"By the way, how is Ichiro Honda doing now?" Boss Jia thought of his good friend and asked with a smile.
"His current situation is a bit difficult …" Xia Qiu Shiyu couldn't help but laugh when she thought of this.
Ichiro Honda's situation was not a bit difficult, it was too difficult.
Logically speaking, Ichiro Honda's tribute tea had no competitors other than the Daqian. At the same time, he had the Daqian's original team and the 300 million USD investment support from Masayoshi Son. In the next six months, Ichiro Honda's tribute tea should have swept the world.
But the reality was that Ichiro Honda had to start thinking about closing his stores.
After the peak performance in July, Honda Ichiro's tribute tea was facing a comprehensive decline.
It couldn't be helped. It took Ichiro Honda a lot of effort to open 2,000 stores in the country, but at this time, Yu-Gi-Oh's national franchise stores were about to exceed 20,000. The number was more than ten times that of Ichiro Honda. Ichiro Honda had been forced into a corner by the Daqian.
After Ichiro Honda had personally experienced the franchisee training, he actually didn't think much of it.
The franchisee system seemed good, but there were so many franchises, and none of them were directly controlled by the Daqian. It was very easy for problems to arise. More importantly, most of the profits were taken by the franchisees.
In Ichiro Honda's view, Jia Yapeng's franchisee system was completely giving away money to the franchisees. Basically, it didn't make much money. It was just to destroy Ichiro Honda's tribute tea.
Moreover, at that time, Ichiro Honda was in its golden age, and there were still stores opening. If they changed to a franchisee system at this time, it would undoubtedly disrupt the development of Ichiro Honda.
Finally, it was the nature of the Fusangpeople.
Fusangpeople liked to boast about their craftsmanship, but this craftsmanship, to put it bluntly, was a waste of time. For example, a certain God of Sushi insisted on using his hands to make sushi, and then claimed that a man's palm temperature was the most suitable temperature for sushi.
Little did he know that Boss Jia was about to vomit when he heard this.
There would always be all kinds of gods appearing in Fusang. To put it bluntly, they were all people who were extremely stubborn, but they were still sought after by some of the country's princes.
To put it bluntly, Fusang was a little paranoid. For Honda Ichiro, if he were to learn from Boss Jia's franchisee system and start a franchise business, it would undoubtedly be another admission of failure.
This was something that Ichiro Honda was absolutely unwilling to do, let alone admit.
Therefore, Ichiro Honda decided to use the tribute tea from the direct store model to fight against the Daqian that had basically turned into a franchise store. He wanted to use the tribute tea to completely defeat Yu-Gi-Oh and prove that he was stronger than Jia Yapeng. That Jia Yapeng was just a lucky bastard!
Therefore, from April onwards, in order to compete with Yu-Gi-Oh, he had to open as many shops as possible. Therefore, Ichiro Honda decided to speed up the opening of his shops.
Originally, Honda Ichiro had planned to slowly increase the number of direct-sale stores to 3000 in 1994.
However, Ichiro Honda decided to speed up. Not only did he want to push the number to 5000, but he also wanted to achieve it by the end of June.
This sounded very crazy, but it was not impossible. After all, in this era of money, as long as Ichiro Honda was willing to spend money, it could be done.
Therefore, Ichiro Honda once again looked for Sun Zhengyi and asked him to increase his investment, giving him another 200 million USD.
This made Sun Zhengyi think that Ichiro Honda might be crazy, but Ichiro Honda strongly insisted. He also told Sun Zhengyi that it was an important time to seize the market.
If the number of tribute tea shops could not catch up with Yu-Gi-Oh, then the tribute tea would definitely not be able to compete. By then, Sun Zhengyi's previous 300 million USD investment would all go down the drain.
In the end, Ichiro Honda even said that if Sun Zhengyi wasn't willing to continue investing, it didn't matter. He would send an invitation to several other investment funds in Fuso. When the time came, the shares would be diluted according to the ratio!
This directly forced Sun Zhengyi into a corner. Considering that he had already invested 300 million USD, Sun Zhengyi finally gritted his teeth and added another 200 million USD.
After receiving the new financial support, Ichiro Honda decisively started his crazy new store plan.
This Ichiro Honda was very capable. At the end of June, Ichiro Honda not only completed his plan, but also exceeded it. He reached 7000 stores in Fusang, which made Ichiro Honda very happy.
However, when Ichiro Honda received Yu-Gi-Oh's data and found out that Yu-Gi-Oh already had 30,000 stores, Ichiro Honda was very unhappy.
However, it did not matter. 7000 stores versus 30,000 stores was not as big of a disparity as 2000 stores versus 20,000 stores.
Moreover, 7000 stores were enough for the tribute tea shops to be distributed all over Fusang. Now, it was enough to find the tribute tea milk tea shops in Fusang. What Ichiro Honda wanted to do next was to promote the tribute tea brand. Just like how Daqian promoted the Daqian VCD, he wanted to promote the tribute tea shop to be much better than Yu-Gi-Oh's milk tea shop.
Although Ichiro Honda's goal was very clear, and his strategy was not wrong, in terms of marketing, Ichiro Honda was completely useless.
If Ichiro Honda's marketing strategy was good enough, he would not have been forced to resign by Boss Jia.
However, Ichiro Honda was very strong. He did not want to rely on others to do this, as it would make it seem that he did not win against Boss Jia.
Therefore, after careful consideration, Ichiro Honda came up with a great idea, which was to invite a famous star to be the spokesperson.
Yes, this was a really good idea.
Although this idea sounded very old-fashioned, it had been proven over the years that inviting a star to be the spokesperson was indeed the last way to quickly establish a brand.
Therefore, after careful consideration, Ichiro Honda decided to invite the popular Sakai Noriko to be the spokesperson of the tribute tea.
At this time, Sakai Noriko was at the peak of her popularity. She had just finished her national concert and held concerts overseas. In addition, she had also acted in many television dramas and movies. Finally, it was rumored that she would be appearing on the Red and White Song Festival, known as the Japanese Spring Festival Gala. She was really popular.
At this time, letting Sakai Noriko become his spokesperson was undoubtedly the best choice.
Therefore, Ichiro Honda decisively spent 10 million USD for three years to invite Sakai Noriko to be the spokesperson of the tribute tea. Then, he filmed commercials and invested 20 million USD in various Fusang TV stations to promote the tribute tea.
However, all of this had its benefits. In June, the tribute tea reached the peak of its life. According to market research, about 50% of the Fusang audience started to think that tribute tea was the best milk tea brand. At the same time, tribute tea's total revenue in June exceeded 50 billion yen, becoming a miracle in Fusang's business history.
Unfortunately, Boss Jia was still in Hua Xia. Otherwise, Ichiro Honda would be very interested in inviting Boss Jia to witness his moment of glory.
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