193: Chapter 193 Warehouse Fire

Shen Fei stood up, straightened his clothes, and brushed the dust off his body.

"Young Master Chen is right, the rules cannot be broken." Shen Fei nodded with a smile, "In that case, we won't disturb you any further."

Chen Jiahao panicked immediately; he clearly hadn't expected Shen Fei to be so easygoing.

"Shen... President Shen, have you come to an understanding? Why don't you reconsider? We actually quite..."

"I've come to an understanding." Shen Fei waved his hand, "The Indonesia market is indeed not Africa; it has many rules and intense competition."

"But there is one thing Young Master Chen might not have realized: rules are rigid, but the market is fluid. Since Chen Group is unwilling to act as an agent, that's fine, we will find other ways."

The panic on Chen Jiahao's face could no longer be hidden: "President Shen, what do you mean by that?"

He was truly feeling scared. Could it be that Transsion was going to replicate their Africa strategy in the Indonesia market?

Establishing offline stores, building offline warehouses, and most importantly, training a group of "slave bodyguards" who were either fighting or on their way to fight every day?

Looking at the group of security guards behind Shen Fei, Chen Jiahao swallowed nervously.

It seemed he had messed up the task his uncle had entrusted to him.

"It means nothing." Shen Fei walked towards the door and then turned his head to say, "Chen Group is not the only distributor in Southeast Asia; I know that much. Besides..."

Shen Fei stopped in his tracks: "Young Master Chen just said that Chinese brands won't last more than three months; I've noted that down. Let's see what happens in three months."

Chen Jiahao hurriedly chased after him, his face full of forced smiles, but he still couldn't hide a trace of ashen pallor.

"President Shen, there's no need to make things so awkward. I was kindly pointing out a path for you, you're being ungrateful!"

He quickly covered his mouth; that wasn't what he meant, he just hadn't thought it through for a moment...

"Ungrateful?" Shen Fei turned his head to look at him again, "Do you know how Transsion achieved 100 million in shipment volume in the Africa market?"

Chen Jiahao was stunned.

"It's not entirely because of how good our phones are, but because we understand one thing. Business is business. Whoever can bring profit to the local area, the locals will follow."

"Your company has been in Indonesia for over 30 years, with a large foundation, so it's understandable that you look down on a new brand like ours. But I have one thing to say to you, Young Master Chen."

Shen Fei looked into his eyes, his expression full of amusement.

"Transsion's success today doesn't rely on begging others; it relies on its own fists."

After saying this, Shen Fei left. Chen Jiahao was so intimidated by his imposing manner that he slumped to the floor.

The plan his uncle had given him was to give Transsion a reality check and demonstrate the unity of the local Chinese community.

Then, forcefully act as the agent for Transsion's platform, taking on all the work, including sales and repairs, just like with other brands, and simply be a new supplier.

Especially, do not let them build offline stores in the Indonesia market.

But now... it felt as if a countdown had appeared on the Chen Group building.

After all, Transsion in Africa didn't just bring benefits to the locals; it had clearly beaten the local market into submission.

In Tanzania, how many people had been replaced because of them? Even now, they hadn't built a single offline base, and sales were still being wildly harvested by grey market merchants.

In the elevator, Wang Hua held back for a long time before finally speaking: "President Shen, we're just leaving like this? This has been delayed..."

"Don't worry about it; it's just a matter of a word from Huang Tianya. The favor isn't that big."

Li Qing, standing to the side, pressed the elevator button and nodded silently.

Shen Fei looked at the two of them and suddenly asked: "Why do you think they wanted to meet us?"

"Transsion's reputation?" Wang Hua said.

Immediately after, Li Qing also said: "President Huang's connections?"

"Correct. To be precise, it's both." Shen Fei watched the numbers on the elevator display jumping.

"They met with us to give face to President Huang and the people behind him, and at the same time, they had their eyes on our piece of meat."

"But they won't cooperate with us because they want to protect their own interests. After all, if Transsion enters, we will definitely build self-operated stores, which will 100% split their profits. They don't want to see that happen."

"So today was a reality check. With these conservatives, begging them is useless; you have to make them beg you."

"Make them beg us?" Wang Hua gave a bitter smile, "President Shen, they have been in Indonesia for so long. Channels, connections, capital, and most importantly, their background—which one of these isn't stronger than ours? How could they possibly beg?"

Shen Fei didn't answer, just smiled slightly.

"Wang Hua, remember one thing." Shen Fei walked straight out of the elevator, "In business, your greatest confidence doesn't come from how many patents you have, but from whether you have something in your hands that others don't. Of course, opportunity is also very important."

Wang Hua and Li Qing both nodded simultaneously. Although they didn't quite understand what President Shen meant, they... still felt it made a lot of sense.

After all, Indonesia also has the word "India" in it; it's normal for it to act crazy sometimes.

Immediately after, Shen Fei handled the work Zhang Shiqing had given him and chartered a plane back to the country.

Only Li Qing, Wang Hua, and Wang Kai, who had rushed over to take over, were left here.

Wang Kai was the person who would be in charge of Transsion's Southeast Asia market going forward.

Over the next three days, they carefully inspected Indonesia.

During these three days, the three of them had been pondering what this so-called opportunity Shen Fei mentioned could be.

But just when they were resting, at 2 AM in the southern district of Jakarta, Chen Group's largest mobile phone warehouse suddenly caught fire.

Although the fire was brought under control within half an hour, the internal fire sprinkler system activated, drenching the more than 300,000 mobile phones in the warehouse.

What was even more fatal was that among those 300,000 phones, 100,000 were newly arrived Samsung Galaxy S2s, 50,000 were Nokia phones, and the remaining 150,000 were various high-volume models.

Water-soaked phones might look fine on the outside, but their motherboards were completely ruined, which meant all 300,000 phones were total losses.

Chen Zhengguang was woken up by a phone call around 4 AM. When he heard the news, his face darkened instantly.

"Have you found out how the fire started?"

"Still investigating. Currently, the fire department's explanation is aging electrical circuits?"

"Aging electrical circuits? Wasn't the warehouse just inspected last month?"

The person on the other end of the line was silent; it was clear that the so-called inspection was a joke.

Chen Zhengguang slammed the phone down, took a deep breath, and forced himself to calm down.

300,000 mobile phones, including 100,000 high-end Smartphones—even at wholesale prices, that was over 20 million USD worth of goods.

The critical part was that these 100,000 S2s were goods he had painstakingly begged from Samsung, and he had paid the full amount upfront. Now they were all ruined.

He picked up the phone and called the purchasing director: "After dawn, contact Samsung immediately and order another 100,000 S2s. At least 20,000 must arrive tomorrow."

"President Chen, that's impossible. There are none left in all of Southeast Asia. The S2 is in short supply globally, and the next batch will take two weeks."

"What about Nokia?"

"Nokia has stock, but the wholesale price has increased by 30%, claiming it's due to rising raw material costs..."

Chen Zhengguang was furious at the phone. He would definitely make those inspection teams pay the price.

He suddenly remembered something else: it was after the Japan 311 earthquake, and global semiconductors were in severe shortage due to natural or man-made disasters.

The prices for flash memory and RAM sticks were changing every day?

Samsung's own production capacity wasn't enough; how could they possibly allocate more goods to him?

Nokia raising prices at this time was clearly taking advantage of the situation.

What should he do?

PS: Brothers, please leave a rating! It stopped at 6.5, but ended up dropping to 6.4; it's too low. Your humble author is begging you all.