Chapter 216 - From the big to small

Feng Yu was confident that the motorcycles sales would be more than 130,000 units this year. First, it was the advertisements. Second, it was this move.

In China, local governments like to compare, compete and copy from others. They did not care about the economic situation of their area. They would only think that you and I are Mayors. If you are driving an Audi, I cannot drive a Santana.

In the original history, China’s Traffic Police’s change of equipment happened at the end of this year. All the sidecar motorcycles were scrapped and changed to imported bikes. Once again, Feng Yu changed history in Bing City.

With Bing City as an example and the promotional campaign, the motorcycle sales increases. The sales for Longjiang and Lin Provinces increased, and most of the sales were for the government. Longjiang Province’s sales even exceeded Guangdong province.

This also spurred the distributors from the big provinces. They wanted to clinch the top provincial sales awards for this year as the rewards promised by Feng Yu was huge.

Regarding economy, average wages and population, Longjiang was ranked one of the lowest. Only the western provinces were ranked lower than Longjiang. Now, Longjiang province’s motorcycle sales were better than Guangdong? How can the distributors take it?

The distributors asked around and found out the reason for the sudden increase in Longjiang sales. It was because of the local governments. So, you think you are the only ones who knew how to do that? We can do that too!

The distributors start to pull out all the stops to convince their local traffic police department to purchase Songjiang Motorcycles. The more they sell, the more commission they will get. Even if they lower the selling price by a bit, they would be still getting more profits.

Looking at the distributors’ orders for the following month, Feng Yu laughed.

These were all capable people. Based on the sales figures for this month, it will be doubled of last month!

Also, not all governments had ordered the motorcycles. The coming two months will be the peak of the motorcycles sales. It might be possible for the total sales to be over 130,000 units before the year ends!

After 2000, there will be over 100 million motorcycles in China, and this figure does not include electric bikes. Although there were over a hundred motorcycle factories, most of the market share was occupied by only a few brands. The top-selling brand sold more than a million motorcycles and more than half of the motorcycle brands sold more than 200,000 bikes.

This year, Feng Yu estimates that Songjiang motorcycles would be China’s top 3 motorcycle brands. The top would still be Jialing. Their small cc bikes were still very popular in villages, and Honda would be in the second place. Honda was the most popular imported motorcycle brand in China.

Even though this was Songjiang Motorcycles’ first year and it got third place, Feng Yu was still not satisfied. He was to be first and force all foreign car brands out of China’s market! Feng Yu had ordered another 2 motorcycles production lines from Kirilenko. He wants to enter the 100cc motorcycle market.

100cc motorcycles were more fuel efficient than 125cc bikes, and the speed was not too slow either. It would fulfill the requirements of those that wanted to buy motorcycles. But Feng Yu decided to set up the two production lines in Jing Ling. Bing City was too out of place. Many distributors had complained about the transportation cost and time.

The only advantage of Bing City was that it was close to the Soviet Union and it was convenient to do trading. But Kirilenko only ordered 100 motorcycles from Feng Yu. It was because the Songjiang motorcycles were designed for the Chinese. The Soviets find that these bikes do not look nice.

Feng Yu used the equipment as an investment for the setting up of another motorcycle factory in Jing Ling City. This time, the city was determined to use cash to increase their investment proportionally. The City does not want to let Feng Yu dilute their shares.

Feng Yu also gave the motorcycle engineers a task. They can temporarily stop the R&D for the bigger cc bikes after the 150cc was completed. They must continue to develop smaller cc bikes.

Other than 125 cc, the motorcycle factory also had the technologies to manufacture 150 and 100cc bikes. Feng Yu said that he would produce the 100cc bikes later the year. There were no plans for the 150cc bikes as China still does not allow such bikes on the roads. After they are approved, the productions will start.

But the engineers do not understand why Feng Yu wants them to research on 75cc and 50cc bike engines. Other people start building bikes from small too big, but Feng Yu was the opposite. Feng Yu wants to make smaller bikes? That’s going backward.

Jialing 50 was selling well, and over 200,000 units were sold in a year. But can their profit match Songjiang motors?

They did not know that Feng Yu decided to introduce the under bones motorcycles and scooters. These will be Songjiang Motors next big thing.

Scooters were already introduced in Japan, but the response was not very good. In Japan, the public transportation infrastructure was excellent, and their car industry was well developed. These limited the growth of their motorcycle market.

The targeted market segment of scooters were the ladies. Women would be able to ride a scooter even when they are wearing skirts, and they were light too.

But in Japan, women had lower status and most of them do not work, and there was no need for them to ride scooters. Also in China, it was considered fortunate for a family to even own a motorcycle. Men would not want to buy these type of slow speed scooters. The only market that has some sales for scooters was Taiwan.

In China, temporary no one likes to ride scooters. In the market, there was only the standard and underbone bikes. But from 1993 onwards, scooters became immensely popular. Feng Yu does not want to wait until then to start developing.

Also, the techniques used for underbones and scooters can be used for electric bicycles. With only slight modifications to the technologies, they can start to manufacture electric bicycles.

After 1993, China would become the top country in the world for motorcycle sales. And from 2000 onwards, China became number one in the world for electric bicycle sales. With such a beautiful pie in front of Feng Yu, how can he give it up?

Feng Yu was even working with the Motor Factory now. He had hired the Motor Factory to develop high-powered lead-acid batteries and lithium-ion batteries.

The lead-acid battery will be the most widely used battery in the future, and it was mainly used for electric vehicles. Lithium-ion battery was used for electronics products like smartphones batteries.

The Motor Factory itself was researching and developing batteries. Even Feng Yu invested, the Motor Factory would not sell the patent to him, but Li Shiyou said that they can share the technology. Feng Yu was satisfied with this.

But Feng Yu felt it was a pity that the Motor Factory did not have plans to develop alkaline batteries. They felt that there will be no market for these small alkaline batteries and they had not enough engineers to work on that.

In another two years, home appliances, like TV, will be entering the remote-control era and there will be many electronic toys. Never mind. Feng Yu also can’t be doing every profitable business. He should also leave some for the others.

The motorcycles’ sales had opened up and the development plan for the next 10 years done, Feng Yu can concentrate on other things. He was worried about the bladeless fan sales the most.

It was not Summer yet, and the sales of the fans were not looking good for both the domestic and overseas market. Even the Fu family were worrying.