When will I have a long tassel?

"How did you gain from your trip to Jinnan?"

Zhou Heng received Tang Zifeng in his large living room, sat down and exchanged a few words before getting down to business.

After Zhou Heng retired, at the request of Xie Tiancheng and Tang Zifeng, he retained his position as chairman of the original "Canglong Machine Tool Cooperation Unit Joint Conference" and did something equivalent to an industry association. Since the title chairman is too sensitive, people in the industry generally call him Chairman Zhou.

Of course, if it is a person who is facing a machine or taking a machine, most of the time he will be called by his original title, that is, Factory Director Zhou. This title sounds more powerful than Chairman.

In the past few years, Tang Zifeng and Zhou Heng moved around frequently, and they usually talked about work when they met. There is a 30-year age difference between the two, their life experiences and personalities are completely different, and they are both men. It would be strange for them to get together and not talk about work. If Tang Zifeng went to visit Liu Yanping, he could talk about Fengyue, but that would be another matter.

This time Tang Zifeng went to Jinnan, he had discussed it with Zhou Heng in advance, and it could even be considered as running errands for Zhou Heng. Zhou Heng and the veteran leaders behind him, such as Xie Tiancheng and Xu Zhaojian, are all industry leaders. They think about issues not limited to individual companies, but focus on the overall situation.

In the past two years, the domestic machine tool market demand has increased dramatically, and the machine tool industry has ushered in a period of rapid development, which makes everyone very happy. But the vicious competition that followed made the old leaders worried. Machine tools are no different than other products, which require continuous investment in scientific research. If we blindly engage in price wars and push profits to the limit, what will be affected will be the funds that companies can use for research and development and the investment in upgrading and upgrading production equipment.

Because they saw this, several old leaders called on various occasions to establish a good competitive order, criticize "individual" companies that provoke vicious competition, and impose restrictions on corrections. Tang Zifeng went to Jingnan this time in response to the request of several leaders to settle the small and medium-sized private machine tool companies in Jingnan. This matter also has some benefits for Linji Group, but more benefits are for the overall industry.

What Zhou Heng and others are most satisfied with about Tang Zifeng is that this young man has a big-picture concept. Although he is the general manager of Linji Group, his work is not limited to considering his own one-third of an acre. This is very common among today's state-owned enterprise leaders. It is already very valuable.

"The overall situation is not bad. Everyone also hated the vicious competition in the previous stage, but they just suffered from the fact that no one came forward to regulate it. I went to talk to the heads of some companies, and they all agreed to quickly organize local industry associations to regulate Everyone should supervise each other’s competitive behavior and maintain normal market order." Tang Zifeng said.

Then, he reported to Zhou Heng the status of discussions with various companies in Heling, Ruigang, Yuyuan and other places, adding his own judgment in some places. Zhou Heng is also an old man who has been working in the industry for decades. He understands these things as soon as he hears them. He keeps nodding his head and sometimes inserts a few comments to remind Tang Zifeng to pay attention to some issues in the future.

"The problem is not too big for small and medium-sized enterprises. When I visited, the biggest problem everyone had was that some of our large machine tool companies maliciously lowered prices in sales. The one that everyone mentioned the most was Xia Yiji, which produces Since the year before last, the price of our lathes has been reduced six times in a row, and now the price of lathes of small and medium-sized enterprises is only 20 to 30% higher than that of lathes of small and medium-sized enterprises. As a result, those small and medium-sized enterprises cannot find buyers at all if they do not lower their prices." Tang Zifeng finally said. .

"I was just about to tell you this. Xia Yiji is really a tough guy." Zhou Heng said with a gloomy face.

The full name of the Xia Yi machine they are talking about is Xia Yi Machine Tool Co., Ltd., and its original name was Xia Liang No. 1 Machine Tool Factory. Xia Yi Machinery is located in Beidian Province. It was also one of the Eighteen Arhats factories under the Second Bureau of the Ministry of Machinery. Its main products were various lathes. When Tang Zifeng established Machine 20, Xia Yiji also participated and was one of the member companies of Machine 20.

In the late 1990s, amid the tide of national institutional reform, Xia Yiji was delegated to Xia Liang City. The next year, it was acquired by a private enterprise called Jinsheng Group and became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jinsheng Group.

Jinsheng Group is an enterprise in Jinnan Province. It first started making hardware tools. The founder is named Gao Jinming, a farmer in Ruigang City, Jinnan Province. In the late 1980s, Gao Jinming's only son Gao Jinsheng graduated from college and returned home to inherit the family business. He changed his father's cautious style and aggressively competed with his peers. He did not hesitate to lose money and earn money, and snatched countless orders from his peers.

The hardware processing business pays great attention to the advantages of large-scale production. With more orders, production costs can be significantly reduced. As a result, although Gao Jinsheng's quotation is low, the company still makes profits. But those peer companies that had taken orders from him could no longer survive. They either went bankrupt or changed businesses, and all sadly withdrew from the market.

When its peers have almost retreated and Jinsheng Group has become a monopoly supplier of certain types of products, Gao Jinsheng will slowly raise prices under various names to obtain high profits.

