In the afternoon of the same day, Mr. Takasha and two other owners of an electrical appliance store in Akihabara drove nearly 50 kilometers with Han Ting to a remote office in Konan District, Yokohama, to inspect the inventory in the warehouse.

The details are not for outsiders, but all in all, they are very satisfied, and they feel that the materials used in this batch of goods imported from Xiangjiang are solid and well-made. Although it may not be worth 600,000 or 700,000 yen per unit, it is not unreasonable that it has become such a hit.

On the same day, the two parties signed a contract for the cooperation mode of equipment financial leasing, and agreed to pay off the down payment and pick up the goods within 3 days.

Three days later, the number of entertainment venues in the Akihabara neighborhood with two arcades, "Thunderbolt Fighter" and "Plants vs. Zombies", increased from 1 to 3 -

Maikoto Shirai's flagship experience store has been further renovated to 20 seats, which is already the limit of this store. The boss of Gao Sha made two points and divided 60 machines.

There are 80 new game consoles concentrated in the entire Akihabara neighborhood, and there is a temporary phenomenon that 100% of the machines cannot be fully used during the afternoon non-prime time, but there is still a queue for the prime time.

Two other owners who entered the machine opened in Shinjuku and Shibuya that weekend, spreading the trend even further.

On November 5th, the first Monday after the opening of the multi-store diffusion, the information was finally fully valued by the game console manufacturers located further in the industrial chain.

These manufacturers will always be one to two weeks slower than the game hall owner, which is also a feature of the times. After all, there is no Internet these days, and not all new industry developments are spread overnight.

The first person to notice was the director of the marketing department of Taidong Electric Appliances, the director of Arai, who was also the former guide of Tomohiro Nishikaku.

Because he felt at a glance that this game, at least in terms of core setting, was very similar to the "Space Invaders" that Tomohiro Nishikaku had submitted and that he had pitched to the petty bosses like Akihabara.

As for "Plants vs. Zombies", it's the kind of incremental improvement, and you can see that there are many unique new designs, and the core is inherited from the previous generation of electric racing machines.

"Plagiarism? Probably not, knowing that Plants vs. Zombies is a brand new and ingenious design, the technology is not advanced, and the creativity is very good. Maybe it's a new company with a lot of ideas. "This is Minister Arai's first judgment.

Then, he applied to the president for research and came to Akihabara in person.

He first went to the electrical appliance store of the boss of Gao Sha, a large store that took up an entire floor of a department store.

A quarter of the electrical sales and repair counters have now been removed from the shop and replaced with nearly 50 game consoles.

"Gao Shasan, don't come unharmed. "Arai knows each other very well, so he gets straight to the point.

"Isn't this Minister Arai from Taidong, how can you have time to come today?" Gao Sha is making money for four or five days, and he is in the rising period of his career, and he is obviously in a very good mood.

His arcade business here now has a turnover of at least 60~800,000 yen on weekdays, and more than 1 million yen on weekends! In this way, the advance payment of 10 million yuan, and even the total purchase cost of 40 million yen, will not be recovered in two months!

Even if the quality of these Xiangjiang goods is not good, in the case of high-frequency use, they need to be repaired in half a year on average, then there will be at least two or three times the profit!

At that time, the life of electronic products was not long, and the household machines that were not used frequently could be used for two or three years, but the arcade machines generally had to be repaired in more than half a year, especially the fire ones, because the work intensity was too great. In later generations, computers in Internet cafes were often broken, and the cost of repair and replacement was very high.

However, Gao Sha's excitement was not angry in the eyes of Arai.

He asked a little complainingly: "Gao Shasang, I also came to sell a machine with similar content like you at the beginning of the year, and at that time you reported that you were very unoptimistic and would never buy it, I don't know if you remember? Why do you regret it now? Is it because you saw that the first trial store was on fire?"

Gao Sha's old face was slightly red.

People want to save face, and no one wants to be looked down upon.

So he thought back to the situation when Han Ting took him to see the goods and explained the same thing to him that day, and subconsciously retorted: "Arai-kun, other people's things are really different from yours, and at a glance, the workmanship is solid and the materials are good." I don't think that's one of those things!"

Minister Arai couldn't refute this, so he handed a cigar to Boss Takasa and then put on a few words of friendship, hoping to see the internal structure of the other party's arcade.

