Chapter 454: Chapter 442: Ultimate After-sales Service

The industrial roar of Cybertron seemed never-ending.

But in the top-floor conference room at the Weisren Heavy Industry headquarters in Hub City, the atmosphere was as heavy as the dead of winter.

The arrival of a figure shattered the office’s usual calm.

Rhine.

He wore a perfectly pressed black suit, his body exuding an oppressive aura from a powerful Magic Source.

He walked through the busy office area, and the employees subconsciously made way for him, their gazes filled with awe and curiosity.

Rhine pushed open the conference room door without hesitation.

Allen, Colin, Vera, and Lina were all there, seemingly in the middle of a heated discussion.

"Boss, I’m here."

"Good. Take a seat and wait. Vera, you can continue."

"Over the past week, five of our seven major distributors in the Greystone Plane, the Dolan Star Ring, and the Blackwater Marsh have unilaterally terminated their partnership agreements."

"Of the seventeen suppliers we work with, nine have suspended their shipments to us, citing ’production line maintenance’ and ’raw material shortages.’ The rest have raised their prices by an average of forty percent."

Vera’s expression was grim.

"In the private messages on the Omni-Platform, malicious inquiries and false accusations against us have exploded by over eight hundred in the last three days. The content is highly consistent, all of it claiming our products use ’inferior parts from unknown sources’ and implying we could go out of business at any moment."

She pointed to the sales curve on the light screen, which had dropped by twelve percent.

"This is the handiwork of ’Mechanical Gears.’ Bark and the circle behind him are waging all-out commercial warfare against us."

Colin pushed up his glasses, his eyes as sharp as daggers beneath the lenses.

"A classic move by an industry monopolist to crush a rising star. Cut off your supply chain, tarnish your brand, and choke your cash flow. After those three strikes, even the most promising company would be brought to its knees."

Vera crossed her arms and snorted. "They certainly think highly of us. But they’re naive if they think they can take us down with these underhanded tactics. We’ve always had backup supply chains; they just cost a bit more. And Lina is no stranger to fighting a PR war."

The three executives in the conference room quickly slipped into crisis mode.

"I suggest we activate the Plan B supply chain immediately. We’ll absorb the increased costs for now. At the same time, we should launch targeted, limited-time discounts on a few of our best-selling products to stabilize sales," Colin said, speaking rapidly.

"The PR department can issue a strongly-worded statement with evidence of the suppliers’ breach of contract. We can also have a few of the major clients we’ve supported speak out on the Omni-Platform, sharing their positive experiences," Lina added.

"I’ll make a trip to the Greystone Plane myself. I’m the one who negotiated with the distributors there. I’ll go knock some sense into them," Vera said, already preparing to stand up.

Standard responses. Precise and effective.

But Allen hadn’t said a word the entire time.

Only when all eyes were on him did he finally speak.

"Discounts? Statements? Knocking some sense into them?"

He shook his head, a faint, almost imperceptible smile playing on his lips.

"That’s their game. Why should we play by their rules?"

Allen stood up and walked to the light screen.

"I just spent three hundred and twenty million Magic Stones to reforge nearly my entire Golem Legion—the one I built with my own hands."

The other three in the room were stunned, not understanding why their boss had suddenly brought this up.

"This is the list of technologies from the Cybertron Legion upgrade project that have been approved for mass production."

Colin glanced at it, his pupils contracting slightly.

High-strength adaptive bearings, new-gen tactical firmware, high-frequency vibration blades, second-generation Rune etching process... Each item was marked as "Verified" and "Scalable."

"Boss, you mean..."

"We’re upgrading our entire product line simultaneously. Every product will be iterated with the same technology used for the Legion upgrade."

Colin did a quick mental calculation. "How much of a performance increase?"

"An overall combat effectiveness increase of thirty-five to forty percent."

Vera’s hand slipped from her chin. "And the price?"

"Unchanged."

The single word landed on the table like a lead weight.

Colin’s mouth fell open. Vera was stunned for a moment. Lina was the first to grasp the implications, her eyes flashing with understanding before dimming again.

"Boss, a forty-percent performance increase with no change in price... won’t our profit margins be squeezed significantly?"

"The cost-reduction advantages of advanced technology in areas like production efficiency and energy consumption completely offset the incremental costs of the material upgrades. When you run the numbers, the profit margin isn’t squeezed much at all."

"That’s fantastic! Customers will vote with their feet," Colin said, his face lighting up.

"I’m not finished."

Allen held up a finger. "That’s the plan for new customers. For our existing customers, we have a different approach."

He turned to face the three of them, speaking deliberately.

"Announce this on all platforms: Any customer who has purchased any Weisren Heavy Industry war Golem in the past year can send their old model back for an upgrade at cost."

Colin’s pen froze in mid-air, a hesitant look on his face.

