The Chaebol Who Flies From Space - Chapter 9
Only Noblemtl
9. It’s a jackpot.
Chairman Cho Tae-young, who was dragged into the kitchen by his son who came running excitedly as soon as he got to work in the morning, couldn’t hide his nervousness.
“You punk, when you’re over 50, you should be a serious man! What the hell is going on that you’re making such a fuss about!”
“Oh my, father! Please try this.”
I clicked my tongue and took a sip of the soup, reluctantly accepting my eldest son’s insistence that I eat quickly without being intimidated by his yelling.
Eww!
The flavor was deep.
Chairman Cho Tae-young took another sip of the soup because he had a strange feeling.
“Where did you get this? The soup tastes so… well… this must not be a famous restaurant.”
I tried to think of a place that serves this delicious Seolleongtang, but no place came to mind.
At Chairman Cho Tae-young’s words, his eldest son, President Cho Dong-won, waved his hand.
“Oh, Mr. Chairman, this is something our company made. It’s something we’re going to release as a new product.”
“……This is a new product?”
The head of the household took another sip of the soup after hearing his son’s words.
Once twice
I was eating absentmindedly and before I knew it, I had picked up the bowl and drank it all down.
Remember!
The signal that the meal was delicious came out of the manager’s mouth on its own.
All the employees around him looked at the chairman, who was eating his food in a hurry without any thought, and their eyes lit up.
“Doesn’t this taste familiar?”
“Where have I eaten this before?”
The head of the household thought for a moment at his son’s words, then slapped his forehead, which had naturally widened with age.
“This tastes like the ramen that Yongwon made for me.”
“Oh, that’s the taste.”
When I heard the circumstances, it was like this.
The powders that passed through the maturation machine installed by Yongwon were absolutely delicious. They were so delicious that everyone who tried them couldn’t hide their excitement, thinking that the new product would be a huge hit.
But because it was so delicious, a problem arose.
The whole story that the investigator told his father was this.
When we were about to launch a new product, we were worried whether production would be able to fully handle it.
As soon as I got to work, I came to the CEO’s office and confessed my feelings to Factory Manager Kwak.
After checking with Factory Manager Kwak how much he could produce, a sigh escaped my lips.
“Even if a new product really hits the jackpot, there are problems.”
“As you know, sir, even if we try our best to produce as many products as possible at the factory, we can only produce 200 million units. If we push ourselves too hard, we can increase it to 300 million units, but it won’t last long.”
President Cho Dong-won frowned at the factory manager’s words.
“What if we subcontract to another factory?”
“So, has the boss forgotten about the last incident?”
“……”
It was the year before last that there was chaos as foreign substances were found in products manufactured by a subcontractor and the products had to be recalled in a hurry.
Unlike other products, if a defect occurs in food, the damage is enormous.
Unless it’s really urgent, I should think twice about subcontracting.
“This is really something. You have a product that would sell like crazy, but you can’t make it and so you can’t sell it.”
A sigh escaped President Cho Dong-won’s mouth.
“Is it because of what you tasted last time?”
Manager Kwak also tried boiling ramen noodles using powder that had passed the maturation process.
“I tried making various products based on that, and the more I made, the more successful it became. Whatever I made, it tasted amazing.”
“Hmm. Well then, what if we tried something other than regular ramen?”
“Anything else?”
“I once cooked some seolleongtang in the early morning hours.”
“Seolleongtang? Oh! Seolleongtangmyeon? I guess there was a lot of that left in stock.”
“Yes, the stock is full.”
It was a product that was ambitiously created to open up a new market, but it failed miserably due to the cold market’s indifference.
It was a natural result, as anyone who tried it would feel the taste of an instant product and it was expensive.
It was CEO Cho Dong-won’s first heartbreaking failure.
“……Brother, stop digging in your aching heart. So?”
Because they are like brother and sister in private, Manager Kwak can speak to President Jo Dong-won so candidly.
