Chapter 50: Chapter 50: Marketing Plan

The three of them chatted for a while longer, settling the follow-up matters, before Lin Hongnian’s secretary came in to remind him of a meeting at five o’clock.

Gao Yuan took the opportunity to say his goodbyes.

Lin Wanyu, however, looked at Lin Hongnian with dissatisfaction, thinking her father was deliberately trying to rush them out.

Lin Hongnian felt a bit helpless. He truly hadn’t arranged this on purpose. The company had just finished the massive Singles’ Day sale and was currently busy dealing with various material suppliers.

"How about this, if you two have nothing to do, you can go tour the factory."

"Then come home with me for dinner tonight."

Faced with Lin Hongnian’s renewed invitation, Gao Yuan naturally couldn’t be the one to refuse, so he looked toward Lin Wanyu.

"No, no, we can’t! We’ve been so busy lately. There are so many things you have to be hands-on with when starting a business, what time is there for dinner?!"

After speaking, she grabbed Gao Yuan’s hand and started walking out.

Gao Yuan could only shoot Lin Hongnian an apologetic look, letting Lin Wanyu pull him away.

「On the way back.」

The two of them began to discuss their plans.

Once the company was registered and they had the "GY" trademark, they could immediately open shops online.

For now, the sales platforms would be Taobao and TikTok.

"Brother Yuan, should we rent an office and start hiring?"

"No office."

Lin Wanyu was a little confused by Gao Yuan’s response.

’We’re about to open two flagship stores at once, and then there’s shipping and other issues. How can we do it without hiring anyone?’

Gao Yuan had already considered this. In the early stages of a startup, you save wherever you can. Every new hire is an expense; that money would be better spent on promotion.

He could handle all the initial work of operations, customer service, shipping, and after-sales support by himself.

And if things got too busy, he still had Lin Wanyu to help him out.

As for design, once the samples were out, he’d find a professional photography studio to take good pictures, and then Gao Yuan could pull an all-nighter to get the rest of it done.

Besides,

in the very beginning, the store would only have one facial mask product. Even creating five different product listings from various combinations wouldn’t be that much work.

After hearing Gao Yuan’s explanation, Lin Wanyu also felt that they could manage without hiring people.

They didn’t need to rent an office either; they could just work from home.

After returning home, Gao Yuan checked the time. It was still too early to cook dinner.

He immediately contacted a design firm he had worked with before and sent them his requirements for the facial mask’s outer packaging design.

He also paid a ten-thousand-yuan deposit right away.

He wanted to see the first draft of the design within a week, finalize the plan in the following week, and then begin material production.

This timeline would match up perfectly with the Lin Group’s production schedule.

In the first week, they would produce samples. In the second week, they would complete quality inspection and testing on the samples.

As for the mass production of the masks, that part was actually very fast.

At six o’clock, Li Mengqing arrived.

Gao Yuan went to the kitchen to cook for the three of them, while the two women started discussing the facial mask business.

From the kitchen, Gao Yuan could hear the two of them had already started discussing how much money they could make!

They calculated based on an ordinary mask costing 20 yuan per sheet.

Profit of 18.5 yuan per sheet.

Profit of 185 yuan per box.

Ten thousand sheets... a hundred thousand sheets...

Gao Yuan shook his head as he listened.

’Is that really how you calculate it?’

’Don’t the packaging boxes, shipping fees, platform commissions, and promotion fees cost money?’

Now Gao Yuan was starting to wonder if he could really make money starting a business like this.

After simply making a bowl of tomato and egg noodles, Gao Yuan didn’t dare stay in the kitchen any longer.

He was afraid that if he stayed a moment more, the two of them would calculate him into becoming the world’s richest man!

After a hurried dinner, Gao Yuan decided to run the numbers for them.

Let’s assume the regular series of masks sells for 19.9 yuan per sheet.

With the cost of each mask at 1.5 yuan, Gao Yuan’s initial order of 200,000 sheets would require 300,000 yuan.

Design and photography fees would require 30,000 yuan.

Even for the regular series, Gao Yuan wanted to create an absolutely stunning visual experience. He couldn’t skimp on the packaging; he wanted consumers to feel they got their money’s worth the moment they held it.

The shipping box would even use a zipper-style opening for user convenience, complete with a small handle.

These two items alone would cost around 150,000 yuan.

