2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 121 The Initial Structure of Flashspeed Automotive
Seeing others make money without feeling the pain, but doing it yourself is exhausting. It wasn't until he actually started building a medium-sized factory that Tan Jincheng realized how difficult it was.

The scenes of people waving their arms and bowing down in online novels simply don't exist. Even a frontline ordinary worker dares to negotiate with you and give you attitude.

If someone is unhappy or can't get through to the training, the employee might quit. This happens frequently during training sessions.

Many things also require her to do personally. For example, she urgently needs to recruit financial staff and a purchasing manager. In the end, Lin Qifen did not accept Tan Jincheng's suggestion to switch jobs and become a full-time accountant.

However, she did recommend a classmate to Tan Jincheng who had a similar professional experience.

Liu Meilin, 40 years old this year, is a classmate of Lin Qifen. Both of them have similar experiences. However, compared to Lin Qifen, Liu Meilin's family conditions are slightly worse. So, under the temptation of Tan Jincheng's high salary, she accepted the invitation.

Going forward, Liu Meilin will be responsible for the finances of Jinpeng Trading, Jinyi Industry, and Shanchi Automotive. Considering the higher complexity of parts procurement and supplier coordination for Shanchi Automotive, Tan Jincheng ultimately decided to locate the finance office at the factory.

With a simple accounting role for three companies and four Taobao stores, the monthly salary is 13,000 yuan. Of this, 3000 yuan is handled by Jinpeng Trading, and Tan Jincheng only needs to be responsible for the remaining 10,000 yuan. For Tan Jincheng, this is quite a good deal.

As for Lin Qifen, since she knew that Tan Jincheng was going to hire a full-time accountant, she naturally knew that the financial settlement work for the three companies would no longer be handled by her.

In the adult world, everyone understands each other implicitly. The reason why she was still willing to introduce a reliable accountant to Tan Jincheng was because she wanted to maintain some goodwill.

A 20-year-old young man has built three companies in just over six months, including a factory. He may become a prominent figure in the future. The bond we forged during his entrepreneurial journey may prove useful in the future.

Who can guarantee that their life will be smooth sailing? Liu Meilin's family was originally in similar circumstances, but an accident depleted their savings, forcing them to change their lifestyle.

In addition, Tan Jincheng also hired two cashiers, both middle-aged women, thus completing the initial financial team of Flash Auto.

The finance team's biggest task when they took office was to deal with the invoice issues of Flash Automotive during this period. These issues had not been handled by anyone before and were quite chaotic. In addition, the workers' payroll system also needed to be set up.

According to Tan Jincheng's plan, Flash Auto's wages were to be paid through formal bank card transfers. However, some workers were unwilling to accept this and preferred to receive cash. They also considered the social security payment process unnecessary and preferred to receive the money directly.

There are quite a few employees with this mindset, and at this point, Chen Jinwen needs to step in to appease them. If there are really those who cannot be reasoned with, then there is no other way but to dismiss them.

If you want to grow stronger and bigger, you can't change these standardized operations. Rather than waiting until you've grown bigger in the future to make changes, it's better to set the rules from the beginning, since there will always be such opposing voices no matter when.

Even in 2023, many people are still unwilling to pay social security contributions.

According to Tan Jincheng's design, the final structure of Flash Automotive will be divided into: Finance Department, Marketing Department, R&D Department, Production Department, Quality Management Department, Purchasing Department, and Human Resources Department.

The responsibilities of the finance department are self-evident. The marketing department will be responsible for the sales and marketing of the electric scooter. The R&D department will be responsible for product development and technological innovation. The production department will be responsible for product manufacturing. The quality management department will be responsible for product quality control.

The purchasing department is responsible for the procurement of raw materials and supplier management for electric scooters. Its specific tasks include finding excellent suppliers, signing contracts, and managing raw material inventory. Like the marketing department, it is a core department.

The human resources department is responsible for employee recruitment and training, as well as performance management, and there is also an administrative department.

In addition, Tan Jincheng also plans to set up an administrative customer service department, whose main components will naturally be some other administrative positions in the company, plus customer service personnel.

Back when 400 numbers were considered high-end and not synonymous with spam calls, having two dedicated customer service lines made FlashCar seem more sophisticated.

Currently, apart from the finance department and human resources department, which have already appointed their leaders, the heads of other departments have not yet been appointed. Although Wang Chao is currently leading the R&D department, he is only a team leader in name only.

The other employees were all given titles such as R&D engineer, test engineer, and designer. Among them were many interns from Ningbo Vocational College. In the future, these people, including newly recruited employees, will compete for the position of head of the R&D department.

Leave professional tasks to professionals, but there's no need to give them high-ranking positions from the start; they need to have a sense of competition.

The same applies to the marketing department. Neither Lin Yumin nor Wu Zhenping are the heads of the marketing department. Those who want to get promoted have to compete for the position.

Another department to be designated is the Production Department. Unlike other departments, the Production Department is considered a grassroots leader. In layman's terms, it can be understood as an enlarged version of the workshop director. This position is also quite important.

Ordinary workers without a leader are like a disorganized mess, so it is essential to have a manager from the very beginning.

Fortunately, after Sun Yuming led the training and filled in for a few days, such a person in charge was found. Since last year, Tan Jincheng has been visiting factories in various places and building up his network of contacts by going out with these factory owners from time to time. At this time, the results began to show.

In 2005, when recruiting employees was relatively easy, even during the off-season, it was still relatively easy to recruit entry-level employees and junior managers thanks to the recommendations of a group of factory owners.

