Extraordinary Genius
Chapter 603 – Medical Plaster strategy
The exclusive supplier agreement with the military was quickly signed. General Gan still had some say in the procurement of medical supplies. Furthermore, Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise’s rates were much lower than Band-aid.
But Feng Yu was still not satisfied. With this alone, it was not sufficient to beat Band-aid.
In his previous life, it was 5 years after Yunnan Baiyao introduces their healing plasters before Band-aid was beaten.
That means 2 years after Band-aid entered the Chinese market, the brand’s presence had grown tremendously and held the majority of the market share for the next 10 years.
During this period, there were lots of medical plaster companies. But none of them could compete with Band-aid. If it was not because of the Government’s help, Yunnan Baiyao might take more than 5 years to beat Band-aid.
Even after Yunnan Baiyao had won Band-aid in terms of sales, but market research was conducted. Band-aid was still the number one brand of plasters, and Yunnan Baiyao was second.
Of course, it was because, in Feng Yu’s previous life, Band-aid had monopolized the market for more than 10 years. It was difficult for other companies to overtake them.
Feng Yu was full of respect for Yunnan Baiyao. They had successfully overtaken Band-aid in terms of sales volume!
Feng Yu does not have the patience to wait for 5 years. His target was 2 years. In 2 years, he wants to overtake Band-aid in terms of sales volume, profits, branding, and other areas. He was to step all over Band-aid.
This will affect Johnson and Johnson from controlling the Chinese market.
In Feng Yu’s past life, just before he came back to this life, the top few pharmaceutical companies were mainly owned by foreign companies or joint ventures with international companies. Those truly Chinese Pharmaceutical companies were way behind them.
The pharmaceutical industry was an important industry. It was quite sad to see foreign companies controlling the industry in China.
This life, Feng Yu does not want to see this happen again. China does have excellent researchers, but they do not have enough sponsors for their research. They do not have enough funds to promote their findings. Many of the top drugs in the world were developed by Chinese scientists and teams of researchers with Chinese scientists in the team.
Research usually is conducted by a team lead by a Professor and assisted by his students. The research students might contribute most of the work, but in the end, who gets the most credit?
The Professor!
This was because most of the people will think that the team had the findings and results due to the Professor’s leadership. But, this was not the truth.
Feng Yu was now supporting lots of researchers. A lot of them were capable and could develop affordable and effective medicines. This was what Feng Yu wants from them. In return, Feng Yu will provide them with funding and reputation.
You had contributed to developing medicine, and you should get the credit. This was a trade. Feng Yu paid them and gets to reap the rewards from their research. The researchers will get fame and funds to do more projects.
For instance, the Yunnan Baiyao formula which Feng Yu remembered. The researchers from Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise found that the formula was not accurate, and it was not as effective as the real Yunnan Baiyao. But after the researchers at from Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise, Professors from Beijing University, Medical Universities, and many other agencies came together to research and amend the formula, the final product was not too far behind from the real Yunnan Baiyao.
These people might even develop better medicines and stands a high chance of developing the Spray medication earlier than Yunnan Baiyao
One of the main reasons for this was Feng Yu. He had asked Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise to increase their R&D spending.
Feng Yu had made it clear with the top management of Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise. The company could achieve high profits last year was because the medicine they produced were of good quality and effective. To achieve higher profits, the company must have an exclusive medical product.
For example, the top few Pharmaceutical companies in the world had become successful because they own the patent of at least a type of drug. None of them had relied on low-cost medicines and advertisements to get to where they were now.
Look at Band-aid. Why was this brand of medical plaster the world’s top-selling plaster and had achieved the highest profits? It was because they were the inventors of medical plasters. It was the oldest brand, and when people think of plasters, Band-aid was the first brand that comes to their mind. In fact, the brand Band-aid had replaced the words medical plasters for a lot of consumers!
If Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise wants to win Band-aid, just waterproof and breathable plasters were not enough. These features were only good enough to win those smaller brands.
Shortly after Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise had introduced waterproof and breathable plasters, Band-aid also introduced similar plasters. Band-aid had this product all along, and it was successful overseas. They did not introduce this product in China was because they feel there wasn’t a need. With their old products, they had already monopolized the Chinese market.
Band-aid was just like Sony and another electronics giant. When they introduce a new product, it was not because their technologies were good enough. They introduced it to show that their technology was the best in the industry. If their technology were still ahead of their competitors, they would not introduce their latest technology, unless it will lower their cost.
Most MNCs will introduce a new technology once in a while to maintain their lead in their industry and increase the influence and value of their brand.
Currently, Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise only has the cartoon prints plasters that’s different from Band-aid. This product was their main focus now. Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise had ordered not only one series of cartoon designs from Liu Michael. They had ordered several series of designs like the cartoon series <Calabash Brothers> and <Black Cat Detective>.
The copyrights of these cartoon series were cheap. If they could not get the copyrights, then they will develop their own characters from novels like <Water Margin> or <Romance of the 3 Kingdoms>. There were many characters in these novels, and it reflects on the Chinese culture.
These were little tricks, and it was not enough to win Band-aid. The only way to win was to develop a plaster that will speed up the healing of the wound, which was the main reason why Yunnan Baiyao overtook Band-aid in Feng Yu’s previous life.
However, this product could not be developed in one or two days. Feng Yu could still afford to wait, but he was only willing to wait for one year. He set a one-year deadline to his researchers to develop this product.
This year, Feng Yu had made use of his connections to be the exclusive supplier of bandages to the General Administration of Sport of China and the army. The advertisements on the mainstream media were only some marketing tactics. Band-aid could also do the same.
But because of all these marketing strategies, Bing City Pharmaceutical Enterprise could not get any profits from their plasters. The company had spent a lot on the marketing cost, and the plasters were selling too cheaply.
Feng Yu’s biggest worry was to win the sales volume and revenue but lose out on the profits and branding.
Now, it was just to control the market share and increase brand awareness. The real battle had to wait until the medical plaster was developed.
Translator’s notes:
Calabash Brothers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calabash_Brothers
Black Cat Detective