Rebirth in America

A few days after DreamWorks acquired Hepburn, Chuck gave Alex another piece of good news. He found a toy factory, a factory that produced various plastic toys.

Due to poor management by the factory owner, the factory was half dead, so he wanted to sell it to make money. The price is not high, only US$600,000.

Alex asked his lawyer to check the asset information of the factory. After reading it, he felt that the business was not a loss. He immediately decided to take it, and after writing the check, he got the ownership of the factory.

At the same time, Alex also asked Chuck to find a trustworthy and reliable person to manage the factory. After all, he would not spend a lot of time on it. Chuck quickly found a black man who was a co-worker he had met in the factory. He looks to be about forty years old and is said to be a workshop director.

"His name is Sam. He was my former supervisor. He is very reliable and worthy of your trust." Chuck introduced.

Alex looked at Sam carefully and felt that he was no different from other black people and could not tell anything. But he was not afraid of Sam's mischief, so he would naturally let other people manage the financial affairs of the factory. As for Sam, as long as he can help him take care of the production of hula hoops, additional manpower will be arranged for sales.

Everyone talked to each other for a while and got to know each other's personality a little bit. The relevant content was quickly discussed. Alex gave Sam an annual salary of US$100,000 per year, and he only needed to produce one thing, which was the hula hoop he designed.

"Is this thing going to be made of polyethylene?" Sam quickly got into the mood and started working for Alex.

"Yes! You can use different polyethylene pipes to make it. I need a 3-foot circle. Make circles of various colors. Don't sell it after you make it. Wait for my news." Alex He gestured with his hands and gave instructions carefully.

Sam was an old worker, and he knew at a glance that this kind of thing was very simple and low-cost to make. Calculating the production cost and sales cost, such a circle costs less than 0.8 US dollars.

"How much does this cost?" Sam asked the last question.

Alex immediately replied: "$2 each!"

After hearing this, Sam's eyes widened and he said, "Two dollars? That's very expensive. Will anyone buy it?"

Alex smiled and said confidently: "I thought it was too cheap. If I were not so anxious to make money, I would like to sell it more expensively."

Why was the hula hoop so quickly forgotten after it became a global trend? It was because there was no patent protection at the beginning and everyone was producing it, resulting in very low profits for the hula hoop. People originally bought them just for fun and to show off to others. It turns out that you have it and I have it. When everyone has it, this kind of hula hoop exercise is not a fashionable exercise.

If Alex were to do it, this hula hoop movement would definitely not go away so quickly. Like Steve Jobs, he will lead fashion trends while creating hunger marketing, allowing this movement to continue for at least ten years.

Sam quickly made several hula hoop samples based on Alex's drawings.

After getting these samples, Alex immediately asked someone to apply for a patent. Not only for U.S. patents, but also for countries with patent protection laws, he has people apply for them.

In addition, Alex asked Sam to find someone who specializes in researching various hula hoops, such as hula hoops with springs, soft hula hoops, multifunctional hula hoops... As long as they can be imagined, they can make them and make them. apply for patent. He didn't believe that so many patents couldn't stop those people from copycatting.

If anyone dares to imitate his hula hoop, he will ask lawyers to file a lawsuit. As long as he has money and patents, he can bring down these companies.

After everything was ready, Alex asked people to start promoting this hula hoop, but he was not explicitly promoting the hula hoop product, but the hula hoop movement. On the pretext of collecting health experiment data, he found many people to participate in this experiment.

For a time, people like this can be seen in public places in major cities in the United States. They are all wearing fitness clothes and wearing a 3-foot circle around their waists. They twisted and turned in circles very fast, which was very beautiful.

Alex paid to hire these people, and there were basically more than a dozen of them in every city, as long as they stayed in crowded places for half an hour every day. This went on for several days, and finally everyone got 10 dollars and a hula hoop.

This kind of publicity didn't cost much, less than two to three thousand dollars, but it caused quite a stir.

When those people first started, they couldn't help but feel nervous. After all, no one has ever done anything like twisting the waist in public places that would be considered vulgar. Especially in the 1950s, if someone dared to do similar actions on the street, it would be associated with immorality. stuff.

Unexpectedly, many people like to watch them do this hula hoop exercise. No one said anything to them, but looked at them with envy. Many of these people are adults who are willing to watch others hula hoop because the wiggle of some people's buttocks is very tempting.

When Alex stopped hiring them to do this, the men took to the streets to hula hoop on their own initiative.

