December 31st.
Zhang Yuan arrived at the Handong University branch of Slackin’ Internet Café early in the morning. He ordered a cup of coffee, leisurely sipping it while browsing forums to see if internet users had posted any interesting new threads recently.
Yesterday, he had already arranged for his employees to return or send for repair all the problematic components, and used all the remaining funds in the account to purchase components with higher failure rates, especially memory sticks.
Although stockpiling inventory like this carried some risk, Zhang Yuan was more concerned about the reputation of the ROF brand.
When this brand was first established, Boss Pei invested so much money in the 1024 Digital Festival to build its reputation.
If this reputation was ruined because of quality issues with the assembled computers, wouldn’t that mean all of Boss Pei’s efforts were in vain?
So, quality had to be guaranteed!
He strived to ensure that every assembled computer would work flawlessly, to provide customers with the best after-sales service, and to maintain sufficient inventory so that customers in Jingzhou could place orders at any time and receive same-day delivery.
After taking care of all these matters, Zhang Yuan could finally relax a bit.
Tomorrow would be the first day of the 2011 New Year holiday. With three days off for the holiday, he should be able to get some good rest.
Zhang Yuan sipped his coffee leisurely while browsing the forums.
Suddenly, a forum post caught his attention.
“MSC’s Factory Caught Fire Again???”
“Damn! Memory prices are going to rise again, right?”
“Profiteers!”
“Shit, it seems they’ve already increased the prices!”
“I was planning to wait for New Year promotions on shopping websites before building a PC! Now I’m screwed!!!”
“It’s over, the profiteers are already making their moves!”
“What’s the deal? How do they catch fire every couple of days? It’s like they’ve been burning non-stop from last year’s Double Eleven to this year’s 618!”
“Is it a fire? Those in the know understand—it’s probably set by the manufacturers themselves.”
“Indeed, these manufacturers take turns catching fire, and it’s not just fires but also floods, power outages… Why don’t they just say they’re cutting production and raising prices?”
“This fire seems quite serious. Wafer production capacity has been greatly affected. It’s not just memory but flash storage that’s likely to rise in price…”
Seeing the users’ discussions, Zhang Yuan was first confused, then filled with unexpected joy.
He quickly opened a shopping website to check the prices of the memory sticks he had previously purchased—they had already increased by more than thirty yuan!
Moreover, this was likely just the beginning. In the coming week, prices would probably continue to rise…
Having spent years on forums, Zhang Yuan was very familiar with these tactics. Whenever memory prices were at a low point, these manufacturers would suddenly have fires or power outages. Then news reports would claim these manufacturers had lost billions, and various profiteers would start making moves and frantically speculating on memory prices…
But despite saying this, no one knew when such “accidents” would occur.
If they did know, they could stock up on memory sticks in advance and make a fortune.
This news would normally be bad for Zhang Yuan.
Because ROF’s assembly business had a pricing strategy similar to branded computers. Following Boss Pei’s guidelines, the initial pricing already fully considered brand premium and after-sales value, and prices couldn’t fluctuate frequently.
To raise prices, they would need to update configurations, and promotional discounts couldn’t be offered too often.
This strategy was mainly to eliminate customers’ concerns and give all consumers the impression that “this brand is conscientious, reliable, and retains its value.”
If memory prices rose and computer prices rose accordingly, it would make them seem like profiteers, which would be detrimental to ROF’s brand.
So, ordinarily, rising memory prices would be bad news for Zhang Yuan, as increased procurement costs without corresponding increases in retail prices would greatly compress profits.
But now it was different.
Zhang Yuan had already purchased a batch of components earlier, especially memory sticks, stockpiling a large quantity based on the standard of four sticks per high-end machine priced at over 10,000 yuan!
This way, these high-end models offered explosive value for consumers, much cheaper than if they assembled the computers themselves!
As for Zhang Yuan, continuing to sell the current inventory at the original price would still yield a substantial profit.
Of course, he could also consider raising prices.
But price increases didn’t align with the Tenda spirit and wouldn’t help further expand the market.
So, after consideration, Zhang Yuan decided to keep selling this batch of inventory at the previous prices!
Considering factors like memory price increases, the configuration of the next batch of computers would need some adjustments—higher configurations, higher prices, with new prices based on the new cost.
Of course, that was an issue to consider later.
Because this stockpile was truly substantial…
Thinking of this, Zhang Yuan couldn’t sit still.
He immediately called his employees, instructing them to design a batch of new posters to display at each Slackin’ Internet Café entrance, while also updating the online store’s promotional page.
The promotional content was very simple: no discount promotions, but absolutely no price increases!
…
January 1st, 2011, Saturday.
The three-day New Year holiday ran from the 1st to the 3rd, and Pei Qian was happy to take a break and rest well.