"No, I'm going to open here, you don't see that every machine is occupied. Gao Sha was afraid that the other party would entangle, so he hurriedly refused.

Arai had already prepared: "Gao Shasan! I'll pay 50,000 yen -- the turnover of one of your machines today will definitely not exceed 20,000 yen, right? Don't worry, the technicians I brought are absolutely good, so I will take them apart and analyze them, and put them back in their original form, which will not affect the performance and quality at all." ”

This is obviously intended to be a reverse analysis to see if there are any good designs worth "learning from".

"This is not good! The other party has a sealed plastic every time the inner shell, but we are not allowed to disassemble the machine, once it is disassembled, there is no warranty, this is not a matter of 50,000 yen. Arai-kun, please don't hit my idea here, I know that you are unwilling to study your peers, you have the ability to ask someone to buy it yourself, I don't want the relationship with Boss Han to deteriorate, so I will not accompany you. ”

Minister Arai didn't believe in this evil, so he went to Shinjuku and Shibuya again, and found that the first batch of three customers really cherished the opportunity for cooperation, and he didn't buy oil and salt, and even he was willing to pay a price of 1 million yen a unit and buy one to come back to study, but the other party didn't do it - this price was already 300,000 yuan more expensive than the purchase price of 700,000 units, which is equivalent to 300,000 yuan as soon as the other party turned over.

After two days of blind work, when he went to work on Wednesday, Arai could only apply directly to President Saitama for money.

"President, I hope you will approve the payment, so that we can purchase a batch of Hanle Electronics' arcade machines, and we can entrust someone to open an arcade hall by ourselves, and the cost will definitely be recoverable in the future. At the same time, we can borrow a few of them for reverse research. ”

President Saitama doesn't care about front-line affairs, and he still doesn't know how popular this game is. So after listening to Minister Arai's words, my first reaction was a great shame.

"Arai-kun! We at Taidong Electric are the ones who produce electric amusement equipment! What do you want to procure...... Competitor Machines?

Minister Arai was cramped for a while: "Didn't we also purchase Nintendo's finished products and take them back to dismantle......

President Saitama slammed the table: "That's different! Nintendo is a 90-year-old factory! Of course, there is no shame in learning from them." What kind of rag pheasant brand you just said!"

(Note: Nintendo actually has a long history, it has been around since the 1880s, but for the first 50 years, it was traditional entertainment facilities such as poker, Japanese-style cards, and mahjong.) After World War II, it began to transform into electric mahjong machines, then to slot machines, pachinko machines and other electric gambling equipment, and finally transformed into game machines. ）

"But people's products are really popular, and there is a suspicion of plagiarizing our ideas and slightly improving them, I want to know why - Xijiaojun from the R&D department once gave me a semi-finished design, and it was our market research results that overturned it. If we can analyze the improvement point of the other party now, we can mass produce it within a month and catch up to seize this profit point!"

Arai endured the president's insults, explained in every possible way, and finally got the authorization to approve the funds.

Then he found an electrical appliance shop owner who had a good relationship in Akihabara and often cooperated with for a long time, and used this cover to go straight to Yokohama to buy goods.

He had to see for himself what was the best design in the dismantled things.

……

However, things are much more troublesome than Arai imagined.

He met Han Ting under a fake identity, but this beautiful and elegant strong woman in the workplace was very difficult. (The name is real, but the position and unit information are fake, that is, they do not disclose that they are from Taidong Electric)

"I'm sorry, Mr. Arai. Our current requirements for partners are to purchase and set up a game hall with at least 20 seats or more, and you only want to buy 3 units, so we will not take orders. Han Ting vetoed the small list with a straight sentence.

We are factory direct wholesale and do not engage in retail.

Arai spit out a mouthful of old blood, but he still has to find an excuse to lie: "Ah...... I'm really sorry, but our store manager actually runs several convenience stores and an electrical appliance store at the same time, both of which are his business. He was cautious, so he wanted to test the water at a convenience store first. Since you have requirements for scale, we can also directly invest in an electrical appliance store. ”

Han Ting smiled politely: "You don't have to explain so much - in short, you can purchase more than 20 units at a time?"

"Yes!" Arai agreed, gritting his teeth slightly.

Originally, I only wanted to spend a budget of more than 1 million yen to buy a few prototypes and disassemble them for research, which was regarded as the cost of R&D consumables. Who knew that as soon as he made a move, it was more than 10 million, which rose 10 times in an instant.

