Chapter 167 Bicycle unrelated to magic
Entering the middle of March, the winter cold had completely faded. The frozen land outside Banta City had begun to warm up and countless patches of green appeared through the soil.
In this season, it was a good time for a walk. So whenever there was good weather, there would be countless noble young masters and young misses who would take their luxurious horse carriages to head out of Banta City, setting out for the verdant fields outside the city.
Although Banta City had many smooth roads outside the city, the western suburb was declared to be an industrial sector by the Lord City Lord, so there were no traces of green at all. But the southern suburb was declared to be a recreation area by the Lord City Lord, which not only kept the forest, but also had a canal that drew in water from the Sandy River. This patch of wilderness had been turned into beautiful scenery, which was an excellent destination for a fine spring day.
Today was a clear day. When the sun had just reached the middle of the sky, there were countless horse carriages of noble families that came out of the southern gate, heading to the patch of green to the south of the city.
Countless noble young masters and young misses were planning to take advantage of this fine weather to walk around in nature and hold a fun picnic outside.
But today, it was different from normal.
As countless horse carriages came out the door, there were two different things mixed in with them.
The young masters and young ladies in the horse carriages heard the calls outside and opened their curtains to see that on the road, there were two people riding a flat, strange thing that had an iron frame and two wheels that they had never seen before.
The two of them were stepping on pedals and as they moved their feet, it quickly rotated a gear underneath them.
As the gear turned, the two wheels on the iron frame turned and it kept moving the two of them forward.
What surprised everyone was that the thing the two of them were sitting on looked very fragile and other than two wheels, it was only a frame. But it could allow the two people on top to quickly move forward, even surpassing several horse carriages and running in front of many noble young masters and young misses.
Seeing the two quickly charge forward on those strange and unknown things, whether it was the noble young masters and young misses in the horse carriages or the people walking on the street, they were all stunned.
What was the thing under the butts of those two people? How could it be so fast?
But as the two of them disappeared into the distance, it made those people unable to get the answer for the questions in their hearts.
The next day was also a clear day.
Countless horse carriages went out the city gates like usual.
But at the same nine in the morning, those two strange looking things carried two people out of the city, passing countless horse carriages and disappearing into the distance.
The questions in people’s hearts deepened.
The third day was another clear day.
The same thing happened again.
The fourth day…...
The fifth day…..
…..
For an entire week, every day was a rare clear day and every day countless noble young masters and young misses went out for a picnic. But every day, there were two people charing out of the city gates on strange things before quickly disappearing from everyone’s sights.
After the accumulation of seven days, this strange thing spread all over Banta City and attracted everyone’s curiosity.
Some people who had nothing to do waited at the southern gates and had drawn the strange appearance of those two things.
After analyzing it, everyone found that those two things had a very simple principle. Using two wheels to stand up and a frame to support it, they used a gear to power it and the person on the thing provided the power with the pedals.
However, even though the principle seemed simple, it really was unbelievable that this thing could move so fast just relying on manual power.
At first people didn’t know a thing about this thing or where it came from, but some people with sharp eyes guessed something after seeing the tires.
Tires were a thing that only the Frestech Chamber of Commerce could produce and adding in the fact that they made many strange things, these two strange things could be new magic machines from the Frestech Chamber of Commerce!
All their questions and guesses received their answers on the eighth day.
On the morning of the eighth day, the new issue of the ?Banta Times? revealed the truth.
Everyone’s guesses weren’t wrong, these two things were the newest product from the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, but unexpected to everyone, this thing wasn’t related to magic at all.
This thing called a bicycle was a machine that relied on manpower and it relied on manpower alone, it didn’t contain any magic.
But even though it was only powered by manpower, as long as the rider of the bicycle was strong enough, the bicycle could move very quickly.
According to inside information from the ?Banta Times?, it’s said that when the Frestech Chamber of Commerce was testing the bicycle, someone riding the bicycle could rush to the Falling Rain Valley before noon if they set out from Banta City in the morning at top speed.
It had to be known that the Falling Rain Valley was a full sixty kilometers away from Banta City, even the best horse carriage would take three hours to get there.
[TL Note: For those questioning this, the general speed of an inexperienced bike rider is around 12 mp/h and converting that, it’s around 20km/h.]
The speed of this bicycle wasn’t much slower than the best horse carriages!
Seeing the report in the ?Banta Times?, everyone was filled with joy.
With this good thing, it would be much easier traveling in the future!
Although horse carriages were good, normal families couldn’t afford horses at all.
Although the Banta City public transport system was slowly being developed and they could take horse carriages to most places they wanted to go, it cost money to take the horse carriages and they didn’t go to many places.
