In the first half of 1940, the hottest commodity sold in New York was undoubtedly nylon stockings, and in the second half of 1940, the hottest commodity sold in New York was the hula hoop.

The customers of nylon stockings are all women, and perhaps men with fetishes will buy them. The customer base of the hula hoop is broader, of course, children are one per person, and many adults are also willing to buy hula hoops to try this new thing.

Hula hoop sales are also a normal phenomenon, after all, when the hula hoop was launched in 1958, it took only four months to sell 25 million hula hoops in the United States, which shows that the hula hoop is bound to be a success. Today, it is just over a million hula hoops, and naturally consumers quickly snap them up.

Chen Qiang's inventory is already in an emergency.

Originally, Chen Qiang rented several large warehouses to store the 1.2 million hula hoops produced, and the Beckland Company would continue to produce new hula hoops every day, but when the hula hoops were officially sold, the warehouses were emptied one by one, and the supply exceeded demand and was settled.

Beckland has started 24-hour continuous production mode, and the construction of a new production hall has begun, but this is still far from quenching the thirst.

In desperation, Chen Qiang could only sell in limited quantities, and every retailer who came to ask for goods was in limited supply.

Many commodities, the more limited the supply, the more popular they will sell, such as the future Moutai, which has been artificially speculated to a sky-high price. Now Chen Qiang's hula hoop is also like this, and many retailers are willing to add money in order to get the goods.

The customer is willing to pay more, of course Chen Qiang will not refuse, he can just make an extra profit.

And those retailers who pay more to pick up the goods are not fools, and the overpayment for the purchase is finally doubled on the consumer. Anyway, the hula hoop is not worried about selling, and being able to buy the goods is equivalent to making money with the package.

There is no technical content in the hula hoop, and Chen Qiang thought that there would be copycat products soon. However, the hula hoop has been on the market for a while, but there are still no copycat products on the market, and Chen Qiang's hula hoop is still the only one. This was somewhat unexpected by Chen Qiang, which is somewhat inconsistent with history. Historically, not long after the hula hoop was launched in 1958, copycats were already everywhere.

First of all, in 1940, the oil industry was not as developed as it was in 1958, and plastic was not yet a popular material. At that time, the main use of plastics was to make bakelite, just to make a power switch, machine dashboard or something, which would not consume too much plastic at all, so the demand for plastics at that time was small, and the demand for small demand led to a small market, so the entire plastic industry was relatively small.

And in 1940, polyethylene is still a very fresh material, polyethylene production and processing technology, not everyone can master, unlike now, just find a chemical engineering college textbook to learn, can figure out the production of polyethylene away, easy to assemble a set of polyethylene production line out.

At that time, the threshold for the production and processing of plastics was relatively high, for example, the Beckland company that produced hula hoops for Chen Qiang, the father of little Beckland was a doctor of chemistry himself, and he was also the inventor of phenolic plastics, so he was able to open a company to produce plastic products.

Another example is the mess of nylon at that time, which is also a kind of petrochemical raw material, nylon has been researched and industrialized since the beginning, and it took more than ten years for the company that produced nylon stockings to fund the scientist Carrotes in the twenties, and it was only in 1940 that nylon stockings were available, and it took more than ten years of investment to be able to get returns. In modern times, it takes more than ten years to research and produce products, which are basically in the pharmaceutical industry and the material industry, and they are also industries with extremely high thresholds.

So in 1940, even if someone wanted to knock off the hula hoop, there weren't that many factories that could process plastic products.

In addition, Chen Qiang's hula hoop did not suffer the impact of copycat products, also because of the European war. Britain gave the United States a large number of orders, and according to the current trend, such orders will be more and more, so the American capitalists have invested their money in traditional industrial projects, at this time, even if it is to produce pots and pans, the British will buy, the production of canned food is definitely in short supply, and the production of guns and cannons is even more profitable. Since the capitalists have projects that can be invested, they can't afford to stare at a more technically demanding hula hoop that sells for only 70 cents.

……

The company built a new production hall as quickly as possible.

After the new workshop, the production capacity of the hula hoop has been directly upgraded to a higher level.

As little Beckland said, the supply of raw materials and production processes are not a problem, the problem is that the production capacity is not enough.

