Chapter 10: All Glory to Umbrella

In September, Umbrella Company acquired Isis Pharmaceuticals for 930,000 pounds and completed restructuring that month.

In mid-October, animal experiments passed, and the Medicines Safety Commission issued a clinical trial permit.

At the same time, the standardized industrial production line for Cloud White Potion was built, the first batch of 100 bottles of White Potion was successfully filled, and the industrial production efficacy was verified.

In late October, a temporary license was issued, the medicine could be marketed, and Patrick immediately launched an overwhelming advertising campaign in almost all mainstream media such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and the BBC.

In early November, the first batch of orders was provided by several pharmacies that trusted Patrick, totaling 5,000 bottles.

That afternoon, 2,600 bottles of medicine were produced.

At the same time, raw materials were exhausted.

In the new Isis Pharmaceuticals factory, Patrick looked at the dozens of boxes of Cloud White Potion in front of him, frowning.

"Our raw materials are only enough for this many medicines?" He asked with some disbelief.

Murphy was also a bit embarrassed. He had previously bought out all the dittany in Diagon Alley, and even went twice later to supplement the raw materials, but he still vastly underestimated the huge production capacity gap between industrial production and manual workshops.

The materials he collected that were enough for Diagon Alley for one or two months were used up in two hours in the pharmaceutical factory, and the machinery and equipment didn't even run at full capacity.

The scale of the Wizarding World is still too insignificant compared to the Muggle world.

"Can we get more raw materials?" Patrick asked.

"Yes, but it takes time, and it might not be sustainable for the time being."

Murphy was thinking about whether to consider searching in other countries and wizarding settlements.

"So the raw materials are so scarce, no wonder such a powerful medicine has never been seen before."

Patrick was quite open-minded, and even felt a bit relieved.

If it weren't for this, he really couldn't understand why this kind of medicine hadn't been discovered by others, but came from a teenager who hadn't undergone professional pharmaceutical training—this made all the pharmaceutical researchers in the world feel ashamed?

"The problem of raw materials must be thought of, but the urgent matter now is how to complete the orders."

Patrick pondered for a while and said: "Dilute it."

Murphy was a bit shocked. "Can we do that?"

Patrick nodded. "Just do it! Every bottle of White Potion is 30 ml now, but for treating ordinary small wounds, one or two drops of White Potion are enough. The 30 ml medicine capacity is too wasteful."

He said, and his train of thought opened up. "In fact, we must dilute it. Where would an ordinary family have so many external injuries? If a bottle of White Potion is enough for several years, how can our medicine sell?"

"No, diluting isn't enough. The effect of White Potion is too strong, almost no continuous medication is needed, so we will make it into disposable drops, or disposable sprays, disposable Band-Aids, etc. We have to sell medicine by the 'drop'!"

Murphy thought about it. "Makes sense, but you and them have already negotiated the price, our pricing was originally not cheap, will it still sell if we reduce the amount of medicine?"

As for whether this kind of profiteering behavior of reducing quantity without reducing price is unethical, Murphy didn't have such thoughts, mainly worried about sales.

"The orders only wrote the content. Anyway, they don't know the proportion of medicine ingredients. The medicine in this batch of orders will be bottled first, and each bottle will be enough for one or two treatments, and then paired with some disposable medicine as a gift."

Patrick said, his train of thought became clear. "Let the pharmacist test it, reserve 0.2 or 0.3 ml of stock solution per bottle, and dilute the rest with water or alcohol to see the effect."

"These raw materials should be very expensive, right?" Patrick asked.

Murphy calculated that he spent more than 100,000 pounds to buy gold, all of which were exchanged for Galleons, and two-thirds of them were used to buy dittany.

Therefore, the cost of these dittany was close to 90,000 pounds.

Yet it only produced more than 2,000 bottles of medicine.

The average raw material cost per bottle of medicine is about 35 pounds.

That is, the cost is about 1.2 pounds per ml.

And they used the currently relatively expensive medicine as a reference, and set the price of a bottle of Cloud White Potion at only 15 pounds.

Murphy didn't have a concept of how much medicine his materials could produce before, but now calculating it this way, if it were sold according to the original amount, he would really lose a lot.

