British 1986

This kind of bracelet is inlaid with beautiful gold and silver patterns. It is heavy and shiny jewelry. Most Europeans will like it at a glance.

First, there is an exotic feel.

The second look is very shocking!

Anyway, I liked it at first glance. It feels heavy in my hand and doesn't look cheap.

As expected, he was an aristocratic gentleman from Great Britain. He was extremely rich, and the gifts he gave out were all high-end goods that they had never seen before.

The middle-aged man looked at the jewelry, carefully wrapped the bracelet with the velvet handkerchief that came with the box, closed the box, and put it away.

When he looked at Allen again this time, his eyes were pure and admiring.

There is absolutely no vigilance.

Allen gave people a sense of dignity, generosity, and mystery. Although he said he wanted to visit and study, middle-aged people couldn't be wary of him at all.

Their little IKEA, can this noble man like them?

There is a high probability that he will come over for an ordinary inspection. The middle-aged man decided that, according to the chairman's words, he would show the best side of their company headquarters to this Excellency!

Imaginary visit and inspection - a bunch of people are following behind, wearing white shirts on the upper body, ordinary trousers on the lower body, and belts, walking around, chatting and shaking hands with the workers in various positions.

Real-life visit and inspection - Sitting in the conference room of IKEA headquarters, with the air conditioner on, drinking tea, and the reception team members sitting in a circle in front of him. If Allen wanted to know something, someone would stand up and be responsible for giving it to him. Explain, just in case Allen doesn't understand.

They also specially prepared pictures and projectors.

The translator next to me carefully used English with a Swedish flavor, translating sentence by sentence.

Allen has never felt that inspection has been so easy.

This is really a matter of asking questions. Apart from information such as the specific purchase price of each product, the rest is completely undefended.

From the history of IKEA founded by its founder, we will talk about IKEA in recent years, starting from Denmark and starting from Sweden, and slowly expanding to the whole of Europe.

"Your Excellency, our chairman has planned to expand to Asia, especially East Asia. We are now preparing to build the IKEA headquarters in East Asia and are currently negotiating with China."

"oh?"

Allen was happily looking through the pictures, but when he heard this translation, he suddenly raised his head.

The current chairman of IKEA can do it. This pattern is bigger than some people.

Of course, companies like IKEA are manufacturing-focused, and they are relatively low-end manufacturing companies.

In terms of labor costs, they must not be able to avoid cheaper construction sites.

For example, for a table, the cost of materials does not count.

Just counting the labor cost, for example, if it is made in Sweden, it costs twenty pounds, but in China, it may be reduced to ten pounds, or even lower.

The reason why IKEA is slowly developing is that in addition to their design concept, they are one of the first companies to make assembled furniture, and they are also the largest.

These days, for things like furniture, everyone buys finished products.

Finished furniture, regardless of shape or material, cannot avoid labor costs.

Even if your furniture is made of the most rubbish materials, someone has to make it, right?

The material of a certain piece of furniture is a waste point, but the price of the piece of furniture itself is not necessarily much cheaper.

This is very painful.

Of course, with better materials, the processing fee will be correspondingly more expensive.

In addition to these, transportation costs are also a big part.

For example, if you buy a three-person couch, it won’t fit in most people’s cars.

But the cost of transporting the sofa requires money.

Putting it all together, buying furniture is troublesome and expensive for ordinary people.

But here’s how IKEA does it.

The furniture they make is originally intended to be low-end, with the goal of allowing everyone to buy cheap, high-quality furniture.

Whether the quality is good or not depends on quality control. The price is cheap.

There are many doorways here.

First of all, you can find some common replacement materials, and after compressing the materials, the bulk of it is the labor cost.

How to reduce labor costs and even transportation costs?

The answer given by IKEA is that the wool comes from the sheep.

Since customers want cheaper prices, this part of the cost can be hidden and passed on to customers.

That is the famous assembled furniture.

This is to first design a certain style of furniture and then reasonably split it into many parts.

Then, it is designed so that customers can assemble it successfully by themselves with only a little time and energy, provided they follow the instructions.

