Chapter 308: Huge Profits of the Cultural Industry

Chapter 308: Huge Profits of the Cultural Industry

Chapter 308: Huge Profits of the Cultural Industry

“Hahaha~~” Sanders laughed and said, “Okay, Mr. Yang is really ambitious. If Mr. Yang really wants to participate in the auction, I, HSBC, will definitely support you with all my strength.”

Yang Wendong asked in return: "Why didn't HSBC choose Jardine Matheson in this matter?"

"There is no difference between British and Chinese capital to me." Sanders said with a faint smile: "Although Jardine Matheson is larger in scale, I am more optimistic about Mr. Yang, or in other words, I am more optimistic about Chinese capital."

"Okay." Yang Wendong didn't ask any more questions and said, "I need to check the specific information of this piece of land. I will reply to you after I confirm it."

"No problem." Sanders nodded.

After separating from Sanders, Yang Wendong returned to Changxing Building, called Zheng Zhijie, and told him about the incident.

Zheng Zhijie said: "I haven't heard of this news in the market. It should still be kept secret. I will go check the information of that piece of land now."

"Hmm," Yang Wendong asked again, "Are there any conflicts between Jardine Matheson and HSBC?"

Sanders' remarks today made it seem as if he did not want to support Jardine Matheson.

Zheng Zhijie said: "I have also heard a little bit. It is said that HSBC has been growing in size in recent years and has begun to affect the size of the Jardine Matheson First Financial Group. Therefore, in many business investments, Jardine Matheson has begun to cut off cooperation with HSBC and turn to other banks."

"The battle for first place?" Yang Wendong nodded.

This is normal. In Hong Kong, a tiny city, many such things have happened, such as the competition for the No. 80 shipping tycoon in the early s; the competition between Jardine Matheson and HSBC for the No. financial group; and the competition between Hutchison Whampoa and Jardine Matheson for the No. foreign company.

Just for the sake of a "fame", many big shots and financial groups have had considerable conflicts and contradictions.

Zheng Zhijie added: "In the past few years, the scale of Jardine Matheson was obviously larger than that of HSBC. In recent years, HSBC has grown in scale with the help of cooperation with Chinese factories. Now it has started to cooperate with shipping, plus traditional British business. It seems that it will definitely surpass Jardine Matheson in the future."

Yang Wendong said with a smile: "Compared with HSBC, Jardine Matheson's capabilities are still insufficient. Its market value seems to be very high in recent years, but in fact, its overall business has not seen significant growth."

As the scale of his own industry expanded, he also began to pay attention to other large conglomerates in Hong Kong, especially in terms of business, and began to compete, led by naturally Jardine Matheson, Swire and others.

Swire's main businesses are aviation, beverages, shipping, sugar production, and trading;
Wheelock’s business covers retail, shipping, trade, real estate and ports;
These are not many, at least the core businesses are just these few, but Jardine Matheson has too many investments, including shipping, trade, real estate, ports, mining, agriculture and animal husbandry, retail, transportation, catering, hotels, etc. He does everything he can think of, and they are all on a large scale.

For a large enterprise like this, having many industries is not a problem, but if none of them is managed very well, that is a problem.

Of course, Jardine Matheson’s foundation is so strong that even though many of its overseas investment businesses are loss-making, it is still thriving overall.

Zheng Zhijie nodded and said, "Yes, HSBC's progress in recent years is obvious to all. Sanders is now also working hard to promote cooperation with many Chinese companies. It is no wonder that Jardine Matheson is preparing to gradually cut off cooperation with HSBC."

"I don't think it's that easy." Yang Wendong added, "But it's a good thing for us. We can use HSBC's funds to compete with Jardine Matheson in some areas."

If Changxing Group only engaged in export or shipping, there would be almost no conflict with many local conglomerates in Hong Kong;

However, the potential of Hong Kong's internal market is so high that no other industry can compare with it except electronics and the Internet in the future. Yang Wendong naturally cannot give up.

If this happens, there will inevitably be conflicts of interest and competition with British banks that currently monopolize many industries in Hong Kong.

If I have HSBC behind me, it will provide me with great help in terms of funds and ZZ.

Zheng Zhijie also said: “Yes, Jardine Matheson entered the retail supermarket market before, using its capital to pressure others, forcing us to give in a little;
But this is only short-term. When the supermarket industry grows in size, Hong Kong is so small that there will still be direct competition. It is indeed beneficial for us to reach a joint agreement with HSBC to target Jardine Matheson.”

