile.

This position can only be held by a trusted confidant. She is the person, besides Lu Weibing, whom the Old Man trusted the most and left for Chen Chen. She has been in this position for 10 years and possesses extensive experience in financial management, capital operation, and fund planning.

The funds for Red Star's investments are currently operated by her. As a veteran employee from the same period as Lu Weibing, Chen Chen is completely assured regarding her capabilities.

"How much marketing expense is this that it got pushed to me?"

After speaking, he opened the document Shen Rou handed over.

Seeing the 60 million marketing expense listed, Chen Chen was stunned.

No wonder Aunt Zhou passed this to me. What the hell is Yang Tuo planning to do?

To require such a massive marketing budget.

You have to know that since Chen Chen took over Red Star, the highest annual marketing expenditure has never exceeded 20 million.

Now, Yang Tuo has directly tripled that amount and more!

After reviewing Yang Tuo's proposal, Chen Chen immediately vetoed it. Of all people Yang Tuo could hire as the brand ambassador, why Chen Long?

Is Chen Long that easy to hire?

This is the famous Endorsement Killer!

Which brand that hired him didn't end up kicking the bucket? Either the boss went to jail or the company went bankrupt. Even as a Transmigrator, Chen Chen wouldn't dare gamble, lest he himself end up in trouble.

He endorsed Aido, and the boss went to jail.

He endorsed Jinlong Motorcycles, and the company went bankrupt.

Ba Wang Shampoo, cancer scandal.

He endorsed Evergrande, and Evergrande also suffered a crisis and went belly up.

These are just the ones Chen Chen remembers vividly. It's said that out of 10 endorsements, 9 fail, and the last one is about to fail.

It's providence, and he truly didn't dare to gamble.

"I lean towards Brother Hu. I'll communicate with Yang Tuo and have him reach out to Brother Hu."

When looking for an endorser, you need to find someone stable who won't have a career-ending scandal. Although people like Li Yifeng and Wu Yifan are very popular now, and many brands will hire them in the future.

But Chen Chen knows that these people will run into trouble sooner or later.

It would be better to hire Brother Hu, who is currently at a low point in his career. The price is negotiable, and his drama next year, *Nirvana in Fire*, will also become a huge hit. The main thing is that Brother Hu is reliable!

He also has a sophisticated aura, which is perfect for endorsing the Kunpeng mobile phone!

This also aligns perfectly with Red Star's next strategic goal for offline presence.

Red Star's next goal is the offline market and the international market. Within this year, the dealers who tasted success have rapidly expanded from dozens of small dealers to hundreds of nationwide dealers.

The number of physical stores truly belonging to Red Star is still the dozen or so stores left when he first took over. These stores have also been expanded and renovated several times, reaching around 100 square meters each. In terms of style, Chen Chen referenced the Xiaomi Home from his previous life.

Just three words: High Floor Efficiency.

Red Star currently has about fifty SKUs, which is still quite a gap compared to the hundreds of SKUs Xiaomi had in his previous life. Because Xiaomi's products prioritized extreme cost-effectiveness, the profit margin was very low. To expand offline, they needed enough products, and when the product variety increased, the Floor Efficiency Ratio would also rise.

This is why visiting a Xiaomi Home felt like browsing a small shopping mall or general store.

"Shen Rou, what is the current progress of our flagship store in the Beijing?"

In the second half of this year, Zhang Jianhui, who is in charge of offline operations, launched the First-Tier City Flagship Store Project, planning to first construct a batch of flagship stores in super first-tier cities like the Beijing and Magic City.

In the first batch store plan, three stores are to be launched simultaneously in the Beijing, five in the Magic City, and one in several provincial capitals before gradually starting construction in other first-tier cities.

As for second-tier cities, they will have to wait for subsequent store opening plans. In third and fourth-tier cities, they will choose some locations to open directly operated stores and then offer franchising, allowing dealers to cover more cities.

"General Manager Chen, the Beijing Wucaicheng store has finished renovation and is currently stocking products. Stores two and three are still undergoing renovation."