In this way, labor costs are cleverly passed on to customers.

But it’s hard to say this when publicizing it to the outside world.

Later, after planning and design by a certain genius, this behavior was called personally experiencing the installation of your favorite furniture. This way you will have a sense of participation and accomplishment. This is called IKEA fun.

In other words, after such a change, the original labor cost passed on to the customer has become what is called a sense of participation.

Many people also like this one, and as long as the installation is not particularly difficult, they can accept it.

As for whether the time spent installing furniture will affect their money?

You won't pretend after get off work?

Wouldn't this be a delay?

Does this sound reasonable?

After the furniture is designed in this way, the assembly process is eliminated as soon as it comes out, and the labor cost is directly saved by more than half.

And in this way, furniture that is made of parts can be reduced in size and directly packed in large cardboard boxes, which will make transportation easier.

Even many customers’ private cars can be transported.

Even large items cannot be transported.

That doesn't matter. As long as you shop in an IKEA store, they can provide professional delivery services and even include installation.

In this way, the problems of the last handful of problem customers are solved.

Therefore, the rise of IKEA has had a huge impact on the traditional furniture industry in Europe.

But the common people are the most honest. As long as you have reliable quality and are cheap enough, IKEA will be very popular among them in the current environment.

Now, IKEA is no longer satisfied with simple expansion. They also want to find another production base to further reduce costs in order to achieve greater profits.

Allen was intrigued by the plan.

It is true that IKEA sells furniture, but Allen is ready to quietly copy many of IKEA's models.

For example, the furniture’s appearance design, unified production base, unified transportation channels, factory-direct store model, and IKEA’s product catalog manual.

This thing is the same as the takeout membership manual created by Allen.

They all make their own products into manuals and distribute them to customers regularly.

But IKEA does not yet have an "online shopping" model as "advanced" as Allen's Takeaway Company.

If you take these IKEA business concepts and models, take the essence and discard the dross, and apply it to your own supermarket, plus the membership and online shopping models developed by Allen.

Now everything is finally ready, right?

And now IKEA is preparing to expand into the Chinese market.

Allen felt this information was crucial.

He planned to secretly find someone in China to make things difficult for IKEA, and then stand up and be a good person at the critical moment, and then do favors, and see if he could have a chance to get into an IKEA car.

As long as you take IKEA's car, you can slowly share IKEA's logistics channels.

For Allen, this can save him a lot of money, and it will also facilitate his expansion when the supermarket is ready in the future.

It’s simply killing multiple birds with one stone!

In just two days, Alan's visit to the IKEA headquarters was fruitful.

How the entire IKEA works, what each department is responsible for, the stories behind various products, etc. are all very inspiring to him.

On the way, Xiao Shitou relied on Allen's familiarity when he gave the greeting gift to ask for the contact information of some relatively capable managers at the IKEA headquarters.

Of course, Allen doesn't want to poach people now, that would appear to be too deliberate.

He plans to ask his secretary to chat and connect with these talented people he likes first, and then after returning, he will send a few people to IKEA headquarters for internships and learn on the spot.

Wait until all the preparation work on his side is almost done, especially after the funds are in place, before poaching people.

By the time.

What's the point of only making money at IKEA headquarters?

Working with Mr. Allen can not only make money, but also gain honor. That is a title, a British title!

Using this big cake as bait, Allen doesn't believe he can't lure anyone.

Some of these management elites pursue money from the beginning. As they get older and become more knowledgeable, their pursuit of money is no longer so urgent. Instead, they pursue honor or status. urgent.

As for identity, what else can't be solved by a British knight?

This status is enough for ordinary people!

Enough for them to become real upper class people.

The hard work of doing business—starting from scratch and building with hard work.

Effortless business practices - tap existing talents and develop on the shoulders of giants!

Allen likes the feeling of eating ready-made food more and more. As long as the benefits are enough, he can save a lot of energy.

The formal welcome dinner officially started on the evening of the fourth day after Alan arrived in Sweden.

