A few days after DreamWorks took Hepburn under its ownership, Chuck gave Alex another piece of good news. He found a toy factory, which was a factory that produced all kinds of plastic toys.

Due to the poor management of the factory owner, he was half dead, so he wanted to sell it for money. The price is not high, only 600,000 US dollars.

Alex asked the lawyer to check out the asset information of the factory, and after reading it, he felt that the business was not a loss. He immediately asked for it, and after writing the check, he got the ownership of the factory.

At the same time, Alex also asked Chuck to find someone who could be trusted to manage the plant, after all, he wouldn't spend a lot of time on it. Chuck soon found a black man, a co-worker he had met at the factory. He looks to be about forty years old, and he is said to be a workshop director.

"His name is Sam, he's my former supervisor, he's very reliable, and you can trust him." Chuck explained.

Alex looked at Sam carefully, and felt that he was no different from the other black people, and he couldn't see anything. However, he is not afraid of Sam's tricks, so he will naturally let someone else manage the finances of this factory. As for Sam, as long as he can help him take care of the production of hula hoops, there will be additional personnel in sales.

We talked to each other for a while and got to know each other's personalities a little. Soon it was agreed that Alex would give Sam $100,000 a year, and that he would only need to produce one thing, and that was the hula hoop he designed.

"Is this going to be made of polyethylene?" Sam quickly got into the groove and started working for Alex.

"Yes! You can make it with different polyethylene pipes, and I need a 3 foot circle. Make circles of various colors, don't sell them after you're done, wait for my news. Alex gestured with his hand and commanded carefully.

Sam was an old worker, and he knew at a glance that this kind of thing was very simple to make and very cheap. Calculating the production cost and the cost of sales, such a circle needs to cost less than $0.8.

"How much does this stuff cost?" Sam asked the last question.

Alex immediately replied, "$2 apiece!" ”

Sam's eyes widened and he said, "$2? That's expensive, will anyone buy it? ”

Alex smiled, and he said confidently, "I still think it's cheap, and if I wasn't in such a hurry to make money, I'd like to sell it more expensive." ”

After the hula hoop became a global trend, it would be forgotten so quickly, because there was no patent protection at the beginning, and everyone came to produce, resulting in a very low profit for the hula hoop. People originally bought it just to show off to others. It turns out that you have me, and everyone has it, and sometimes this kind of hula hoop sport is not a fashionable sport.

If Alex had been left to do it, he would certainly not have let this hula hoop move pass so quickly. He would be like Steve Jobs, leading fashion trends while creating hunger marketing to keep the movement going for at least a decade or more.

Sam quickly made a few hula hoop samples based on the drawings designed by Alex.

As soon as he got the samples, Alex asked them to apply for a patent. Not only the United States patents, as long as there are countries with patent protection laws, he has people to apply for them.

In addition, Alex asked Sam to find someone to specialize in various hula hoops, such as spring-loaded hula hoops, soft hula hoops, and multi-purpose hula hoops...... As long as you can think of it, you can make it and apply for a patent. He doesn't believe that so many patents can't stop those people's copycats.

If anyone dares to copy his hula hoop, he will let the lawyer go to the lawsuit, and as long as he has money and patents, he will be able to bring these companies down.

When everything was ready, Alex asked people to start promoting this kind of hula hoop, but he didn't explicitly promote the hula hoop product, but the hula hoop sport. On the pretext of collecting data from health experiments, he found a lot of people to participate in the experiment.

For a time, such people would be seen in public places in major cities in the United States, wearing gym suits and wearing a 3-foot circle around their waists. They twisted and twisted, and the circle turned very fast, which was very beautiful.

These people are paid by Alex, basically there are more than ten in every city, as long as they twist in a crowded place for half an hour every day. It went on for days, and at last I got $10 and a hula hoop each.

This kind of propaganda didn't cost much money, less than two or three thousand dollars, but it caused quite a stir.

When those people first started, they couldn't help but feel nervous. After all, no one had ever done something vulgar like twisting their waist in a public place, especially in the fifties, and if anyone dared to do something similar on the street, it would be reminiscent of something indecent.

Surprisingly, many people enjoy watching them do this hula hoop exercise. No one said anything about them, but looked at them with a look of envy. Many of these people are adults who are willing to watch others play hula hoops because some people's butt writhing is very tempting.

When Alex stopped hiring them to do so, they all spontaneously went out into the streets to play hula hoops.

