Chapter 180: Viral in East Africa, the Investment World's Guiding Lantern of Doom

After handling the customer complaint, PinBei not only saw no drop in daily active users, but actually enjoyed a surge.

Meanwhile.

Far away in Addis Ababa, Zhou Jinling and the others finally received the second batch of Sister Chengzi F1 phones shipped from the Shencheng factory, with inventory reaching as high as one hundred thousand units.

In addition, there were thirty thousand units of Sister Chengzi F2 phones, improved from the Sister Chengzi C1, priced at 299 US dollars.

Cao Dahua had said: the price given to distributors could yield another 10-20 US dollars in profit depending on the partner's sales scale.

The Sister Chengzi F2's chip was switched from the Snapdragon MSM8260 dual-core processor to the cheaper, slightly less powerful MSM7225, and the screen was correspondingly downgraded.

But the speaker volume, number of card slots, and battery capacity were enhanced, making its design better suited to the African market.

"Zhou Ge, are we starting sales tomorrow?" Jin Xu asked with a smile as he moved the goods into the warehouse.

Their station had been allocated 5,000 Sister Chengzi F1 units and 1,500 Sister Chengzi F2 units; at the original sales pace, that was enough for them to sell for at least a month and a half.

"No rush. I've invited over a dozen nearby digital store owners to Kate Gna Restaurant to discuss cooperation."

Zhou Jinling changed into a suit, somewhat recovering the poise he once had.

Kate Gna Restaurant was a restaurant in the nearby commercial district, serving local cuisine; the food and beverage items were mainly Shiro (chickpea stew), Tibs (fried meat), and Injera (flatbread wraps).

Jin Xu and Qi Liang exchanged a glance, wry smiles involuntarily appearing on their faces.

Because local food was cheap, the three of them often ate this stuff, and they had long had enough of it.

"The company reimburses expenses, so eat plenty at lunch." Zhou Jinling finished tying his tie, patted both men on the shoulder, and joked with a smile.

He didn't want to eat local food either, but the owners he had invited were all locals; switching to a Chinese restaurant simply wouldn't be appropriate.

Moreover, Chinese restaurants in Addis Ababa had menu prices comparable to French or Italian restaurants—unimaginably expensive.

"Zhou Ge, how about switching to a Chinese restaurant and letting these big dark-skinned fellows experience our food culture?" Jin Xu said with a grin.

Qi Liang nodded along as well; although Chinese restaurants in Addis Ababa had adapted their flavors, as long as the customers were Chinese, the cooks would prepare dishes according to domestic tastes.

The taste was actually not bad!

"Cut the nonsense. You two love your mao xue wang, stir-fried fat intestines, and braised hairtail—but which of these local bosses could stomach that?"

Zhou Jinling rolled his eyes and said, annoyed.

"Hehe, that's true enough." Qi Liang sighed and replied with a dry laugh.

"It's getting late. Bring two sample units, let's go!"

Zhou Jinling instructed the two, then took the lead walking outside.

The three walked along Old Ambo Road for about fifteen minutes before they saw the Kate Gna Restaurant sign.

The moment Zhou Jinling stepped inside, he was surrounded by three dark-skinned local bosses and ushered to a dining table to sit down.

After all, the person who had been communicating with them previously was Zhou Jinling.

Although Jin Xu and Qi Liang were also wearing shirts, their bearing was clearly a notch below Zhou Jinling's, so they were taken for his assistants.

At this point, about a dozen people were already seated at the table—mostly Black, except for one woman in a long dress whose complexion was slightly lighter, looking more like a Southeast Asian.

Zhou Jinling knew the other party was a mixed-race Black and white woman who ran a digital specialty store near the Sheraton Hotel on Bole Road.

The scale was not small; she specialized in selling Apple, Samsung, Nokia, and other phone products.

Abyssinia had a population of over 90 million; although most could only afford 34-dollar feature phones, there were likewise over 10 million people with extremely strong purchasing power.

Let alone the 299-dollar Sister Chengzi F2, even the 799-dollar Apple 4 was a hot seller locally—enough to show the spending power of local tycoons.

"Mr. Zhou, may we see the goods first?" Elita asked.

She was the only female boss among these distributors, and also the one with the strongest capital in the nearby commercial district.

"Of course, no problem."

Zhou Jinling smiled and pulled out a chair to sit down.

