Sales Performance

All 550 projectors sold out again within a day of going on sale.

With their excellent quality and value for money, they had no rivals at the same price point. It was only natural that they sold so well.

That evening, an SF Express courier drove his van to the apartment building where Ning Yifan was renting a place and began making trip after trip to handle the projector packages. With Ning Yifan helping out, it still took them more than two hours to get through them all.

As an added bonus, the courier also brought Ning Yifan some good news.

Given the large number of packages Ning Yifan had been sending and receiving lately—and the fact that business wasn't likely to slow down—the courier enthusiastically recommended SF Express's monthly subscription plan.

Send a certain number of packages each month, and you could get discounts on shipping. The first hundred packages cost the regular rate; packages 101 to 500 cost only two-thirds of the original rate; packages 501 to 1,000 cost half; over 1,000 cost just a third; and over 5,000 cost only a fifth!

The plan also came with pickup at your door, help filling out shipping forms, and assistance with any delivery issues whenever you needed it.

This time, Ning Yifan had shipped more than 500 packages at once, so the shipping discount alone came to a considerable sum—over 7,000 yuan!

He had still chosen SF Express's fastest air-freight service. Shipping more than 500 items had cost Ning Yifan over 17,000 yuan in total.

With all 550 projectors shipped out, Ning Yifan found himself in the awkward position of having nothing left to sell.

There was nothing he could do but wait for buyers to confirm receipt and for the platform to transfer the money before he could start producing more projectors.

There were ways around this, of course: he could take out a loan, borrow money, or ask the component manufacturers to let him pay later. Ning Yifan simply couldn't be bothered to get involved with banks or component suppliers.

Besides, there was nowhere in particular he urgently needed money for right now. Upgrading the company and setting up a factory were both fairly pressing, but they could wait a little longer.

In about a week, once the payments for this batch of 550 projectors came through, Ning Yifan would receive roughly 2.75 million yuan.

He could then put that 2.75 million toward projector components, enough to buy the parts needed to make more than 1,600 projectors.

The fully automated robotic arm could assemble more than 1,600 projectors in just over three days of running at full power. Once those projectors sold, they would bring in roughly 8 million yuan!

It took about a week for buyers to confirm receipt. After the money came in, ordering all the projector components would take another two or three days for delivery. Add in the time needed to sell them, and based on the current situation, the whole process shouldn't take much more than half a month.

So Ning Yifan wasn't in a hurry. He could take his time.

With over 8 million yuan in hand, Ning Yifan would be able to carefully pick out a factory that suited him. The roads around it had to be good, and ideally it would be near a lake, with fresh air. That would make his morning runs a lot more enjoyable!

The factory also needed a large plot of land to leave room for future renovations and upgrades. Finally, he wanted to keep the price under 5 million yuan. Even with 8 million, he'd still need to set some aside to buy projector components.

He hadn't even received the payment for the last batch yet, but Ning Yifan had already mapped out how to spend the money from the next batch of Phantom Projectors.

The day after Ning Yifan shipped the projectors, buyers in various parts of Dasha Kingdom began receiving their orders, starting with those in nearby provincial capitals.

There was no need to describe the buyers testing their projectors in detail. Even though the fully automated robotic arm had assembled them, under Ning Yifan's supervision, the results were no worse than when he assembled them himself. Specialized equipment had also been used to calibrate the colors, so every projector worked perfectly. And SF Express's premium express service had delivered them safely and reliably.

As buyers received and tested their orders, discussion of the Phantom Projectors made by Shenma Technology Company gradually spread online.

Most of the people who took an interest in the Phantom Projectors were young. Once there were more than 500 of them, some started uploading videos of themselves using the projectors, hoping to catch the eye of people who might be interested—or simply to document a great purchase.

"At 5,000 yuan, is the Phantom Projector worth buying? No question—it's an incredible deal!"

"I'm so excited my hands are shaking! I've waited almost a week, and I finally got my hands on this virtual projector. Now let me show you all whether this thing is worth buying!

"I actually got to try this projector at a friend's place before, so I already knew quite a bit about it. Judging by the specs and how it performs, it's definitely worth buying!

"A 200-inch high-definition projection screen is nothing like those products that claim to project at 200 inches but look terrible in practice, with every pixel visible.

"This review is mainly for friends who haven't had a chance to try the projector yet. I want to show you what it can do.

"They say this is from the second production batch. Has the quality dropped? Are there any problems? All right, let's open it up.

"The packaging looks almost exactly the same as the first-batch products reviewed by the other UP creators.

"Now, the product itself. The look and feel are no different either.

"Finally, let's test it..."

After a series of tests, this buyer, who enjoyed sharing snippets of his life, came to a final conclusion: the second batch of Phantom Projectors was just as good as the first. The high-definition picture quality, the sound, and even the one-millisecond response time and 144 Hz refresh rate when used as a computer monitor—all worked perfectly.

One person's review video might have disappeared without a trace, but more than thirty similar posts had appeared online over the past two days. With so many of them, it was only natural that people interested in electronics started paying attention.