The cost of R&D is too high.

It's just that the other party's things are worth such a study, alas.

However, the next bad news awaited him.

Han Ting told him: "For all financial leasing machines, we must follow up and pay a return visit before completely repaying them, and we will never allow misappropriation or other improper operations." In addition, the warranty will be cancelled in the following cases......"

Of course, this piece of barai can't be agreed, he will take it back to unload eight pieces, if it is tracked down by the manufacturer, how can he get it.

"We don't need a financial lease, we pay it in full!"

"Yes, that's a 20% discount. "Han Ting is businesslike.

"Isn't it seventy-fifty?" Arai was stunned.

Han Ting: "Yo, it seems that it was introduced by peers, and I have learned about the market, seventy-five percent off is our first promotion, and now the market has proved that the recycling cycle is far lower than expected, so everyone's confidence has skyrocketed, and we naturally don't need to give too many additional discounts to those who pay off at one time——

Pay attention to our last offer, but there is a deadline, which means that the sooner we become our customers, the more we will earn, and the more we wait, the less we will earn! If it is December, we will further reduce the discount of one-time payment to 85%!"

This posture is that the manufacturer is ready to use the unique profiteering equipment to create the prestige of "the sooner you buy, the more you earn, and the more you wait and see, the more you lose".

There is nothing wrong with this line of thinking, and it is only natural to give "early adopters" dividends.

Just like the people who went to open a Taobao store in 03, there are always various discounts, not only do not need money, but also give free art. But after Taobao grows bigger, do you still want to go online without paying a deposit of 2,000 yuan to open a store?

"Okay, I'll buy it!"

Arai gritted his teeth and signed a cash check for 10 million yen at the discounted price.

……

After buying it home, Arai immediately commanded Tomohiro Nishikaku of the R&D Department to disassemble and analyze.

Poor Xijiao Tomohiro obviously sold the design materials of the abandoned project in the company and made a private fortune, but now he is empty-hearted.

When I received a request from Minister Arai, I thought the case was going to be discovered.

Fortunately, it was finally confirmed that it was only dismantling and doing a differentiated analysis of competing products.

He slid a game console back into a parts state.

"What is this? Why is it so full in such a large cabinet?"

"As you can see, it should just be a normal electric fan. Tomohiro Nishikaku cautiously explained, wondering if Minister Arai had been stimulated by something that caused him to have a problem with his intelligence.

"Of course I know it's an electric fan! I'm not blind!" Arai was furious, "I mean, can you explain why there's an electric fan in the console's case?"

"It should be...... For CPU cooling, right?" Tomohiro Nishikaku analyzed the installation location and structure of a wave of electric fans from a professional perspective.

"Although the CPU of 8080 or Z80 does not generate significant heat, adding an electric fan to dissipate heat from all components is a good design idea, which can improve the life of the whole machine to a certain extent.

I've never seen such a design before, but I think that in the future, as the density of integrated circuits increases, it will be necessary to use a cooling fan one day. This competitor's design idea is very advanced, and it can be said that it is very craftsman......"

In addition to the fans, Arai and the west corner can also see several useless designs that are very large and move very quietly when they are opened, which is enough to prove that "this game console is made of solid materials", or it is better than no design.

But Arai vaguely understood: this supplier was well aware of the psychological weaknesses of the late 70s.

The bosses of those electrical appliance shops are still using "whether the materials are solid" to judge whether it makes sense to sell a thing expensively.

Wrapping a CPU the size of a piece of dried bean curd with a large cooling fan and then appearing as a whole can immediately alleviate the opponent's resistance to "such a piece is worth hundreds of dollars".

Just like the people who engaged in assembly machines in later generations, they were very angry when they saw that the CPU of the loose piece was sold so expensive. As everyone knows, expensive high-end graphics cards, after removing the cooling fan, the body is actually not much larger than the CPU.

Who let me say that I am "only willing to pay for physical goods, and not for virtual intellectual achievements", and the root of the national inferiority has not been cut off. The cultural industry has just entered an era of "selling Gundam figurines instead of copyrights" to achieve major profits.

"This Xiangjiang person knows me too well! We didn't lose unjustly, obviously the core idea that we thought of first, but we didn't think of how to package it to cater to the values of those old hat electrical appliance shop owners! I'm so stupid, really ......"

Minister Arai fell into a state of remorse for Shobayashi's sister-in-law.