Compared to this simple and light bicycle, horse carriages were without a doubt more troublesome. ｂｅ𝚍ｎｏｖｅ𝚕．ｃｏｍ
After confirming that this bicycle was a product from the Frestech Chamber of Commerce, countless people came to the doors of the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s service center. Many people asked when this bicycle would be sold and everyone couldn’t wait to buy one.
“It seems like there’s no need to worry about the sales of the bicycle.” Xu Yi laughed as he put down the ?Banta Times? in his hand. He turned to look at the bicycle that had its wheels being powered by a Wind Magic Engine.
Strictly speaking, this bicycle was just a supplementary piece of research that Xu Yi came up with while developing the engine.
Although the bicycle wasn’t an important product in an industrial system, the bicycle had many important pieces of technology hidden within.
For example, the power transfer system, the bearings, the gear casting, and different kinds of technology, they were all used in the production of the bicycle.
Other than giving the Frestech Chamber of Commerce a new product, Xu Yi had Camby and the others study the bicycle to let them learn a bit about this technology through experimenting.
This was completely different from on earth.
The mechanical engineers on earth learned theory first before conducting practical research.
As for the Magic Mechanical Engineers represented by Camby, they first conducted practical research first under Xu Yi’s guidance before gaining theoretical knowledge.
There was no choice here, Xu Yi wanted to speed up the development of the industrial system, so he could only forcefully instill his knowledge into them.
It was a good thing that dwarves like Camby had a strong talent for this. If Xu Yi just explained something for them, they could easily understand it and even extrapolate other pieces of knowledge from it.
Through researching the bicycle, Camby and the others became mechanical engineers that had a deep understanding of converting power.
The next step was for Xu Yi to let them combine the Wind Magic Engine with the bicycle to a certain extent.
If they could create a Magic Bicycle that was powered by the Wind Magic Engine, it meant that the Wind Magic Engine research would have practical applications.
The experiment that Camby’s group was doing right now was to test the stable output of the Wind Magic Engine and how strong the bearings were.
This experiment had already lasted ten days and the results were something that Xu Yi wasn’t satisfied with.
First, the Wind Magic Engine couldn’t maintain a stable output. Rather it would frequently stop without any warning and sometimes the efficiency would either get better or worse.
After Xu Yi and the other magic researchers carefully looked it over, they found that when the wind of the Wind Magic Array inside the engine increased its speed, it would create chaotic wind currents. This would affect the Magic Array to a certain extent and affect its output.
If this influence reached a certain point, the Magic Array would lose its ability temporarily and the engine would lose power.
There was also an important issue, which was the materials.
The bicycle’s gears and bearings were fine at low speeds, but when it maintained high speeds for a long time, it would be worn down.
According to their estimates, if it maintained the Wind Magic Engine’s highest speed, whether it was the gears or the bearings itself, it would be greatly worn down in just ten hours and could even break.
Xu Yi didn’t have a way to solve this right now.
Because this was a materials problem which was the hardest problem to solve.
Although the industrial system on earth was close to perfect, it kept falling behind in terms of material.
Xu Yi was a Chinese mechanical engineer, so he didn’t excel in the field of materials. Adding in the limits of the country, it was impossible for them to obtain the most advanced material production technology.
On this problem, he could only hope that the material research facility led by chief Siluka had results.
Before this, the material research facility led by chief Siluka had already given Xu Yi many pleasant surprises.
Xu Yi was giving this problem to them now and once the non-ferrous smelting plant on the Black Rice Wasteland began operating, Xu Yi was confident that chief Siluka would give him a satisfying answer.
But before that, he could only patiently wait.
Even if Xu Yi was anxious to develop the engine, this kind of technology didn’t allow for a single bit of negligence.
As a talented mechanical engineer from earth, Xu Yi had this belief and this patience.
Chapter 168 Irreplaceable Kennard
It was impossible for life to be free of problems and it was also impossible for it to always be filled with problems.
Although he had met a bottleneck in the development of the engine, the supplementary bicycle that he had developed gave Xu Yi a pleasant surprise in terms of sales numbers that even surpassed his expectations.
After the seven days of advertising and the announcement in the ?Banta Times?, when Kennard hosted the Frestech Chamber of Commerce’s product announcement and announced that the bicycles would officially be on sale, in just the first day, the Frestech Chamber of Commerce received an order for fifty thousand bicycles.
In just a week, this number turned to a hundred thousand.
Xu Yi thought that in a western fantasy world like the Sines Continent that had magic, elves, and dwarves, something like the bicycle would be accepted that easily, so it would be as popular. He never thought that the sales numbers would be this terrifying.