He would choose SF Express for shipping, giving customers no time to second-guess. As soon as an order was placed, it would be delivered to the user at top speed.

Calculated at the minimum rate of 8 yuan per delivery, this would still cost an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 yuan.

Marketing and promotion costs would be controlled at 30% of sales, which would be 1.2 million yuan.

In other words, after selling all 200,000 masks and deducting all costs for packaging, promotion, and so on, the company would be left with about 2 million yuan in its account.

The combined costs would account for about 40% of the total sales revenue.

And that was assuming everything sold according to plan. If they added labor costs later on, controlling the profit margin at 50% would already be a perfect outcome.

Of course, this was just a rough calculation. Later, as the business grew, the team expanded, and the product line became more complete, there would be professionals to calculate profits and losses.

However,

according to Gao Yuan’s calculation, as long as the initial phase went smoothly, the money they earned would be enough for him to stock up for the next batch and produce samples of other products.

But,

Gao Yuan was also well aware that this was just the ideal situation. The reality would be infinitely harder.

People were just too obsessed with big international brands. The online sales data was basically dominated by them.

He would have to come up with some kind of breakout strategy later on!

"Gao Yuan, how are you planning to do the marketing?"

When Li Mengqing heard Gao Yuan mention operations and promotion, she had to ask.

"Basic operations plus paid ads!"

Taobao’s operations were actually simple. After opening the store, you first pad the stats. Get the basic reviews, customer photo reviews, and the Q&A section all set up, and then just max out the paid ads.

"That’s it?"

"That’s it..."

Gao Yuan spread his hands and answered directly.

’What else could there be?’ Taobao had many marketing tactics, but Gao Yuan couldn’t be bothered with the others; they weren’t worth the effort.

The profit margin on masks was already low. If he did other types of marketing, he’d just be making money for other people. How would he ever get to drive a Rolls-Royce then?

Li Mengqing was suddenly at a loss for words.

Other sellers were on TikTok and platforms like Little Red Book, frantically generating hype, finding top livestreamers to sell their products, but Gao Yuan’s approach was completely blunt and direct: just throw money at ads.

"What I mean is, are you not preparing to do any influencer marketing or have online celebrities sell your products?"

Only then did Gao Yuan realize what Li Mengqing was asking about.

But honestly, he hadn’t planned on doing any of that in the early stages.

’The profit margin is already this low. If I also get into influencer marketing and celebrity sales, am I crazy?’

"We can do some free promotions, sure. Ten boxes of masks at most."

"As for having influencers sell for us, we won’t consider it. 200,000 masks... that might not even be enough for us to sell on our own."

Lin Wanyu didn’t know much about e-commerce, so she just nodded along as she heard Gao Yuan speak.

Li Mengqing was so shocked her jaw nearly hit the floor.

’Did Liang Yongqi give him this courage, or did Wu Bai give him this confidence?’

People were so pragmatic these days, and he still wanted free promotion. Even if Li Mengqing was on Gao Yuan’s side, she couldn’t ignore the facts.

Just within Wuyou Media, any influencer with over ten thousand followers would charge upwards of ten thousand yuan for a single promotional video.

A streamer with a million followers doing a sales stream would demand a slotting fee of over 100,000 yuan plus a commission of more than 30%.

Suddenly, Li Mengqing didn’t quite know what to say.

Gao Yuan’s marketing plan was insane.

Gao Yuan naturally noticed the change in Li Mengqing’s expression.

He understood completely. If he had just sourced the products from Lin Wanyu’s family, he would have used conventional marketing tactics too.

But he knew this was a secret formula provided by the system, completely incomparable to other products.

Other products claimed to be hydrating and whitening, but to be honest, they were mostly useless.

Consumers mostly got a psychological placebo effect after using them.

But the system had explicitly stated that it would increase skin activity by 10%. That was practically a miracle.

Even if a top-brand mask could achieve 5%, it would be considered an incredibly conscientious product.

Besides, it wasn’t that those big brands didn’t want to improve their products’ effects on the skin; it was that they couldn’t!

To put it in poker terms, the secret skincare formula he held was a hand full of aces. Once it hit the market and had time to ferment and build buzz, it would absolutely cause a massive wave.

But he couldn’t explain any of this. He could only wait for the product to be made and let the users speak for themselves.

"Do you trust me?"

Gao Yuan looked into Li Mengqing’s eyes and asked a question tinged with a hint of emotional blackmail.

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