fictionpage Chapter 46 The Formation of the Wolf Pack
Chapter 46 The Formation of the Wolf Pack
In mid-March 2017, Su Chen received a WeChat message.
The message was sent by a regional operations manager at Toyota Agricultural Supplies, and the content was a video taken with a mobile phone.
The video shows a rice paddy in a county in Guangxi. An agricultural drone equipped with Hongyuan Flight Control is in operation—it's one of the first commercial models produced by Mr. Guo's factory and was sold to a large-scale farmer in the area through a Toyota dealership.
In the video, a middle-aged man wearing rubber boots stands on a field ridge, watching an agricultural drone fly automatically along its flight path overhead. The background sounds are the wind and the whirring of the rotors.
After finishing the task, the middle-aged man said to the camera, "Wow, one acre was done in three minutes! Ten times faster than carrying a fogging machine before. And it's evenly distributed."
Just that one sentence. No editing whatsoever.
Su Chen watched the video three times.
The first check was of the flight status—the flight path was stable, the gliding rhythm was even, and the turns were clean. The flight control performance met expectations.
The second time I looked, I saw the farmer's expression—not surprise, but genuine approval, like, "Wow, this thing really works." More convincing than any other expression.
The third time I looked at it, I focused on the key words in that review: "ten times faster" and "uniform".
This is real feedback from real farmers in real farmland.
Su Chen forwarded the video to Liu Gang, Ding Dean, and Chen Hongyuan.
Liu Gang's reply was simply "good".
Ding Dean didn't reply immediately. But the next morning, he sent a message: "President Su, I have three other agricultural machinery factories that would like to discuss flight control with you."
Su Chen's heart skipped a beat.
The dominoes started falling.
……
Over the next two weeks, things progressed far faster than Su Chen had anticipated.
The three agricultural machinery factories that Ding Dean brought came from Hunan, Jiangxi, and Guangdong, respectively. They were all small in scale, with annual output ranging from over ten million to over thirty million yuan. But each of them had the same characteristic—they had sufficient machinery manufacturing capabilities and accumulated technical expertise in agricultural spraying, but flight control was a hurdle they could never overcome.
Su Chen didn't deal with each company individually. He had Ding Dean gather the three companies at Toyota's Guangzhou headquarters for a small briefing.
The briefing was very simple – Su Chen did only three things: he played the video of the farmers, showed the core data of Chen Hongyuan's paper, and then conducted a preliminary assessment of the flight control matching for each factory's aircraft model on the spot on the computer.
As a result, all three companies placed orders on the spot.
Thirty sets, twenty sets, twenty sets. A total of seventy sets.
Adding to the fifty sets that Mr. Guo had previously made.
The cumulative order volume for the flight control SDK reached 120 sets within a month.
Forty-two hundred thousand yuan.
The number is still small. But Su Chen knows the significance—this is not about 120 flight control systems, but about 120 agricultural drones equipped with Hongyuan flight control systems entering the market.
120 machines were sold to farmers. 120 farmers use them in the fields. 120 living examples.
Each one is a business card that speaks volumes.
April. The plant protection season has officially begun.
Early rice in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, and Jiangxi provinces has entered the tillering stage, leading to a surge in demand for plant protection products.
Mr. Guo's first batch of fifty agricultural machinery machines has all been sold through Toyota's dealerships. The other seventy machines from three other agricultural machinery manufacturers are also being delivered in succession.
Ding De'an sent a sales report: As of mid-April, the number of agricultural drones equipped with Hongyuan flight controllers sold through Toyota channels had exceeded eighty units. The return rate was zero.
What concerned Su Chen even more was a sentence Ding De'an added at the end of the briefing: "Five other agricultural machinery manufacturers have contacted us to inquire about purchasing flight control kits. We have already referred them to Hongyuan."
Five.
Su Chen couldn't suppress the turmoil in his heart, but his fingers unconsciously tapped three times on the table.
It took two months to go from zero to four companies.
It only took two weeks to go from four to nine companies.
The speed is increasing.
The reason is simple—the plant protection drones from the top four agricultural machinery manufacturers are already in the hands of farmers, and word-of-mouth is spreading. Information dissemination in the agricultural machinery industry is much slower than in the consumer electronics industry—but once it spreads, it's hard to stop. Because agricultural machinery manufacturers will ask each other: "What flight control system does that manufacturer's plant protection drone use? Is it good? How much does it cost?"
And the answer is always the same—Hongyuan.
Su Chen instructed Zhang Lei to lead the team to work overtime to process the newly added SDK orders. Each agricultural machinery factory has different models, and the flight control modules need to be adapted and adjusted for each hardware platform. The workload is increasing dramatically.
The two newly hired engineers—one responsible for SDK technical support and the other for version management—have started working, but they are still overwhelmed.
Su Chen knew this was a good thing. The inability to meet demand meant that supply was increasing.
Two weeks later, the SDK orders from the end of April were compiled.
One hundred and seventy sets.
The total number of orders has exceeded 300 sets.
SDK revenue exceeded one million.
These 300 agricultural machinery machines are distributed among seven different agricultural machinery factories and sold to rural areas in four provinces through Toyota's more than 300 stores and each factory's own channels.
Seven hardware manufacturers, over 300 stores, and one flight control platform.
The wolf pack has already taken shape.
The alpha wolf is Hongyuan.
While YuChen.com was still questioning whether "the platformization of flight control is too idealistic," reality had already moved ahead of the comments.