American oil companies are desperately exploiting oil, and American oil refineries are also working at full speed to refine various petroleum fuels to supply to the European battlefield, due to the large-scale operation of factories, such as lubricants and other petroleum products are not worried about sales, but because the industry has not developed to a certain extent, the chemical raw materials produced by petroleum refining are in a state of surplus, so the supply of plastic raw materials is very sufficient, and the price is much cheaper than before the war.

With the ramp-up of hula hoop production capacity, Chen Qiang finally has a surplus of hula hoops that can be supplied outside of New York.

When the hula hoops were just listed, Chen Qiang once put a small amount of hula hoops in Washington, Boston and other big cities, and those hula hoops were quickly sold out, and Chen Qiang did not continue to supply to other cities, after all, even New York was in short supply, how could Chen Qiang have the effort to estimate places outside Washington.

Now that the production of hula hoops has risen, Chen Qiang has finally begun to expand beyond New York.

New York is not only the largest city in the United States, but also the vane of various industries in the United States, whether it is music, sports or fashion clothing, as long as it is popular in New York, it can be popular throughout the United States. And the same is true for goods, as long as they can be popular in New York, they will definitely be popular in the United States.

Hula hoop sales in New York are good explosion, so Chen Qiang is not worried about sales outside New York, and retailers everywhere will not miss a product that can make money, Chen Qiang's next thing to do is to keep producing hula hoops and then ship them to all parts of the United States.

Chen Qiang estimated that if he was lucky, perhaps in the second half of 1940, he would be able to sell 8 million hula hoops, which could bring Chen Qiang millions of profits.

Compared to selling hula hoops, the earning power of the gym is too insignificant.

However, when the hula hoop was on sale, Chen Qiang did not give up the gym, on the contrary, he was still looking for more franchisees.

Chen Qiang also did two things, one was to find the famous New York musician, the "grandfather of rock and roll" Louis Jordan, and create a song for the hula hoop.

The second thing is that Chen Qiang pieced together a set of hula hoop aerobics through memory. This was followed by the promotion of this set of hula hoop aerobics in his gym.

……

Thomas is the owner of a gym and a franchisee of "Chen Qiang Fitness".

Since becoming a franchisee of Chen Qiang Fitness, a variety of novel courses have also made Thomas a lot of money, although it is far less than those big business owners, but as far as the gym industry is concerned, Thomas is very good.

Today, Thomas received a letter from Chen Qiang, inviting him to send someone to train for a new fitness class called hula hoop exercises.

"Hula hoop? Isn't that the thing that's been very popular in New York lately? There are a lot of children playing hula hoops on the streets, is there also aerobics to do this kind of thing? I always thought that this thing was just a toy, but I didn't expect it to be used as fitness equipment and have a systematic way to exercise. ”

Thomas complained, but decided to learn the hula hoop exercise himself. After all, you have to pay a service fee every year, if you don't go to the training, then the service fee will not be in vain.

……

Chen Qiang used his franchisees to start promoting hula hoop exercises.

The reason why Chen Qiang did this was not to increase the sales of hula hoops, but to change people's perception of hula hoops.

At this time, most Americans had the same idea that Thomas thought that the hula hoop was a toy, not a gym machine.

The hula hoop in history is indeed the earliest launched by a toy company, and the initial positioning of the hula hoop is also a toy. In the 60s, the hula hoop spread from the United States to Europe, and even entered China in the 80s, all as toys. The main customer group of hula hoops is also children.

However, now if you go to a treasure to search for the hula hoop, the keywords of the most popular ones are words such as "slim waist", "weight loss", "belly tightening", "women's fitness", etc., and the advertising picture is often a beautiful woman in sportswear shaking the hula hoop. This shows that after decades of development, the hula hoop has changed from a children's toy to a fitness equipment.

What Chen Qiang hopes is that people will see the hula hoop as a kind of fitness equipment, rather than a children's toy. If possible, Chen Qiang would even like to make the hula hoop a sport.

Children's toys are not sustainable, people in every generation will have different toys, and children's toys in every era are different. For example, the toys that the post-80s played with when they were children were completely different from those of the post-00s, and those post-00s generations had never even seen the toys of the post-80s.

