章節 1276: Chapter 1276: Chow Tai Fook stabbed twice
Eternity Jewellery Company is now the second largest jewellery company in Xiangjiang after Chow Tai Fook.
The predecessor of Eternity Jewellery Company, Xie Liyuan Gold Shop, was still quite a distance behind Chow Tai Fook.
However, after being acquired by Xia Yu and restructured into Eternity Jewellery Company, Eternity Jewellery Company has developed rapidly with the support of huge financial resources.
Today, in terms of sales, the gap between Eternity Jewellery and Chow Tai Fook is within 30 million Hong Kong dollars.
Especially after May 1983, when He Chaoying took office as president of Eternity Jewellery.
At Xia Yu's behest, the resources of the Jiuding Group were slightly tilted towards Eternity Jewellery, and the company's employees, under the leadership of the former president Zhou Hexuan, fully cooperated with He Chaoying to accelerate the pace of expansion.
In terms of the number of stores, Eternity Jewellery overtook Chow Tai Fook at the end of 1983.
Although the turnover of a single store still lags behind Chow Tai Fook, based on the development speed shown by Eternity Jewellery, Chow Tai Fook's position as the leader in the jewellery industry is in jeopardy.
Many gossip media have dubbed He Chaokeng the 'Queen of Jewellery'.
With the titles of 'Queen of Jewellery' and 'Daughter of the Gambling King', He Chaokeng is no doubt well-known in Hong Kong and Macao.
But now, this 'jewelry queen' who is noble and aloof in the eyes of outsiders is like a meek sheep, leaning on Xia Yu. There is no trace of the temperament of a cold and aloof female CEO.
Looking at Xia Yu intently reading the annual report of Eternal Jewelry, He Chaoying's face revealed a knowing smile, and her gaze gradually became absent-minded.
It had been a long time since she had been alone with Xia Yu like this...
At this moment, Xia Yu also learned the details of the company through the annual development report of Eternal Jewelry Company, and also learned the details of the jewelry industry in Xiangjiang through the comparison of various data in the report.
There are thousands of gold shops of various sizes in Xiangjiang, among which there are four in the first echelon, which are called the 'four major gold shops in Xiangjiang' by the media.
The leader is Chow Tai Fook, which is owned by the head of New World Development, Ha Dan Tong. Its annual turnover last year was 2.45 billion Hong Kong dollars.
The second is Eternal Jewellery, with a full-year turnover of HK$2.43 billion last year.
The third is Chow Sang Sang Group, with a full-year turnover of HK$2.04 billion last year.
The fourth is King Fook Jewellery, which is some way behind the top three, with a full-year turnover of HK$660 million last year.
In addition to these four major goldsmiths, there is another very bright company in the Hong Kong jewellery industry, and that is Tse Sui Luen Jewellery. It has developed at an astonishing pace and is very willing to spend money on advertising. It is the largest client of global brokerage firms in the jewellery industry, except for Eternal Jewellery.
In terms of net profit, Eternal Jewellery's was HK$238 million last year.
...
With a turnover of HK$2.43 billion and a net profit of HK$238 million, Eternity Jewellery is not listed, but if it were, it would definitely be eligible to be included as a constituent stock of the Hang Seng Index.
Of course, these results are only from last year.
At the beginning of this year, Eternity Jewellery's road to dominance was overshadowed.
Eternity Jewellery's revenue is divided into three main parts: precious stones led by diamonds, jade led by jadeite, and precious metals led by gold.
Among these, sales of diamond jewellery account for the largest proportion, followed by gold jewellery, and then jadeite jewellery, which is the focus of marketing.
Jadeite jewellery can be said to be the key project that He Chaoying has been focusing on since taking over Eternity Jewellery.
However, there are now problems with the supply of raw materials for both diamonds and jadeite.
The problems did not occur at the same time, but the time between them was relatively short.
Let's talk about jadeite and the jadeite industry in Hong Kong first.
The world's jadeite producing areas include Myanmar, the island country, Guatemala, the United States, Colombia, Mexico, Kazakhstan and other places.
However, only Myanmar's jadeite reaches gemstone grade, while the rest can only be used for handicrafts and cannot meet the requirements of processing technology.
In contrast, European and American countries have not been exposed to Chinese culture and do not appreciate jadeite.
However, in Southeast Asia, where there is a large Chinese population, the market for jadeite has always existed.
In particular, after 1980, the accelerated economic development in Southeast Asia saw a sudden increase in demand for jadeite, especially in Taiwan Province, where rapid economic development led to many people buying jadeite for collection.
On the mainland, after 1949, the jewellery consumer market gradually disappeared.
In 1956, public and private enterprises were merged, and a large number of factories and jewellery stores were merged. Many masters returned to their hometowns. At that time, the mainland's domestic jade market was basically zero.
