As time passed and global giants uniformly slashed their prices, some chose to stay, some chose to wait and see, while others chose to leave.
One banquet hall, thirty-two guests—this was Kunlun Company's first batch of partners.
"On October 1, we'll launch across the board. Here's to everything going smoothly!" Gao Yuan raised his glass in salute.
Boss Ding of Anta Group took a large gulp of red wine, then smiled at Gao Yuan. "I really don't understand it. With such high-performance X series fabric available, why are so many of our peers choosing to embrace Western suppliers? What exactly are they after?"
"After calculating it all out, using X series fabric raises the cost of a single T-shirt by ten yuan, sportswear by twenty-seven yuan, and trench coats by thirty-five yuan. It certainly isn't cheap, but it's not unacceptable either."
Someone in the crowd teased Boss Ding, "Of course you wouldn't think so. Look at how expensive Arc'teryx and Fila are. Even Nike has to concede defeat compared to you."
Everyone burst into laughter, though mixed into those laughs was more than a little envy and jealousy.
Before anyone realized it, Anta had already left all its domestic competitors far behind.
According to the 2019 Brand Value Survey Report, Anta ranked first among China's sporting goods brands with a value of 23.2 billion US Dollars.
Meanwhile, Li-Ning was valued at 6.93 billion, Under Armour at 7.94 billion, outdoor giant The North Face at 35.3 billion, Adidas at 49.8 billion, while Nike, ranked first, was worth nearly 150 billion.
This showed that aside from its considerable gap with Nike, Anta Group had officially entered the second tier of global sporting goods companies and ranked among the world's top five.
Some people might wonder: how could Anta be worth so much?
The answer was simple. The Anta brand itself was rather ordinary, but the group also owned the leading outdoor brand Arc'teryx, sports fashion brand Fila, hiking shoe brand Salomon, mountaineering brand Splendi, ski brand Descente, tennis brand Wilson, baseball brand Demarini, and as many as twenty-five brands in total.
In other words, Anta itself was not worth much. Anta Group was what held value.
Gao Yuan smiled. "It isn't that simple. Suppose a company catches the olive branch extended by DuPont Group. Does that merely mean it can obtain Thinsulate fabric at a low price?"
"Of course not. Besides Thinsulate, DuPont also has Lycra, Kevlar, Corian for making astronauts' spacesuits, and countless products so powerful they are almost unimaginable."
"Japanese companies are the same. Toray, Mitsubishi Chemical, Asahi Kasei, Shin-Etsu—the trump cards in their hands are simply too numerous to count."
"So it isn't that our X series fiber isn't good enough. It's that our opponents are simply too strong. China has ranked first in the world in chemical fiber output for many years, but how much truly top-tier technology do we actually possess?"
"As industry insiders, you should know that the machines responsible for spinning fiber in factories are imported, and most of the various neutralizing agents and lubricants are imported as well."
"Originally, this wasn't a problem. With globalization, we were also a cog in Earth's enormous production machine, closely connected to the entire world."
"However, since 2018, the times have changed. The beginning of deglobalization has abruptly placed us at a disadvantage. Now we have no choice but to pick everything back up and make it ourselves, from screws to Aviation Engines, and hold the technology in our own hands. Otherwise, we will face enormous disaster."
Everyone nodded repeatedly. It was precisely because they worried about the future that they had ultimately gathered here, choosing to work with Kunlun Company, which was clearly not as powerful as DuPont Group but possessed limitless potential.
The reception went extremely smoothly. Though Gao Yuan was young, his words always inspired trust, and his answers to every question were highly professional.
Why had so many customers switched to DuPont?
Gao Yuan explained the first, second, third, and fourth reasons one by one.
What were Kunlun Company's next plans?
Gao Yuan laid out the first, second, third, and fourth points just as clearly. He also told them why the plans had been arranged that way, where the technical difficulties lay, and roughly how long it would take to achieve breakthroughs.
None of the falsehoods, evasions, and hollow courtesies of traditional businessmen could be seen in Gao Yuan.
He was eloquent and sincere, his mind constantly thinking and analyzing at high speed. He answered everyone's questions with logic and facts, putting them all at ease.
"Please believe me: X2 Fiber is the most powerful thermal insulation material in human history!" Gao Yuan swept his gaze across the thirty-odd partners present, his voice filled with confidence. "And I can stake my life and fortune on this: for a long time to come, no one will be able to replicate our technology!"
"Starting October 1, whether it is Kanebo's Ceramino, Kuraray's LONWAVE, Unichika's Thermotron, Toray's Softwarm, or Japan Mitsubishi Chemical's Renaissα—"
"All past thermal insulation technologies will be swept into the garbage heap of history!"
In the high-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere, October brought deepening autumn and the first frost.
White ice crystals formed along the beautiful shores of Lake Baikal. Faraway Alaska's grizzly bears were preparing for hibernation, while Iceland, a small country with only 350,000 residents, had already begun providing heating to its people.
Gao Yuan and his thirty-two strategic partners were ambitious, preparing to launch a powerful assault on the thermal fiber sector monopolized by giants.
Though costs were somewhat higher, they firmly believed that technology alone was the ultimate power in this world. No one could stop the monster called technology from utterly transforming human life with overwhelming force.
Gao Yuan also firmly believed that warmth was an essential need no one could refuse.
If you told someone living in Harbin not to buy expensive mink coats and down jackets, but to make do with a cheap coat to save money—
See whether they would slap you across the face.
There was no other reason. In the face of brutal cold, people could truly freeze to death.
In short, when October 1 arrived, Gao Yuan's thirty-two strategic partners simultaneously launched their new autumn and winter products using X series fiber, formally opening the curtain on this war.
Unfortunately, the two sides were completely unequal in strength.
The giant corporations dominating the global market were unwilling to see a competitor from China rise up, so they drove prices extremely low. As a result, the battle reached a stalemate from the very beginning.
One had to know that there were more than two hundred countries and regions in this world. Only China and a handful of places had relatively developed online sales; even major countries such as Britain, France, Japan, and Korea still relied primarily on offline retail.
Among Kunlun Company's opponents was an entire row of Fortune Global 500 companies, including super giants such as DowDuPont, BASF, and Bayer. Their influence over the global retail market was simply terrifying.
Though in theory Kunlun Company's X2 Fiber possessed the strongest thermal insulation capability in the world, the giants' frenzied counterattack prevented it from rapidly expanding its market share.
Gao Yuan and his partners could only hope that as time passed and the climate grew colder, the advantages of their products would emerge.
However, no one expected that the final direction of this war would not be determined solely by those business giants.
In early October, a supply plane landed at Ali Airport in the uninhabited region of the distant, frigid Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
The plane brought precious fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as several large cardboard boxes filled with clothing in various colors. The boxes bore the following words.
For the General Logistics Department Military Supply Equipment Testing Institute.
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