Chapter 120: Leaving the Supermarket Behind

On December 3, 2001, Huang He and Leng Zhimeng flew back to Shanghai. This time, however, they would remain there for twelve hours before catching another flight to South Korea to attend the inaugural World Cyber Games, which would open on December 5.

Since they had twelve hours to spare, Huang He had no intention of wasting them at the airport. Instead, he drove straight to his flagship store in Shanghai to see how it had been operating after more than a week in business.

To Huang He’s satisfaction, the store was still drawing a steady stream of customers. More than a week after its opening, people were still lining up outside—or rather, there were even more of them now. Even with fifty customers shopping inside, hundreds more were still waiting outside. Compared with the other shops near the Bund, the spectacle was so overwhelming that it left them utterly outclassed.

“My strategy really was the right one. Just watch, Zhimeng. Within half a year at most, the Jiangnan Group will have established hundreds of large official flagship stores like this across the country. As for our mobile blind-box stalls, we’ll have more than ten thousand!”

Huang He smiled as he painted a magnificent picture of the future for Leng Zhimeng.

Leng Zhiruo’s work had been highly effective. The branch offices planned across the country were already about sixty percent complete. Moreover, under the authorized franchise system, the company did not even need to push expansion itself. Once people realized the astonishing consumer potential of blind boxes, they came knocking on their own initiative, asking to cooperate.

Some were Jiangnan employees or people introduced by them, but most had simply approached the company independently. In any case, Jiangnan Group’s blind-box sales stalls were spreading outward like ripples across a lake, and their momentum had already become impossible to suppress.

That was why Huang He had been so eager to spend all eight hundred million yuan. He wanted to establish his own Jiangnan Council in Wenzhou because the company’s leather-goods blind boxes were already falling short of demand. More products had to be added to the great blind-box family.

To some extent, the business at this Shanghai flagship store reflected blind-box sales across the entire country. Seeing so many people waiting in line, Boss Huang finally felt a little reassured.

After watching the scene outside for a while, Huang He took Leng Zhimeng into the store.

The moment he entered, however, half of his good mood vanished. One section of the store was completely empty, with a sign announcing that the merchandise was temporarily out of stock.

And that empty section was none other than the food-and-grocery blind boxes—the best-selling and most popular products of all.

When Huang He saw that they were out of stock, he was instantly furious. He had the front desk call Liu Xiangjiang over, then unleashed a furious tirade the moment the man arrived.

“Liu Xiangjiang, I thought you were the smartest of the five of us. How is it that you’ve now become the most sluggish when it comes to getting things done? I told you more than a week ago to prepare at least a hundred thousand shopping vouchers, and now you’ve gone and suspended the food-and-grocery blind boxes altogether. Is this how you handle your work?”

“It’s only a voucher! All you have to do is put it inside the box. It’s the simplest type of blind box there is, and you still can’t manage it. What exactly are you good for?”

Boss Huang cursed and ranted, barely stopping short of outright swearing.

“Chairman, I’m terribly sorry. I’ve been running from supermarket to supermarket these past few days, but I really can’t find any that are willing to sell us their shopping vouchers!” Liu Xiangjiang said helplessly, his eyes ringed by two enormous dark circles.

“No supermarkets are willing to sell them to us?” Huang He froze for a moment. “What about RT-Mart, the supermarket we worked with before? Didn’t that partnership go smoothly? What happened?”

“RT-Mart was the first one to change its tune!” Liu Xiangjiang said through gritted teeth.

It turned out that the several thousand RT-Mart vouchers they had purchased that day had sold out again the very next day. Liu Xiangjiang had no choice but to return to RT-Mart’s marketing department to buy more, only to be turned away at the door. He could not even meet the person in charge. The staff below merely kept saying that they had no more vouchers to sell, sending him away empty-handed.

Liu Xiangjiang immediately sensed that something was wrong. He brought several people with him to observe the area around the RT-Mart supermarket. What he saw nearly made his lungs explode with rage.

RT-Mart had simply copied their idea. They were holding a promotion right outside the supermarket, selling vouchers for ten kilograms of rice at ten yuan apiece. Under those circumstances, they would have been fools to sell the vouchers to Liu Xiangjiang for six yuan each. Naturally, they would rather keep the profits for themselves.

Left with no alternative, Liu Xiangjiang continued negotiating with other major supermarkets, only to be defeated one after another.

The previous time, he had requested too few vouchers, so the supermarkets had been unwilling to cooperate. This time, the demand had risen to one hundred thousand vouchers, representing a total value of one million yuan. The problem was that none of the other major supermarkets could offer RT-Mart’s price of six yuan per voucher. The cheapest price anyone quoted was eight yuan.

At that price, there would be no profit at all in the food-and-grocery blind boxes.

Liu Xiangjiang had spent the entire week running around over the shopping-voucher issue, yet he still had no solution. When Huang He called him over, he had actually been on his way to negotiate with another large supermarket.

Liu Xiangjiang was so distressed that he was nearly in tears.

“Boss, why don’t we just open a supermarket ourselves? It doesn’t have to be large. A few storefronts would be enough. I asked around, and the wholesale cost of ten kilograms of rice is less than four yuan. If we purchase and sell it ourselves, we won’t have to let those supermarkets earn a single cent!”

Liu Xiangjiang spoke through clenched teeth. It seemed that these past few days had made him despise those damned supermarkets with all his heart.

“Sooner or later, I’ll turn those supermarkets upside down myself, but not now.” Huang He shook his head. “We have to secure a major supermarket chain. Otherwise, our nationwide strategy will be impossible.”

“Nationwide strategy?” Liu Xiangjiang asked blankly.

“That’s right. The food-and-grocery blind boxes will eventually be sold nationwide as well. In the future, all of our tens of thousands of blind-box sales points across the country will have to offer the same food-and-grocery blind boxes. Are we supposed to open a small supermarket in every part of the country just to satisfy demand for them?”

Huang He shook his head. “The food-and-grocery blind boxes have very slim profit margins. If we really built such a massive supermarket network, the money we earned probably wouldn’t even amount to a tenth of what we spent.”

“Don’t we already have our own stores across the country? Couldn’t we simply stock more food and groceries in them?”

“Food and groceries aren’t like other products. They’re too heavy and take up too much space. Our stores can’t hold them. Besides, do you expect customers who buy food-and-grocery blind boxes from stalls elsewhere in the city to come all the way to this flagship store in Shanghai to collect them? Never mind whether they’d be willing to come—could this store even accommodate that many customers?”

Huang He’s string of rhetorical questions left Liu Xiangjiang speechless.

The man was certainly intelligent, but he still had a touch of the bookworm about him. He did not know how to look at a problem from every angle.

“Then, Boss, what should we do now?” Liu Xiangjiang asked weakly.

“Very well. If the supermarkets refuse to sell to us, then we won’t play their game.” Huang He paused, then asked, “Xiangjiang, do you know what kind of shop is most numerous across the country?”

Before Liu Xiangjiang could answer, Huang He continued speaking to himself.

“Actually, the most common shops in the world are little neighborhood convenience stores!”

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