To be honest, Gao Jinsheng's skill is not mysterious. The main thing is to have the courage to fight with his peers and die together. Gao Jinsheng initiated games of "who blinks first" again and again, and every time he was the ultimate winner. In just a few years, Jinsheng Group has become one of the largest enterprises in Ruigang. The name of Gao Jinsheng has also achieved the effect of stopping children crying at night in Ruigang's industrial world.

After achieving initial success, Gao Jinsheng extended his hand to the real estate industry. With the wealth accumulated in the manufacturing industry, coupled with his boldness and courage to gamble, he also became successful in the real estate circle. His fame soon broke out of Ruigang and headed towards Jingnan. The next step was to Going nationwide.

The acquisition of Xialiang No. 1 Machine Tool Factory is an important step for Gao Jinsheng to prepare to go nationwide. Gao Jinsheng had studied in college and had a high vision. He saw that the machine tool industry would have great development in the future. At that time, Xia Yiji had just been transferred to Xia Liang City, and its operating conditions were not good. Xia Liang City planned to sell it in tears. It's the right time to pick up leaks. So he resolutely took action and acquired this large machine tool factory with a history of more than 80 years for a mere purchase price of tens of millions.

After acquiring Xia Yiji, Gao Jinsheng injected a sum of capital into Xia Yiji to restore its vitality. Later, he repeated his old tricks and ordered Xia Yiji's sales department to significantly reduce the prices of several lathes, launching a price war with domestic counterparts.

The main competitors of Xia Yiji are actually several other large domestic companies that produce lathes, such as Qingbei Machine Tool Factory in Ningxiang and Qianyan No. 1 Machine Tool Factory in Rubei. These were also the Eighteen Arhat Factory back then and today's A member company of Machine 20 is considered a brother company of Xia Yiji.

The lathe products of several machine tool factories have their own merits, and they also maintain a tacit agreement on prices, so the differences between them are not too big. Machine tools are not very price-sensitive products. Under normal circumstances, if the price difference is within 10%, users will not specifically choose cheap products, but will choose them based on their own usage habits, compatibility with other equipment, and after-sales service. Convenience and other factors, choose the most suitable manufacturer.

Xia Yiji significantly reduced the price of lathes, widening the price gap between itself and other peers to more than 20%, which broke the original tacit understanding. Even if users don’t care about the price, they still have to weigh this matter.

For example, the price of a lathe from Qingji is 150,000, which is completely acceptable to users. But Xia Yiji suddenly said that the lathe he produces with similar performance only costs 100,000. Can users have no idea? They may not care about spending an extra 50,000 yuan, but since others can sell it for 100,000 yuan, but you say you want to sell it for 150,000 yuan, is there any element of fraud in this?

This is the mentality of buyers. It doesn't matter how much they spend, but if they are deceived and spend money they shouldn't, they won't be willing to accept it.

As for those small and medium-sized machine tool companies, their original product grades are different from Xia Yiji, and they are not at the same competitive level. However, the price of Xia Yiji's products has dropped so low that it is not much higher than the product prices of these small and medium-sized machine tool companies. This threatens the survival of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Faced with Xia Yiji's price war, the first reaction of companies such as Qingji and Qianyiji was to call Xia Yiji's sales department and ask them if they were out of their minds and how they could lower the price to this level. When they heard that the other party did not report the wrong price, but did it deliberately, these companies took the lawsuit to Ji 20 and asked for a joint meeting to coordinate the matter.

Before the reform of national institutions, victims of malicious competition among peers can complain to the Second Bureau, and the Second Bureau is indeed responsible for supervising and managing such behavior. But now even the Ministry of Machinery has been abolished, leaving only the Mechanical and Electrical Industry Bureau under the Economic and Trade Commission. The job responsibilities clearly state that it is only responsible for industry development planning and does not have industry management functions. Companies like Qingji couldn't find a local government agency if they wanted to file a complaint, so they could only rely on an unofficial cooperative organization like Ji 20.

Zhou Heng is the chairman of Machine 20 and Tang Zifeng is the secretary-general. After receiving complaints from member companies, neither of them could take it lightly and called the person in charge of Xia Yiji to coordinate the matter.

The person in charge of Xia Yiji is named Shao Weiyuan. He was the former director of Xia Liang No. 1 Machine Tool Factory. His current title is the general manager of Jinsheng Xia Yi Machine Tool Company. Shao Weiyuan was acquainted with Zhou Heng and Tang Zifeng, and he had some personal connections with Zhou Heng.

After receiving a call from the two of them, Shao Weiyuan sighed and said that he was actually a puppet now, and that Xia Yiji's major business decisions were all made by Gao Jinsheng. The price reduction was a decision made by Gao Jinsheng. The senior executives in the company did not dare to question it either out of flattery or to protect themselves.

Of course, they also know that it is useless for executives to question anything Gao Jinsheng decides. Gao Jinsheng has never been a person willing to listen to other people's opinions.

If coordination cannot be achieved over the phone, the only option is to meet in person to discuss. While Tang Zifeng went to Jingnan to coordinate small and medium-sized machine tool companies, Zhou Heng also went to Beidian and met Gao Jinsheng, who was directing a new round of price war in Xia Yiji.