Chapter 1689
Changes in the Motorcycle Market
The reason Wang An spends most of his time at the motorcycle shop is because when he was discussing the division of labor with the second-generation rich kids, Wang An was mainly responsible for the motorcycle factory and the motorcycle shop.
Ma Guoqiang was mainly in charge of the pharmaceutical factory, while Wang Shuai and He Liang were mainly responsible for opening gold shops in various cities.
According to Wang An, now is the golden age for developing various businesses. As long as you seize the market first, you will have endless money to make later.
As for now, since everyone has plenty of money to spend, investing most of the profits from motorcycles and pharmaceutical factories would definitely be the right choice.
Of course, Wu Dong, Zhang Shuya, and the other six second-generation rich kids also strongly agreed with Wang An's statement.
With their already superior perspective and ability to understand the latest policy changes, they are naturally able to know more about market changes.
China's economy is developing at a leapfrog pace. As long as we keep up with the government's pace and seize this opportunity, it will be hard not to make money.
Wang An's work at the motorcycle shop wasn't too busy. Besides reconciling accounts with the finance department and reviewing various expenditures, his main job was to discuss cooperation with motorcycle dealers from other places who came specifically to talk about it.
Under Wang An's leadership, Longjiang Motorcycle has been steadily expanding over the past three months, and while maintaining stability, the pace of expansion has also been very rapid.
However, the current expansion is mainly in the form of cooperation. To put it bluntly, it means that the assembled motorcycles are sold to dealers in various regions in a wholesale manner. The motorcycle factory only keeps a portion of the profit, and then the dealers in various regions are responsible for sales and after-sales service.
Unfortunately, given Longjiang Motorcycle's current resources and size, and mainly due to a lack of funds, it cannot open directly operated stores in various locations in the short term.
Therefore, at this stage, cooperating with dealers in various regions is the most suitable approach for Longjiang Motorcycles.
To date, Longjiang Motorcycles has dealerships in all major cities in Heilongjiang Province except for Harbin, as well as in counties near DJ County and some prefecture-level cities in Jilin Province.
As for why there are no dealers in Bingcheng, it's because Bingcheng is the capital of Heilongjiang Province. After investigation and research, Wang An and He Liang built a direct-sale store in Bingcheng, which is also the only direct-sale store of Longjiang Motorcycle.
As for the store manager, Wang An sent Sun Jianhua, while for the DJ County store manager, Wang An promoted the young girl Huang Yufang.
In Wang An's view, for a company to develop, the capable should rise and the weak should fall. Although Huang Yufang is a little younger and lacks experience, her ability to sell motorcycles is absolutely unquestionable.
For a motorcycle shop that focuses on sales, sales volume is always the sole, or at least a very important, standard for evaluating a person's ability.
Unfortunately, due to insufficient production capacity and a lack of foreign exchange, Longjiang Motorcycle's inventory is not enough to support its expansion into Liaoning Province.
As for other provinces outside of Northeast China, they have even less chance of development.
If we don't have any cars to sell, how can we expand outwards?
Fortunately, since the establishment of the motorcycle factory, through the continuous research and exploration of its engineers and senior technicians, the factory has been able to replicate some motorcycle parts with simple structures and relatively simple shapes.
For example, components with low technical content, such as screws, frames, tie rods, gears, shock absorbers, and wheel hubs, can now all be mass-produced.
Furthermore, the motorcycle factory has partnered with Bingcheng Machinery Factory, which can also produce some parts for the motorcycle factory. However, it must be admitted that, given Longjiang Motorcycle's existing production technology and Bingcheng Machinery Factory's technology, coupled with the difference in raw materials, these counterfeit parts are indeed significantly inferior to the original imported parts.
For example, the shock absorber component: the original imported shock absorber of the Longjiang 70 motorcycle is very soft, but the shock absorber produced by Longjiang Motorcycle Factory is very stiff.
When installed on a motorcycle, not only is the riding comfort significantly reduced, but more importantly, the lifespan of the shock absorber is also much shorter.
If you ride normally on mountain roads, the shock absorbers will probably leak oil after a few thousand kilometers, and the shock absorber springs will also be ruined.
Even so, after various tests and trials, these parts have been installed on some motorcycles under Wang An's orders.
However, these motorcycles are sold at a much lower price, so it's not really considered ripping off customers.
Furthermore, in order to make the Longjiang Motorcycle brand famous throughout the country, Wang An not only sold motorcycles using domestically manufactured imitation parts at much lower prices, but also promised to replace these parts free of charge once or twice if they were damaged.
That's right, it's a free replacement.
Not only are spare parts free, but labor costs are also waived.
The reason why Wang An insisted on using the counterfeit parts, even though he knew they were unusable, was that he still did so anyway.
That's because although the quality of the counterfeit parts is poor and the user experience is somewhat lacking, the manufacturing cost of these counterfeit parts is extremely low.
For the same components, the cost of domestically produced imitation components is only about one-sixth of the price of imported components.
In other words, if an imported shock absorber costs 120 yuan, then a counterfeit one only costs 20 yuan, or even less.
The cost difference is just too damn huge, it's outrageous, even absurd!
Therefore, even if motorcycles using counterfeit parts are sold at a lower price, and the parts are replaced free of charge once during the customer's use, the motorcycle will still be sold.
However, the profits motorcycle manufacturers earn by using counterfeit parts are much, much higher than the profits from assembling motorcycles using purely imported parts!
Most importantly, only in this way can motorcycle manufacturers have sufficient R&D funds to produce better quality motorcycle parts.
It must be admitted that for a company, especially one with high technological content, mastering its core technologies from scratch in this era is truly not an easy task.
Of course, although the quality of the simple parts after being copied is really not good, motorcycle factories can still copy them no matter what.
However, motorcycle manufacturers are completely powerless when it comes to the two most important components of a motorcycle: the engine and the gearbox.
We are powerless to replicate it; we cannot even scratch it. (End of Chapter)