"Manager Zhang hopes to apply for a batch of kunpeng phone 2 ultimate collectors edition units for the opening event."

Since it is the largest flagship store in the Beijing, it is appropriate for the opening event to be lively. Chen Chen agreed to Zhang Jianhui's request with almost no hesitation.

"Yes, the opening should be lively. Give them 2,000 units. When stores two and three open, allocate 1,000 units per store. The openings in Magic City should follow the same specification."

After Shen Rou made a note, she said to Chen Chen:

"General Manager Chen, Mitchellson Abbott, the Vice President of Apple China, hopes to meet with you, stating that he wishes to establish some business cooperation with Red Star."

"Mitchellson Abbott?"

Chen Chen's only interaction with him was at the Internet Conference in Wuzhen. Red Star and Fruit currently have neither competition nor any business dealings. Why is he looking for me?

"Is he representing Fruit or himself?"

Chen Chen asked, as this was crucial.

"He should be representing himself. The email didn't specify Fruit Company."

If Fruit needs Red Star, or rather, if Red Star has anything Fruit would be interested in, it would probably only be the Yangtze River Battery. In all other aspects, everyone purchases from suppliers, the only difference being that Fruit mostly uses custom components and acts as the 'daddy' to these suppliers.

Some suppliers could even immediately go belly up after losing supply chain orders from Fruit.

As for Fruit and Huawei wanting to purchase the Yangtze River Battery, it's not impossible, but at least not right now.

The acquired Saiwei Cell Factory, after production line and process upgrades, is already struggling to meet the capacity demands for the Kunpeng mobile phone and all Red Star phone series. Joining the Fruit supply chain to supply a company like Fruit, which ships hundreds of millions of units annually, is virtually impossible.

"Reply to Mitchellson Abbott that I am free on the afternoon of the 16th, and we can meet."

"Alright, General Manager Chen. There is one more piece of news: Qualcomm has changed its Head. It is said that Qualcomm's Board of Directors was highly dissatisfied with Smith losing the China orders. The newly appointed Head is named Kipling Cole."

It was Smith who personally orchestrated the price hike against Red Star and Huawei, which resulted in the direct loss of all orders from these two Chinese phone companies.

Furthermore, Xiaomi also recognized the crisis and this time adopted both the Qualcomm platform and the Nvidia Tegra 4 Platform, which further intensified the Qualcomm Board of Directors' dissatisfaction with Smith.

You must know that the current China phone market has become the world's largest smartphone market. Red Star and Huawei have their own processors and basebands. Red Star would rather forgo Telecom 4G than yield to Qualcomm. OV is thriving offline using MediaTek's processors, and Xiaomi has adopted a dual-platform strategy.

As for others like Meizu, Gionee, Qikoo, and ZET, their current market share is negligible and can be ignored.

The four largest Chinese phone manufacturers are all tacitly avoiding Qualcomm, the root cause being Smith's failed strategy.

If Qualcomm were the only processor manufacturer in the world, everyone would have to use it, but the current mobile processor market is still an era of contention among a hundred schools of thought.

China has Huawei HiSilicon Semiconductor's Kirin Chip, Red Star's lingxiao chip, Samsung has its own Exynos Processor, there's also Nvidia's Tegra Series, and Texas Instruments hasn't exited the processor market yet. Furthermore, although MediaTek cannot catch up to Qualcomm right now, he is not weak either.

If Qualcomm is so arrogant now, raising prices arbitrarily, then if you were the only player in the market, wouldn't you raise prices to the heavens!

"If they replace him, so be it. Red Star is a 'Blacklisted Customer' of Qualcomm anyway."

Chen Chen smiled. If they don't have Telecom 4G, so be it. Sales are affected, but definitely not as much as imagined—it's an acceptable level. Qualcomm replacing a Head doesn't mean they will authorize us to use Telecom 4G for free.

Even if they came to Red Star now to renegotiate cooperation, Red Star would have to think twice.