Chapter 171: Counterattack
The faces of several distributors were extremely ugly, Han Peng felt very comfortable in his heart, and continued to strike while the iron was hot: "If everyone here dares to sell FC game consoles, Dongfang Commercial is still willing to cooperate with you regardless of previous suspicions." In fact, if you can unite and act in unison, you will not be afraid of the threat of Atari going out of stock, because if Atari dares to do this, it means that they will automatically give up the entire Southern California market!
If Atari really dares to put you all on the blacklist of refusing to cooperate, our FC consoles can just grab the blank market. The sales figures in your hands are also very clear, and the profit gap between the consignment of the Atari-2600 and the consignment of the FC game console is actually not large.
As long as you dare to sell FC game consoles, after Atari is out of stock, our company guarantees that the profit from the sale of FC game consoles will not be less than the profit from your previous sales of Atari-2600. If the previous profit is not reached, our company will be responsible for subsidizing the difference!"
Atari's so-called ban on the sale of FC consoles relies on its strong market position, and many game dealers rely on Atari products to support most of their sales, so they have to obey it. The only way for Oriental Games to break the threat of Atari is to destroy Atari's monopoly in the market.
But without the support of distributors, it is difficult for Oriental Games' FC consoles to even hit the shelves, let alone challenge the market leader position of Atari consoles. So Li Xuan asked Oriental Commercial to put aside the intermediate distributors and go into battle shirtless. Go and get in touch with the retail stores at the bottom of the spectrum.
Orient Commercial's marketing team can't do this in all U.S. markets, but they can conquer one state first, or narrow it down further. Conquer a city first. Under the guidance of Li Xuan's line of thinking, Oriental Commercial started from Los Angeles and San Diego in southern California.
Dozens of sales pitches, spending a week, frantically running all over the Southern California area. Oriental Commercial offers very favorable conditions to retail store owners, they do not need to undertake any upfront investment, do not have any hard sales tasks, and can exit at any time. Most retail store owners will not miss such a risk-free opportunity to make money, so Oriental Commercial is finally the fastest speed. Spread FC consoles all over the Southern California market.
After waiting for another week, after the sales figures of the FC game console were released, Dongfang Commercial finally had confidence. You can sit down with these distributors in Southern California and talk again. Because the sales of FC consoles in Southern California are not inferior to Atari's Atari Atari-2600 consoles.
These dealers finally couldn't sit still with the number of reports given by Oriental Merchants. The reason why they had fully compromised with Atari was because they couldn't guess how much market potential FC consoles had. Now FC consoles are at a complete disadvantage. But it can still tie with the Atari game console.
Originally, they could have made a lot of money from the distribution business of FC consoles. But it was lost in vain because of the interference of Atari. Naturally, these distributors were reluctant to continue to be at the mercy of Atari.
With the instigation and support of Oriental Trading, several distributors in Southern California reached an offensive and defensive alliance and re-signed a new game console distribution agreement with Oriental Trading. The so-called Southern California region mainly refers to the super urban belt consisting of the Greater Los Angeles area and the Greater San Diego metropolitan area in southern California.
Oriental Commercial was also in no hurry to announce a new cooperation agreement with distributors in Southern California, but waited another three days. Because in the future, Oriental Commercial relied on the same impressive sales figures, as well as the role model of the distributors in Southern California, to successfully convince the distributors in the greater San Francisco area. Aside from Atari's sales ban, the FC console agency agreement was re-signed.
Distributor in three of California's most densely populated and economically developed metro areas. Tempted by huge real-world benefits, they all chose to redistribute FC consoles. Oriental Commercial announced these two news at the same time, which caused a huge repercussion in the industry.
Atari was slapped in the face, and its ability to dominate distributors was greatly shaken. Atari reacted quickly, immediately blacklisting several dealers it believed were leading the rebellion, trying to deter others.
But when the dealers saw that Atari was only targeting a small group of people, they immediately quit. They then simply tore their faces completely and invited mainstream media such as the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle to denounce Atari for relying on its monopoly position in the market, squeezing downstream distributors, and harming market fairness, and asked the US Department of Justice to intervene and launch an antitrust investigation against Atari.
"Xiao Li Sheng, you used this trick well, the newspapers in the United States began to report on this matter in large quantities!" Han Peng waved the "Los Angeles Times" and "San Francisco Chronicle" in his hand, which are the two newspapers with the largest circulation on the West Coast of the United States, and they are also the top 10 mainstream newspapers in the United States by circulation.