Allen thought he could finally experience a state banquet-level reception for a foreign royal family in a serious manner.

By the time the dinner officially started, he already felt a little regretful.

Queen Silvia only smiled and shook hands with him when they first met. The rest of the time, she kept a dark face and sat there silently without speaking, staring at Gustave with cold eyes.

Gustav didn't say anything and ate with his head down.

As for long speeches such as toasts and welcome speeches, there were none.

As for the food, it wasn't the state banquet that Allen imagined, it was just ordinary Swedish home-cooked food.

Apart from a housekeeper who was responsible for introductions, there were not even any servants.

This reception dinner was like a dinner party for colleagues from the company, and the atmosphere was very strange.

Next to Queen Silvia, sat a girl of fifteen or sixteen years old. She stared at Allen with eyes that looked like an alien the whole time.

Seeing this look made Allen almost unable to eat anymore and felt uncomfortable all over.

Next to this girl, there is a little carrot head who is much smaller than her. Judging from the hairstyle, she should be a girl, but she is not very old, at most about the same as William.

The older one should be the eldest princess who "stole" the position of Crown Prince Bertil, and the younger one goes without saying.

The impression given by the two of them is that the older one is quieter but looks at people in a wrong way. Although the younger one occasionally looks at Ellen, most of her attention is on what she is eating.

In this way, during the entire dinner, Allen was the only one who occasionally looked at each other or Bertil, or glanced at Gustav.

There was no communication between the few people at all, which was quite embarrassing.

"Alan, I made you laugh, uh, the queen is not in a good mood these days."

After dinner, Gustav eagerly signaled to Allen, and the two went to hang out in the garden outside. Gustav explained hesitantly.

"."

The queen's performance today made even Allen feel annoyed. The key is that Allen was wondering what was going on?

Even if the Swedish royal family is in danger, the couple will not be like this, right?

What happened?

Besides, King Gustav, this is too much, isn’t it? He is strict with his wife?

"It's okay, Your Majesty. Thank you very much for the welcome banquet you specially organized for me. This banquet has a very family atmosphere. I like it very much."

Allen doesn’t know how to praise him, he can only say that it has a family atmosphere and is very casual.

"Well it's still early. Shall I take you for a walk in the city? My nephew Christian will arrive tomorrow. Let's rest after he arrives. We will go hunting the day after tomorrow."

Gustav didn't say much on this issue, and instead told when the second prince of Denmark would arrive, and invited Alan to go to the city for a walk now.

Allen looked up at the sky. It was already dark!

He didn't know much about where else to go in the city this late at night, but since the king had invited him, he could just do as he pleased.

Gustav himself drives a very low-key Volvo 360 SEDAN. From a distance, this car looks like an old Jetta, a square car.

Xiao Shitou followed their car with several bodyguards.

I saw Gustav turning left and right in the city, passing through various lanes, and finally stopped in front of a store with a purple neon light on the front.

"Enchanting Rose"

Allen could barely understand the roll call on the door. The name was somewhat informal.

The large door at the door was closed tightly, and two men who looked like thugs, with tattoos on their arms, stood on both sides of the door holding hands, like door gods.

"Let's take you to visit our nightclub in Sweden."

"Huh? Nightclub?"

As soon as King Gustav got out of the car, his whole mental outlook changed, giving people a feeling of excitement and anticipation.

But when Allen heard his words, he was slightly stunned.

You, the majestic king, said you would take me to the city for a walk in the middle of the night, and then you ended up taking me to a place like this?

Nightclub?

This style of painting is not quite right.

Huh.

Allen suddenly recalled Queen Sylvia's stinky face at the dinner party, and he felt that he had found the reason for the queen's unhappiness.

Could this be because the king likes to go to nightclubs?

This. This. Allen is speechless. It seems that except for when he went to kill Koreans in the KTV in Swansea a few years ago, he has been in places like this. The other times were when he was serving in the Navy and docked. Time has passed.

After so many years, he had never been to a place like this after inheriting the title. He didn't expect to follow King Gustav to a place like this today.

Just. It’s amazing.