Chapter 39: The Emergence of the Jiangnan Coin

Chapter 38 and 39 have been expanded, as the original plot felt too abrupt and lacked smoothness. Readers familiar with the previous version of Chapter 38 are encouraged to revisit its ending for a better understanding.

“Chairman, there’s a problem!” That very evening, Shen Yuequn sought out Huang He to report the situation.

Shen Yuequn had been the first in the country to sell mobile phones through blind boxes. Since Huang He was unsure of the outcome, he had instructed Shen Yuequn to act as a test case. The experiment quickly exposed an issue.

In truth, Huang He had already anticipated this problem, and it wasn’t one that could be solved by ordinary means. The odds of winning a phone had to be extremely low; otherwise, where would Huang He’s profits come from? After all, each phone cost a minimum of six hundred yuan.

“For customers, their reluctance to try for a phone stems from overwhelming uncertainty—an uncertainty that ordinary buyers simply cannot bear!” Huang He mused, his gaze falling on another report, sent by Zhang Yingguo. The report described a sharp decline in blind box sales in regions like Wenzhou.

Zhang’s report contained another revealing passage: many customers who had bought hundreds of blind boxes never returned. After speaking with them personally, he discovered their homes were piled high with wallets—hundreds of them. These wallets, unlike shoes, couldn’t be resold or easily disposed of; they offered no practical use and were hard to sell, so they simply accumulated in their homes, causing frustration and discouraging further purchases.

Zhang ultimately suggested it might be better to simply throw them out, out of sight and mind—perhaps then some of the veteran customers might come back.

“It seems blind boxes need to develop sustainably!” Huang He’s mind began to formulate a not yet fully mature idea. When he glanced at a segment of his own OO development outline, clarity dawned, and a strategy emerged.

Five days after the first phone appeared, Shen Yuequn returned to his stall.

“Old Shen, what happened to your phones? Why did you only sell them for a day and then stop?” The crowd teased him as he arrived.

The phones had only been available for a single day. After that, all related advertising was swiftly withdrawn, to the delight of many who had envied or resented the promotion.

“The previous sales policy had issues. We discussed it and revised the policy!” Shen Yuequn replied with a smile, bringing out new advertisements.

To everyone’s surprise, the phone ads were back, along with a brand-new sign: “To thank all customers for their support, and knowing that many friends have accumulated large quantities of Jiangnan brand leather goods, so as not to harm your interests, we are now offering to recycle all Jiangnan Leather Factory products.”

“As long as your item retains its original packaging, with all accessories and documents—such as warranty cards and certificates—intact, you can exchange it immediately for Jiangnan Coins.”

“Any leather wallet can be redeemed for 20 Jiangnan Coins; a leather belt for 30 coins; leather shoes for 100 coins; a leather jacket for 1,000 coins.”

“With 200 Jiangnan Coins, you can exchange for a random leather shoe blind box (guaranteed to contain shoes, with a chance of an Italian master edition); 1,000 coins for a limited random wallet blind box (guaranteed to contain a random wallet, with a chance of an Italian master edition); 2,000 coins for a random leather jacket blind box (guaranteed to contain a random jacket).”

“And finally, if you collect 8,888 Jiangnan Coins, you can exchange them at once for a genuine Tianxing Supreme Flagship Full-Color Touchscreen Phone blind box (guaranteed to contain a randomly colored phone).”

“With the announcement of this new policy, phones and wallets will now be included in the blind boxes, making your luck even more diverse.”

“Jiangnan Coins? Old Shen, you’re getting bold—are you planning to issue your own currency?” The crowd exclaimed in amazement.

“It’s not a currency, it’s just a points system!” Shen Yuequn remembered Huang He’s instructions and explained, “Legally, currency is something freely circulated and used for transactions and substitution.”

“But Jiangnan Coins aren’t that—they’re only for exchanging specific products, and cannot be circulated or traded. So they’re not a currency!”

“Not circulated or traded? What does that mean?”

“You’ll see soon enough!” Shen Yuequn replied confidently, though deep down he felt uneasy. He couldn’t be sure whether Huang He’s new Jiangnan Coin activity had market potential, or whether it might provoke regulatory backlash. After all, the term ‘coin’ in Jiangnan Coin could attract powerful scrutiny.

But Huang He, knowing how Q Coins flourished in later years and how countless online coins became ubiquitous, had no worries about the name.

The appearance of Jiangnan Coins seemed sudden; in reality, Huang He had brought thousands of Tianxing phones as inventory from Shenzhen, but lacked a direct sales platform. Thus, they were distributed among the various blind box stalls, joining the blind box lineup as another product.

To address the earlier issue—the phone blind box odds being too low to excite customers, and the abundance of unused wallets dampening their desire to buy—Huang He introduced the Jiangnan Coin system. This allowed customers to accumulate points and eventually claim a phone, greatly reducing the difficulty of acquisition.

Essentially, it was a guaranteed system for blind boxes: even if someone spent a fortune and never won a phone, the worst-case scenario was 445 attempts, or 4,450 yuan—445 wallets exchanged for 8,900 Jiangnan Coins, enough to redeem a Tianxing phone.

This price was already highly attractive, as current market full-color touchscreen phones cost over 6,000 yuan.

And the odds of getting 445 wallets in a row were extraordinarily unlucky; under normal probability, a phone could be obtained for around 3,500 yuan.

Buying a 6,000-yuan phone for 3,500 yuan—who wouldn’t see that as a huge win?

As for the collected wallets and shoes, there was no need to worry about waste. Simply repackage them as blind boxes and sell them for ten yuan each; they didn’t lose value as second-hand goods, which was remarkable.

For Huang He, selling a knockoff phone costing less than 1,000 yuan for 3,500 was unquestionably profitable.

As for the ultimate outcome of this scheme, only the market could decide.