The second early release of the "Liúshāng qūshuǐ cǎi wēi shí" · Han Dynasty attire · Blind Box was a great success. At Vivian's birthday celebration, Huang He had a total of 10,000 blind boxes available, and they sold out in the blink of an eye.
It wasn't that Huang He didn't want to release more, but rather that was all that had been transported. Except for the first set of Han Dynasty attire, which Qu Wei personally tailored and modified on-site based on the buyers' height data, the other blind boxes contained only a customization voucher. It would take a month for the customizations to be completed, and then it would depend on logistics for when the clothing would reach the buyers.
However, since high-end luxury brands all operated on a made-to-order basis, there was no need to worry about causing dissatisfaction this time. Instead, it made the products seem even more exclusive and high-class.
As for the price of the blind boxes, the current pricing was 29 Euros per box. Proportionally, this was about 290 RMB per box, which was triple the price of 99 RMB per box in China.
When this pricing was decided, there were some dissenting voices within the group. They believed the price was too exaggerated. Some felt that increasing the price by about 20%, to 12 Euros per box, would have been sufficient.
Others argued that the prices in Europe and China should be the same to avoid accusations of discrimination, and thus advocated for a price of 9.9 Euros per box.
Still others felt that China was a friendly nation and that a generous price should be offered to surrounding countries, even if it meant making a sacrifice, to showcase their magnanimity.
Moreover, they believed that excessively high pricing would affect sales, and therefore proposed a price of around 7 Euros. Even at this price, the overall profit would still be astonishing.
Subsequently, Huang He directly and forcibly dismissed all those who advocated for such magnanimity, even offering them a substantial severance package as they left.
He, Huang He, and Jiangnan Group were not like some other companies who considered themselves America's good sons and priced their products higher in China than in the US. Huang He was not that kind of person.
Of course, considering the significant price difference between the two regions might cause dissatisfaction among some Europeans, Huang He decided that in the future, all blind boxes shipped to European and American countries would contain different items than those sold within China.
Firstly, the decorations would differ. Both versions of the blind boxes would have common and rare items with different appearances but almost identical costs. As for the final deluxe version, the differences would be in color and some details.
In essence, at a glance, both versions would look the same. Upon closer inspection, they would be different, but in terms of cost calculation, they would remain the same, or the European and American versions might even be slightly cheaper.
This way, European and American countries would have no reason to complain.
However, what Huang He himself did not expect was that many years later, even when all product lines were available globally and the same products could be purchased in any region, there would still be a large number of daigou (personal shoppers/resellers).
A significant number of Chinese people would specifically pay three times the price to ask people to buy blind boxes from European and American countries to obtain a differently colored variant.
Meanwhile, many poor people in European and American countries, in order to have the opportunity to wear luxury goods at a lower price, would specifically ask people to purchase Chinese versions of the blind boxes through daigou.
This turn of events left Boss Huang himself perplexed.
In summary, Jiangnan Group's luxury blind boxes had established a foothold in the European market. At the very least, European customers had acknowledged that Jiangnan Group's luxury blind boxes indeed possessed the status of luxury goods, and that was sufficient.
On the other hand, just as Larry Page had planned, following Huang He's super advertisement, Vivian not only became the most famous princess worldwide but also propelled the Tesla Advertising Alliance to fame.
Just three days later, a company, in its eagerness to promote its new product, was willing to spend 100 million US dollars to purchase the Tesla Advertising Alliance's entire network background package.
This meant that the backgrounds of all websites under the Tesla Advertising Alliance would be replaced with this company's advertising graphics. This advertising package would only last for one minute, at a cost of 100 million US dollars.
In reality, this package itself did not exist. Both the advertisement itself and its price were concocted by Huang He on the spot that evening.
The price of 100 million US dollars was also highly inflated. Huang He had intentionally exaggerated the price to elevate the impact of this promotion. According to the advertising alliance's pricing mechanism, an advertisement lasting one day at a price of 8 million US dollars would have been more reasonable.
However, since Huang He and Larry Page had created this advertisement as a stunt and had no expectation of actually selling it, they had set the price at 100 million US dollars.
Unexpectedly, the promotional effect of this advertisement was so good that a company actually accepted the 100 million US dollar offer and secured the opportunity for the entire network background.
As a result, their product became an overnight sensation worldwide. It was said that their global sales exceeded 500 million US dollars in a single month, once again astonishing the world.
The outcome was that four or five companies continuously expressed their desire to purchase this entire network background package.