It had to be known, because the cost of the bicycles weren’t low, the price the Frestech Chamber of Commerce had set also wasn’t low.
This time the Frestech Chamber of Commerce had made different models for their product. The first batch of bicycles was separated into bicycles for men and women, with the men’s bicycles having a price of eight gold coins and the women’s bicycles having a price of six gold coins.
This price was still expensive for many Banta City citizens even with their current wages because buying a bicycle would cost them half their monthly wage.
Not to mention the citizens of other cities that didn’t have as high as a monthly wage as Banta City citizens.
But when the bicycles were put on sale, whether it was the Banta City citizens of the citizens of the surrounding cities, they were all wildly snatching them up.
The Frestech Chamber of Commerce was planning on their first batch of ten thousand bicycles to last them a week, but it was all snatched up in just a single afternoon.
Seeing the large number of orders that came in, Ankhto who was put in charge of the bicycle factory by Xu Yi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The Frestech Chamber of Commerce never expected the sales numbers of the bicycles to be this terrifying, so they only prepared a single production line. They had trained no more than two hundred workers.
The current monthly production of the factory was only around five thousand units.
To complete the remaining ninety thousand orders, it was impossible even if they took a year.
Faced with this situation, Ankhto, Sebas, and Heinz who had specially come back for this all strongly suggested to Xu Yi to create two more production lines and recruit more workers to satisfy the demand.
However, Kennard had opposed this suggestion.
“Everyone, please take note of this, this is the sales distribution map that I made.” Kennard hung a large map on the conference board and pointed at the dense amount of red points he had drawn on the map, “A single red point represents a thousand units and if everyone looks closely, it isn’t hard to see a problem. It is that in our current order, it is mainly centralized around Banta City and the surrounding cities. If we go out a bit further, there is only a centralized area in Anvilmar City. As for the rest of the kingdom, it is very scattered.”
The other people in the conference carefully looked over the Lampuri Kingdom map and found that other than the red points gathered around Banta City, although places like Karma City and Saltan City had quite a few dots, it wasn’t as dense as Banta City.
Other than these three cities, there were far less dots in the further cities. There was only Anvilmar City where there were a few more red dots gathered, but it was around the same as Karma City or Saltan City, it was still far less than Banta City.
As for further places on the map, there might occasionally be one or two red dots, which only represented a thousand or two units.
“Based on this sales distribution map, I think everyone should understand that although the sales numbers of the bicycle soared in the first week, we should notice that although it’s been ten days past the first week, the sales numbers have never grown past a hundred and twenty thousand. It can be seen that the bicycle’s market is far from being as exaggerated as everyone imagines it to be.” Kennard said in a deep voice, “According to my estimates, after this initial boom, the monthly sales numbers in the future won’t be over five thousand units. If we rashly increase production lines, it will just be wasting resources.”
Ankhto knit his brows, “It can’t be that little, right? This thing is popular in Banta City and the surrounding cities, even the people of Anvilmar City likes them that much, so I think that many places in the kingdom will also accept it. It shouldn’t just be at five thousand units.”
“That’s right, it isn’t this bad, right?” Heinz also said, “Kennard, Xu Yi has praised your analysis skills and your farsight, but I think this time that you’ve made a mistake. This bicycle is selling this well, how could it be that bad in the future?”
Sebas didn’t say anything, he just looked at Xu Yi, clearly wanting to hear his opinion.
Xu Yi didn’t say anything as he shook his head with a smile. He kept looking at Kennard, clearly he wanted everyone to keep listening to what Kennard had to say.
Kennard didn’t show any courtesy, as he cleared his throat and continued, “Ankhto, vice chairman Heinz, I can understand your thoughts, but the bicycle isn’t any different from any magic machines that our company has made before. Because of how remarkable the bicycle is, it can clearly increase people’s speed of travel, so if they can’t afford a personal carriage, they will normally have a demand for the bicycle.”
“Based on this, the sales numbers in the future should keep increasing. Why do you say that it’ll be so little?” Ankhto asked in a confused voice.
Kennard revealed a faint smile, “When it comes to selling goods, there are two factors. When a person decides to buy something, one, they look at their demand, which is whether they need this thing or not. Two, they look at their consumption power, which is whether they can afford it or not. As for the bicycle, most people would have this demand, but…..In the current Lampuri Kingdom, most people wouldn’t have this consumption power.”
“Consumption power?” Ankhto and Heinz looked at each other, feeling confused, “A man’s bicycle only cost eight gold coins and a woman’s bicycle costs six gold coins, how can’t they afford it?”