It has to be said that these factory owner friends may not be able to help you with anything major, but they really go the extra mile for small things. If you make a phone call, they will genuinely try their best to help you find out which former employees were more capable, and they will also call to ask about those who have stayed in touch after leaving the company.

It was under these circumstances that Wang Guoxin was introduced to Shanchi Automotive. With decades of experience in workshop management in the auto parts industry, Wang Guoxin, 43 years old this year, became the head of the production department at Shanchi Automotive.

In the early stages of a company's establishment, the required skills of employees, except for a few very critical positions, are not actually that high. Suitability is sufficient, and the right person can manage the right position. As the company develops, a large portion of the initial employees who joined the company will inevitably be eliminated; survival of the fittest is an unavoidable process in the development of both businesses and society.

Tan Jincheng is now very clear that the goal is not to find some incredibly talented person, but to find a suitable candidate who can get the company running smoothly. If no one can be found, he will fill in himself.

For example, Tan Jincheng is prepared to fill the position of purchasing manager himself for a while because the position is too important.

Although the structure of the electric scooter is simple, the procurement of its parts is not insignificant. The seven main components alone, including the battery, motor, controller, and charger, involve many suppliers.

Based on the minimum procurement standards, if two suppliers are selected for each component for comparison, that would amount to 14 suppliers. With the few million yuan currently in hand, if any procurement manager were to be hired, and if they were to encounter a ruthless one, that manager alone could bankrupt Tan Jincheng.

To be honest, apart from Tan Lihua, Tan Jincheng wouldn't trust anyone else to handle this matter, not even Zhang Xupeng. It's not that he doesn't trust Zhang Xupeng or is afraid that he might take kickbacks during the procurement process, but rather that he doesn't currently have the ability to do so.

There are reasons why the turnover rate of purchasing managers in most companies is high.

In addition, there was a joke in the new energy vehicle industry in my previous life: the reason why the price of a certain new energy vehicle company’s cars remained high was not because the cars were so good, but because their parts procurement prices were 25% higher than those of their competitors.

Tan Jincheng didn't want such a thing to happen in his company in the future, so he took over the entire process himself in the early stages. After understanding the cost of a car, he would then replace him with a purchasing manager, and that would be fine.

According to Tan Jincheng's vision, if the cost of a small electric scooter can be controlled within 800 yuan during his procurement process, then any other procurement manager can do the same.

If you purchase finished products for under 800 yuan, and the quality remains unchanged, you can let your purchasing manager skim some profits, and I won't bother with that. After all, too much purity leaves no room for innovation.

You can't expect a horse to run without feeding it; Tan Jincheng certainly wouldn't do that.
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"Dong dong dong."

Just as Tan Jincheng was busy in his office, there was a knock on the door.

"Come in," Tan Jincheng said without looking up.

As the door opened, a crisp voice rang out: "Boss Tan, our filming task for today is complete."

It was Gu Qingqing. She didn't film today either, but she still came with Qin Siyu and Zhao Xianbo.

During the day, besides keeping an eye on the filming progress, Gu Qingqing spent the rest of her time with the customer service staff of the three Taobao stores, learning about the operation of the Taobao stores, how to reply to customers, how to ship orders, and how to handle negative reviews.

It has to be said that, after being persuaded by Tan Jincheng, Gu Qingqing has really started to learn seriously and has gotten involved in the role of Taobao operations.

Meanwhile, Gu Qingqing also took the time to visit the workshop of Shanchi Auto Industry. The workers stood in rows, listening to the lecturer's introduction, and various machines were being installed and debugged one after another.

At noon, I went to the canteen of Flash Auto to try it out. The meal was served on iron plates, with three dishes and a soup. Although it was not very plentiful, the taste was pretty good and the portions were quite generous.

All of this was new and exciting for Gu Qingqing.

Gu Qingqing had also thought that if she hadn't met Tan Jincheng, she would never have been exposed to so many industries that she had never seen before, from Taobao stores to clothing trade, and then to electric scooter manufacturers.

These things seem completely unrelated to her, a college student majoring in English.

But it was these experiences that showed her another side of society. She realized that Taobao stores could make so much money, and that so many people actually bought those seemingly insignificant, even somewhat vulgar, QQ underwear.

Furthermore, according to customer service staff, these QQ underwear items actually have the lowest return rate. In the 10 days since they went online, although the actual sales volume is average, the return rate and negative review rate are actually zero.

The funniest thing is that Boss Tan actually had people pretend to be buyers, placing fake orders and adding pictures from who-knows-where to the comments section. Then, he had these customer service staff take screenshots and post them on QQ groups and online forums.

What's going on in this person's head? How could they even come up with this kind of advertising method? But judging from the feedback from customer service staff, the advertising effect is actually quite good?
This was a huge blow to Gu Qingqing. No wonder Boss Tan said that this store might be the best-selling and longest-surviving of the three stores in the future.

With such outrageous propaganda, how could it not be good?
Gu Qingqing found the promotional tactics used by QQ Lingerie Store to be somewhat sleazy, which didn't fit Boss Tan's usual image. But this seemingly upright and gentle person had come up with such a crooked trick.

In fact, what Gu Qingqing didn't know was that Boss Tan's underhanded tricks didn't stop there. For example, he used the rules at the Canton Fair to report some infringing merchants, and he would likely use such tricks again in the future.

"You're done filming? You have class tomorrow, so we won't see each other again until next week." Tan Jincheng looked up and smiled at Gu Qingqing.

After spending six months together, Tan Jincheng's feelings for Gu Qingqing gradually increased.

(End of this chapter)