2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 426 The First Step in Building a Car

As the company grew larger, it seemed that its other affiliated businesses were becoming increasingly difficult to control.

Take payment methods as an example. Before founding Orange Technology, Tan Jincheng had never thought of this. The game recharge system of Happy Farm was relatively simple and did not meet the payment standards of online shopping at all.

Many businesses seem to be built piecemeal. In the field of electronic payment, due to the actual conflict of interest with banks, and the fact that third-party licenses will not be officially issued for many years, I really didn't think I would do it before.

However, now that we have e-commerce business, we have no choice but to continue. Alipay can't be used as the main payment method, and Tencent's Tenpay is too weak. It's practically useless, only good for topping up QQ coins.

Tan Jincheng often thinks that Tencent's success is a great stroke of luck.

Let's put aside the question of whether they copied or not. It seems that only QQ truly emerged from among real competitors. Other products, including WX, developed based on strong initial capital accumulation.

I've made countless products and spent a fortune on online shopping, but recently it hasn't worked out. The same goes for Weibo and short videos. Short videos are the funniest; I've released several apps and offered countless subsidies, but in the end, they were all taken down.

So many of these big projects lost money. It wouldn't matter if they succeeded while losing money, but they all failed. It's truly a journey of trial and error.

With so many flawed projects, he would have been in serious trouble if he had switched companies, but he grew bigger and bigger through trial and error. He became rich and caught a good era. He was really lucky.

Once the internet truly takes off, other companies won't be so lucky; a slight mistake in a project can be fatal.

Flashpoint and Orange Technology are certainly not as large and powerful as Tencent, which can afford to squander their resources. They have to be very careful with every project, and any derivative industries must revolve around their main business.

In the mobile payment sector, Orange Technology can't really make it big. First, it doesn't have a large user base, and second, this thing really relies on credibility.

Users even prioritize large state-owned banks when depositing money, as payment systems developed by small companies are inherently less trustworthy than those of large companies.

Therefore, in addition to payment methods such as recharge cards and recharge wallets, Orange Technology wants to cooperate more with banks and connect to their online payment systems, which would greatly enhance credibility.

Not too many are needed; just getting the payment systems of a few large banks sorted out will suffice. Currently, there are no issues with Ningbo Bank, as a large portion of Flash Group's cash inflows and outflows are processed through the Beicang branch of Ningbo Bank.

Even the salary payment is made through Ningbo Bank, as they are a major client of Ningbo Bank. Ningbo Bank has already passed the IPO review and will be listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in July. Tan Jincheng had previously used connections to obtain some original shares, but not many.

Firstly, too much money couldn't be spent on this, and secondly, it was genuinely popular, so not many could be obtained. Tan Jincheng acquired the shares at the issue price.

However, after the IPO, ByteDance will continue to acquire shares of Ningbo Bank. This stock is so volatile, as Tan Jincheng knows. In addition, the bank's dividend system is quite good, and there is a dividend every year.

Apart from Ningbo Bank, which is fine, we only need to get the payment systems of a few large state-owned banks connected. With about four or five banks connected, we can basically cover the vast majority of users.

Once Orange Products is successful, banks won't need to take the initiative; they will naturally come to us seeking cooperation. This is also a good way to attract new customers.

Speaking of the secondary market stocks that ByteDance has acquired intermittently, they will all be a considerable fortune in the future. As of now, the gains have been quite good. It's so great to be in such a good era.

I started buying in batches last year, and the stock market has seen amazing gains this year. When I first heard about SAIC Motor last year, I bought the stock under the name of "Big Engine".

So far, SAIC Motor's stock price has nearly tripled, resulting in astonishing returns.

Tan Jincheng planned to gradually sell all his A-share holdings when the market index was around 5000 points, including his holdings of Moutai. In any case, the several-fold increase represents a significant price difference for ByteDance.

Anyway, we can buy it back at a lower price a year later. Buying for ten million and selling for thirty to fifty million will result in a premium of at least two times, which is a huge amount. Knowing that this trend will continue, it would be unreasonable not to take action.

It would be a waste of resources not to take the share of the gifts that the times have given us, even if we know it. In addition, we can do a lot with the extra benefits from these gifts, whether it is FlashDrive, Cang Technology or even ByteDance Engine itself.
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Monday, April 5th.

Tan Jincheng, who had been back in Beicang for several days, was welcoming two important guests at the headquarters of Flash Motors today: Ying Jianren and Wu Jianzhong.

Since Tan Jincheng visited Yongkang during the May Day holiday and finalized the oil-to-electricity conversion plan with Ying Jianren, Ying Jianren has been actively seeking connections and recruiting relevant technical talent.