They already feel that this kind of envied exercise is a kind of enjoyment, especially when manufacturers promote this kind of exercise, they also say that this kind of exercise can lose weight and keep fit. Skilled people can obtain good exercises and development of waist and abdominal muscles, hip muscles, and leg muscles, which can effectively improve the flexibility and flexibility of various parts of the human body.

"Where do you buy plastic rings like this?"

People kept coming up and asking, people eager to know where they could get this cool-looking thing.

"This is a hula hoop. We didn't buy it, someone gave it to us."

"Not sold? Then why did they give it to you?"

"It is said to be a fitness experiment. When the manufacturers sell this product, they want to know how effective their products are on fitness."

The people who inquired were immediately interested, and they also wanted to join this cool-looking fitness exercise. When they learned that the experiment was over, they all left disappointed.

This fitness experiment was not a whim of Alex, but a real thing done by asking relevant doctors to do it. What he didn't expect was that the doctors' final results were very optimistic. Doctors believe that people who are obese or lack exercise can quickly improve their health by spending about half an hour a day doing this kind of hula hoop exercise.

The doctors were very reluctant to end this fitness experiment so quickly, and they asked Alex to provide funds to continue the long-term experiment.

Alex spread his hands and said, "No money!"

After these doctors were dismissed by Alex, they were still unwilling to give up. Each of them wrote relevant fitness experimental papers and published them in medical journals. Some more serious doctors asked Alex for some hula hoops, and they planned to find patients themselves to conduct related experiments.

Soon, major news reporters also discovered this strange movement. They published relevant articles in their own newspapers and quoted some of the doctor's paper views. Now more Americans are taking notice.

However, people discovered that this product called hula hoop was not sold anywhere. Some people also found the manufacturer of hula hoops, and they kept calling to inquire about the sale of hula hoops. The answer was, please be patient, it is being produced.

Some unscrupulous manufacturers saw business opportunities and imitated the hula hoops one after another. As a result, they were sued in court as soon as they were put on the market. How could Alex, who had been well prepared, let go of such a good opportunity? He showed all the patents in his hand, and coupled with the relevant information on health experiments, no matter which company it was, it would be impossible to win this lawsuit.

These manufacturers that did not obtain production licenses lost their lawsuits one after another and had to compensate Alex for his losses, stop production, and destroy all unsold hula hoops.

This lawsuit caused a lot of controversy, and it also gave hula hoops free publicity. More people know that there is such a piece of fitness equipment, an ordinary plastic ring, that can make people lose weight and keep fit easily.

Just when Alex successfully set off a warning to others, the hula hoop was grandly launched in the eyes of everyone.

As soon as the hula hoop, which costs as much as $2, came on the market, it was snapped up by people who had already been made hungry by hunger marketing. In some areas, these hula hoops are even sold for $5 each. Fortunately, Alex was well prepared. He had the factory produce a lot of hula hoops early in the morning and kept them for sale.

A large number of hula hoops are transported from the warehouse and sent to various places. Soon, people were surprised to find that people were playing hula hoops everywhere.

You can see people playing hula hoops in bedrooms, living rooms, corridors, streets, playgrounds, squares, etc. UU reading www.uukanshu. netｔThat autumn, whenever a football game was held, an unexpected pleasure often occurred. That is to watch the charming female band leader twist her waist like crazy, causing thousands of spectators to scream in joy.

No matter what obscene thoughts those watching may have, this new American gadget is still very popular in other countries.

In Germany, it is always a little unreasonable for Germans without children to buy toys. In order to avoid being seen, they ask the store to wrap the goods and deliver them to their homes at night.

When a Belgian expedition set out for the Antarctic, they also had 20 hula hoops in their luggage: the money was used as entertainment expenses.

In Warsaw, a weekly newspaper for youth actually said, "If the Ministry of Light Industry and the Bureau of Handicrafts do not start producing hula hoops, our progress in this area, especially from an international perspective, will fall far behind." This is Both departments continued to drag their feet, so hula hoops were smuggled in through East Germany.

Seeing such a huge market, manufacturers from all over the world have contacted Alex to obtain authorized production licenses. Alex also knew that it was impossible to satisfy so many users just by relying on one of their plastic factories. He can only grant this patent to other manufacturers for production.

Alex's licensing method is based on the manufacturer's sales volume. For every hula hoop sold, a patent fee of US$1 will be paid. As for the price of the hula hoop, Alex doesn't care that much.

Because of this, manufacturers have to increase the selling price of hula hoops. In order to make users feel that they are worth their money, they can only manufacture them carefully, which has extended the vitality of the hula hoop movement a lot.