"Yes, the most important thing is that we have no conflict with HSBC." Yang Wendong nodded.

In the short term, he is not planning to work in the banking industry because Chinese companies do not have enough capital to make big investments in the financial industry. This has nothing to do with money, but rather with politics.

Moreover, many of his industries currently need to cooperate with HSBC, and opening a bank at this time will not be conducive to other businesses.

It’s not too late to work in banking when the time is right, and there will be plenty of opportunities in the future.

Zheng Zhijie added: "Then I will also investigate the situation between Jardine Matheson and HSBC in detail."

"Hmm." Yang Wendong thought for a moment and said, "But we just need to understand this matter. Don't tell HSBC publicly. There are many things that don't need to be made clear."

"Okay." Zheng Zhijie agreed.

Time quickly came to 1963.

It has been 5 years since I came to Hong Kong in this era.

On January 1, after getting up, Yang Wendong jogged for 3 minutes on an internal road around his home, which is an important step in maintaining health: proper exercise.

After coming back, I simply washed up and went to the dining table outside, where there was milk, bread, buns, fried eggs, several kinds of fruits and other food.

After eating two bites, Bai Yushan and Su Yiyi came over. Yang Wendong served two eggs to each of them and said, "This fried egg tastes good."

"Hmm." Su Yiyi immediately separated the egg white from the yolk, and then fed the egg white to her son.

It’s just that little Zhiwen seemed to have just woken up and didn’t want to eat.

Yang Wendong handed him another bottle of milk and he started drinking.

"This child is still too picky about food." Yang Wendong said with a smile.

Su Yiyi said, "There are so many delicious foods at home, and you often bring snacks back from outside. How can he not be picky?"

"Well, this is my responsibility." Yang Wendong nodded. He did indulge his child a little too much.

After breakfast, Yang Wendong played with his son for a while. Little Zhiwen then took out a bunch of Lego toys and started playing with them while Yang Wendong watched from the side.

Su Yiyi came over and asked, "What are you looking at?"

Yang Wendong said with a smile: "I am looking at this building block. The person who invented it was truly a genius."

Su Yiyi asked curiously: "Your Rubik's Cube is pretty good too?"

"The Rubik's Cube is good, but it's considered an adult toy." Yang Wendong shook his head and said, "Compared to this kind of building blocks, the market is far behind."

Su Yiyi smiled and said, "Take it one step at a time. I think the recent Calabash Brothers is quite popular." "Well, the results are not bad." Yang Wendong nodded and said, "I hope the new products in the future will be the same."

Su Yiyi asked: "Are you ready to launch a new product?"

"Yes." Yang Wendong said, "But we have to release new comics first."

At around ten o'clock in the morning, after Yang Wendong arrived at Changxing Building, he directly called several persons in charge of the comics business.

"Old Wu, how's the Black Cat Sheriff comic going?" Yang Wendong asked directly.

Wu Hailin replied: "Mr. Yang, the various character drawing models have been made, and the plots of the first 10 episodes have also come out. We are going to submit them to the comic weekly in a week.

Here is the first comic, please take a look. "

"Okay." Yang Wendong took it and looked at it for a while.

If he had just traveled through time, the plot of Sheriff Black Cat, or the previous Calabash Brothers, would have been very ordinary and not very attractive to him, who had experienced the information and cultural explosion in his previous life.

But a few years later, after the baptism of time, his threshold for entertainment is not as high as before, and after watching for a while, he still finds it interesting.

A few minutes later, he quickly finished reading the first episode. After closing the newspaper, he said, "The plot is okay, but we still need to find a way to simplify the dialogue in the comics. Our customers are mainly children and students. The simpler it is, the more people will understand it."

If these stories can be made into cartoons, they can be shown to children who are not in school, and even three-year-olds can understand them.

But now that we don’t have the conditions, we can only make it into a comic. This is a huge limitation, but there is nothing we can do about it.

Wu Hailin agreed and said, "Okay, I will limit it a little bit and try to use the simplest words."

Yang Wendong nodded and said, "Then let's prepare for the release."

"Okay." Wu Hailin replied.

Yang Wendong asked again: "How are the sales of comic cartoon stickers?"

It is difficult to register a patent for stickers because they already exist overseas, but comic cartoon stickers do not need to be patented because there is copyright on them.

