Early the next morning, after finishing breakfast, Pei Qian headed straight to the company.
Today was Friday, and tomorrow would be a day off, so arrangements for money-burning had to be made as soon as possible.
After watching the press conference held by Finger Company and Longyu Group yesterday, Pei Qian had spent just half an hour coming up with a counterattack plan.
After all, when it came to spending money, Pei Qian was more enthusiastic than anyone else. His usual procrastination immediately disappeared, replaced by extremely high efficiency in taking action!
Since this plan involved many departments, Pei Qian called in Assistant Xin directly.
“This is the general plan for the ‘May 15th Gaming Festival.’ Take a look, refine it a bit, and then arrange for the relevant departments to implement it.”
Pei Qian handed a document directly to Assistant Xin.
Assistant Xin took it and quickly browsed through it.
Her typically composed expression showed a slight fluctuation.
Assistant Xin asked, “Mr. Pei, is this a measure taken to respond to Longyu Group’s price war?”
Pei Qian nodded: “Yes, you could say that.”
After a slight hesitation, Assistant Xin said, “Mr. Pei, I feel it necessary to remind you that if we follow this plan, our cash flow will face certain risks.”
“My suggestion is that we can still hold these activities, but it would be better to pair them with some revenue-generating activities. That would be more prudent.”
“Of course, how to proceed ultimately depends on your arrangement.”
In most cases, Assistant Xin would not express her opinions, but this plan really made her feel somewhat inappropriate, which is why she couldn’t help but offer a very restrained reminder.
The plan Mr. Pei had given could be seen as a variant of the previous “October 24th Digital Festival,” just with different emphases.
The previous October 24th Digital Festival could be summarized in three words: “grand customer appreciation,” providing subsidies to customers across various industries, burning money to gain attention, and enhancing brand awareness.
But the October 24th Digital Festival mainly focused on physical industries, such as: discounted dishes from Slackin’ Takeout with free delivery fees; discounts on shipping fees when using Headwind Logistics, with commission charges on pickups from other courier companies canceled; free home delivery service and installation fees for ROF computer assembly, with random upgrades…
Subsequent annual October 24th Digital Festivals basically followed this plan, just with some new content added. For example, after the release of the OTTO E1 phone, there were subsidized purchase activities during the Digital Festival.
Because the official promise was that the E1 phone would not be discounted, customers still purchased it at the original price but received some gifts afterward.
Similarly, after establishing the Tuoguan Fitness Gym and Sloth Apartment businesses, customers who consumed at these establishments during the October 24th Digital Festival could also receive certain discounts.
But even with these changes to the October 24th Digital Festival, its main focus remained on physical stores and digital products.
This time, Mr. Pei’s “May 15th Gaming Festival” shifted the focus of promotional activities to games and game-related industries.
The specific regulations were as follows:
The May 15th Gaming Festival would last for one week, from May 15th to May 22nd.
During this period, anyone playing with friends in online games like “Sea Fortress” or GOG could receive a gift package daily, randomly obtaining in-game items, including epic weapons, rare skins, and other items.
During this period, anyone purchasing single-player games like “Looking Back Is the Shore,” “Struggle,” or “Mission and Choice” would have a chance to get their purchase for free.
For accumulated online time in any Tenda game, reaching just one hour daily would earn a random cash rebate, ranging from a minimum of 0.1 yuan to a maximum of 888 yuan—and this wasn’t in tokens, but actual cash!
Watching GPL matches on Rabbit Tail Live would earn free platform gift items. These were all paid gifts that, when given to streamers, would translate into real money for them.
Watching GPL matches in person would give chances to win prizes, which could be free admission on the spot, rare skins, or limited-edition figurines, etc.
One crucial point was the requirement for extensive inventory stocking of G1 phones and Smart Fitness Drying Racks.
There were some other miscellaneous detailed regulations, but these were the main ones.
For Assistant Xin, she could see that these regulations were clearly designed to counter the price war from Finger Company and Longyu Group.
At yesterday’s press conference, Finger Company and Longyu Group had come on strong, and Mr. Pei had quickly responded—this was normal behavior.
But in Mr. Pei’s series of measures, there were two very obvious problems.
The first problem was that almost all activities had absolutely no threshold requirements, and these activities weren’t discounts but giveaways.
There’s a huge difference between discounts and giveaways!
Take games for example. Whether it’s the game itself or in-game skins and items, if there’s a discount, even at 10% of the original price, the game company still makes money.
After all, once a game is developed, selling any number of copies doesn’t incur additional costs—it’s just the same code copied and pasted countless times.
So most game companies frequently hold promotional activities, and even with massive discounts, they still make money.
It’s even possible that because of large discounts attracting more players, they end up making more money than selling at the original price.
But Mr. Pei’s approach wasn’t about discounts at all—it was about giving things away for free!
There was no discounted promotion behavior whatsoever, but rather giving away items just for logging in, even directly giving cash!
While giving away virtual items might seem costless, if a player who originally planned to buy a certain item happens to receive it for free, it means they won’t spend that money anymore, which still depletes future income for the game company.
In short, all of this was burning money to buy attention. This kind of behavior basically couldn’t recover costs, and the attention gained might not translate into income in the short term. It might even make many people too comfortable with freeloading, diminishing their desire to spend.