They already feel that this kind of envied exercise is a kind of enjoyment, especially when the manufacturer advertises this kind of exercise, and also says that this kind of exercise can lose weight and fitness. Skilled people can obtain the movement and development of waist and abdominal muscles, buttock muscles, and leg muscles, which can effectively improve the flexibility and flexibility of various parts of the human body.

"Where do you buy these plastic rings?"

People kept coming up and asking them, and people were desperate to find out where they could get this cool-looking thing.

"It's a hula hoop, we didn't buy it, someone gave it to us."

"Not sold? And what did they give you for? ”

"It's said to be doing a fitness experiment, and when the manufacturer sells this product, they want to know how much their product has a role in fitness effect."

The people who asked were immediately intrigued, and they wanted to join in on this cool-looking fitness sport. When they learned that the experiment was over, they all left disappointed.

This fitness experiment was not a whim of Alex, but a genuine request to be done by a doctor. What he didn't expect was that the doctor's final result was very optimistic. Doctors believe that people who are obese or lack of exercise, as long as they spend about half an hour a day doing this kind of hula hoop exercise, their physical health can quickly improve well.

Doctors were reluctant to end the experiment so quickly, and they asked Alex for funding to continue the experiment.

Alex spread his hands and said, "No money!" ”

After these doctors were dismissed by Alex's words, they were not willing to give up, and they all wrote relevant fitness experimental papers and published them in medical journals. Some of the more serious doctors asked Alex for some hula hoops, and they planned to find patients to do the experiments themselves.

Soon, major journalists also discovered this strange movement. They published articles in their own newspapers and quoted some of the doctors' views. Now more Americans are noticing.

However, it was found that this product, called hula hoop, was not sold anywhere. There are also people who have found the manufacturers that produce hula hoops, and they keep calling to ask about the sale of hula hoops. The answer was, please be patient, it is in production.

There are also unscrupulous manufacturers who see business opportunities, and they have imitated this kind of hula hoop, but as soon as they are listed, they are sued in court by a lawsuit. How could Alex, who had already been prepared, let go of such a good opportunity, he showed all the patents in his hand, plus the relevant information of health experiments, no matter which company could win this lawsuit.

The manufacturers, who did not have a production license, lost the lawsuit and had to compensate Alex for its losses, stop production, and destroy all the hula hoops that had not yet been sold.

This lawsuit caused a lot of uproar, and it also invisibly gave free publicity to the hula hoop. More people know that there is such a fitness equipment, an ordinary plastic ring, which can make people easily lose weight and fitness.

Just when Alex succeeded in making an example, the hula hoop was grandly listed in the eyes of everyone's expectation.

As soon as the $2 hula hoop hit the market, it was snapped up by people who had long been hungry for hunger marketing. In some areas, these hula hoops are even sold for $5 a piece. Fortunately, Alex was prepared, and he made the factory produce a lot of hula hoops early in the morning, and he kept them for sale.

A large number of hula hoops are taken from the warehouse and sent to various places. Soon, people were surprised to find that there were people playing hula hoops everywhere.

Bedrooms, living rooms, corridors, streets, playgrounds, squares, etc., can all see people playing hula hoops. That autumn, whenever a rugby game was played, there was often an unexpected delight. It was to watch the glamorous female leader of the band writhe her waist like crazy, drawing thousands of cheers from the audience.

No matter what the viewers may think, this new American game is still very popular in other countries.

In Germany, it is always a bit difficult for Germans without children to buy toys, so in order to avoid being seen, they ask the store to wrap the goods and deliver them to their homes at night.

When a Belgian expedition set out for Antarctica, it also included 20 hula hoops in their suite: the money was used for recreational expenses.

In Warsaw, a weekly newspaper for youth said: "If the Ministry of Light Industry and the Bureau of Handicrafts do not start producing hula hoops, we will fall far behind in this regard, especially from an international perspective." "The two departments were still dragging their feet, so the hula hoops were smuggled in through the GDR.

Seeing such a huge market, manufacturers from all over the world have contacted Alex to obtain an authorized production license. Alex also knows that it is impossible to satisfy so many users with just one plastic factory. He can only grant this patent to other manufacturers to produce.

Alex's licensing method is based on the number of sales by the manufacturer, and for every 1 hula hoop sold, a patent fee of $1 is paid. As for the price of the hula hoop, Alex doesn't care so much.

Because of this, manufacturers have to increase the selling price of hula hoops. In order to be able to make users feel that they are worth the money, they can only carefully manufacture, which prolongs the vitality of the hula hoop movement a lot.