"Phantom Projector? What's that?"

"These specs look way too good to be true. Are they seriously not making this up?"

"These review videos look so real!"

"I've already come across four of these posts. The algorithm is amazing. I've actually been thinking about getting a large-screen monitor, and this looks like it might be fun to try!"

"The price put me off. Waaaah, here I am, still using a secondhand monitor that cost two or three hundred yuan, crying poor!"

"Maybe I could buy a few of these projectors and turn my guesthouse into a private cinema. That might be a pretty good idea. I just don't know if it really performs as well as the UP creator claims."

"I've seen several videos about the Phantom Projector too. Wow, it just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. But even in the footage shot with the UP creators' own equipment, you can tell it looks really good!"

"I just checked the official flagship store, and they're sold out again, hahaha. Is this seller playing games with us? But all the reviews in the store are glowing, and they look real too. It doesn't seem like they're faking reviews or orders."

"Following. I'll wait and see. I'm actually looking to replace my monitor soon. If it really has all those features, I'd be willing to pay 5,000 yuan for one!"

In addition to commenting under the videos, the more than 500 customers who'd bought this batch had more places to show off than the customers from the first batch.

Baidu Tieba's graphics card forum, computer parts forum, and Tualatin forum—the major platforms for computer hardware enthusiasts—were also seeing a wave of posts strongly recommending the Phantom Projector.

A buyer who liked helping people out posted in the Tualatin forum.

"Monitor or projector? The Phantom Projector is the perfect replacement for a computer monitor!"

"An incredible big screen, ultra-high-definition picture, and monitor-level response time and refresh rate. Gaming on this thing is so much fun!"

"Hi, everyone! I bought a really fun projector over the past couple of days. It can be used as a computer monitor, and it's great value for money. After testing it out, I couldn't resist coming here to recommend it.

"The Phantom Projector has 8K ultra-high-definition picture quality, as well as a monitor's high refresh rate and response speed. Here are some photos I took while gaming over the past couple of days: image, image, image.

"Playing Battle Royale on a 200-inch screen is so much fun. With a screen this big, you can even get a headshot from 200 meters away!"

Replies soon appeared under the post.

"No advertising in this forum. Don't even think about taking my money!"

"How much is Shenma Technology Company paying you? Sony will pay ten times as much!"

"A 5,000-yuan monitor doesn't really fit my Tualatin-forum lifestyle. Smirk."

"Turn left and head over to the graphics card forum!"

"With a three-thousand-yuan budget, you head into the graphics card forum, then keep adding money until it's eighty-eight thousand.

"Slap in a ten-core E7, bring home four Titans, too.

"Set up three 4K screens, cool it with ten thousand yuan's worth of liquid cooling.

"Three solid-state drives, then max out the hard drive and memory.

"Spend thousands on a keyboard and mouse, eight thousand eight on a headset and controller.

"Then there's the six-thousand-yuan case, with Red Star fireworks going pop-pop-pop.

"Finally, you realize it's all useless, and sit there with your god-tier PC browsing the forums.

"--

"With a three-thousand-yuan budget, you head into the Tualatin forum and come home with a ton of hardware.

"Slap in a quad-core Xeon, and laugh at your old motherboard.

"Blu-ray movies won't faze it; a Blue Bird cooler is the best.

"One battered KingSpec drive at most; max out the specialized memory.

"The keyboard and mouse together cost 9.9 yuan, and the peripherals are free shipping for 8.8.

"Better to go barebones for cooling; a bulk-pack power supply will do just fine.

"Finally, you realize you've bought too much, and open an internet café across from the school."

"Are projectors like that actually real? I haven't been following electronics much lately, but this looks real!"

"I just came from Bilibili. I watched reviews by a few UP creators, and it doesn't seem fake. It's a shame they only have two or three hundred thousand followers each. Not a single big creator with over a million followers has come out to say whether it's real."

"5,000 yuan? Think carefully. You could buy a computer for gaming with that money."

"Why is it so expensive? If it sold for 500 yuan, I'd buy one just to play around with."

"Even if I wanted one, I'd have to be able to buy it first. I've seen plenty of posts about it, but when I asked the store, they said the next batch wouldn't be available for another seven or eight days."

The more than 200 customers who bought the first Phantom Projectors had already brought in the attention of many new customers. This time, the sale of more than 500 projectors had spread the word even further, attracting even more consumers who wanted to buy one.

Where there was fame, there was controversy. In addition to potential customers, the projectors had also caught the attention of people in the electronics industry.

Zhou Yuánlěi was a tech UP creator on Bilibili with more than a million followers. Over the past two days, he'd received dozens of messages from fans asking about the Phantom Projector and requesting a review video.

Zhou Yuánlěi had watched online reviews and read customers' accounts of using the virtual projector. There was no doubt that its incredible performance had caught his attention too.

It was a high-value product with little name recognition so far. Maybe he could make a little money off it?