"American newspapers like to publish news about this kind of weak forces resisting the rule of power, not to mention that it has something to do with anti-monopoly! The US Department of Justice has just concluded its antitrust investigation into IBM, and this term is a hot word now!" Li Xuan said with a smile.
Several newspaper reports were about game dealers fighting Atari, but the words FC consoles kept appearing between the lines, which easily aroused the curiosity of readers. What kind of good console is this that makes Atari so nervous, and makes game dealers so desperate?
This is undoubtedly a huge opportunity for free publicity for Oriental Game Company. On the surface, Oriental Game Company is very well out of the matter. As a foreign company, it is easily at the disadvantage of being naturally ostracized by American readers.
But now the protagonists of the incident are Atari and a group of Californian game dealers, who seem to have nothing to do with Oriental Games. In fact, this qiē was planned by Oriental Commercial behind the scenes, including those dealers who wanted to file an antitrust complaint with the US Department of Justice, and Oriental Commercial made a lot of promises behind the scenes, so they would be so unrelenting.
"The U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust investigation is definitely a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all large American companies. However, the U.S. Department of Justice generally only targets giant companies such as IBM and Bell, and the scale of Atari is still a bit insufficient. Li Xuan shook his head with a smile and said.
Li Xuan does not believe that the Justice Department will waste taxpayers' money and intervene in such a petty investigation. After all, the U.S. home console market is now only about $2 billion in size. But with the attention and focus of the media, Atari is bound to dare not continue to implement the so-called ban policy, otherwise it will really fall into the tongue and let the Ministry of Justice not intervene.
In this way, dealers in the United States can be said to have no worries at all, and there have been game dealers in the past few days, who can't wait to come to the door to seek cooperation with Oriental Commercial in FC game consoles.
"The California market has been completely conquered by us!Next, it depends on how many sales can be made after the FC game console is put on the shelves!" Han Peng nodded and said, "It's a pity that the cost of our self-built logistics and distribution system is too high, otherwise I would really want to kick away these distributors!"
Previously, Oriental Commercial Co., Ltd. used the logistics and distribution system of Computer Park Company to directly distribute goods to retail stores throughout California. But this is only a stopgap measure after all, in order to support the operation of Oriental Trading, the logistics center of the computer park has incurred huge operating costs, including overtime pay, and these expenses are to be borne by Oriental Games.
In contrast, the cost of distribution through guò agents is lower. Naturally, Oriental Commercial will not be unable to get along with the US dollar, so in the end it chooses to cooperate with distributors. Of course, the new distribution system kicked out the state-level distributors, with the logistics center of the Oriental Business Tongguò Computer Park supplying directly to regional distributors, who then wholesaled to the final retailers.
Just as Li Xuan and Han Peng were reading the newspaper at the U.S. headquarters of Oriental Commercial in Los Angeles, at the headquarters of Atari Corporation, Mr. Casal, the company's president, slammed a newspaper to the ground. He just finished reading the report, which happened to be the case that several game agencies in Los Angeles were preparing to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice for an antitrust investigation into Atari Inc.
"FUCK!
According to Casal's initial calculations, he threatened to cancel the supply through Guò to distance most of the distributors from Oriental Games. In this way, even if the FC console is too good to appear on the shelves, it naturally cannot threaten Atari's sales.
The Oriental Game Company was disrupted by the rhythm of listing, and the advertising costs paid before were all wasted. Oriental Game Company has suffered such a heavy setback, and when it readjusts its strategy and faces the home game console market again, how can it take half a year, right?
Atari is working on a new Atari-5200, and as long as this new console hits the market, Casal is not afraid of the advantages of the FC console in terms of hardware performance. It's a pity that Yiqiē didn't develop in the direction he envisioned. Oriental Games' counterattack was extremely aggressive, and it only took a month to defeat most of the game distributors in the California market.
even instigated a few thorns to fight with Atari, and Casal naturally did not believe that the Ministry of Justice would conduct an antitrust investigation into Atari Company. But the word "monopoly" is enough to attract the attention of the media. In the spotlight, the methods that were not on the table can no longer be used. (To be continued......)
PS: Ah, I was blown up, the list of new books for monthly tickets fell from fourth to fifth, and the update was not powerful, so I could only cover my face and brazenly ask for a monthly pass!