The second problem was why Mr. Pei specifically emphasized stocking up on G1 phones and Smart Fitness Drying Racks. What did that have to do with the “May 15th Gaming Festival” activities?
When traced to their root, these two problems were actually one problem: the financial pressure was enormous!
Assistant Xin was very clear about the company’s current financial situation. Although Tenda Group had always been quite wealthy, recently “Mission and Choice” had invested a large sum of money with no immediate returns. Then the Chi Xing Studio had invested another large sum. Add to that the expenses from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and various other projects, and the company’s available funds weren’t as abundant as before.
This “May 15th Gaming Festival” was subsidizing real money, tens of millions wouldn’t be enough, it would probably be measured in hundreds of millions. If you added the inventory for phones and Smart Fitness Drying Racks, the required amount of funds would be even more terrifying.
Although Tenda’s various industries were still steadily making money so far, this behavior was like dancing on the edge of a knife—it would be easy for a cash flow problem to arise if funds weren’t rotated smoothly.
Moreover, what if Finger Company and Longyu Group held another press conference and decided to burn even more money? Would Tenda follow suit or not?
Although this risk could be managed somehow, it ultimately came down to one point: it wasn’t necessary.
Since they were burning money anyway, why take risks when they could do it steadily?
So Assistant Xin couldn’t help but suggest pairing with operational activities, recovering money while spending it, which would be safer.
Pei Qian smiled slightly: “Pair with operational activities? Of course not!”
“What is a ‘festival’? The meaning of a festival is universal celebration, being happy together. If we have many marketing activities, are we giving customers a festival, or are we covertly taking money from customers’ pockets?”
“We can have promotional activities at other times, but during the ‘May 15th Gaming Festival’ and ‘October 24th Digital Festival,’ what we should do is provide complete subsidies and give back to customers, digging into our own pockets to let customers get 100% genuine benefits!”
“If we sneakily conduct operational activities, subsidizing on one hand while making money on the other, that would betray the original intention of this festival. This so-called ‘festival’ would not gain high recognition from customers and would eventually be reduced to just another ‘big sale’ that regular businesses often have, which no one would remember.”
“Wouldn’t that be picking up sesame seeds but losing the watermelon?”
“As for the funding issue, there’s absolutely no need to worry.”
“Tenda’s various industries are still continuously making money. Even if there really are some funding problems, there are solutions. For example… couldn’t we just sell a building or something?”
Pei Qian’s calculations had long been echoing like thunder.
He certainly knew that this combination of measures would put great pressure on Tenda’s finances, but the problem was that if Tenda’s finances weren’t under pressure, then he would be under great pressure when settlement time came!
When others calculated these issues, they would subconsciously give some leeway.
For example, if the company had 100 million in its account, they would dare to spend at most 60 million, leaving at least 40 million for emergencies.
What if something happened that urgently needed money?
But when Pei Qian considered problems, he always calculated on the high side.
If the company had 100 million in its account, it was necessary to aim to spend 130 million.
Because facts had proven that Tenda Group’s inexplicable ability to make money was too strong. This 100 million might just have been spent, but Tenda Group might have already earned another 50 million!
So this time, Pei Qian was giving plenty of lead time.
As for the risk, it was nothing more than insufficient funds, with some activities stalling halfway through.
But this risk wasn’t much for Pei Qian, because he had previously bought several buildings for the Sloth Apartments, and these buildings had all appreciated in value.
According to the system’s rules, fixed assets were like a big reservoir. When Pei Qian had too much system money on hand, he could quickly consume it by buying buildings; when he didn’t have enough system money on hand, he could sell these buildings to convert them back into funds.
The only problem was that if too many buildings were bought, it might cause the proportion of fixed assets in the system funds to be too high, shrinking the personal property converted from losses.
Selling one or two buildings could reduce this risk, so why not?
Moreover, Pei Qian had a backup plan, which was the system’s mysterious reward for this cycle: consuming personal property could increase the discount amount for a certain industry at a ratio of 1:100, with a maximum consumption of 100,000 in personal property.
In other words, if money couldn’t be fully burned, Pei Qian would grit his teeth and spend 100,000 yuan, instantly increasing the discount amount for an industry by 10 million, all given away for free.
This 10 million was pure discount without any reason; even if it was directly given to customers as cash, the system would not stop it.
Currently, Pei Qian hadn’t used this rule yet.
Because that was 100,000 yuan—if the system funds could be spent completely without using this rule, why dig into his own pocket?
The current money-burning policies were all within the system’s allowable range. Because Tenda Group faced external competition, it was normal to be forced to burn some system funds as a countermeasure, and the system considered this reasonable behavior after dynamic assessment.
In other words, without the money-burning competition from Finger Company and Longyu Group, the system would not approve activities like the “May 15th Gaming Festival.”
That’s why Pei Qian was so grateful to Eric, because Eric’s behavior was like sending charcoal in snowy weather!
Pei Qian was even somewhat impatient to see Eric burn more money, because the more money they burned, the more the system would allow Pei Qian to burn. Add to that the 10 million yuan of unconditional pure discount quota, and with this back-and-forth, Mr. Pei was going to lose money until he bled!