1928: The rise of giant merchants

The problem of sexual intercourse when talking about dancing should not be underestimated.

Ye Luo is sure that as soon as the Black Cat Ballroom opens, the people in Shanghai will enjoy the benefits and business will be booming, quickly overtaking the limelight of the hotel ballroom.

After this, there will inevitably be a group of people who are interested in throwing dirty water on Black Cat Dance Hall.

The similarity between dance halls and brothels makes it destined to be easily misunderstood as a gray industry, and it is difficult to reach the level of elegance.

If it promotes a culture of criticizing dance, then the dance hall business will not be able to grow bigger and stronger, and at most it will be just another movie theater business.

If this happens, Ye Luo's efforts will be in vain.

To solve this problem, we must first understand a series of people such as the main groups who become obsessed with dancing, the main customer groups of the ballroom business, and the main groups who may criticize dancing as a bad habit, compare and analyze their portraits, and then find Find a way to break the situation.

"Baby, you can get a few sample questionnaires from me later, and then ask Mei Seng and the others to print them, and then ask the security company staff to distribute the samples in various places. By the way, let Boss Wu give the questionnaire as a bonus. , sold to customers together with the next issue of "Liangyou Pictorial"."

Ye Luo said to Xiao Aqiao, and then looked towards the studio. The shooting there was probably about to end.

"Okay, I understand." Xiao Aqiao winked at him and smiled slightly, "It must be done properly."

After a while, Lu Xiaoman, wearing a shawl and holding a lot of bouquets, walked out with a tired look.

"So many flowers?" Ye Luo was shocked.

"Yes, when we were shooting on location just now, a lot of people came to give me flowers, which scared me." Lu Xiaoman stuck out her tongue. Although she said this, she was enjoying it in her heart.

She has always wanted to be an actress and star, and finally experienced the happiness of being a popular movie star.

Seeing that Lu Xiaoman looked a little depressed, Ye Luo took her back to the car and asked Ding Li to send her home safely and continue working tomorrow.

When he heard that he still had work tomorrow, Lu Xiaoman's eyes darkened, and he forced a smile to say goodbye to Ye Luo.

She suddenly had the illusion of falling into a tiger's den!

September 15, the seventeenth year of the Republic of China (1928).

The Majestic Hotel, which originally opened on Gordon Road and also operated as a dance hall, has officially closed. Its manager, Laurence Kadoorie of the Kadoorie family, left Shanghai by ship on September 13. It is said that he is going to join his business in Hong Kong. Very successful father Roy Kadoorie.

There are also rumors that the Sassoon family forced Lorenz Kadoorie to leave Shanghai because Victor Sassoon, the "crooked Sassoon", had a grudge against Roy Kadoorie and Michael Kadoorie and did not want them to stay in Shanghai. Keep making money.

Lu Yusheng of Yongxing Company bought the entire Dahua Hotel for an astonishing price of 4 million oceans.

It is said that the second young master Ye Luo also quoted 3.8 million oceans, but Lu Yusheng was the first to get it.

And the two of them purchased the Majestic Hotel to run the dance hall!

For a time, there were signs of the dance club business budding in Shanghai. Countless small and medium-sized businessmen and many tycoons were looking at these two companies, hoping to become the first wave of people to follow the trend and make money together after their dance halls officially opened.

Soon after, news came out that Ye Luo had acquired a large number of marginalized industries of the Kadoorie family.

These include a total of six companies in the textile industry, power industry and pharmaceutical industry.

However, the news did not cause much controversy.

Because these three industries have long been controlled by powerful forces, many of which are still controlled by the Sassoon family. No one believes that Ye Luo can pull out a tooth from the tiger's mouth!

The Sassoon family is not a loose foreign organization like the Automobile Dealers Association.

They are deeply rooted in Shanghai, and their two major businesses, tobacco and real estate, are near monopolies. Hundreds of other companies are spread across various industries. The family's total global assets are said to have exceeded 10 billion! There are also assets of over 1 billion in Shanghai, which are far beyond what Ye Luo can match now.

On the day the Dahua Hotel closed, Yongxing Company announced the construction plan for a new ballroom.

Lu Yusheng also came forward to hold a grand press conference to inform the public that this new ballroom was not just a property of Yongxing Company.

Of the 4 million yuan he purchased for the Dahua Hotel, Lu Yusheng himself only owned 1 million yuan, the other two tycoons of Yongxing Company each owned 500,000 yuan, Edward Sassoon owned 1.8 million yuan, and the other 200,000 yuan came from many companies attached to Yongxing. Small and medium-sized business people in the company.

From now on, the construction of the new ballroom will begin. Lu Yusheng used the press conference to invite businessmen to invest in the venue, and claimed that many celebrities have already invested in the venue.

