Volume 2 - Chapter 139 – So sinister
“No… No need!” Zhou Yu freaked after hearing about my car. No matter what, he didn’t want to get anywhere near my car, so he even got a bit scared.
That Wang Di also owned a car. This guy drove a Ford sports car.
It was fortunate that the fundraising event supported cards, otherwise, just where was I supposed to get so much cash!
“Classmate Liu Lei, how much are you preparing to donate?” Zhou Yu deliberately said loudly beside me. “If you are just going to donate a few thousand, then don’t do it. You are representing Huaxia University!”
“Hehe, Classmate Zhou Yu isn’t right here, no matter how much you donate, it is a act of good will towards the people. How does it have any relationship with what school I’m from?” I laughed and asked.
“Ugh…” Zhou Yu didn’t think that I would say that, so all of a sudden, he was unsure of what to say.
“Oh yeah, Zhou Yu, since our names are already out there, let’s not ask for this name! How about this? Let’s compare with Classmate Liu Lei to see who can donate the most! Regardless of who wins and who loses, it will be donated using this pretty lady’s name!” Wang Di gave Zhou Yu a cue and pointed at Xu Ruoyun.
“This idea is pretty good, let’s do just that! I wonder if Classmate Liu Lei dares to play this game?” Zhou Yu said with a nod.
“This idea is pretty good, let’s go just that,” I thought to myself. With the help of these two idiots, it would be hard even if Xu Ruoyun didn’t want to get first place.
The leader-board of donations kept on refreshing, but the highest amount was merely at around three thousand yuan.
“Let’s go over and scare that brat to death,” Zhou Yu said to Wang Di, then walked to the donation box with Xu Ruoyun’s tag.
“Computing First Year’s Xu Ruoyun donates eighty thousand yuan!” The staff said excitedly, it was the highest donation at that moment!
Zhou Yu returned proudly and said to me, “It’s your turn.”
I nodded and said, “There’s no hurry, it hasn’t ended yet.”
Zhou Yu and Wang Di thought I was afraid and struggled in my heart, so they were both very excited.
I wasn’t in a hurry, what I had to do was to see if there was any donation higher than Xu Ruoyun’s. Disappointingly, there wasn’t. Aside from Xu Ruoyun’s, the highest was merely twenty thousand yuan.
“Why are you still not going?” Zhou Yu reminded when he saw that the fundraising event was nearly over.
“Oh, I’m not going. You won,” I said.
“I won!” Zhou Yu couldn’t believe that he just won like that.
“Yeah, you won,” I said with certainty.
“Wang Di, we won!” Zhou Yu said happily to Wang Di.
“Mhmm, you guys won. Thank you for donating eighty thousand yuan for my wife,” I nodded towards Zhou Yu with a smile.
“Your… wife?! Xu Ruoyun is your wife?!” Zhou Yu said in a bit of disbelief.
“Yeah, didn’t you know?” I asked.
“He’s your husband?” Zhou Yu asked Xu Ruoyun without giving up.
Xu Ruoyun nodded.
“Thanks. You two, we’ll be leaving first,” I held Xu Ruoyun’s hand and walked out.
“Fuck! He messed with us, that woman is with him!” Wang Di said angrily.
“So eighty thousand yuan is just gone?” Zhou Yu said dumbly.
“No shit! Fuck, we did it all for them,” Wang Di swore. “That brat clearly wanted to screw us over once! You retardedly thought that you can put him down with money, but they had completely planned it all.”
“Hubby, are we terrible for doing that?” Xu Ruoyun asked.
“Nope, they are so rich, they should contribute for towards the people that suffered,” I said.
“Then why aren’t you donating?” Xu Ruoyun asked in confusion.
I smiled, “Of course I will donate, but not in front of them.”
“You are so sinister. Zhou Yu is definitely beyond pissed this time,” Xu Ruoyun rolled her eyes at me and said.
On May 20th 1999, New Century Computers introduced their first product that had been developed using sponsors – the Chinese character OCR system. In the same time period, the OCR system for handwritten Italian, Russian and English was also introduced to the market. We were able to find suitable retail agencies for the Italian and English OCR systems, but we ran into a bit of trouble with the Russian system. That was because Russia had already have a local company, Company A, that had the same sort of product with a very high recognition rate as well. It was a bit difficult for New Century to get into the market with its current power.
My thoughts on this was to try our best not to get into direct conflict with this Company A. We could sell use our advantage in the price to sell our product with the local scanners in a bundle.
This was the first time Chu Gao felt how important his responsibilities were, while the higherups of New Century Corporation also started to work intensely. Chu Gao agreed with my idea a lot, since New Century didn’t have much foundation, although it had enough funds, it lacked reputation, causing us to lose a bit. That’s why, my idea did sort of approached the issue in another manner.
However, to my surprise, Company A actually publicly denounced New Century’s OCR product, and swore cockily that New Century doesn’t have to think about even getting a single decimal of the Russian OCR market! Furthermore, it also worked with a lot of local agencies to completely refuse to work with New Century.
After this happened, I attended the meeting of the higherups of New Century Corporation for the first time as the consultant.
Since New Century had not been established for a long time, and the contacts it had was limited to within Huaxia, we had directly gave the local companies rights for the products in USA and Italy, so New Century did not had to sell its own products. However, Russia was different, since there were no local sales company, New Century had to do everything.
The results of the discussion between the higherups did not result in any solution, because New Century already lost to Company A in terms of “location” as a foreign company.
“Consultant Liu, what do you think we should do?” Chu Gao called me Consultant Liu in the meeting.
“I think that the main issue we have is the inability to occupy any market shares! The Russian consumers are not as opposed to using the products of a new company as Company A. That’s because it’s the same for them no matter who’s they use. But right now, the main issue is that we affected Company A’s profits. Company A has wide connections in Russia, so we can’t truly get into the market. That’s why, as long as we get the Russian consumers to use New Century’s products, the problem will be solved,” I said.
“Yeah, we can even not get any profit, and just take market shares. But the key question remains, how do we do that,” Chu Gao nodded.
“I insist on my initial viewpoint, bundle sales!” I said determinedly. Bundling products was the ace move of the company I was in during my previous life, regardless of the product, as long as they wanted to take the market, they would bundle it in their operating system, forcing the users to accept it.