Zhongtai and Shanchi's plan is naturally to implement the oil-to-electric conversion project in Beicang. Wu Jianzhong has been here a few times, but this is Ying Jianren's first time visiting Shanchi's headquarters. The Beicang factory project is basically managed by his brother-in-law Wu Jianzhong, and Ying Jianren rarely comes here.

With the added advantage of China's infrastructure boom, the Zhongtai Beicang factory is being built at a very fast pace. Some production line platforms will be ready for production by the end of this year. Due to the limited number of car models, the Beicang factory will have a relatively large production capacity once it is fully completed.

The initial Flash factory served more of an auxiliary function. The plan for Zhongtai is to wait until after acquiring Fiat, integrate it with Southeast Motor and its own existing technology, and develop more models.

These new models will be produced at the Beicang factory, mainly to support the production capacity of the Zhongtai 2008. The 2008 is indeed selling very well. Tan Jincheng doesn't know how many were sold in his previous life, but the overall feeling is that it is definitely more than in his previous life.

At least, in his previous life, Tan Jincheng didn't see many 2008 figures in Beicang, but now there are quite a few, all thanks to the trend started by Flash.

"If we're talking about converting gasoline vehicles to electric, we can do it on the existing gasoline vehicle platform. So Chunxiao doesn't need to build any new platform production lines. Just set up some factories and testing facilities."

"That's great! This will speed up the process a lot. I'll start building a team and recruiting technical staff right now."

"Yes, we can start now. If things go smoothly, we can try it next year."

Wu Jianzhong was in charge of explaining to Tan Jincheng. Both Ying Jianren and Tan Jincheng were only half-baked. Although Wu Jianzhong was not a very professional, he had been in charge of the actual management of Zhongtai and Tieniu Group for a long time, so he knew more than these two half-baked people.

"Haha, great news! The progress is fast. It seems I need to urge them on my factory project in Luzhou as well." Tan Jincheng was very happy.

In recent years, Flash has been either building factories or on its way to building factories. The first phase of the Tianjin factory will be officially put into production at the end of this year, and the entire Tianjin factory will be in production next year.

Meanwhile, some projects in Wangjiang Industrial Park will also be accepted next year. The Luzhou factory is the largest investment project in Anhui Province this year, so it is naturally highly valued. Year after year, more and more factories are being built by Flash.

Tan Jincheng felt as if a tree he had planted himself was beginning to blossom and bear fruit.

Ying Jianren and Wu Jianzhong knew about Tan Jincheng's efficiency. As for the project collaboration, Tan Jincheng couldn't wait to start building a team, and the two exchanged knowing smiles.

This guy has been making quite a splash lately. After messing around in the electric vehicle industry, he's now working under a well-known figure in the internet industry, causing quite a stir in the internet world as well.

Speaking of which, their coming to discuss cooperation with FlashCheer now, although it was already a pre-arranged agreement, was actually intentional.

It's not shameful to ride the wave of popularity; otherwise, they wouldn't be in such a hurry to come to Beicang.

By leveraging Tan Jincheng's popularity and finalizing the cooperation details, the announcement could increase Zhongtai's exposure and even potentially boost car sales.

In early May, anyone associated with the wealthy and powerful Flash Group and Tan Jincheng would attract considerable attention.

In Tan's own words, he has been generating his own buzz lately. They don't quite understand what "buzz" means, but they can still understand the implication of his words.

Unsurprisingly, once the term "internet celebrity" emerged, the first generation of internet celebrity entrepreneurs would undoubtedly be Boss Tan.

The two companies finalized the specific details of the cooperation, including personnel allocation and collaborative construction of the factory. Flashcar had no experience in building automobile factories, and even for just a small part, it needed the assistance of Zhongtai.

Although the collaboration with Zhongtai was only ostensibly for testing the performance of power batteries, it was undoubtedly the first step for Flashcar towards car manufacturing.

Could Ying Jiancong and Wu Jianzhong have foreseen that Flashcar Future might enter the car manufacturing market through the lithium battery sector and learn from BYD?

That's not important. So many companies enter the car manufacturing industry every year, and none of them have been established for years. Even if Tan Jincheng clearly stated that Flashcar had plans to manufacture cars in the future, it would be difficult for them to refuse the current cooperation.

They also need technological accumulation. There is competition among large enterprises, but the boundaries are not so clear, and cooperation is also possible. At this stage, Flashpike is the best partner for Zhongtai.

Car manufacturing is not something that can be done in a year or two. Even if Flash Motors wanted to enter the market, it wouldn't pose any threat to ZTE at the moment. On the contrary, it could even provide some assistance.

(End of this chapter)