2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 502 The first snow in 2008 years
PS: This is chapter 500! It wasn't easy. Thank you all so much for your support!

If you have money or not, go home for the New Year.

For some low-income workers, this is the only way to comfort themselves during the Chinese New Year. However, it's a completely different story for employees of the Flash series.

They genuinely look forward to the Lunar New Year, especially the earliest batch of employees who joined the company in Beicang.

It's impossible for all company employees to have absolutely equal salaries. To set an example, the top 200 employees who joined the company and haven't left yet have the highest salaries.

In 2007, apart from various benefits, the salaries of these employees were on par with the average housing price in Beicang District.

The standard set by Tan Jincheng was that employees could buy more than one square meter of housing for every month they worked, in order to motivate new employees to strive for success.

However, this policy will not be able to be implemented next year, and housing prices in Beicang District will soar to over 10,000 yuan per square meter in the second half of next year.

A workshop employee earning over 10,000 yuan a month is extremely rare even in 2023. Boss Tan wouldn't dare to suddenly raise his employees' salaries to over 10,000 yuan in 2008; that would have been too much of a travesty.

After New Year's Day, FlashChi employees, eager to go home and show off, seemed to notice something different this year: "What's going on this year? Is the holiday starting so early?"

"Yeah, our cars are selling really well, so why are you giving us a holiday so early this year?"

"You know what, there's less overtime now. What's the boss thinking?"

They've gotten used to working less overtime now after working overtime for so long, but they're really not used to having a holiday on the 20th of the twelfth lunar month. In previous years, it was usually after the 24th of the twelfth lunar month.

"The holiday is early, but the reward for not going home for Chinese New Year is doubled, didn't you guys notice?"

"Who doesn't go home for Chinese New Year? Many of our long-term employees won cars in the raffle last year. Would you give up such a good time driving home and showing off?"

"After the holiday, I started working overtime. I really don't want to go back. The salary is too tempting. It's enough for a month after the Spring Festival. Going home after the Spring Festival is not bad either."

"You said how about we work until the 26th of the twelfth lunar month before going back? We can get extra overtime pay for a few more days."

"You'll lose a lot of money if you don't do the full work."

"That's more than usual, isn't it? How about it?"

Flash Group's industrial bases in Beicang, Tianjin, Luzhou, and Wangjiang have all scheduled their Chinese New Year holiday for the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month this year, while the holiday in Shenzhen is scheduled for the 27th day of the twelfth lunar month.

This was all to implement the policies adopted at Boss Tan's secret meeting.

The early holiday was intended to encourage those who wanted to go home to leave while the snow was still light. The increased overtime pay was intended to keep those with weak willpower from leaving, thus avoiding a large-scale mass return to their hometowns and preventing disruption to the company's transportation capacity.

Since the meeting before New Year's Day, the heads of branches in various regions have been diligently implementing Tan Jincheng's strategy. This is partly due to Lin Yumin's strong support, and partly because the two examples mentioned by Zhang Xupeng and Gu Qingqing were too mystical.

But even with such a mysterious thing, Boss Tan guessed right. They really didn't expect that a large part of the initial funding for Flash Motors came from sports lottery!
Once might be a coincidence, but twice is not. Buying lottery tickets can be a game, with some betting on high odds, but for an electric vehicle company to be the first in the industry to hire a celebrity spokesperson, to say that the boss is gambling is utter nonsense.

The industrial bases to the north, including Bafang Group, are diligently implementing Boss Tan's requirements, stocking up on winter supplies, and adjusting their holiday schedules for the Lunar New Year in terms of both time and benefits.

Qin Junchao in Shenzhen dared not slack off even more, since the boss had specifically mentioned him in the meeting.

In addition, in the days that followed, the boss would call him from time to time to ask about the progress of his preparations. If anything else went wrong, he would have to quit.

"Oh, by the way, why did you wait until after President Xie left to bring up the heavy snow that day?"

Orange Technology was also prepared, but Orange Technology employees had fewer holidays. The launch of Orange Products Club kept them extremely busy. Although the promotional activities have ended, they are still able to maintain a good GMV.

The products are very cheap and are brand names. The two-month promotion has greatly increased Orange Products' reputation. To be honest, Boss Tan is now quite worried that the GMV is too good. You can't let consumers not buy these things.

With a worried look on his face, Boss Tan slipped over to Orange Technology's side again. He didn't need to prepare for this year's annual meeting; he just needed to cooperate with the performance.

Just like last year, Boss Tan still has a chance to go on stage and embarrass himself this year. Last year, Boss Tan's funny dance was very well received.

It's a pity that our boss Tan can't do the "Chicken You're Too Beautiful" dance, otherwise this thing would be truly cutting-edge technology.

"He is, after all, a public official; it's better not to let him know certain things."

If Xie Junhong knew about this project, which is related to people's livelihood, he would definitely report it. How would Tan Jincheng handle that?

As I recall, in Beicang in 2008, the snow was very thick, but it melted quickly, and the disaster was not too severe. The Beicang District government had enough financial resources to cope with it, so there was no need for them to be such a prophetic master.