And many children's toys only have a burst of popularity, when the cartoon "four-wheel drive kid" was released, the four-wheel drive toys sold on the market were also what "emperor superstar", "burning sun", "sprint meteor"; A few years later, "Four-wheel Drive Brothers" was released, and the four-wheel drive toys on the market became "Charge God of War", "Sonic God of War", "Speed Axe" and so on. For people who grew up in that era, mentioning these names is full of memories, but for children who grew up watching "Bear Infested", they don't know what the "God of War" is, and what they know better is Xiong Da Xiong's bald head.

Therefore, the replacement of children's toys is very fast, a cartoon can drive a number of children's toys, and when another cartoon is released, a new children's toy will be popular. And those former children, as they grow older, will gradually abandon the children's toys they are familiar with, and no one in their twenties or thirties is still fiddling with the BB guns and dolls of their childhood. When people grow up, BB guns are replaced with inflatable dolls, and dolls become ***.

Children's play has a popular period, and it will become obsolete after a long time. But sports are different, and many sports are popular for decades, if not centuries.

For example, 20 years ago, many middle school students liked to play basketball, and now many middle school students also like to play basketball, and I believe that 20 years from now, middle school students will still like to play basketball. As a sport, basketball will never be left behind and will always be enjoyed.

Other sports are similar, basketball, football, table tennis, a sport that can be popularized, is naturally very hot, and it may not lag behind for hundreds of years. Even sports such as gymnastics and diving cannot be popularized due to technical difficulties, but there are still many professional athletes engaged in it, and there will be many spectators to enjoy it.

Sports may have a low ebb of development, but they will never go out of style.

Therefore, Chen Qiang hopes that people's perception of the hula hoop is not a children's toy, but a kind of fitness equipment, or even a sport. In this way, the hula hoop can always be active and popular. If the hula hoop is only regarded as a children's toy, maybe after a few years, the hula hoop will slowly disappear, and eventually it will only become a childhood memory.

……

In a bank in New York, Chen Qiang had just walked into the bank, and the hall manager immediately greeted him.

"Mr. Chen, what business do you want to do? Hurry inside please. We have black tea and coffee here, what would you like to drink? Good. Lucy, go pour a cup of black tea, don't add milk and sugar. ”

The hall manager warmly invited Chen Qiang into the VIP reception room.

The new intern looked at this scene with some puzzlement, and then he asked a formal bank teller next to him: "What is the origin of this Chinese?" I even had to let the manager receive it personally. ”

"He's Chen Qiang, the world's No. 1 athlete. You've probably heard his name. The teller spoke.

"It's him! I heard that he also won the US Open. No wonder the manager received him personally, it turned out to be a celebrity! The intern nodded in realization.

"Do you think just a well-known athlete would make a manager so enthusiastic?" The teller lowered his voice and continued: "This Chinese, in addition to being a well-known athlete, is also a millionaire!" ”

"What? Millionaire! The intern gasped.

Millionaires in 1940 may be even rarer than billionaires in 2019, especially in the United States.

In the colonial era, the royal families and nobles of Europe gained a lot of wealth by virtue of colonial plunder, and to put it bluntly, they were robbers all over the world to rob money. And the United States missed the golden age of colonization and could only get rich by developing industry.

It is much more difficult to make money than to rob money, otherwise people would not have the mantra "you might as well rob it", so the millionaires in the United States at that time were naturally more valuable than the millionaires in Europe.

Chen Qiang never thought that he would become a millionaire. Even in later life, he wasted most of his life, and his assets did not reach the level of one million dollars. Maybe Chen Qiang will travel a few years later, and when the house price rises again, with the old house in the urban area where he lives, maybe he can really have millions of dollars in assets.

Chen Qiang didn't know when he became a millionaire, in short, when he went to the bank one day, he suddenly found that he was already a millionaire!

For each hula hoop, Chen Qiang can make a profit of almost 25 cents, so if you calculate it, Chen Qiang only needs to sell 4 million hula hoops to make a million dollars.

In other words, the sales volume of Chen Qiang's hula hoop has exceeded 4 million.

However, Chen Qiang also knows that the potential of the hula hoop is more than that, and when the hula hoop is listed in the future, it will sell 200 million in two years!

Nowadays, hula hoops are only sold in cities around New York, and in the future, when hula hoops are sold in the United States, Chen Qiang will be able to make more money.

Now that Chen Qiang has money, he didn't take the money to enjoy, but came to the bank, he planned to withdraw a sum of money and then donate a few planes to China like other patriotic overseas Chinese.

——————

Ask for a ticket!