But if it is done according to Patrick's method, each bottle of medicine only has 0.2-0.3 ml of stock solution.

Then the cost per bottle is directly reduced to below 0.4 pounds. Even if the price is set as low as the most competitive 5 pounds or so, he still has more than ten times the profit space.

The clever thing is that this amount of medicine is already completely enough.

Even for treating relatively serious wounds, only two or three drops of Essence of Dittany are needed.

And one drop of medicine is about 0.05 ml.

0.2-0.3 ml of stock solution is about 4 to 6 drops, enough to treat two serious external injuries. Based on its efficacy, it is completely enough to meet the needs of ordinary families.

He described the cost to Patrick roughly, and then couldn't help but reach out and pat Patrick. "Patrick, you are a fucking genius!"

The two discussed for a long time about the use, positioning, and pricing of various disposable products.

"All disposable products must be packaged separately, and they must be exquisite. The best content also needs the best appearance to be recognized."

"Finally, most importantly, every product must have our trademark printed in the appropriate position. The red and white umbrella-shaped logo you drew before is very recognizable and will definitely leave a deep impression."

Does that even need to be said?

The billions of zombie tides in the post-apocalyptic wasteland will let you know what the oppression of the Umbrella Corporation is.

Thinking about the streets full of Umbrella Corporation logos in the future, Murphy started to worry a bit.

Merlin's eggs are about to shrink!

In short, no matter what, don't touch virus research!

However, Murphy still supported this proposal. At present, Jobs' aesthetics had caused a trend in the business world, and Patrick was obviously a fan of his idol.

And he indeed possessed quite a few traits similar to his idol.

After some exploration, Murphy no longer had any doubts about whether Cloud White Potion could be accepted by the Muggle market.

He took a piece of paper from his bosom and handed it to Patrick. "I wanted to give it to you yesterday, 5% shares, don't think it's too little, others can't buy it even with five million pounds."

But in Murphy's place, Patrick's role is actually much more useful than those five million pounds from Jim.

Patrick took the equity certificate, his face flat.

"Why, don't think it's enough?"

Patrick shook his head. "I just calculated it in my mind. Conservatively estimated at a 15-fold profit margin, this order alone will make us a net profit of more than 70,000 pounds. And such a shipment volume is less than one-thousandth of London's demand, and even less than one-ten-thousandth of the entire UK, but based on the effect of White Potion, it is bound to be popular globally."

"This 5%, within a year, will be worth hundreds of millions, and it will continue to climb. How could I think it's not enough."

"It's just that, compared to the glory of bringing such a product to the world, hundreds of millions of pounds don't seem like much."

Murphy was a bit surprised. "I didn't expect you to be an idealist."

However, this wasn't particularly surprising. If Patrick didn't have that little bit of idealist temperament, he wouldn't have been recruited by a hairy kid like himself with empty gloves and white wolves.

"Haha, I think we will leave our names in history!" Patrick's eyes were shining.

For such a middle-aged bald man, Murphy suddenly felt he was a little cute.

He smiled. "Since what you want is honor, and money doesn't mean much to you, then give the shares back to me."

Patrick's face stiffened, and he hurriedly retracted the equity certificate.

"I was wrong just now, all glory belongs to Umbrella, belongs to you, boss. I just took a ride, what honor, nonsense."

Honor is honor, but you still have to eat.

Murphy was amused. "Rest assured, no one can snatch this 5% from you. Moreover, in the future, we probably won't have only this one product, Cloud White Potion. You probably still underestimated the value of this equity."

Patrick suddenly thought of the notebook Murphy took out when he told him about the experimental steps of White Potion.

White Potion was just a page torn off by Murphy from that notebook.

Perhaps, Murphy still has one or two other medicines of this level in his hands? Or even three or four? Or more?

"Hah." Patrick finally suppressed the wild thoughts in his heart.

He solemnly put the certificate into his backpack, thinking about framing it later.

"Thank you for your generosity." This time Patrick's expression was much more serious.

Murphy smiled. "All glory belongs to Umbrella."

Patrick stared at Murphy with that somewhat uncomfortable gaze. "All glory belongs to the boss!"

(End of chapter)