Chapter 87 "Top Department": a company that produces "concepts"

The unexpected success of the "Western Software Park" turned Song Ruhua's business career into an unpredictable canyon. Before that, whether it was making computer display screens or selling tax calculation software systems, he had always followed an industrial road.In an interview with a reporter, he said: "Companies should not engage in industries that they are not familiar with or have no advantages in. Many well-known companies in the world have such experience. We at Top will never engage in securities and real estate. This is in our There are clear provisions in the company's constitution. Top hopes to become the largest software vendor and engineering center in China."

However, after 1997, he has completely changed his views.After the acquisition of Chuanchangzheng, he also wanted to spend energy to revitalize it. In one year, he went to Zigong to work on site more than 70 times.However, how easy is it to rectify an old state-owned enterprise that is hard to get back?Due to excessive governance, several strikes occurred in the factory.He was "kidnapped" by workers to criticize him, and was almost killed in a car accident once.This experience made Song Ruhua heartbroken, and eventually lost confidence in starting a business. Although the enterprise has no way to revive, but in the capital market, the restructuring effect is "immediate". In 1998, the listed company, which had been renamed as Top Software, announced that it had achieved a main business income of 221 million yuan, an increase of 232% over the previous year, and achieved a profit increase of nearly 5467%. The growth rate of net profit and main business income ranked first in high-tech No. 1 in the software industry. In May 2000, the company obtained the qualification for additional issuance.Song Ruhua announced that he will implement the "Software Internationalization and Multiplication Plan", and has successively invested in 10 major high-tech projects.With these imaginative announcements, Topsoft raised 950 million yuan in one fell swoop.Driven by the market hype, the company's stock price soared to 48 yuan per share, becoming a representative of high-quality and high-growth stocks in the Shenzhen stock market.

Since then, Song Ruhua, who has a lot of money in his pocket, has been obsessed with capital management and has no interest in industrial management.He finally discovered how difficult it is to run a company well in terms of industrial practice, but how easy it is to "reorganize" it in terms of capital concept. With the software park project blossoming all over the country, Top Company's reputation is in full swing.All this made Song Ruhua sigh, "The good wind sent me to the blue sky with its strength."He began to concentrate on building his own "Top Department".With the halo of high-tech enterprises on their heads, some old-fashioned state-owned enterprises have become playthings in the hands of this capital player.

The second listed company under Top Group is another excellent case of capital reorganization. At the turn of the century, the Internet heat wave swept the world, and Song Ruhua, who has always been quite curious about new things, naturally would not stand by.While he has made many achievements in the software park project, one of his junior alumni named Ding Lei gained more wealth and reputation than him by founding NetEase.He once said bitterly to people: "When I was teaching at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Ding Lei might have listened to my class." A friend bought the domain name of www.chinese.com.

Obviously, this is a top-level domain name, and everyone can figure out the hidden commercial value. In July 2000, Top announced to invest 600 million yuan to build "Yanhuang Online" for Chinese people around the world.Song Ruhua is determined to hit the advertisement hard and make her famous all at once.All of a sudden, "Yanhuang Online"'s "Red Storm" was published in all kinds of newspapers across the country. The advertisement only had a very eye-catching sentence: "Let's make it big together." This time, Song Ruhua was literally burned money.According to the data from AC Nielsen, the world's largest media monitoring company, "Yanhuang Online" placed a total of 36.916 million yuan in advertisements in 2000, which means it burned 100,000 yuan per day. Among Chinese Internet companies, it is second only to his junior alumnus Ding Lei. of NetEase.

However, after investing so much money, Song Ruhua has never figured out what exactly "Yanhuang Online" should "make big".At the beginning, the website was positioned as a "Chinese gathering community across five continents of the world". Soon after, Song Ruhua realized that this was an unachievable goal.He quickly transformed it into a "global Chinese business website".His intuition told him that the Internet will completely overturn the traditional business model.He once described: "Chengdu holds the National Sugar and Wine Fair every year. So many people come to Chengdu by plane or train, eat, drink, and leave after a day. At most, they sign some contracts. If they sign online, I don't know what will happen. How much cost can be saved.” In China at that time, there was another person who said the same thing to him, and that was Jack Ma who was struggling to establish the Alibaba website in Hangzhou with 500,000 yuan of savings.The difference between the two is: a person with hundreds of millions of dollars in his hand only saw the direction, while the other "poor man" found a way.

Unable to find a path to a commercial website, Song Ruhua proposed to enter the field of information product channels and make "Yanhuang Online" a "retail industry solution expert".After several twists and turns, the website has never improved.However, although Song Ruhua has no inspiration in the Internet industry, in the capital market, he has won back a lot of votes with his long-sleeved skills. When Changzhou invested in the software park, he took aim at a local "shell resource". In September 2000, Golden Lion, which was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, issued an announcement to transfer 26.83% of its shares to Top Group, which became the largest shareholder. The stock was renamed "Yanhuang Online" and became a listed company on the Chinese stock market. The first listed company named after a website.Golden Lion Co., Ltd. is a bicycle manufacturing factory in Changzhou. After two years of listing, the company's profitability declined sharply.Before the merger, Song Ruhua and his entourage visited the factory and saw waist-high weeds, a dilapidated scene.The entourage jokingly said: "In the future, Golden Lion will have two highs, one is the high stock price, and the other is the high grass." Sure enough, in the year after the merger and reorganization, "Yanhuang Online" claimed to have successfully developed "networked general material procurement Bidding management system" and "networked office automation system", the financial statements at the end of the year are even more surprising: the main business income has increased by 318% year-on-year, and the profit has increased by 139.16% year-on-year.Since then, the stock price has continued to rise, from less than 10 yuan at the beginning to a high of 33.18 yuan.

Song Ruhua snatched back the huge advertising fees and commercial self-esteem lost in the Internet field from the capital market. If it weren't for this kind of description, it would be difficult for people who don't understand the hidden rules of Chinese business to see through the myths shrouded in halo.In the business world around 2000, Top became one of the most dazzling and mysterious "high-tech concept enterprises". Despite the triumphant songs every year, no one has figured out exactly what Top is doing and what industry he is making money from. A business observer wrote: "Top began to produce computers in 1999, but it has rarely been seen in major IT markets across the country; Top's mobile phones, although they can be seen on the expressway not far from the Beijing airport. Even the local reporters in Chengdu can’t tell whether the once-bustling Yanhuang Online’s business is online or offline.” Yang Zhihong, Director of the Group's Public Relations Department, recorded a "true joke" in the book "Top Review": When applying for a loan from a bank, a certain president laughed and asked: "Top's products are rarely seen in the market. Where did the sales revenue in your report come from?" Top's manager said half-jokingly and half-seriously: "We have a subsidiary company that specializes in smuggling." The president laughed and gave up, no further investigation.

A reporter from "Chengdu Business Daily" described a detail he witnessed in the report: At an entrepreneur forum, Ren Zhengfei of Huawei asked Song Ruhua who was sitting next to him: "What does Top do?" Song Ruhua thought I couldn't answer for a long time.In the later stage, even Song Ruhua himself had to admit a little helplessly: "When it comes to Top Software, stockholders know that it is very popular to speculate, but what is Top Software and which aspects are well-known, many people still don't know .To achieve this goal, it will take the next 3 to 5 years or even longer, and the task is still quite arduous.”