For example, the famous businessman Gu Liancheng invested 700,000 yuan, the famous comprador He Qidong invested 500,000 yuan, the young marshal's wife Yu Fengzhi invested 300,000 yuan, the newspaper tycoon Zhang Zhuping invested 200,000 yuan, and the old-school businessman Zhang Hongtu invested 200,000 yuan. etc.

These are only the shareholders who can be disclosed. There are also a group of senior officials of the Jinling National Government. Their names cannot be mentioned, but many of them have invested money, hoping that Lu Yusheng's century dance hall will make them a lot of money.

The ballroom is named Paramount Hall, which is homophonic to "Paramount"!

Lu Yusheng also announced that Paramount was designed by Yang Xiruan Architect. The building has three floors. The ground floor is the kitchen and store, and the second floor is the dance floor and banquet hall. The largest dance floor is more than 500 square meters. The dance floor is supported by automobile steel plates. It can produce a swaying feeling at any time; there are small dance floors that can be divided at will around the big dance floor, which can be used for dance practice and tryst; after the two-story ballroom is fully opened, it can accommodate thousands of people dancing at the same time, and the indoor is also equipped with heating and cooling equipment. Air-conditioned and luxuriously decorated.

After reading the new ballroom construction plan given by Lu Yusheng, everyone was moved by it.

Even Ye Luo couldn't help but admire that Paramount was indeed the legendary No. 1 music house and the largest dance hall in the Far East!

This shocking investment amount and construction plan are even more detailed than his Ye's World.

Ye's World is a super large amusement park of more than 14,000 square meters.

Paramount is just a hotel-style ballroom with a total area of ​​about 1,200 square meters, which is only one-tenth of the size of Ye's World, but the cost is much higher!

Lu Yusheng had invested a lot of money this time, and was bound to completely crush Ye Luo in the dance hall business, in order to clear the name of Yongxing Company, and at the same time wash away the shame of Zhang Wanlin.

Also on September 15th, Shu Qiao, the general manager of Ye's Dance Company, announced the construction plan of the Black Cat Dance Hall, and carried out bombing advertising in major newspapers and magazines. Ye Luo had said that he would do so many times before. To get into the dance industry and make money, everyone knows that Lu Yusheng made it clear that he would follow Ye Luo.

It's just that the design of the Black Cat Ballroom is far less luxurious and magnificent than the Paramount.

The ballroom was located on Gulangyu Road, a relatively remote part of the French Concession, and the hotel it owned was the Paris Hotel, which was on the verge of bankruptcy and could only be regarded as a small and medium-sized hotel.

According to the photos provided by Xiao Aqiao and the live view of the Black Cat Dance Hall, which has been basically completed, the gap with Paramount is not even a little bit different.

Apart from the strange name and the mysterious "Black Cat" trademark, there is nothing surprising about the Black Cat Dance Hall.

On one side, countless celebrities have invested, and the original site is the second-ranked super luxury hotel in Shanghai. The Paramount, the largest ballroom in the Far East, is eye-catching and shocking just from the reference picture;

On one side is the mysterious dance hall Black Cat, which is invested by Ye Luo, a rising star in Shanghai's business community and the youngest multi-millionaire;

Initially, people mostly discussed and looked forward to Paramount, with few mentioning the seemingly unremarkable Black Cat Ballroom.

Faced with Paramount's overwhelming money offensive.

The dancers and staff of the Black Cat Ballroom were very nervous and worried.

They are actually quite satisfied with their current working environment and life, but if the Black Cat Ballroom dies suddenly and the second young master's business fails, their current comfortable life will be immediately broken, replaced by endless despair and the pain they have experienced. Countless disappointments.

Not only are the dancers and staff nervous, but Lu Xiaoman, a promotional model for the Black Cat Ballroom, is also restless every day, always paying attention to the promotional effects of various advertisements.

As time went by, Lu Xiaoman discovered that the billboard of Black Cat Dance Costumes she photographed stood downstairs at Black Cat Dance Hall, attracting many people to stop and watch it every day.

In this issue of "Liangyou Pictorial", the cover girl chose her wearing a bold and sexy black cheongsam, and called her the Black Cat Dance Queen. She became popular in Shanghai and sold nearly 40,000 copies!

Ye Luo has been telling them not to worry and just do their job well. He seems to be very confident in the popularity of Black Cat Dance Hall.

Lu Xiaoman and others did not believe it at first, but as the various novel concepts of Black Cat Ballroom entered the hearts of the people like spring breeze and gradually replaced Paramount, which was only prosperous and magnificent but without details, they were gradually convinced. I also have a little confidence.

The real turning point came on September 16, when Ye's Dance Company started pre-selling dance tickets.