“I put the powder that Yongwon made into that damned Seolleongtangmyeon. It was delicious! Delicious! It was really amazing.”
“Really? You’re saying that the taste of Seolleongtangmyun has improved?”
This was an eye-opening sound.
What are you worried about now?
Aren’t you worried that your production capacity for a product that is expected to be a huge hit is not enough?
Then why don’t we just make expensive products and sell them?
Ramen is a food product with strong price resistance.
Since it is used by the entire nation, consumption is greatly affected even by a price increase of 10 or 20 won.
When talk of price increases comes up, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and the Fair Trade Commission take a very cautious approach.
The company didn’t have much to say about the rising consumer prices.
However, Seolleongtangmyeon is a product that was already released at a high price.
Even if consumption increases, there will be less pressure to produce it than for regular ramen products.
“And by the way, I tried Seolleongtangmyeon with lots of red pepper powder and dried bracken fern, and it was a really great Yukgaejang.”
This goes without saying.
Mr. Kwak, the factory manager, spent his entire life making products from our food.
A person who has a unique perspective on taste.
After hearing that the taste was very good, the investigator hurried to the food development department.
And after a week of trials, this was the product that came out.
The chairman nodded after hearing the story from his son. He felt that there was absolutely no way this product would fail.
“Haha, right. Chief Inspector, let’s do this. This will work.”
As soon as the chairman made the decision, our food company stopped producing unpopular products and started producing new products with all its might.
There was some internal backlash because it started without any sales, but everyone who tried the new product said nothing else and predicted its success.
The factory, which had been in a slump while struggling to increase its market share of 10% in the ramen market, is starting to see some signs of life.
They felt it too.
How much of a shock will a new product have on the market?
And how much fatter their pockets will be if the product is a success.
The chairman or president was not a person who saved money.
***
The purchasing managers from large marts who came to the tasting event ahead of the launch of a new product had unfavorable reactions when they saw the new products placed in front of them in the middle of the event.
Anyone could tell that it was the Seolleongtang noodles that had failed last time that had been brought back.
If it was a small or medium-sized company, the response would have been so bad that they would have kicked the company out immediately.
The same was true for Kim Sang-dae, the purchasing manager at New World Mart, the second largest hypermarket in the world.
I had high expectations when they said they were releasing a new product, but I feel like my expectations were coldly betrayed.
In the ramen market, Heungbu Foods is number one.
No matter what anyone says, it is a monopoly with a market share of over 60%, so even large marts cannot escape the influence of Heungbu Foods.
Even large mart buyers had to be desperate to buy Heungbu Foods, which had finished dominating the market with just one spicy ramen.
If you’re not in a good mood, you won’t be able to give out your best product.
From the perspective of the mart’s purchasing managers, bringing in a lot of the best products was a huge achievement.
Manager Kim Sang-dae couldn’t possibly be happy about this unpleasant situation either.
Even if A and B are switched, it has changed a lot.
So, I had high hopes that our new food product would help to break this dirty situation even a little, but my expectations were dashed when I saw the product.
“This is a renewal of a failed product.”
Chief Do, who came with us, sighed.
It seems he also had high expectations.
This is a product I have eaten several times before, and no matter how much they change the packaging and renew it, the basic base doesn’t change.
Expectations were high before, but the market response was cold.
Considering the price of Seolleongtang on the market, which is over 5,000 won, it was a product that was acceptable, but consumers judged it differently.
“We had high expectations…….”
After the Wooji incident, Samyoung was reluctant to develop new products, and the company that was considered to be the rival to Heungbu Foods was Woori Foods.
We kept trying different things, whether we succeeded or not.
Should I eat this or not?
Manager Kim grumbled as he stared at the bowl in front of him, feeling no sense of anticipation at all.
“Manager Do, once we’re done here, let’s go out and have a bowl of seolleongtang. There’s a famous restaurant nearby. You want to go with me, right?”
Manager Kim Sang-dae asked Manager Do about going out to eat, pretending to eat something. Manager Do, who called himself a gourmet, was a picky eater.
