Chapter 252 The Youngest Shipping King

In the afternoon, Yang Wendong and Zheng Yuhua came to Oriental Daily.

Qin Zhiye naturally came to greet him. After returning to the conference room, Zheng Yuhua informed Qin Zhiye about the successful cooperation with HSBC.

"This is great news." Qin Zhiye said happily, "Mr. Yang, if I remember correctly, after the acquisition of these 24 cargo ships is completed, you will have 32 cargo ships under your command, with a total of 47.1 tons of shipping space."

"Yes." Yang Wendong nodded.

His cargo ships are all 1.2 tons, but generally 1.7-50 tons, so the total tonnage is almost less than tons.

Qin Zhiye thought for a moment and said, "Mr. Yang, I have an idea. The Oriental Daily is about to be published. Why don't we come up with a sensational headline to attract a wave of Hong Kong citizens? What do you think?"

"Do you mean the title should be a little exaggerated?" Yang Wendong asked back.

Once when he was chatting with Qin Zhiye, he accidentally mentioned the concept of "clickbait" in his previous life. After Qin Zhiye asked about it, he was immediately amazed by Yang Wendong's creativity.

But we still negotiated later. First, there should be no false information. Even if the title is a little exaggerated, it must be linked to the content. Second, this method cannot be used too many times, otherwise customers will become numb to it.

"Yes." Qin Zhiye said, "I think the title [The Birth of the Youngest Shipping King] is attractive enough."

"I am not the shipping king, am I?" Yang Wendong said, shaking his head.

Although the Hong Kong shipping king of this era could not compare to the one a dozen years later, without a million tons, he would not be worthy of the title;
Take the British-owned Wheelock and Swire for example, their tonnages are both over 300 million tons, and the Chinese shipping magnate Anthony Tung has a tonnage of almost 150 million tons.

Whether in terms of capital or experience, Yang Wendong, at least for now, cannot compare with these companies.

Qin Zhiye smiled and said, "That's why I used the word 'youngest'. Strictly speaking, this is not wrong, right? There shouldn't be a shipowner under 30 years old with a tonnage of more than 40 tons, right?"

At this time, Zheng Yuhua, who was more familiar with this, agreed and said, "Yes, there is no such person outside of Hong Kong. If we define him as under 30 years old, Mr. Yang is indeed the only shipping king."

"What you said does make some sense." Yang Wendong had to agree with this point of view.

Given the age limit, he is truly the most worthy "youngest shipping king", and he has achieved his current success from scratch, not inherited it.

Qin Zhiye added: "Mr. Yang, even if we don't expose it, other media will expose it sooner or later. There are some media organizations overseas that count major companies around the world.

The tonnage of shipping vessels is also a key focus.”

"That's true. There are quite a few such media." Yang Wendong nodded.

In fact, many people like information about the world's rich people, but in this era, information transmission is very slow, so it is difficult to make detailed statistics.

Therefore, Fortune only counts American companies, and Forbes has not yet come up with a ranking list.

But some publicly registered information, such as aviation and ocean-going vessels, is easy to count.

Qin Zhiye added: "Besides, in terms of the number of ships, Yang Sheng is not much different from Dong Haoyun. It's just that he has a lot of oil tankers under his command, and each oil tanker is basically over 5 tons or even 10 tons, which widens the tonnage gap."

"Yes, relying solely on small cargo ships, the tonnage is indeed not enough." Yang Wendong nodded and said.

Ordinary cargo ships of this era are basically of 10,000 tons. It’s not because the shipbuilding technology cannot do it, but because cargo ships that are too large are not cost-effective in later operations.

Because the larger the cargo ship, the longer it takes to manually unload and load cargo at the dock, which is an unacceptable loss of time for either the dock or the ship owner.

Commodity (ore, grain, etc.) cargo ships, oil tankers, and future container ships can all be made very large, with a capacity of 5 tons, tons or even higher, because these commodities can be quickly loaded and unloaded and do not rely on slow manual handling.

For example, the shipping magnate Tung Chao-Yen placed an order for a 1959-ton oil tanker in Japan in 10. Before and after this, there were also many oil tankers and large cargo ships of more than 5 tons, so the tonnage was naturally far greater than that of Yang Wendong.

Zheng Yuhua then said: "The tanker business is difficult to take over. Generally, only experienced fleets can succeed. Our Changxing Shipping is still too young.

Once the 24 cargo ships are integrated this time, we can try to order tankers next time.”

"Yeah, that's what I think." Yang Wendong agreed.

The oil transportation business must be done. It was the most profitable market in the shipping industry at that time, especially after the outbreak of the Middle East crisis in 67. It was said that a large oil tanker could pay back its investment in about a year.

Even the Jardine Matheson Group wanted to exchange the Jardine House (the tallest building in Hong Kong in the early 70s) for a 20-ton oil tanker from Pao Yue-kong, but was rejected by the latter; this incident became Pao Yue-kong's lifelong regret.

However, the risk of transporting oil is much higher, because once an accident occurs, even with the support of an insurance company, the shipowner behind it is in danger of death. Therefore, people in this industry are very cautious.

