4: Turn Huaqiangbei into a back garden!

"What is this?!"

Peng Ge's eyes widened, because he discovered that inside this shiny, brand-new-looking Chenguang Mobile Phone was such a shocking sight.

"These tiny disassembly scratches and old glue residues... is this a refurbished phone?!"

Peng Ge let out a cry of disbelief. As someone working in the mobile phone sales industry, he knew quite a bit about phones.

Refurbished phones were actually very common in Huaqiangbei; one could even say that out of every ten "new phones" he, Peng Ge, sold, five were refurbished.

There was no help for it; the profit from selling refurbished phones was just too high. By using a lower purchase price but selling them at the price of new phones, the profit from selling a single refurbished phone surpassed that of two regular new phones!

Therefore, selling refurbished phones in Huaqiangbei was almost standard practice, which was not very surprising.

What surprised Peng Ge at this moment was that a phone he deemed to be of such high quality, one that absolutely could not be a refurbished unit, actually was one. This left him stunned.

"Hahaha, it seems I am destined to make a fortune."

Meanwhile, Lin Chen did not take that massive sum of 9,320 yuan to the bank to deposit it. Instead, he carried the funds with him to Saige Plaza in Huaqiangbei, because the stock he needed to purchase next was quite large.

Previously, sourcing 13 units required him to run around to five or six mobile phone shops and waste a lot of breath. The upcoming order volume was even larger and more troublesome, not to mention that just searching shop by shop would make it impossible for the subsequent supply to grow rapidly.

After all, he didn't just need dozens or a hundred Nokia 5110s; he needed hundreds, or even thousands!

If he were to search for such a large order volume shop by shop, he would probably have to scour every mobile phone shop in Shenzhen, and whether they would even sell to him was another matter entirely.

After all, they could also make money by refurbishing phones themselves; why should they let you profit? It's not like you're the only one who knows how to repair phones!

Therefore, paying a slightly higher price to find a well-connected middleman was the best choice.

At least until his strength reached a certain level, paying a slightly higher cost to have a middleman source stock from other mobile phone shops would be easier, and it would also allow him to acquire more refurbished phones to sell much faster.

And so, Lin Chen, carrying his massive funds, arrived at Saige Plaza in less than 5 minutes.

Saige Plaza was the oldest electronic plaza in Huaqiangbei, with a history of over 14 years since its founding in 1988. The most famous thing here was the "one-meter stall."

As the name suggests, a one-meter stall was a shop space about one meter in size—basically the size of a standard computer desk counter.

On the surface, their stalls looked too small to sell anything, but in reality, repair shops in China sourced their stock from here. So, while the stalls were small, their influence was not.

A few years later, experts and media came to investigate Huaqiangbei, and experts from the United States gave Huaqiangbei's supply capability a perfect rating.

The experts from the United States pointed out that if a company needed to procure 400 electronic components, it would take 4 months to complete the procurement in the United States, whereas here in Huaqiangbei, it only took one day!

This was the strength of Huaqiangbei in this era, and it was also the reason why Lin Chen wanted to come to Huaqiangbei to develop his business.

There was no way around it; in this current era, if you wanted to manufacture electronic products, there was no other place in China that could match the component supply capability of Huaqiangbei.

"Hello, do you sell Nokia 5110 dismantled parts, or faulty and broken units?"

Upon arriving at Saige Plaza, Lin Chen asked a salesperson at a stall named Xinke Electronics. This was a young man about the same age as Lin Chen, who was currently reading a newspaper with rapt attention.

This Xinke Electronics stall was quite decent within this hundred-meter area; the stall itself was three meters wide, standing out among the crowd of one-meter stalls. They should have the capacity to supply large quantities of faulty and broken Nokia 5110s in the future.

"We do have them, of course, but how many do you want to buy?"

The salesperson from Xinke Electronics replied nonchalantly, his hand not letting go of the newspaper.

To this, Lin Chen pondered for a moment before giving his reply:

"I will need a volume of at least 500 units within the next month."

"The future?"

Hearing the word "future," the Xinke Electronics salesperson's mouth curled into an inexplicable smile, and then he said with a cold face:

"Don't talk to me about the future. There are too many people in Huaqiangbei who talk about the future. Be realistic—how many units do you want right now?"

Looking at the very difficult-to-talk-to salesperson from Xinke Electronics, Lin Chen could only darken his face and state the real quantity he wanted to purchase now:

"40 units."

Previously, he had purchased 13 Nokia 5110 units at a mobile phone shop for 2,000 yuan, two of which could not be repaired and could only be dismantled for spare parts.

Besides the 2,000 yuan, he had also spent about 500 yuan on repair parts, so his actual investment was 2,500 yuan, and he eventually earned 6,820 yuan.

This time he had 9,320 yuan, which theoretically could buy 60 units, but this time Lin Chen wanted to purchase some Nokia 5110s in better condition so that his repair and re-shelling speed could be faster.

But better quality meant a higher purchase price, and with the addition of a middleman, the purchase price would be even higher, so with a capital of 9,320 yuan, he could actually only buy about 40 units.

However, when the salesperson from Xinke Electronics heard that Lin Chen only needed a mere 40 units, he immediately shook his head arrogantly and said:

"You come to us to source a mere 40 units? Do you know that every transaction we make here is in the tens or hundreds of thousands of yuan?

If you need to buy accessories and dismantled parts for 40 Nokia 5110s, I would be very welcome, but collecting faulty and broken Nokia 5110s is just too much trouble.

You should go to those mobile phone shops and look for them one by one; this is not a place for you."

Looking at the arrogant gaze opposite him, Lin Chen immediately darkened his face, and then realized the reason for everything.

Everything was a matter of strength. Outsiders didn't know that his Dawn Mobile Phone could sell well; they only thought he was a young man who didn't know his place and was destined to lose money.

They believed that after making this small deal with him, there wouldn't be a next one, so they weren't willing to invest capital in Lin Chen, nor were they willing to waste manpower, resources, or favors for a mere 40 units.

"Then I shall take my leave."

Lin Chen did not savagely entangle himself with the other party, because it was meaningless.

They just looked down on you and didn't want to earn your small money; what could you do at a time like this?!

However, once might be an accident. Lin Chen went on to ask two other smaller one-meter stalls, but the result was undoubtedly the same as Xinke Electronics: he was rejected.

"Heh."

When the salesperson from Xinke Electronics saw Lin Chen hitting a wall at even smaller one-meter stalls in the distance, he seemed to let out a sound of mockery.

However, because of the long distance, Lin Chen did not hear this mocking sound.