“I understand.” Before Kennard even replied, Sebas on the side said with a nod, “Yes, there are indeed many people who can’t afford it. Ankhto, vice chairman, because you are in contact all day with people in Banta City and Karma City who have rather high incomes, you’ve forgotten that in our Lampuri Kingdom, most of the normal citizens are poor. A city like our Banta City where an average person can have a monthly income of over ten gold coins is unique. So on the sales trend map that the general manager has made, we find that there are more sales in Banta City, even more sales in Anvilmar City. Moreover, Karma City and Saltan City is like Anvilmar City because most people in Karma City and Saltan City work for large companies for our Banta City, so their monthly income is higher and they can afford the bicycle.”
Ankhto and Heinz looked at each other and after a while, they couldn’t help nodding.
They finally understood, Sebas was right.
To be honest, most of the Lampuri Kingdom was poor and many people couldn’t even feed themselves, so how could they spend so many gold coins to buy a bicycle?
Even Banta City was like this just a few years ago. Thinking about how if the bicycle was sold three years ago, even Heinz who was the owner of a small general store only made a hundred gold coins a year, how could he possibly bear to buy the bicycle.
Thinking of this, the two suddenly felt this was a bit unbelievable.
Based on the situation in the sales distribution map, could it mean that the people of Banta City were even richer than the people of Anvilmar City?
How was that possible? Anvilmar City was the capital of the Lampuri Kingdom!
“There’s no need to doubt it, these are the facts.” Seeing the shocked looks the two had after understanding the situation, Xu Yi said with a faint smile, “Perhaps there aren’t as many large nobles and merchants in Banta City compared to Anvilmar City, but the average income of people is indeed higher than Anvilmar City. There’s also another important reason, it’s that people in Banta City have a high approval of our Frestech Chamber of Commerce. As long as it’s a product from our Frestech Chamber of Commerce, the people of Banta City have full confidence in it. As long as they know the functions of the bicycle, they’ll immediately buy it. As for the people of the other cities, they will wait and see.”
“Un, sir chairman is right.” Kennard said, “If we advertise properly in the future, I believe that the bicycle sales numbers can still increase. But I don’t think that it reaches the level where we need to add another two production lines, so I suggest that we should postpone this for now.”
Ankhto and Heinz looked at each other before nodding.
“I agree.” Sebas also said.
Kennard and the others looked at Xu Yi and he said with a faint smile, “We’ll listen to the general manager in this matter, I won’t interfere.”
Heinz looked at Xu Yi with a strange gaze, but he didn’t say anything else.
After this meeting was over, Heinz immediately went to find Xu Yi alone and asked with a worried look, “Xu Yi, are you planning on handing the company over to Kennard to manage?”
“Why not?” Xu Yi asked back with a smile, “I believe that you are clear on Kennard’s abilities now, do you feel that he isn’t competent?”
“It isn’t that I doubt his abilities, only he…..is someone from the Emma Family after all.” Heinz said with a sigh, “He has to return to the Emma Family eventually, if you give him authority in our company, I’m afraid…...it will be bad for the company.”
“You’re thinking too much.” Xu Yi patted Heinz’s shoulder and had him sit down, “First, I trust Kennard’s moral character. After working with him for s o long, I think that he is a very ambitious person, but he can realize his ideals in our company. So there are many times that he’s indicated that he wants to keep working for our company and doesn’t want to return to the Emma Family.”
“This probably isn’t something that he can decide.” Heinz said with curled lips.
“So what if he returns to the Emma Family in the end?” Xu Yi still had a relaxed look on his face, “He is just a general manager, he isn’t a major shareholder, so he is only responsible for some management and he can’t do anything else to the company. Then again, it is hard to find someone to replace such an outstanding general manager. Moreover, even if you find someone to replace him, how can you be sure that the person who replaces him won’t leave?”
Heinz thought about it and found that this was indeed a problem that couldn’t be solved.
The current Frestech Chamber of Commerce wasn’t a small company. As they became bigger, there were more and more things to take care of. If Xu Yi were to take care of everything like before, it wouldn’t be enough even if they split him in half.
Heinz was also clear on the fact that his abilities were limited, he wouldn’t be able to help Xu Yi that much.
After thinking for a while, Heinz could only give a sigh as he helplessly said, “Alright, we’ll leave it like this for now. But we should find some people to help you as much as possible, otherwise if Kennard suddenly leaves, the company will fall into chaos.”
Xu Yi revealed an appreciative smile, “You finally understood, Heinz. The company can’t be taken care of by me alone, only increasing the amount of people in management is the right solution. Here, take a look at something……”
Heinz took the documents from Xu Yi’s hand and after looking at it, he saw a large title on top of it.
“Frestech Chamber of Commerce transformation plan.”