Jin Xu, at the side, placed the bag in his hand on the table and pulled out a palm-sized phone box.

Pure white design, looking extremely exquisite.

The front was printed with the words "Sister Chengzi F2."

Elita unceremoniously picked it up, tore open the shrink wrap, and a phone with an ultra-narrow bezel and ultra-thin body was revealed before everyone's eyes.

Elita powered on the phone, connected to the restaurant's wifi, and began trying it out as if no one else were there.

In 2011 Abyssinia, internet infrastructure was still relatively underdeveloped, but Addis Ababa, as the capital, typically had wifi service at upscale restaurants, cafes, hotels, and business centers.

Zhou Jinling didn't mind, sipping tea leisurely.

Although the Sister Chengzi F2 had been downgraded in specs, it had been optimized in speakers, card slots, and camera algorithms; moreover, at only 299 dollars, once marketing was done well, it would absolutely be a hot item locally.

"Click!"

Elita tested the camera function again; although the imaging effect couldn't compare to Apple's, her face in the photo had clearly been brightened and optimized.

This showed that Sister Chengzi Tech valued the user experience of Abyssinians more than the likes of Apple and Samsung.

"Mr. Zhou, I'll take 100 units of this model." Elita was quite satisfied and asked for 100 units right off the bat.

"No problem." Zhou Jinling hadn't expected that, before this meal had even started eating, he'd already secured the most capable distributor.

"Young Lady Elita, please let me have a look." A nearby digital store owner, seeing Elita so optimistic about this product, immediately requested.

Elita handed the phone over.

Seeing this, Zhou Jinling was in great spirits and called over a waiter to start ordering.

The group ate and chatted; an hour later, the dozen or so digital store owners who had come to the appointment had all ordered some quantity of goods, more or less.

In any case, Zhou Jinling promised that if they couldn't sell them, they could return them to him at any time.

After eating and drinking their fill, Zhou Jinling led the group back to the Sister Chengzi phone specialty store.

Each side handed over money and goods simultaneously.

In just over ten minutes, Zhou Jinling had presold 1,700 Sister Chengzi F1 units and 480 Sister Chengzi F2 units.

The reason for such results was also the outcome of his nearly half a month of going door-to-door to communicate one by one.

While waiting for the factory to ship the goods, Zhou Jinling worked on wall advertisements while exploring marketing methods suited to the local market.

In Abyssinia, where e-commerce was underdeveloped, the offline channel expansion approach that Ou Han originally used was actually a better fit.

"Zhou Ge, it's got to be you! In just a short while, you've sold what we usually sell in a whole month." Qi Liang said, buttering him up.

"It's only pre-sales. Whether we can sell out depends on whether these people push hard enough, and whether our wall advertisements actually work."

Zhou Jinling didn't appear overly optimistic.

"I think there's no problem. The prototype of the Chengzi F1 sold 10 million units domestically."

Jin Xu used domestic sales figures to encourage the two of them.

"Open the door! Welcome the customers!"

Zhou Jinling nodded slightly, forced a smile, and shouted loudly.

Outside the door, more than a dozen buyers had already lined up. When Elita and the others picked up their goods and left, this group had peeked through the door crack and seen the shelves packed full of phones.

After a month of fermenting, the Chengzi F1 had already become somewhat famous locally.

Priced at only 99 US dollars, you could get a smartphone with a 3.7-inch large screen, quad-SIM quad-standby, two batteries, and 8GB of massive memory—instantly becoming a fashion item for young people.

But for half a month straight, a "sold out" sign hung at the shop door, leaving people greatly disappointed.

This unintentional hunger marketing secretly accumulated a large number of potential buyers.

Jin Xu and Qi Liang glanced outside the door—the line of customers was growing longer and longer.

The two hurriedly pulled the door open, stood behind the counter, and reopened for business.

In one afternoon, they sold 47 Chengzi F1s and 12 Chengzi F2s. After all, the prices of the two differed by three times, so the F2's sales were inevitably a bit lower.

Other Chengzi phone market teams had similarly impressive sales figures, and people like Zhou Jinling who had built a primary distribution network were not few in number.

In just three days, Abyssinia absorbed 27,000 Chengzi F1s and 6,000 Chengzi F2s.

Sales gradually heated up!

Compared with October and November, Chengzi phones had finally gained a firm foothold in East Africa, and won users' hearts with outstanding camera functions, ultra-long battery life, and a multi-card slot design.