In most countries, copyright protection laws are much stronger than patents, because legal restrictions on patents are intended to prevent patent holders from failing to make improvements for a long time and hindering the innovation of others, but this is not the case with copyright.

Wu Hailin replied: "The Calabash Brothers series of stickers were launched in mid-October last year. It has been almost 80 days since then. A total of 1050 million stickers have been sold in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The factory price of each sticker is 5 cents. Our turnover is about HK$50."

"1000 million? That's only slightly less than the population of the two places, right?" Sean asked in surprise.

The subsidiary's business, unless it is a project with very large data, is generally reported once a quarter, and he really didn't know that the stickers had such sales volume.

Wu Hailin explained: "Mr. Yang, this sticker is different from comic newspapers or single volumes. Many people will buy many different stickers at one time, and some will buy several times. So even if there are only a few hundred thousand children who like Calabash Brothers comics, the number of purchases will be dozens of times the number of people, and the price is also cheap, only a few cents a piece."

"Well, what is the profit margin?" Yang Wendong asked again.

He is not very familiar with some small products. If it is not the first product of the cultural industry, he would not even ask about the amount of hundreds of thousands.

Wu Hailin said: "We get the goods from Changxing Industry at 3 cents per ticket. They should have a 30% profit, so I only make a 2-cent gross profit. When it reaches the terminal, the price per ticket is between 0.08 and 1 cent."

Yang Wendong nodded and said with a smile: "It's a huge profit."

The cultural industry is owned by Changxing Culture Company. In this area, Changxing Industry is equivalent to an OEM, and the same will be true for toys designed with character copyrights in the future.

Wu Hailin said: "Yes, our profit on newspapers is very low, or even no money at all, and many people will buy a newspaper together.

But for comic stickers, people who want to buy them can only buy them themselves, which has a higher profit margin.”

"We make comics to make money." Yang Wendong smiled and said, "In the future, comic weekly magazines don't need to pursue their own profit margins. It is enough to maintain normal operations.
Even more so, if the peripheral products make a lot of money, then in the future, when the comics are published as single volumes, we don’t need to pursue the goal of making money itself. The core purpose is to let more people know about our various cartoon characters.”

Whether it is books, newspapers, or other methods, it is difficult to get someone who is not familiar with it to pay for it. Consumers are also sensitive to the prices of such things. Once they are expensive, they are unwilling to buy them. This is also human nature.

But if they are familiar with it, it will be completely different. They will be happy to pay for it, so derivative peripheral products are the source of profit.

In the cultural industry of the past, many cartoons themselves were not profitable, but as long as they became famous, a copyright IP could obtain economic returns from countless fields.

"Okay." Wu Hailin said.

Yang Wendong asked again: "How is your Japanese study going?"

Wu Hailin smiled and replied: "I can have some basic conversations and read some simple Japanese children's comics. If I come across a word I don't know, I look it up in the dictionary or ask the teacher."

Yang Wendong said, “Okay, learning a language is very laborious, but Japanese comics are much better than ours. If you want to learn their essence, you must first learn the language and understand the culture.
Now that you can understand some basic comics, let’s start from there and slowly learn their creative ideas.”

"I understand." Wu Hailin agreed and said, "The quality of Japanese comics is indeed much better than that of Hong Kong and even the mainland before."

"That's normal. Culture and economy are linked. Only when the economy is strong can we have our own culture." Yang Wendong then said, "In addition, you should also learn more about the development of Western technology. Our comics may also include these plots in the future. You need to understand them first, and then you will be able to conceive on this basis."

Many comics in Japan or the United States are related to technology, such as Transformers, Doraemon, and even Dragon Ball.

If the creators don’t understand the public’s understanding of technology, they won’t be able to create these plots.

Even in science fiction plots, the future technologies involved need to have a foundation in modern technology, otherwise it would be fantasy.

Wu Hailin nodded and said, "I am also learning this aspect."

Yang Wendong said, "Okay, that's it. Changxing Culture will be preparing to launch a variety of different comics this year. You need to focus on recruiting people, especially people who are good at comic drawing and plot design."

The time traveler can only roughly know the plots of some classic animations, movies, and TV series from the previous life. Not to mention the details, even many important contents have been forgotten.

Therefore, after providing the basic background and framework, we must rely on many talents in the industry to expand the entire story and shape the characters.

Wu Hailin paused and said, "Mr. Yang, there are indeed some problems in this area at the moment."

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(End of this chapter)