However, it has been more than five years since the reform and opening up, and some bold people in the mainland have become rich. The Chinese love of jade runs in their bones, and many wealthy people have begun to play with jade again.
What is the shape of the mainland's jade market? You can get a glimpse from the sales situation of Eternal Jewellery's store in Pengcheng.
That being said,
At first, there were problems with the supply of raw jadeite material, but He Chaoying was not alarmed and just thought it was normal.
The reason for this is that the raw jadeite material purchased by Eternal Jewellery is all from Yangon, Myanmar, and the upstream supplier is the Kachin Independence Army in northern Myanmar. This is because the Kachin Independence Army controls Pagaing, which is the mining area with the highest concentration of jadeite in Myanmar, and 95% of Myanmar's jadeite comes from here.
However, the Kachin Independence Army has been suppressed and besieged by the Burmese government.
The Kachin Independence Army wants to turn jade into money to buy arms, so it has to secretly transport it through the Burmese government-controlled area to Yangon or Chiang Mai, Thailand, to sell it.
In the process, there are frequent outbreaks of life-and-death conflicts.
In 1970, a huge piece of jade was unearthed in the area controlled by the Kachin Independence Army. The Burmese government army sent out a large number of armoured vehicles and tanks to seize it. The war lasted for three days, and the jade was taken away. The Kachin Independence Army, who was unwilling to give up, used a rocket launcher to smash the jade on the way back to Yangon. Soldiers and civilians in the vicinity swarmed to pick it up, and many people became rich as a result.
It is precisely because of the huge uncertainties in the mining and transportation of jadeite that the sales dates of Yangon merchants who cooperate with the Kachin Independence Army fluctuate frequently.
For this reason, Eternal Jewellery Company always tries to prepare as much raw jadeite as possible to ensure that there are no stock-outs.
However, over time, as the jadeite in the warehouse continued to be depleted, and there was no progress in Myanmar, a survey revealed that the Burmese government had launched a large-scale encirclement and suppression of the Kachin Independence Army, and strictly blocked channels in an attempt to cut off the Kachin Independence Army's supply of blood.
As a result, Eternal Jewellery's jadeite procurement channel was hopeless for the short term. It was hard to say how long it would take to reopen the channel and whether it would ever reopen at all!
So He Chaoying hurriedly asked the company to find other jadeite dealers to procure from, but almost all of these dealers were backed by the Burmese government. Their previous customers were also very stable, and there was simply not enough jadeite to go around for Eternal Jewellery.
Of course, there was also a human factor, and that was Chow Tai Fook Jewellery. Instead of purchasing jadeite from merchants supported by the Kachin Independence Army, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery, which wanted to play it safe, had been working with merchants supported by the Burmese government for many years.
When it learned that Eternal Jewellery had problems with its jadeite supply, it took advantage of the situation to suppress Eternal Jewellery, spending more money to take in all the excess jadeite, not giving Eternal Jewellery a single piece.
That was fine.
Chow Tai Fook Jewellery also took advantage of the situation to suppress Eternal Jewellery when it came to diamond raw material procurement.
Today, over 80% of the world diamond market is monopolised by the international diamond trading company DTC.
Before its restructuring, DTC was the centralised sales organisation of the De Beers Group.
In 1973, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery became one of the 125 internationally authoritative diamond dealers in the world, and was the only diamond buyer in Hong Kong to make the list.
However, later, Chow Sang Sang and Eternal Jewellery also entered the list one after the other and obtained the qualification to purchase.
DTC's diamond distribution model is to hold a dealer procurement meeting every six weeks.
At the latest meeting, Chow Tai Fook and Chow Sang Sang were both qualified, but Eternity Jewellery did not receive an invitation.
Eternity Jewellery asked DTC for the reason, and the feedback was that Eternity Jewellery's sales had disrupted the diamond market price and violated the relevant regulations, so the cooperation qualification was temporarily cancelled.
However, after the bidding meeting, after asking around in detail, it was learned that Chow Tai Fook's procurement scale had almost doubled this time, which was equivalent to eating up the share of the original quota given to Eternal Jewelry Company!
According to the reasoning logic of 'whoever profits the most is the instigator,' this time it must also be Chow Tai Fook Jewelry's doing.
As for how Chow Tai Fook Jewelry convinced DTC, it is unknown.
What's important is that Eternity Jewellery has very little jadeite and diamond raw materials left, and if they are not replenished soon, they will face a huge crisis.
The better Eternity Jewellery's sales become, the less time the company has to deal with the situation, and the faster the crisis will erupt.
He Chaoying wanted to solve the problem herself, but after being persuaded by Zhou Hexuan, who is more experienced, He Chaoying chose to ask Xia Yu for help.
So today, Xia Yu came to Eternity Jewellery...
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