Vera was the first to speak, her voice tight. "Boss, at cost? Are you sure?"

"I’m sure."

"Because they’re obsolete."

Allen’s voice was calm but forceful. "In my eyes, anything obsolete should be eliminated. That principle applies to my Legion, it applies to our products, and it applies to our enemies... just the same."

He swiped a hand across the light screen, pulling up a list of all Weisren Heavy Industry products available on the Omni-Platform’s marketplace.

From the traffic-driving bestseller, the "Spider Slayer Mk. II," to the mainstay "Peacekeeper PX-1B," and the high-end "Hive Mothership."

"They want to play at commercial warfare?" Allen’s gaze swept over everyone in the room. "Then we’ll just flip the whole table."

Allen’s tone was irrefutable. "Any customer who has purchased any model of combat Golem from Weisren Heavy Industry, either on the Omni-Platform or through our official channels, can, with proof of purchase, exchange their old Golem for a same-tier product incorporating our latest technology, for only the ’cost of the new raw materials’."

"A Spider Slayer Mk. II can be exchanged for the latest model, which uses high-strength materials and is equipped with a high-frequency vibration blade."

"A Peacekeeper PX-1B can be directly exchanged for a PX-3, a complete redesign based on the PX-2 blueprint."

"Even the ’Purgatory’ platform, the ’Storm Falcon’... all of them are eligible!"

"All the customer needs to pay is the cost of the additional materials between the old and new models. Labor fees, R&D fees... we won’t charge a single cent!"

Colin felt as if his brain had just been struck by an invisible sledgehammer.

He practically jumped to his feet, his voice cracking. "Boss! No! Absolutely not!"

"We’ve sold over three hundred thousand Golems of various models in total! Even if only half the customers participate in the exchange, for the Spider Slayer series alone, even at cost, we’d be out nearly a million Low-Level Magic Stones! If you count all the Golems, that number will exceed two hundred million Magic Stones!"

"We have the money in our accounts, but it’s not there just to be burned!"

Colin’s breathing grew heavy. "This means we’d be squeezing our already below-industry-average profits even further!"

Vera’s brow furrowed tightly. "Boss, this will completely upend our pricing structure. If we set this precedent, who will ever buy our new products at full price again? Everyone will just wait for our upgrade programs."

Commercially, this was suicide.

Only Lina, after her initial shock, had a strange light dawning in her eyes.

She murmured to herself, "I think I understand. This is... a sacrifice."

"Go on," Allen said, looking at her.

Lina took a deep breath and looked up, her gaze fervent. "We’re sacrificing short-term profits in exchange for two things."

"First, absolute customer loyalty. With this move, we’re telling every Wizard that when you buy a Weisren Heavy Industry product, you’re not just buying a Golem; you’re buying a ’ticket’ to all future technological advancements. No amount of advertising can buy that kind of brand adhesion."

"Second, a devastating blow to our competitors."

Lina’s voice trembled slightly with excitement. "What’s the business model for Mechanical Gears and their ilk? They sell low-quality products at high prices. They rely on a lack of transparency. Their after-sales service is nonexistent."

"With this move, we’re taking a knife and plunging it straight into their hearts. Do they follow suit? If they do, their profit margins can’t sustain it; their old customers would bankrupt them. If they don’t? They’ll have to stand by and watch all their customers flock to us, while their brand instantly becomes synonymous with ’obsolete’ and ’irresponsible’."

Colin and Vera were left speechless.

As they followed Lina’s line of reasoning, a chill ran down their spines.

It was brutal.

This move was like pulling the rug out from under them—crushing all the old-guard competitors still stuck in the "one-and-done deal" mentality and driving them out of the market entirely.

Allen looked at the others, who had finally grasped his plan, and gave a faint smile.

"Colin, let me ask you, can two hundred million Magic Stones buy us a monopolistic market position?"

Colin’s lips moved, and he arduously forced out a single word: "No."

"Can it buy us a great wall of word-of-mouth reputation built by three hundred thousand loyal users?"

"...No."

"Can it make those old fossils at ’Mechanical Gears,’ who have been entrenched for a thousand years, lose all their credibility overnight?"

"...No."

Allen spread his hands. "Right now, we have an opportunity to use this two-hundred-million ’loss’ to obtain all three of those things at once. So tell me, in this deal, are we losing, or are we winning?"

Colin said nothing more. He simply closed the financial warning on his light screen, opened a new blank document, and began working on a detailed cost analysis and material procurement plan for the project.

Vera let out a long breath and rubbed the bridge of her nose, but a smile filled with fighting spirit spread across her face. "I’ll go adjust the production schedule and warehouse logistics. We’re going to have to max out Hub City’s production capacity."

"Boss," Lina asked, her eyes gleaming with excitement, "when do we post the announcement?"

Allen picked up his cup of long-cold tea.

"Now," he said calmly.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.