If you want female friends to realize the charm of men, the best way is to be serious and focused, and not pretend.

So early the next morning, Gu Ao took his bodyguard Li Lianjie to the Bay Area from Los Angeles. He wanted to sincerely inspect the progress of the game console business and listen to reports about the horsemen.

This was the first time Gu Ao took such a short flight after he came to the United States, which made him feel a little moved: If the United States is like China in the future, it would be easier to have a high-speed rail. What kind of plane should I take just 800 kilometers?

But this is destined to be impossible. The United States has a vast land and sparse population, and the popularity of private cars is high. Railways are destined to be a huge loss, so they can only engage in high-priced landscape trains.

"Ajie, don't mind playing a guest role for me for two more days, just carry my luggage. When the domestic "Shaolin Temple" and "Terminator" are released, you may be a big star." As the plane landed, Gu Ao joked with Li Lianjie half-jokingly.

"How could it be? I know how the 'big stars' came from - they are all the result of Google's cultivation. In the future, more big stars will beg you to play a guest role as a bodyguard and it will not be obtained."

Gu Ao raised his hand to stop him: "Hey, don't belittle yourself. I'm here to study this time, so it's not easy to make too big a show. When I graduate in the future, I will definitely get a full-time bodyguard team."

Less nonsense, Gu Ao took Li Lianjie out of San Francisco International Airport, and Shi Yuzhu was already waiting there respectfully to pick him up.

"Mr. Gu, Ajie, here." Shi Yuzhu invited the two of them to get in the car, and then drove them to the company in person.

Shi Yuzhu has been with Gu Ao to the United States for more than a month. Under Gu Ao's authorization, he registered and established a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tiankun Entertainment in the United States, and also hired more than a dozen key employees to connect the docking of Sony's shipping channels and domestic shipping orders and other daily work.

Of course, sales profits are not currently taken from this company. In name, this is just a company that provides technology and after-sales services, and then provides some business contacts. Therefore, there is no problem of tax avoidance.

To this day, Gu Ao's industrial model does not need to consider tax avoidance. The reductions and discounts given to him in China and the discounts in Xiangjiang have not expired. Gu Ao estimated that even if he would build an "offshore company" in the future, it would be at least after 1984.

By then, it would be nothing more than China's business to the Cayman Islands and the United States' business to the Bahamas, and everyone on earth would understand it.

By then, my cousin Lu Guangfu will graduate from the Fabre of Brotherhood. Gu Ao can leave all the capital structure matters to Lu Guangfu to worry about.

I have a bachelor's degree in Finance Department of Columbia University and a master's degree in international business law. I can't do this well, so I will be in vain.

Let’s talk about the present moment.

The reason why Gu Ao asked Shi Yuzhu to open Tiankun Entertainment's US-based subsidiary to San Francisco is that Sony's US-based headquarters is still here. Gu Ao's shipping channels mainly rely on Sony, so of course he has to hug him nearby.

To be precise, it is located in the southern part of the Bay Area, where Stanford University is located. This place is now the center of Silicon Valley, only more than 20 kilometers away from San Francisco International Airport, which is about the same as the core urban area of ​​San Francisco. Before the Internet era came, Stanford was around the core of Silicon Valley.

Some viewers who have a view of Sony who are still in the future may wonder: Didn’t Sony’s headquarters always be located in New York?

This is actually a misunderstanding. Before the Plaza Agreement in 1985, Sony was a very pragmatic electronics company that is technical and industrial. Because the cost advantage of Japanese-funded products is still there, Japan is very hardworking, and the headquarters of the electronics giants are basically located in California.

But after the Plaza Agreement, the yen more than doubled against the US dollar in three years. Japan soon discovered that it was better to export capital than to do business, so Sony, including the people, moved its headquarters to New York and embarked on the road of buying and buying.

Gu Ao is now working with Sony in 1.0.

...

More than half an hour later, Shi Yuzhu drove along Highway 101 to Palo Alto and took Gu Ao to visit a subsidiary with only a few offices.

"How has our gaming console sold this month? Have you ever followed Sony in close proximity? Do you have any ideas?" Gu Ao sat down on the sofa in the reception room, and asked while picking up the report to read it.

Shi Yu Zhuhui reported: "It's not bad, the prepared inventory has basically been digested. The "Earth Defender" sells the best, and there are currently thousands of backlog orders waiting for shipment.

"Island of Adventure" Secondly, the inventory can be sold out, and this momentum can be maintained for at least three months. However, the sales of the older "Bombman" and "Pac-Man" are worrying - I explored for a month and found that the US market could not apply the previous ideas of the Japanese market.

American women basically don’t play games, and even games with cute styles cannot attract female consumers. 90% of them are consumed by men. This conclusion is the result of my personal visit to several cities and research, and our after-sales technical service staff followed up, which should be able to reflect the real data.”

Gu Ao closed his eyes and thought for a while, obviously not satisfied with the answer, and asked back:

"It can maintain the hot sales for three months - Han Ting is currently supplying you with about 10,000 units per month, right? I mean the four games combined. The hot sales in three months means a total of 30,000 units shipped, and then there is a trend of gradually saturation? Currently, an arcade machine has a net profit of only 200 US dollars, up to 300, and Sony's channel fees are also included.

