Return to Singapore 1995

Chapter 475: Using the Trump Card to Catch the Enemy Off Guard

Before coming to the United States, Pacific Online Bookstore suddenly had a new competitor overnight: Popular Online Bookstore. Moreover, this Popular Online Bookstore came with great momentum and grabbed a lot of market share that originally belonged to Pacific Online Bookstore. This led to many rumors in the market, which indirectly affected the fundraising of Yifan No. 2 Venture Capital Fund.

Several investors who originally agreed to become LP partners temporarily waited and slowed down their investment pace, so that the establishment and fund raising of Yifan No. 2 Venture Capital Fund did not reach the ideal progress expected by Li Xiaofan.

Originally, Li Xiaofan planned to quickly complete the LP partner determination and fund raising of Yifan No. 2 Venture Capital Fund before coming to the United States this time, and then finalize the signing of the investment contract for Cyrix after coming to the United States.

However, the plan did not change quickly, and the investment in Cyrix can only be postponed.

The next morning, Li Xiaofan flew to Dallas, Texas, and had dinner with Dr. Zhang of Texas Instruments in the evening.

Li Xiaofan informed Dr. Zhang about his previous communication with the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). After weighing the pros and cons, he suggested that the planned wafer foundry project be placed in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region after the return next year.

This Hong Kong Island was originally one of the candidate locations considered by Dr. Zhang for building a factory, and he will officially return to the embrace of the motherland next summer. Dr. Zhang certainly supports Li Xiaofan's idea very much, and he will also have an explanation to his old father in the future.

During the meal, Dr. Zhang told Li Xiaofan that the top president of Texas Instruments TI, as well as the company's senior vice president, his master Dr. Shao and others, have repeatedly retained Dr. Zhang, and they must let him complete the two wafer factory construction projects at hand and wait until he officially retires next year.

Now that Dr. Zhang has listened to Li Xiaofan's introduction, everyone will simply postpone the wafer foundry project plan until next year, and start all the preliminary preparations this year.

For Li Xiaofan, investing in Dr. Zhang's wafer foundry is not particularly urgent at the moment. The most urgent thing is to find a way to get a stake in Cyrix, which produces CPU processors, as soon as possible.

……

During his stay in the United States, Li Xiaofan also inquired about the newly established "American DT Venture Capital Company" through various connections such as Yang Zhiyuan, Huang Renxun, Xu Jianguo from Taiwan, and Taiwan shareholders of OmniVision Technologies.

From the current situation, the Taiwanese shareholders behind this American DT Venture Capital Company are quite powerful, which brings a lot of hidden worries to Li Xiaofan.

……

After returning to Singapore, the price war between Pacific Online Bookstore and Popular Online Bookstore is in full swing.

The books and other products on the two websites are about 30% cheaper than before the price war. Everyone started to sell at a loss. It depends on who can survive to the end.

Of course, the biggest beneficiaries are online consumers in Singapore and other Southeast Asian countries.

Another "side effect" is that the online price war between Pacific Online Bookstore and Popular Online Bookstore has attracted a group of offline consumers to shop online to "enjoy the online shopping bonus" through media reports and word-of-mouth spread by consumers, making the entire market cake bigger.

Just when the online price war between the two companies was at a stalemate, in early October, Li Xiaofan launched a killer application product on Pacific Online Bookstore: PICQ.

On October 8, Mirabilis, an Israeli company invested by Li Xiaofan, launched ICQ version 1.0 to global Internet users and began to provide download services on the ICQ website.

Previously, Li Xiaofan obtained Mirabilis' exclusive Asian authorization license.

After Dr. Pan Zhanlong's team obtained the ICQ version 1.0 source code file, they made improvements and upgrades according to Li Xiaofan's requirements, and launched PICQ version 1.0 on Pacific Online Bookstore on October 8.

In addition to all the functions of ICQ and being compatible, the biggest function of this PICQ is: providing online customer service.

In addition, it has Chinese and English compatibility functions, and can download Chinese input software and chat in Chinese.

After online customers download the PICQ program on Pacific Online Bookstore, they can not only add friends, chat, transfer files and other functions, but also contact the online customer service of Pacific Online Bookstore online.

At the same time, Li Xiaofan also launched the PICQ download service on Yahoo Singapore and Lion City chat rooms.

Once PICQ was launched, it became popular, with explosive growth in downloads and users.

The original group chat in the chat room has become a peer-to-peer P2P private chat. For boys, PICQ has become a weapon for picking up girls.

When everyone surfs the Internet, using PICQ has become a fashion.

For Pacific Online Bookstore users, with PICQ, they can contact Pacific Online Bookstore's 24-hour online customer service in a timely manner through PICQ to solve various problems such as returns, delivery address errors and changes, complaints and consultations in a timely manner.

The launch of PICQ has greatly increased the experience and satisfaction of Pacific Online Bookstore customers.

Li Xiaofan's move caught the opponent, Dazhong Online Bookstore, off guard.

The opponent originally planned to compete with capital and fight a protracted war to grab market share.

But they did not expect Pacific Online Bookstore to use such a move.

By the time Volkswagen Online Bookstore reacted and rushed to develop similar products to PICQ, the market opportunity had already been taken away by Li Xiaofan's Pacific Online Bookstore.

A large number of online customers that had been accumulated through Dazhong Online Bookstore were lost to Pacific Online Bookstore.

Friday morning, October 18th.

After work, as soon as Li Xiaofan arrived at the office, Liu Yanping rushed in with several forms and reported to Li Xiaofan:

"Director Li, this is yesterday's sales report. Our online sales yesterday increased by 12% compared with the day before yesterday. Comparing the data before the launch of PICQ on October 8, yesterday's data doubled the average daily sales in September. So much!”

Li Xiaofan said happily: "Great, does this mean that the sales amount of Dazhong Online Bookstore is extremely shrinking?"

"Yes, Director Li, it can be understood that way. According to data provided by a third-party market research company, the market share gap between us and Volkswagen Online Bookstore is getting wider and wider. In September, before the launch of PICQ, the online sales of books In this area, our data is evenly matched with that of Dazhong Online Bookstore. However, last week’s sales data showed that our Pacific Online Bookstore occupies 70% of the market share, while Dazhong Online Bookstore has shrunk to less than 30%..."

Hearing this, Li Xiaofan smiled: "Very good, Yanping, if this trend continues, this contest between us and the other party will be over soon!"

Chapter 504/562
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Return to Singapore 1995Ch.504/562 [89.68%]