Chapter 278 The Situation Is Promising and a Meeting Is Held

Daisha replied: "Dr. Li, judging from interviews with local classmates and local Singaporeans around me, Singaporeans are quite affectionate towards Popular Bookstore and Thambi magazine store. It is said that Popular Bookstore currently has a store in Singapore. There are more than 200,000 members, and the Thambi magazine store is very influential among young people in Singapore, especially the comic magazines in their store are very popular..."

After returning to the Singapore Science Park office, Li Xiaofan convened a group of people for discussion. Their initial opinion was that taking into account the feelings of the Singaporean people, they suggested contacting Popular Bookstore and Thambi Magazine Store to see if they were interested in cooperating.

After listening to everyone's opinions, Li Xiaofan sent his two assistants, Liu Yanping and Daisha, to go to Popular Bookstore and Thambi magazine store to test each other's attitude.

As a result, they left with excitement and returned disappointed. Both Popular Bookstore and Thambi Magazine Store expressed no interest in cooperation.

After listening to the report, Li Xiaofan said: "Okay, let's pay tribute first and then attack!"

Li Xiaofan knew that the only competitor for his upcoming "Pacific Online Bookstore" was Singapore Popular Bookstore.

Others, such as the Yum Tower next to Bugis Station in Singapore, are now considered the only bookstore in Singapore. They were once known as the so-called cultural center and art capital of Singapore. In addition to Dazhong Bookstore, there are some small bookstores such as Youlian Bookstore, Youth Bookstore, Shengyou Bookstore, etc., all of which are small and insignificant.

The only rival, the Popular Bookstore, has a history of 71 years. In 1924, when the Zhili-Fengtian War was raging in the mainland, Mr. Zhou Xingqu, the founder of Dazhong Book Company, left mainland China and came to Singapore.

The company name of this bookstore in Singapore at that time was very interesting. It was called "Shanghai Zhengxing Company" in Chinese, but the English name under the Chinese plaque translated as "Zhengxing Company World Bookstore". At that time, Singapore was still a small Nanyang city, and its reputation was far less than that of Shanghai. At that time, Shanghai was the largest city in the Far East.

World Bookstore, a company founded by Zhou Xingqu, was specialized in selling Chinese picture books and comic books. At the same time, it opened branches in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Surabaya, etc. in Southeast Asia to sell Chinese books. In 1949, after the original source of books from mainland China gradually disappeared, Zhou Xingchu established World Publishing House in Hong Kong, where southern literati gathered, to publish magazines and Chinese books to supply bookstores in Southeast Asia.

After Singapore gained independence in 1965 and adopted English as its official working language, Popular Bookstore was forced to transform and gradually sold mainly English books, supplemented by a small number of traditional Chinese books from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Currently, Popular Bookstore has more than 20 chain bookstores in Singapore, plus more than 100 retail outlets in Malaysia and Hong Kong.

The company was listed on the Main Board of the Singapore Exchange in 1997, but due to the impact of Internet bookstores, the company was forced to delist from the Singapore Exchange in 2015...

In his previous life, Li Xiaofan worked part-time in Singapore. In addition to libraries and movie theaters, Popular Bookstore was one of his favorite places to go in his spare time. He was still very fond of Popular Bookstore.

In his previous life, Li Xiaofan had heard many stories about Dazhong Bookstore.

In the 1980s, World Publishing House, established by Popular Book Company in Hong Kong, supplied books to many small private bookstores in Singapore. However, small bookstores were under heavy operating pressure and had many bad debts, resulting in an increasing number of books in stock published and distributed by World Publishing. At most, customers in Singapore defaulted on debts of nearly 20 million Hong Kong dollars to their World Publishing House.

As a result, Zhou Zeng'e, the successor of Dazhong Bookstore and the then president, became so angry that he stopped the cooperative relationship, stopped collecting debts, and stopped supplying books. All the books in the warehouse were dumped. It is said that a total of fifty-six carts were dumped at that time. books thrown into the trash. Then, Chow took advantage of the booming real estate market in Hong Kong to sell the warehouse and cash out to open a popular bookstore in Malaysia.

This year, Zhou Zeng'e invested heavily in Hong Kong's Whampoa to open Hong Kong's first large-scale bookstore with an area of ​​more than 40,000 square feet, and also operated catering in it. This project lasted until 1998 when it was forced to close down after suffering a loss of HK$70 million.