In other words, we tried our best to ask Sony to give us a shipping channel, and only then made a net profit of $8 million during the huge profit period? Including the subsequent "long-tail income", it should not reach 20 million - why is the US market so small? According to population, income level and video game acceptance, the US market is at least three times that of the Japanese market! Your current strategy seems that the US market is less than twice that of Japan!"

People who do big business have very clear goals and expectations, and will not be satisfied just by being willing to make money or grow.

If there should be high growth, but the actual growth rate in the end is not that high, it is still necessary to review.

Just like later QQ selling games, profits and sales increased by less than 40% year-on-year compared with the previous year, they will be considered by the capital market as "the answer to failure", and then the stock price plummeted, and the major shareholder Mih, who has held shares for more than ten years, was panicked and sold.

Li Lianjie, who was watching the fun next to him, couldn't help but feel that Brother Gu was really strict.

His subordinates actually helped him make money, but they were not satisfied. They even disliked the slow expansion speed and the growth rate of money-making did not meet expectations.

Fortunately, Shi Yuzhu has seen the world and has been in prison. In order to gain the opportunity to steal the opportunity to start over in the future, he studied a lot of business management books, all of which were spent a lot of money to get out of the Special Administrative Region prison, even more hard than when he was studying in the mathematics department at Zhejiang University.

Therefore, he was quite capable of resisting Gu Ao's reproach.

"Mr. Gu, I said that there is a problem of low activity among female players here, which cannot be changed in the short term. We cannot fight wits and courage with non-existent enemies."

Gu Ao refused to give in: "Even in Japan, female players consume less than 20%. I don't think this factor can lead to such a big deviation - what I want is quantitative analysis, not qualitative. In this way, you can show me the market distribution chart of the shipment, and then mark the population, per capita income, and consumption of each target market state, city. I want to see which is lower."

Shi Yuzhu quickly apologized, saying that he had not done any statistics on this aspect.

"Then I'll give you half an hour and get it done quickly." Gu Ao said, and ran away from behind.

Shi Yuzhu quickly found a sales assistant and a financial statistics department, and Huowei worked on a hand-drawn report, adding the dimensional data that Gu Ao wanted to read.

Gu Ao glanced a few times and found the problem.

"New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago - the early penetration data of the four megacities is similar to when they entered the Japanese market. However, the subsequent market is obviously worse than that. Have you not analyzed the reason for such a clear gap?"

Shi Yuzhu said in embarrassment: "But this is normal - the Japanese market is also like this. Tokyo is popular and popular. And the 'operators' are the most active. The United States is much wider than Japan, so the response speed of medium-sized cities is of course slower.

Not being able to 'some new things are popular in New York' has led to consumers in Southern Entertainment immediately following the trend. Even operators are much slower to respond, and it would be nice to be able to spread to Atlanta."

Gu Ao nodded: "Okay, even if this is a normal phenomenon caused by the US market structure - then, as the marketing person, have you considered how to sink channels in this environment? If you only follow Sony's channels and passively follow orders, what use do I want you?

You should know that Atari's accumulation and technical response speed in the field of electronic games is much faster than Nintendo. After we become popular, we don't even have a first-mover advantage for three months, and we will face Atari's personal copycat! At that time, with the opponent's powerful channels, if we don't rush out, we will end here. We can only 'get a vote and leave' and we can't challenge Atari."

Shi Yuzhu was so excited that his face turned red, gritted his teeth and said in grief: "Of course I have thought about the solution, but I dare not guarantee it, and it requires some early investment."

"But it's okay."

Shi Yuzhu paced back and forth anxiously for a few steps, then went back to his office and brought a memo. Not only did he find notes, but he also had many cut photos.

Then, Shi Yuzhu also turned on the big TV in the reception room, adjusted to a channel, and started commenting.

"Mr. Gu, this thing was just discovered after I came to the United States. I also conducted a special investigation and found that in the United States, it should also be a new thing that has just appeared - there is an institution called hsn, that is, home-shopping-network, or 'home shopping network'.

The agency rented a channel on Florida TV station and sold things directly. If it does not rely on satellite TV, only a few cities such as Miami and Oakland can receive it. In order to study the potential of this thing, I specially opened a satellite TV. Don’t equate this thing with domestic TV advertisements. It takes a much longer time and will specifically render the effects of use in the program, seller contact information, and shipping channels. You can order directly."

Gu Ao interrupted: "I know, isn't this just TV shopping? Let me tell you first, arcades are not retail products. And the current sales of this program should be very disappointing."

Shi Yuzhu: "Of course I know it is not a retail product - I believe that retail will not be very effective. Because ordinary consumers do not have that courage and believe that the creditworthiness of TV mail order is only enterprise-level customers, but it is easier to trust. As you said, any new business model will definitely be easier to believe in first 2b customers, and then it will be slowly transmitted to 2c.

If we modify the TV shopping model and change it to 'TV recruitment franchisees', it will definitely be more promising than the pioneers. We can shoot a short video and interview the arcade owners who first introduced Tiankun Entertainment Game Machine, let them show up, and obtain authorization to read their operating income statements, and tell the entertainment venue operators in small cities, in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago... how much money did those colleagues who introduced the 'Adventure Island' and 'Earth Defenders' make!"
Chapter completed!