Due to risk considerations, Yang Wendong would not take on the oil transportation business when he is just starting out and does not have enough experience. He will consider this matter again when his team is stronger.

“We’ll consider it later when we buy the tanker.” Qin Zhiye added, “But we can still use this title to attract people, and there’s no deception involved anyway;

The first day of Oriental Daily's release, it needed some shocking headlines to become an instant hit."

Yang Wendong thought about it and asked, "It was indeed effective on the first day, but what should we do next? You can't do this every day, right?" Qin Zhiye nodded and said, "That's right, but Mr. Yang, don't forget that our price is very cheap, and the quality of other content is not bad. What we lack is an opportunity for a large number of citizens to buy it;
As long as they buy it and think the content is good and the price is cheap, I think many of them will continue to buy it.”

"Yeah." Yang Wendong agreed with this point of view. Once a good product is exposed, it will always retain a wave of consumers. This is an iron law of business.

At this time, Zheng Yuhua asked: "Mr. Qin, how much is the price of this Oriental Daily?"

"3 cents." Qin Zhiye replied.

"3 cents? This is basically the cheapest price on the market, right?" Zheng Yuhua asked curiously, "Can I make money this way?"

Yang Wendong shook his head and said, "It's still possible to maintain a small profit. I don't plan to make much money from this newspaper."

The annual profit of the most profitable newspaper in Hong Kong is less than that of a residential community developed by Changxing Real Estate.

What he wants is sufficient sales and a team of reporters across Hong Kong. This way, when necessary, he can always know what is happening in Hong Kong society and pass on the information he needs to let the society know.

Especially the drought in 63, if we had taken control of these matters, we could have avoided a lot of losses to the entire society.

Qin Zhiye also said: "Yes, if we were not concerned about offending other competitors through vicious competition, we could sell it even cheaper."

"Yes, those newspapers also have their own relationships, there is no need to make enemies for no reason." Yang Wendong nodded and said: "But if we use normal means to gain market share, then no one can say anything.

Also, although our price is the cheapest newspaper, we still need to do a good job with the content, especially the daily life of Hong Kong society, which needs to be written as realistically as possible so that customers can feel involved after reading it. "

"I understand. Just like what Mr. Yang said, we should go for the high cost-effectiveness route." Qin Zhiye said with a smile.

"Yes, high cost-effectiveness." Yang Wendong nodded.

He also said this word accidentally, and many people in Changxing Group knew it. In fact, this kind of thinking also existed in this era, but it was very rare.

Qin Zhiye added: "Then I am going to launch the first newspaper the day after tomorrow. I will send the content to you tomorrow."

"Okay." Yang Wendong asked again: "How do you do marketing?"

Qin Zhiye replied: "I have discussed with Zhang Hui that his radio station will promote it a little, and the Hong Kong Chinese Daily and Ming Pao will do the same, but the effect will not be very strong because it will not get consumers to consume immediately.

So I still plan to use the method I used to promote the Hong Kong Chinese Daily News, and directly give a certain commission to the newsstand owners at the terminal, 2 cents per copy. "

"The profit margin of Oriental Daily itself is very low. Is it okay to give it another 2 cents?" Yang Wendong asked with a smile.

The total terminal price is only 3 cents, which needs to be divided into channels. 2 cents must account for a very high percentage of the profit, just like mineral water, the cost is very low, but the cost of the intermediate process is very high.

Qin Zhiye replied: "I plan to provide subsidies in the short term, about half a month to a month, and then slowly adjust according to sales."

"Okay, let's do this." Yang Wendong agreed.

Although it is a bit cliché, giving rebates to dealers is the most effective promotion method in any era.

"Okay." Qin Zhiye said to Zheng Yuhua, "Sister Zheng, I will also advertise your Maritime Academy. I heard that you don't have enough Zhao students?"

"Haha, thank you very much. Actually, I am also planning to advertise." Zheng Yuhua said with a smile.

"Internal cooperation would be helpful." Yang Wendong nodded.

The shipyard in Kwai Chung was naturally slow to build, but the Maritime Academy next to it was much simpler. Changxing Real Estate had already bought a piece of land with an area of 10 feet (1 square meters), and then built a school, dormitories, library, basketball courts, football fields, etc. on it.

In short, they are all two or three stories high, which is the maximum utilization of such a large area.

By the end of last year, everything was completed, so we started recruiting students. The first batch of employees were actually people within the company who could register their family members first, but not many people went.

Maybe it was because it was too far away, or because tuition fees required some money, the expected number of 250 people was not reached.

Qin Zhiye said: "I understand. If the Oriental Daily can sell 20,000 or 30,000 copies a day, it will be a great help to all our brother companies."

"Okay, but aim higher." Yang Wendong smiled and said, "As Hong Kong's economy gets stronger, more people will start buying newspapers, and some will even buy multiple copies."

"Then the target is 5 copies." Qin Zhiye said with a smile.

On January 1, Oriental Daily was officially launched in all newsstands in Hong Kong.

……

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(End of this chapter)

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