In his previous life, Li Xiaofan read a report. The reporter interviewed Zhou Zeng'e, who had been running the book business for nearly half a century. He once said with a smile: "Running a bookstore is really something only a fool would do."

Li Xiaofan still respects Mr. Zhou Zeng'e. The spirit of insisting on running bookstores in Nanyang, where Chinese books are marginalized, is really admirable.

Later, Mr. Chow Tsang-e, President of Singapore Volkswagen Group, established the Chow Sing-chu Fund in the name of his father, Mr. Chow Sing-chu. The foundation adheres to its spirit of promoting Chinese education and culture and actively initiates book donations, literary lectures, cultural and historical exhibitions, story telling and other activities. The fund has planned and published several sets of children's picture books, as well as a series of books on the development of Singapore's Chinese publishing industry, humanities classics, and Chinese education.

Their family has made important contributions to the development of Chinese culture, education and language in Nanyang.

Li Xiaofan was thinking in his heart: Popular Bookstore doesn't want to cooperate now because they currently have more than 20 stores in Singapore, more than 200,000 members, and their profits are quite good. When our "Pacific Online Bookstore" is launched, it will definitely have an impact on them. I can discuss cooperation with them and clean up the mess when the time comes.

Especially when Yahoo goes public early next year, when he has a large amount of funds on hand, he can take the opportunity to invest in Popular Bookstore. Integrate "Pacific Online Bookstore" with offline "Popular Bookstore" physical stores to create an O2O model, and the products can be developed from books to more extensive multimedia products such as computer games, movies and music...

Li Xiaofan's idea is to go back to the entrepreneurial path of Amazon. In his previous life, Amazon started selling computer games, music CDs, toys and other products in 1998, and began to expand into more categories. In the 1998 fiscal year, Amazon's revenue reached an astonishing $600 million...

In his previous life, when Li Xiaofan was taking an EMBA course, a well-known professor at Tsinghua School of Economics and Management mentioned when analyzing the Amazon case: "People who say Amazon is an e-commerce company don't understand Amazon at all!"

So Li Xiaofan convened a meeting of all employees of Singapore Yifan Company before the opening of Yahoo Singapore Station.

The total number of people in several business lines of Singapore Yifan Company is not small at present.

The most profitable Yifan Trade is currently managed by Liu Yanping from Singapore and Wu Xiumei from Mingzhou Industry and Trade in mainland China. Two more people were hired in Singapore to help Liu Yanping, and the number of employees in Mingzhou Industry and Trade in mainland China has increased to 32. In September, the sales of the entire Yifan Trade sector exceeded 3 million US dollars, with a gross profit of more than 900,000 US dollars.

In Yifan Technology, the TAIYO electrician after-sales service and consumables sales business that Aaron is responsible for later hired a mainland technician to help Aaron, and the income last month was more than 50,000 Singapore dollars. In terms of ICT test fixtures and software, Li Xiaofan asked Gu Qijun to be in charge, and the number of employees increased to six. The income exceeded 200,000 Singapore dollars last month, and the growth momentum was rapid.

The Singapore Yahoo Station project is mainly managed by Dr. Pan Zhanlong. At present, this section has the most employees, with 12 full-time employees and more than 100 part-time mainland students. At present, this project is mainly based on investment. Fortunately, there was funding from several departments such as the Singapore National Productivity Board NPB in the early stage.

Yifan Optical Glasses Store is mainly managed by Guo Hanyue and Liu Mengchen. Li Xiaofan asked Guo Hanyue to serve as the temporary store manager. In addition to the optician Xiao Tianming, a new clerk Qiu Li was recruited last month. Qiu Li is a mother in her thirties who married to Singapore from Fujian eight years ago. Throughout September, the sales of Yifan Optical Glasses Store in Tampines exceeded 400,000 Singapore dollars, and the profitability was very good.

In addition, there are financial director Zhou Xiaoqing, assistant Daisha who is temporarily in charge of "Pacific Head Online Bookstore" and others.

In total, the entire Singapore Yifan company has nearly 30 full-time employees, which is already a large scale.

Throughout September, the overall sales revenue of the entire Yifan company exceeded 3.5 million US dollars. If this growth momentum continues, and not counting Yahoo Singapore and Pacific Online Bookstore, Li Xiaofan estimates that the sales of the entire Yifan company can exceed 60 million US dollars next year.

At the general staff meeting, Li Xiaofan put forward the core concept of Yifan Company: everything starts from the interests of customers!

He advocates three practices: everything for the interests of customers, giving profits to customers, and frugal culture.