With Titan Environmental already making a name for itself, recruitment went very smoothly. Nearly all the candidates found by the employment agencies were willing to join the company.
For every employee who passed Tang Shizhe's interview, the Splitters would use the network to thoroughly investigate their background, from their QQ Space and WeChat Moments to their Weibo accounts, looking for any sign that they might be susceptible to bribery.
The Splitters monitored these employees' bank accounts as well. Any unusual activity would be reported to Tang Shizhe immediately.
Fortunately, none of the employees recruited so far had shown any signs of anything suspicious.
After a brief training session at the company, they were sent to cities across the Xia Kingdom to prepare for the construction of Titan Environmental's brick-and-mortar stores.
Each of the four centrally administered municipalities would have four first-tier branches. With an average renovation budget of RMB 600,000 and a rental budget of RMB 400,000 per store, that came to RMB 16 million.
Of the remaining 283 prefecture-level cities, each would have at least one and at most three stores, depending on its size. In total, they needed to build 500 brick-and-mortar stores.
With an average renovation budget of RMB 250,000 and a rental budget of RMB 100,000 per store—those were averages, mind you—the second-tier branches in the prefecture-level cities would require a total of RMB 175 million.
Together, the two sums came to more than RMB 190 million.
After setting aside the employees' salaries for the coming year and other potential expenses, Tang Shizhe had RMB 200 million left.
Once he spent RMB 190 million of that, he would have less than RMB 9 million remaining. Fortunately, the product was about to launch.
With a budget of RMB 18 per Purification Tree, he could still produce 500,000 units to send in advance to the warehouses at the various branches.
As for the renovations, once a city had found a store with a decent price and location, work would begin immediately.
Every store would share the same simple design. Only two Purification Trees would be activated inside each one; the rest would be kept in storage. That was the only way to highlight the Purification Tree's effects!
As for whether renovating so quickly would leave behind formaldehyde or anything like that, Tang Shizhe's response was that they had Purification Trees, so there was nothing to worry about!
A month after the launch event, Tang Shizhe received word that all the stores across the country had been fully renovated. The hefty renovation fees he had paid hadn't gone to waste; the contractors had worked overtime to finish the projects.
At the same time, Titan Environmental officially launched its website.
For now, the site had only two sections: the Purification Tree 10 and the Purification Tree 10S. The page for the Purification Tree 10 Plus was still grayed out.
The entire website had a clean, white look with a flat design.
Below the Purification Tree's introduction and videos was a preorder button.
After placing an order, customers only had to pay RMB 618 to pick up their purchase at a local store three days later.
By then, the Purification Trees given to reporters at the launch event had also made their way into the hands of various review outlets. Review videos and articles sprang up like mushrooms after the rain.
To everyone's surprise, every single review was glowing!
Fourth floor, chairman's office
"I wonder how many people have preordered it so far." Tang Shizhe sat in his leather chair, rubbing his chin as he muttered to himself.
Since the company had already burned through all its financing, he could only count on the preorder revenue to keep production of new Purification Trees going.
Tang Shizhe reached out and lightly pressed on his desk. A screen rose from beneath its surface.
He entered the password from memory and opened the company website's backend management system.
The preorder count had already reached an astonishing 18,468—which meant nearly 130,000 people!
And the number was still climbing. Eighty percent of customers had chosen the classic Purification Tree, while the other twenty percent had opted for the special aromatherapy edition.
The classic model sold for RMB 618, while the special aromatherapy edition cost RMB 738.
The preorder sales had brought in RMB 64.27 million from the classic model alone, and another RMB 19.18 million from the special edition! Including the loose change, the total came to RMB 83.47 million! The two models had almost identical production costs, and making all those Purification Trees had cost just RMB 2.34 million!
After deducting other operating expenses, the net profit would still come to nearly RMB 80 million! And this was only the first day since the Purification Tree's launch!
All this new income would go toward producing new products and promoting them.
By noon, whether people searched on Baidu, Sohu, or any of the major shopping sites, the Purification Tree ranked first for air purifiers!
Over the next three days, the Purification Tree was mentioned constantly in the media, and video ads for it began appearing on video-sharing sites as well.
As the ads flooded the market, sales of the Purification Tree surged. In just three days, preorders topped 500,000.
Along with the boost from all the advertising, the Purification Trees Tang Shizhe had his employees place outside their stores were also drawing attention.
Whether through reporters' articles, word of mouth, or the glowing reviews from review outlets, the Purification Tree had become the latest viral product.
That was only because most people planned to wait until the physical stores opened and try one out for themselves before making a purchase. Otherwise, there would have been even more preorders.
"Tang Yi, get ready. We're going to take a look around the factory!" Tang Shizhe summoned him through the Mental Network.
Ten minutes later, at Titan Environmental's factory
Trays filled with liquid glided along the assembly line. After entering a sealed room, they emerged with a tree sapling growing in each one.
Mechanical arms lifted the saplings out of their trays and placed them in flowerpots on another conveyor belt. The pots had already been half-filled with sandy soil.
Once the saplings were in place, a nozzle extended from the other side of the conveyor and filled the pots with soil. Then the seedlings were carried into a room resembling an artificial greenhouse.
After being watered with a white liquid, the Purification Tree seedlings rapidly grew to full size.
The Purification Trees were then packaged and loaded into white trucks, each bearing Titan Environmental's prominent logo.
The saplings would be transported to a logistics hub in Zhengdu, the provincial capital, 80 kilometers from Jiaonan City, and then sent from there to destinations across the country.
Of course, these trucks only handled transportation from the factory to the logistics center, and all the drivers were experienced professionals the company had hired.
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