Dance tickets are a brand new concept, but Ye Luo has previously launched innovative marketing methods such as New Year's tickets in Yip's World, which has been very effective and has also given the staff of Yip's Dance Company a reference for this. This time the marketing is done more handily.

In fact, Xiao Aqiao and the others do not agree with Ye Luo pre-selling dance tickets in advance. They feel that this will easily expose the advantages of Black Cat Dance Hall. What if Paramount learns from it?

But Ye Luo insisted on letting them print dance tickets and vigorously promote the concept so that after the opening, customers would quickly accept the dance ticket trading model and not feel unfamiliar.

As for being imitated by Paramount.

If Lu Yusheng and the others were not opening Paramount, Ye Luo would have guarded against this move.

It's a pity that he bought the Majestic Hotel and opened this super-invincible scam. No matter how good the dance ticket system is, they can't imitate it.

Because as Lu Yusheng said at the press conference, Paramount wants to be extremely luxurious and build an unprecedented super luxury ballroom. Therefore, he needs a large number of wealthy and powerful shareholders and a large amount of capital investment to satisfy Paramount. Luxurious decoration and many advanced equipment.

In order to limit the power and profits of a large number of celebrity shareholders, Paramount will pay dividends to shareholders on a per-head basis, so it is destined not to have too many dancers and will only constantly hint and require guests to bring their own dance partners.

At first, Ye Luo couldn't understand why the largest ballroom in the Far East would go bankrupt within seven months. He felt that even if the positioning was wrong, as long as it could steal all the business from large hotel ballrooms, Paramount would still be able to make some money.

It's clear now.

Lu Yusheng is so incompetent that he not only tricked himself and Yongxing Company to death, but also offended so many celebrity shareholders to death!

Charging on a per-capita basis means abandoning the dancer system, and abandoning the dancers means that there will be no money at all.

Sure enough, the pre-sale of dance tickets for the Black Cat Dance Hall on September 16 was promoted through the Great World literary tabloid and many marketing methods, and the public's acceptance was quite high. Naturally, it also attracted the attention of Lu Yusheng and others.

However, Ye Luo has not yet announced the tea prices and the official business methods of the Black Cat Dance Hall, so they only thought that Ye Luo had just improved the dancers' charging system, changing the previous clock buying system and music buying system to the dance ticket system. .

There is nothing unusual about changing the soup but not the dressing.

Lu Yusheng was overwhelmed with excitement after seeing so many powerful people pouring into Paramount as shareholders. In order to prevent these powerful people from affecting his business, he chose the per-capita dividend model and simply abandoned the dancing girl system.

In his opinion, in the past, ballroom dances, except for a few tycoons who liked to find Belarusian or Japanese dancers, mostly brought their own beautiful dance partners. It was said to be dancing, but in fact it was for socializing and business negotiation, and it was just a means of communication for the upper class.

His Paramount provides a platform for these big shots to meet and chat.

As for Ye Luo's thoughts, Lu Yusheng couldn't guess and didn't bother to care.

The Black Cat Ballroom was modified based on the original location of the Paris Hotel, and is now almost fully decorated.

Lu Yusheng had already sent people to secretly investigate, and he had also visited several times himself.

Except for Lu Xiaoman's sexy billboard downstairs, there is nothing else eye-catching.

It's really just an ordinary dance hall, nothing to worry about.

The Black Cat Ballroom was scheduled to open on September 30, so Lu Yusheng urged the engineering team that Paramount should also open on the same day, in order to avenge the past and save the face of New World after the defeat of Big World.

While Lu Yusheng and others were busy preparing for the opening of Paramount, Ye Luo temporarily let go of the Black Cat Dance Hall and turned to the song and dance troupe he had always wanted to do.

In his vision, the ballroom would develop into a stage where singers would perform on stage. Guests and dancers would dance offstage, complementing each other and boosting the record and song industry, which was only becoming prosperous in the 1930s, making it more convenient for him. Make money!

On the evening of September 18, Queen Ji, the dancer at the Black Cat Dance Hall, took a rickshaw to No. 32 Xiafei Road with an uneasy mood.

She knows that Xiafifang is full of celebrities. The monthly rent for a small bungalow here is 200 oceans, which is higher than the salary of many people!

The dancer contract Wang Ji signed still had a basic salary. Although it was only twelve yuan a month, it also gave her an unprecedented sense of respect.

In the eyes of the second young master, they were not despicable prostitutes, but employees of the company. Wang Ji was particularly grateful and admired for this.

This time the second young master called her to come to his private villa, and Wang Ji was also prepared to be "played badly". I had heard from the little sisters before that many rich young men had weird hobbies, and they were afraid that she would be taken aback by the second young master. , I want to play with some flowers.

While she felt that the second young master was not such a person, she was also looking forward to it.

Just when she plucked up the courage to open the door, she was shocked to find that the bungalow was packed with people!