Larry Page was very tempted, but he received strong opposition from Huang He. Huang He told Larry Page that scarcity breeds value. The reason the previous two advertisements had achieved such astonishing results was because such advertisements had never appeared before, and users experienced immense novelty, hence they were willing to pay for them, leading to significant gains for the advertisers.
However, if they accepted these four or five orders consecutively and changed the advertisement every day, the novelty would be lost, the marketing effect would disappear, and the advertisement's intrinsic value would truly revert to 8 million US dollars.
And this was not the most important point. The most crucial aspect was that these background advertisements would severely impact user experience. Not to mention that many advertisement images were designed in a way that was visually unappealing, but simply loading the advertisement images would consume a significant amount of network bandwidth.
In areas with slower internet speeds, it could take over 10 minutes to load the background images. This would cause Google's user experience to plummet dramatically, and users might even revert to Yahoo Search.
Huang He's words sent shivers down Larry Page's spine, and he immediately admitted that he had been too greedy. Finally, he and Huang He agreed to sell such packages only once a month. This meant that each month, only one merchant would have the opportunity to feature this advertisement for one day.
Concurrently, Huang He and Larry Page also negotiated some details. For instance, due to the enormous size of the advertisement images, to avoid slow loading times, after the advertising contract was signed, it would take about half a month to secretly send the image data to users' computers when they opened the Google search page. This would create a local image, allowing computers to directly read the local image when opening web pages, significantly reducing download times.
Furthermore, to maintain the buzz surrounding this advertising package, the advertising partner for this premium package would be kept strictly confidential. The identity of the advertising partner would not be revealed until the advertisement was launched.
Secondly, the Tesla Advertising Alliance would invest funds to collaborate with media outlets, encouraging them to speculate on which entity would be the next advertising partner, much like media speculation before the Nobel Prize announcement about who would win that year's award. The aim was to speculate on which company would be the one placing the dominant advertisement.
This would turn the advertisement itself into an advertisement for the Tesla Alliance. Well, this might seem quite confusing, but those who understand will understand, and those who don't can criticize the author's writing.
This was a long-term operational plan, and there was not much to discuss for now.
However, in the short term, there were significant effects. Yahoo's stock price dropped again. By August 4th, Yahoo's stock had fallen to $3.92 per share, causing peculiar expressions on every investor's face.
Who could have imagined that this stock was aiming for $15 per share just half a month prior?
The change was simply too rapid.
However, with Yahoo's stock price dropping to $3.92, it had essentially hit rock bottom. After all, Yahoo's scale and market presence remained. In fact, Yahoo's actual value should have been around $5 per share.
After falling to $3.92, the market's panic sentiment had largely been released. What followed would be those who gambled on a contrarian rebound.
It was at this precise moment that Huang He and Little Swift began acquiring Yahoo company stocks at $3.9 per share.
It wasn't that Huang He intended to invest in Yahoo. Rather, it was to return Yahoo's stocks to its investors.
The basic principle of short-selling a company was to exchange cash for an equivalent amount of stock from institutions, and then sell these shares on the market.
When the stock plummeted, they would buy back the same number of shares at a lower price, return these shares to the institutions, and reclaim the funds they had collateralized.
In this way, the short-seller could earn substantial profits from the stock price difference.
"I guess I've done a good deed by helping Yahoo squeeze out the excess water!" Huang He said with a smile. If people at Yahoo heard this, they would probably want to punch him.
Previously, Huang He and Little Swift had sold a total of nearly $30 billion worth, or 2 billion shares, of Yahoo stock. Now, Huang He and Western Mustang Company were beginning to buy back 2 billion shares.
Of course, these shares could not be bought back all at once, otherwise, Yahoo's stock price would skyrocket instantly. Instead, it had to be done gradually, without affecting market fluctuations.
However, 2 billion shares was still an enormous quantity. By the time all 2 billion shares were bought back, Yahoo's stock price would have risen back to $5 billion and then stabilized.
The sale of these stocks, valued at $30 billion, had generated approximately $27 billion in funds.
The subsequent repurchase from the stock market cost about $9 billion. Adding the interest paid for short-selling, the net profit from this transaction was $17.5 billion.
With the cooperation of Western Mustang Company, Huang He was the first to sell shares and also the first to buy back at a low price, resulting in the lowest cost for Huang He's short-selling of Yahoo. He ultimately earned $6.2 billion.
Western Mustang Company also earned $11.3 billion, bringing its second phase fund's total capital to $33.3 billion. Upon the announcement of this news, Western Mustang Company received widespread praise, although there was less criticism this time. Western Mustang Company was no longer seen as merely an investment company relying on luck, and more people began investing their money, eagerly awaiting the third phase fund next year.