But after waiting for a long time and receiving no answer, I looked at Manager Do, wondering what was going on.
As he watched Manager Do, who had a picky palate, hurriedly emptying his plate, Manager Kim Sang-dae couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh.
“What are you doing?”
Despite Manager Kim’s words, Manager Do emptied the bowl in front of him absentmindedly.
Is it that delicious?
Just looking at them eating made my mouth water.
where.
As I took a sip of the slightly cooled but still hot soup, the sensation on my tongue tingled and pounded all the way to the tip of my head.
Manager Kim Sang-dae muttered to himself as he absentmindedly emptied the bowl in front of him.
‘This is crazy. This is crazy! What is this taste?’
Only after I had eaten to some extent did I come to my senses.
The same goes for Manager Do, who sits next to me.
The manager, who had emptied the bowl cleanly, whispered softly.
“Boss, this is a big hit. We need to push forward our product orders as much as possible.”
“I think so too. If this comes out, it won’t be available for sale.”
Expensive price?
Anyone who has tried this once will not turn down the chance to eat it three times a day for a thousand won.
Ramen is expensive, but how expensive is it?
Even the famous Seolleongtang restaurant that sells 10,000 won soups can’t produce this kind of taste.
How deep the flavor of the broth is.
My stomach was already somewhat full, but thinking about the soup made my mouth water again.
“How much does the factory cost?”
“It’s five hundred won. I thought it was expensive, but it wasn’t.”
“It’s expensive! Even if this costs 1,000 won, it will sell like hotcakes. Regular ramen costs 450 won, so even if it costs twice that much, there will be a lot of consumers looking for this.”
Manager Kim’s mind was racing with calculations of how much the new product would sell.
Manager Kim’s eyes lit up as he calculated how much to order and at what price to sell it for.
“How much spicy ramen was sold last year?”
“About a billion units have been sold.”
One product accounted for 25% of the entire ramen market.
When Koreans think of ramen, they think of spicy ramen because of how much it sells.
“Will this sell for that much?”
“······. I don’t think it’s to that extent?”
Even Manager Do seemed unsure.
However, Director Kim Sang-dae’s judgment was different.
‘Even if our food company produces this to its fullest, 400 million units, no matter how you think about it, this is not a product that will sell less than spicy ramen, it will sell more. We secure as many products as possible in the beginning.’
If sales were to decline because we couldn’t secure a best-selling product, it would be something that would make us jump out of our sleep.
This was especially true for those who were close to being promoted to executive position, like Vice President Kim Sang-dae.
Who hasn’t done that? A man should not be afraid of failure, and if he draws his sword, he should be able to cut anything.
Although he was briefly afraid of failure, Manager Kim Sang-dae was determined to go all in.
“Let’s order 50 million.”
“···.”
Manager Do remained silent in response to Manager Kim Sang-dae’s words.
This is a larger number than the sales of spicy ramen at New World Mart.
If it’s gambling, then it’s gambling.
Although it was a situation that could easily lead to suspicions of receiving bribes, Manager Do agreed with Manager Kim’s opinion.
“It’s a game worth taking a chance on. There will be some backlash, but once the product starts selling, it will sell exponentially. Even if we order late, it will be difficult for our food production to keep up. I agree with the manager’s opinion.”
Although he was his trusted subordinate, Manager Kim gained strength from the judgment of Manager Do, who had sharp insight.
Thanks to the careful consideration put into pushing forward with 50 million orders and placing them at the front of the supermarket food shelves, the attitude of consumers who had initially been lukewarm due to the high price began to change a week after the product was launched.
As products were piled up, consumers would rush to buy them all, leaving empty shelves in a hurry.
It was a huge hit. It was a huge hit.
Manager Kim Sang-dae, who received a promotion notice from the head of the headquarters in charge, shouted “Cheers!” in a corner of the purchasing warehouse where products were quickly disappearing as they were piled up.