The Industrial Giant Reborn

FEDMART is a listed company. Chen Zhiwen needs to apply to the US Securities Regulatory Commission for the acquisition. However, a small and medium-sized supermarket is also at the bottom of the US stock market. The Securities Regulatory Commission will not care at all. It will be passed within a few weeks, and with the approval of the board of directors, which controls more than the general stock, the transaction price will be directly determined.

As for the U.S. Department of Commerce, like the Securities Regulatory Commission, it doesn’t care about such small supermarket chains at all, and the supermarket industry is not on the list of industries that the U.S. Department of Commerce does not allow foreign investment. They may intervene, otherwise, they are very happy to see foreign capital come to the United States to invest in this kind of infrastructure industry. Just like decades later, the European and American governments welcome Huaguo capital to build hotels in the United States, and they can invest and Who doesn't like this kind of investment that drives employment without affecting national security?

However, in order to avoid being discovered by Hong Kong, Chen Zhiwen still adopted the Bermuda registered head office to acquire Fedmart. If no one cares, no one will care who is behind the acquisition of a supermarket.

On August 26, 1974, with the consent of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, fedmart was successfully delisted and became a wholly-owned enterprise.

After the acquisition was completed, Chen Zhiwen came to fedmart's headquarters again.

This is an office with a height of only three floors. The internal staff are mainly administrative staff such as customer service, procurement, logistics, and personnel. It is only two minutes away from the nearest fedmart supermarket.

Everyone in Fedmart also knows that the Asian accompanied by Pierce is his current boss. Many people are a little nervous, for fear of layoffs after the new boss arrives. After the oil crisis, the U.S. economy has been poor, and many companies outside are also laying off employees.

The area of ​​the office building was small, and it took only ten minutes to go around. Afterwards, Pierce and Chen Zhiwen came to an office with a smell of paint, which was obviously prepared by Pierce recently for Chen Zhiwen.

Pierce made a cup of coffee for Chen Zhiwen himself, and said, "Mr. Chen, I heard from Mr. Ron that you like this brand of coffee. I have specially prepared some for you."

"Thank you." Chen Zhiwen looked normal on the surface, but he could only laugh awkwardly in his heart. He didn't have any coffee he liked to drink, but when he met Ron before, the coffee prepared by the other party was not bad, so he said that he liked it very much up.

"Mr. Chen, Fedmart is also owned by you now, so for the next development plan, besides purchasing cheap goods from Hong Kong, do you have any other plans?" Pierce asked after sitting down.

"Of course, I plan to inject capital to open a new store, but it is another brand, and the way of operation will be different from fedmart." Chen Zhiwen said after putting down his coffee.

"New brand? Big box store too? Or something else?" Pierce asked.

"It's still a warehouse-style supermarket, but the customer target I want to target is not commercial purchases, but everyone." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

The history of the development of warehouse supermarkets has been born since the 1940s, but the previous scale was not very large, and it was far from being comparable to more traditional department stores and new supermarkets led by Wal-Mart. Until 1976 in the original history, So Pierce's re-entrepreneurship created a new model.

"Everyone? How is this possible? Give up the membership system?" Pierce said: "Fedmart also tried to cancel the membership before, but the effect was very poor."

Chen Zhiwen denied: "It's not about giving up membership. The membership system will still exist. Membership is also the core part of warehouse supermarkets. However, the target group of warehouse supermarkets is wrong. They only take nearby factories and companies as customers. This range is too narrow. If we want to develop better, we must develop all nearby consumers as customers. The civilian market is the largest market in the world. If we don’t seize this market, we will never be able to compete with other types of supermarket chains.”

Before 1976, the main service targets of warehouse supermarkets were nearby factories, companies, commercial institutions, government departments and their employees, etc. These companies purchased a large amount of products, and the types of products purchased were not many, while storage The characteristic of the traditional supermarket is that there are not many varieties, but the quantity of each kind is large.

This is also the reason why warehouse-style supermarkets were created. In the era when all kinds of supermarkets were contending, warehouse-style supermarkets gradually survived with their fixed institutional customers and became a small category in the retail industry.

However, there are successes and failures. The large-scale procurement of organizations has given the warehouse supermarket a chance to survive, but it has also limited its development. After all, the purchase volume of these companies is limited, far inferior to the customers of other supermarkets—— -everyone. Moreover, when other supermarkets compete fiercely, they will also notice the category of company procurement, and it is not difficult to enter it to grab a job. Just give a discount. This is also the root cause of the development of warehouse-style supermarkets in the 1970s. One of the reasons is that in terms of capital, warehouse-style supermarkets with a general scale of hundreds of millions of dollars cannot compare with those traditional retail giants with a turnover of billions or tens of billions.

"But how can normal people pay membership fees? Although this amount is not much, most people don't spend money first and then shop." Pierce asked in confusion. Fedmart has tried to invite ordinary people to shop before, and this has been broken. The rules of warehouse supermarkets have been changed, but it has no effect. It is too difficult to let ordinary people spend money to consume, and it is not possible to let them come to shop like ordinary supermarkets without a membership system. Ordinary residents are obviously more willing to go to normal supermarkets. supermarket.

"So we need new methods." Chen Zhiwen nodded and said, "I know that you tried to reform a few years ago, but failed. Ordinary users don’t have many choices, and generally, they don’t buy too much, but now is a good time, because everyone has no money during this time.”

"The recent economic situation is indeed not good. Even the company's purchases have dropped a lot. The cost of our warehouse supermarket is much cheaper than other supermarkets. What should we do to attract surrounding users to spend?" Pierce asked with a frown. The system will not work, and the membership system will not work.

"In the current economic situation, oil prices are expensive and commodity prices are expensive. In theory, the most economical way for users to save money is to buy enough cheap goods at one time and store them at home. This is the lowest cost, which is also in line with the operation of warehouse supermarkets. way, and what we want to do is to encourage this kind of consumption.” Chen Zhiwen smiled and said: “We want to launch a membership system that can return cash.”