They could use such lies to appease the executives, who were supposedly special figures, since no one dared to verify them anyway. But such obvious lies couldn't be fabricated when dealing with the district officials. "The amount of goods that will be put on the shelves later will still be the same, but in smaller quantities. Also, we will issue a notice about our limited transportation capacity after the Spring Festival travel rush."

"Okay, got it."

Believe it or not, Flashpoint and Orange Technology are acting as if it were a snowstorm. Even if it didn't happen, they're just playing along with the boss. Given Flashpoint and Orange's financial resources, this amount of money is nothing.

"By the way, the sales figures released by Flashpower have been questioned by the media. Aren't you going to respond?"

"What's there to respond to? They're questioning whether we've inflated our data. I've paid plenty of taxes, so why should they care how much data I publish? If they're bored, let them investigate."

The actual sales figure for Flash Motors' electric vehicles this year was 148.07 million units. After the peak season ended, the number of Flash Motors exported to Southeast Asia did not decrease significantly.

Currently, Flash Motors has firmly held the top position in China's electric vehicle export market.

With average monthly sales exceeding 12 vehicles, the figures are truly impressive. However, the publicly released data only shows 130.27 vehicles sold, averaging less than 11 vehicles per month.

The reason given was that sales in northern regions decline during winter, which led some professional media to question whether Flash Motors was deliberately concealing sales figures in order to reduce tax payments.

There's no need to pay them any attention. Given Flash's current status, countless eyes will be watching. If you snatch the top spot, the media will question whether you're exaggerating or inflating sales figures. They'll always find a reason.

"But your sales have dropped too little. Sales were still so strong in September, so it's normal that people don't believe it when you suddenly say that sales have dropped so much."

"Haha, since we've already reduced it, let's reduce it a little more, to save face for Lao Zhang."

Zhang Congxun cared a lot about this number one sales position. After returning from Luzhou, Xinri's promotional efforts were much greater than in the first half of the year. Even during the period when the price of lead-acid battery raw materials rose, he did not reduce promotional efforts like other manufacturers.

The gap between first and second place is quite large, so let's just say we're giving him face.

The Olympics will begin, and that's when we'll really unleash our full potential.
-
January 18, 2008, Friday, the eleventh day of the twelfth lunar month.

The Spring Festival travel rush is about to begin, and the massive human migration project is about to start. On this day, heavy snow fell in large areas of Hubei, Jiangsu, and Anhui, while Ningbo was experiencing moderate rain.

Since the beginning of December, Ningbo has hardly had any sunny days. The continuous rainy weather lasted for a month and a half, which was quite unusual.

This made even Tan Lihua, who had previously thought his son was making a fuss over nothing, realize something was amiss.

"Boss, it's snowing in Qingyuan."

Qin Junchao's voice trembled slightly on the other end of the phone. After returning, Qin Junchao had done his best to arrange the task given to him by his boss and had also gained a comprehensive understanding of the history of snowfall in Guangdong Province.

There's a saying in Guangdong that if there's snow, it must come from Qingyuan in Shaoguan.

Today, heavy to blizzard-like snow fell across central China, and surprisingly, even Qingyuan was affected. Although the snowfall wasn't heavy and only occurred at the highest peak, it clearly matched the boss's prediction—it really did snow!

"Have you heard about today's weather? There's been heavy to blizzard-like snowfall across the central region. You can start preparing now, and speed things up."

Boss Tan didn't go to the company today. He rehearsed all day yesterday and then exercised on the rooftop last night, so his back is a little sore.

Since it's snowing, there's not much to pack. Besides Qin Junchao, Tan Jincheng mainly asked Sun Yuming and Zhang Xuhui to join him. Compared to Wang Qinghua, their work experience is limited, and they lack experience in dealing with large-scale disasters.

"Okay, I understand. I'll speed things up right away." Qin Junchao took a deep breath.

That's incredible! Absolutely incredible! No wonder he made a fortune buying lottery tickets. With that kind of information sensitivity, he deserves to be a boss.

"This is the snow disaster you were talking about?"

Gu Qingqing didn't go to work either. The whole family was at home today. The TV was showing footage of snow removal on highways in various places. Gu Qingqing and Tan Jincheng were sitting on a small sofa, while Tan Lihua and his wife were sitting on a large sofa in the middle watching the news.

Little Tan Jinyue, dressed in her autumn clothes, was playing with her little horse indoors, moving around while shouting "Giddy up!"

Although it's cold outside, it's warm and cozy inside, so even children wearing only light clothing don't have to worry about catching a cold.

"This is nothing. Just watch, it will get bigger and bigger. You all heard it just now, it's starting to snow in the mountains of Guangdong Province." Tan Jincheng said calmly.

It's so painful to keep this bottled up inside. If the blizzard finally comes, Boss Tan will finally be able to release some of his pent-up emotions. Now that he can finally speak out, he doesn't have to be afraid anymore.

Although there's something even more unspeakable coming up.

(End of this chapter)