Meanwhile.

After finalizing the cooperation with Suning and Vancl, Chen Yansen decided to hold Pinbei's first investment promotion conference on December 28th.

On the basis of stabilizing existing merchants, he would introduce more brand owners and source factories to enhance Pinbei's influence in the industry and seek new cooperation opportunities and business models.

Although Pinbei had only been online for a little over a month, its outstanding sales results still attracted a large wave of merchants to attend.

After learning of this, the leader in charge of commerce in Xucheng immediately arranged two teams of inspection personnel to escort this investment promotion conference.

One should know that in 2011, Xucheng was still just a major agricultural city, with pillar industries entirely relying on forestry, coal power, and light textile and food industries.

As for the automotive parts, photovoltaic energy, cloud computing and big data, and new materials industries of ten years later—apart from cloud computing which had just begun to be laid out, the others didn't even have a shadow yet.

From this, one could see how much importance the higher-ups placed on Sister Chengzi Technology and Pinbei Technology.

The day before December 28th, people gradually arrived in Xucheng.

What Chen Yansen hadn't expected was that Zhang Jindong of Suning actually brought his team to visit in person.

Don't be fooled by Suning in 2011—its annual online sales were less than 10 billion, but Suning's real strength was all offline: 1,500 chain stores nationwide, firmly holding the top seat in Hua nation's home appliance chain retail.

A fortune of thirty or forty billion, top ten on the Forbes rich list, riding high at the peak of his success.

Chen Yansen was well aware of the strength of this Jin Ling local tiger. Though he wasn't afraid, when business came to his door, he certainly wouldn't turn it away.

In the business world, having one more friend is far better than having one more enemy.

Moreover, bringing in Suning would give Pinbei one more option while perfecting its merchant system.

"President Chen, young and promising, pleased to meet you!"

When meeting, Zhang Jindong extended his hand first, appearing extremely enthusiastic.

Zhang Jindong, nearly fifty, was dressed in a sapphire-blue bespoke suit, with a tuft of white hair on his forehead, his face glowing with health, as he stepped out from the back seat of a Bentley with the license plate "66999."

Assistants and bodyguards followed behind him, full of pomp.

The development path he had set for his own son was similar to Chen Yansen's. If Kang Yang weren't still studying at university in Penn State, Zhang Jindong would really have wanted to bring his son to meet Chen Yansen.

"President Zhang, you're too kind. Please, come inside."

Chen Yansen stepped forward with a smile to shake hands and exchange pleasantries.

Looking at Zhang Jindong, he couldn't help but sigh inwardly—a businessman, once unable to keep up with the times, would find it very hard to hold onto the wealth in his hands.

Zhang Jindong had made two wrong moves in a row: first, failing to successfully transform, with Suning's online business losing to Jingdong; second, making reckless investments—acquiring Inter Milan, Wanda Department Store, Carrefour, and investing in Jia Yueting and Evergrande—losing forty to fifty billion in one go.

Truly a guiding ghost lamp of the investment world!

Zhang Jindong looked at Chen Yansen with satisfaction. Logically speaking, with his status, he shouldn't have needed to attend an investment promotion conference of this level, but he just wanted to meet Chen Yansen.

Not yet twenty, yet making waves in e-commerce and the phone industry, with a fortune of ten billion.

At this moment, Zhang Jindong developed the same idea as Ma Wenteng and Ma Liyun—knowing it was impossible, yet still wanting to recruit Chen Yansen.

The two chatted as they walked toward the lobby of Building 6.

Inside and outside the building, besides the security personnel responsible for patrol, there was also a team of inspection personnel.

The ground parking spaces were filled with luxury cars. After all, the merchants invited to the investment promotion conference were at least B-tier brands, or owned a processing factory with considerable production capacity. BBA was common, and there were over a dozen Maybachs, Bentleys, Porsches, and Range Rovers parked.

Chen Yansen led Zhang Jindong to the first row of the conference hall on the 8th floor and sat down.

But no sooner had Zhang Jindong sat down than his face turned cold, because three seats away sat the head of Jingdong.

The two were from the same hometown, yet due to competition in the digital and home appliance sector, they had been fighting fiercely.

"President Zhang, didn't expect to run into you at an industry exchange meeting of this scale."

Liu Qiangdong said with a smile, his words carrying a hint of teasing.

(End of this chapter)