b.A Chicken Farm is Born

The last part is here:   Japan Is In Recession Again

Tra la la la la la ... Finally can celebrate a little.

Converting from big head projects to small head projects. Immediately, I received success. Kekeke ... I bidded 3 times the reserved price. All the small fishes went into hiding. They all avoided me as they worried that I might even bid 4 times the reserved price or I just freeze and let them have the small head project at 4 times the reserved price. Their expressions were gold. Their confusion and their angst in their loss fueled their pain. They now learned that I was no kind soul but a medium-sized bully.

People queued up to buy iPhone 6. I queued up to buy chickens. Unlimited supply of chickens. Now that I can keep lots of chickens, I wonder if they also let me go for the next small head project - keeping dogs.

Although I was blessed in small head projects, I am still interested in having a big head project and show my Jones that I have arrived. Fuck! Fucken characteristics at work.

Afternote:
The most natural question is that why did I pay so much for such a small head project? At low price quantum, the barrier of entry is extreme low. Every adventurer would have to pay cash to have a quick go at these projects. Therefore, there is a certain level of irrationality. Adventurers compete with each other and have an unnatural sense of achievement when any one of them won the final bid. These achievements are hollow.

I quote a current worked example:   An adventurer once bidded for a chicken farm and won with a 2 times reserved price. He was so happy and proud and even jided me on his victory march out. Months later, rumour had it that he didn't have the capital to buy cages and equipments to start his chicken farm. To date, his chicken farm remained a piped dream. It is only a matter of time that the license plus land would be revoked and resold again in the open market. That's when I shall return and have some more fun with it. You see:   James Sassoon once said it is better to lose opportunity than capital. Only blur fucks are happy for such a hollow victory march. The issue at hand is if you don't have sufficient cash to play the game through, the chicken farm would never yield a single cent of income. Indeed, it is a 100% return or 0% income perpetual shit-hole. Therefore, no matter how small or big is the project, generating cash-flow income is key to success in investment.

Then why should I have paid 3 times just to get at it. You are quite right to assume that I was out of my mind. I was frustrated for the better of one full year. I was without success I needed a successful bid to 冲冲喜. So yes. The bid was irrational but good as it rebuild the team's morale which money cannot buy.

All chicken farms are different. Some have super under-priced and some have totally overpriced reserved prices. I happened to gun for the super under-priced ones. But at 3 times the reserved price, you need an iron nerve to either blink or not blink. Remembering always your worst enemy is another human. In fact, none of the bidders knew that I was thinking of setting up a toy chicken farm which does not bother to turn in any revenue. So they can't really test my fathoms.

The true battle is about to begin ...

Winter is round the corner. Leaves are now falling like nobody's business. In some nights, there were even frost on the window sills.

I have contacted some banks and they were happy to give me an advance on all my assets. But, I am not going to take that route. All my life, I have been played time and again by the fucking banks. I intend to play it totally safe. If I can't get a loan on the strength of my purchased property, I have no intention of buying it. Further, in winter, the sellers might even give me a repayment period in return for a good lump sum upfront. They are desperate to sell to finance their ongoing lifestyle. After all, they were once the immortals that walk this earth. Now they are old and fragile, they needed that assurance that they still can walk independently without help. Well, their gambling sons are definitely not helping. 

Interesting things do happen now and then. The chicken farm I just bidded successfully was in fact one of the 10 chicken farms in the area. This farm is currently the most juicy amongst them. All the chicken farms belong to a single owner. That's when the fun begins. The owner doesn't know that I happened to be a good chicken farmer. In fact, I hope to buy the other nine farms off him and make it into a big dog farm.

b.Strategy - The Art of OEM (Branding)

The last parts are here:   Strategy - The Magic Flu   and   Branding Strategy

This is one of the most important essays. It enveloped many years of business operations, failures, successes and cunning. Following or contemplating it will save time.

The best way to understand this topic is by going into real examples.

Research & Development (R&D) is an expensive toy. Spend too much like Steve Jobs during his Lisa project, he got sacked by the very company he founded. Spend too little like Nokia cell-phones, it closed shop in 2013, after it became the world's largest vendor of mobile phones from 1998 to 2012 (Nokia Story is here).

In 1970s, Steve Jobs forced and conned his best friend, Steve Wozniak (Woz), to build a simple desktop computer from commercially available parts in a garage (Apple Story is here). Steve Jobs literally squeezed out all of his friend's technology know-how at one go, i.e., years of self-studying and researching up to University of California, Berkeley. Woz was a genius in his own right. This commercialization reduced cost tremendously, but, unfortunately allowed pirates from the east to duplicate it wholesale and with ease. By end 1970s, Apple became so popular that it single-handed created the desktop computer market. There was a saying that time, for every original apple computer sold, 99 clones were made. This provided a tremendous momentum and support for continuing purchase of Apple computers. Slowly but surely, it evolved towards business applications, which is the main force behind any historical success (recall Blackberry Story created for use in business emails).

