I didn’t take a nap at noon today because I was having lunch with a client.
After more than a month of discussions, the mold technician, accompanied by his boss, came to our company today for a face-to-face meeting. The trip from Shenzhen to Dongguan takes over an hour, so the fact that the boss was willing to make the trip in person shows a great deal of sincerity.
People say that these days, bosses don’t drive BMWs, Audis, or Mercedes-Benzes—they drive comfortable models like the Ideal or Aito. Today, this Hong Kong boss was driving an Aito.
The owner manufactures watch cases for well-known brands. Currently, they produce titanium alloy forged watch cases using a type of V8 die steel. After producing a few hundred to a thousand units, the mold needs to be repaired. Although the mold is capable of mass production, the repairs are too frequent. He saw my video online and heard that 8566 die steel has excellent performance, but he was skeptical.
That’s because everyone around him kept telling him that anything bought online is fake and that he should never trust it. So, a month ago, he asked their tooling manager to add me as a friend and discuss the mold’s operating conditions with me.
After chatting for over a month, the boss and the manager came together today, bringing the product and the mold with them.
We talked for over an hour. After helping him analyze the mold’s operating conditions, the causes of mold failure, and the approach to material selection, he went ahead and bought four pieces of 8566 round bar.
It was nearing noon, and since they’d traveled such a long way, it was customary to treat our guests to lunch. But we were so engrossed in conversation and attending to our guests that we forgot to take photos of the delicious dishes—and forgot to let our followers enjoy them with us. All I can share is a photo of the boss’s luxury car—the Aito M8—taken in the rain.
During our lunch conversation, I discovered a secret: the video was actually meant for the boss. Mold technicians have no incentive to optimize molds—as long as the mold functions, they consider production to be going smoothly, and they don’t worry about efficiency. Only the boss considers efficiency and the lifespan of the mold. If it weren’t for the boss’s push on this project today, we might not have moved forward until next year.
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Wu Dejian’s tool steel, the chief of staff of the user, bought everything he had used.