Then, Steve Jobs made the first mistake in life. He made Apple III and launched in 1980 and made it totally non-copyable by any pirates. Apple sale went down like a rock. Unfortunate for Apple, during this time, IBM decided to enter this market segment with the original intention to provide a slightly more clever version of a dumb slave terminal to their main-frame computer. The IBM PC (personal computer) was meant to do a little printing, word-processing before communicating direct with their main-frame. [Rumour] Bill Gates of Microsoft was asked to write the Operating System (DOS) through his mum, a secretary to IBM vice-president. To IBM, the PC is just a toy. But, its launch timing was so immaculate that it went on to kill off Apple's home computer market in one quick stroke. By 1990s, Apple was more or less dead. The IBM PC was once again fully copied by the pirates of the east and became the new darling. Like before, there was a saying that time, for every original IBM PC sold, 999 clones were made. By this time, the desktop computer was the new found power given to ordinary home (and later, office) users to claim against main-frame dinosaurs.

Again IBM got greedy. IBM created a new pentium PC with a new operating system PS/2 and made the PC totally non-copyable. Sale of IBM went south, but, Microsoft not being a part of PS/2, then proceed to let IBM PC clones to install and run the clone computers as if nothing has happened. IBM was dropped from the market just like that. The power of masses cannot be under-estimated.

To date, Microsoft still allows full-copying of their softwares, hence, able to remain reasonably dominant in the desktop and laptop markets.

This above part is quite a well-known and documented history.

Up and about the same time, in 1950s, after the Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan, the Taiwanese society was relatively stable politically in the 1950s. However, it faced some obstacles economically as a result of the mass destruction during World War II and the Chinese hyperinflation in the 1940s. The sudden increase in population caused by the Kuomintang migration from mainland China also affected Taiwan's economy. During this time, only the US came to their aid. They were given food and resources. The bags that contained these food and resources were then taken apart and made into underwears for the kids. It was that tough during those times.

By end 1970s, the executive premier, Chiang Ching-kuo's Ten Major Construction Projects served as the basis for heavy industrial development and computers in Taiwan. Unlike that fucken little island, Taiwan provided a serious sum of US$1 billion for Taiwanese to develop clones for the Apple and IBM computers. Taiwan government believed in her people and allow the full development of OEM (original equipment manufacturer) high-technological products and the grants were given freely to citizens. To date, after that critical investment in her people, Taiwan remained the only dominant player in the electronics manufacturing. This was how brands like HTC and Asus started by being OEMs and slowly but surely, they each became original product and household name.

The same story goes to Samsung, after Apple asked Samsung to make components for their PCs and mobiles.

The Argument 

Every retail chain loves to build their own house brands. They know their venerability in sale. When the brand is well-known, the sale channels of the retail chains would have less bargaining power. Therefore, all the time, the retail chains seek to limit this branding growth. Given every possible chance, the retail chains will build their own house brands. But, as said before, R&D is very expensive. In the end, the retail chains only managed to change only the external packaging of the products, but not its content. The manufacturing process of the products is jealously guarded by the original producer. So you will find a fuck-price peanuts, selling alongside Tong Garden's peanuts (obviously, Tong Garden in order to gain access into the fuck-price retail chain agreed to repackage some of its peanuts with a fuck-price packaging and allow the fuck-price peanuts to be sold at a dollar cheaper) or fuck-price canola oil, selling alongside RBD's canola oil. 

If you were to buy petrol from the pump stations, noticed their refilling trucks are sometimes from very odd companies, i.e., every oil company do often cross-sell their oil products to each other. Hence, their advertisements about how good and efficient is their petrol are pure bullshit. There are all the same.

Back to the PC market, Microsoft used to and still is dominant in the pc market. At one time, rival, Linux, was developed and distributed free. But, it was deemed to be an inferior product from Microsoft's Windows. Since Windows was easily copied, Linux never take off even though it was free. Right now, Microsoft is no-where near the mobile units. Android, the operating system for mobiles, is given a free rein to develop its product. In time, Google, the owner of Android, would be far richer than Microsoft and Apple combined.

After the first read, the arguments above may appear disjointed and a little confusing initially. Read it a few more times, you will see the reason behind each story. It is important that you are able to deduce the relationship between R&D, product and survivability of self.

So it is obvious that you would start off with very little R&D resources. So be like Asus, HTC and Samsung, start to develop the product using your own bare hands. Employ little critters as your free workers. Don't be afraid to brand your product under someone else's house brands. Keep improving the quality of the product. This is one thing nobody can take away from you. But, do reduce the risk by allowing as many retail chains to brand it under their names. That way, the retail chains will feel less threatened by your rise. Given enough time, your own brand may or may not appear, but, you will be rich beyond measure.