Having an assistant truly makes a difference.
Without Lin Baicheng needing to personally handle it, within just three days, Cheng Yufeng had already shortlisted several toy companies for acquisition. Each of these companies had complete factories and workers—ready to begin production immediately after purchase.
Now that Lin had accumulated some capital, he no longer needed to grow slowly. This time, he chose a larger toy company and sent Cheng Yufeng to negotiate the acquisition.
Since Cheng was newly hired and Lin was not yet fully familiar with his character, he discreetly asked lawyer Chen Gao to independently evaluate the toy company. This way, he could determine whether Cheng had acted in Lin's best interests during the negotiation.
It wasn't that Lin was being petty—it's just that caution is necessary in business. Otherwise, one could easily be taken advantage of and suffer heavy financial losses without even realizing it.
Five days later, Cheng successfully negotiated the acquisition at a price of 8.2 million Hong Kong dollars, slightly below Chen Gao's estimate of around 8.5 million. This proved that Cheng did indeed possess strong negotiation skills.
Lin signed the contract with the toy company's owner. For this transaction, all he needed to do was sign and have the finance department transfer the funds.
He renamed the company to Jupiter Toys. It had a factory occupying over 3,000 square meters in Tai Po and four retail stores, each about 100 square meters. Just the four storefronts alone were worth over 1 million Hong Kong dollars.
The company had nearly 200 employees. The original owner decided to sell because profits had declined in recent years. With limited annual earnings, he preferred receiving a large sum at once to invest in other ventures.
In earlier years, the company had been quite profitable—hence the large factory and self-operated stores. Unfortunately, the veteran toy craftsmen lacked innovation. The toys they designed no longer appealed to children.
The owner had tried hiring other craftsmen, but the toys they designed were unpopular and caused financial losses. Eventually, he stopped innovating and resorted to producing unlicensed imitation toys. As a result, profits shrank significantly.
But Lin did not intend to rely on his employees to come up with new toy ideas. He himself had plenty of ideas. As long as the experienced craftsmen could turn his designs into real products, that was enough.
After acquiring the company, Lin and Cheng visited the factory. They met the factory director, Huang Jianhe. Lin spoke with him briefly and, seeing no issues in his management abilities, decided to keep him in the position for now, pending future evaluation.
"Director Huang, please bring me the person responsible for toy design and production," Lin said.
"Yes, Mr. Lin."
Huang did not dare to slack off just because Lin was young—after all, he now worked under Lin.
A short while later, Huang returned with an elderly man in his fifties or sixties.
"Mr. Lin, this is Master Gong Xiang, the craftsman in charge of toy production," Huang introduced.
"Master Gong, this is our new boss, Mr. Lin."
"Mr. Lin," Master Gong greeted politely.
"Please have a seat, Master Gong," Lin said, respectful of his age.
Lin took out a blueprint showing a 3×3 mechanical cube and handed it to him. "Master Gong, do you think our factory has the capability to produce this mechanical cube?"
When it came to toys, one could not ignore the legendary Rubik's Cube—and the most well-known version worldwide was the 3×3 cube.
Initially, Lin didn't know when the Rubik's Cube was invented. For someone from decades later, it was something people bought and played with, but few bothered to research its origins. Lin was no exception.
To avoid patent disputes, before acquiring the toy company, Lin contacted Isabella in the United States, asking her to investigate whether the Rubik's Cube had already been invented.
The results surprised him—it had.
As early as 1970, Larry Nichols invented the 2×2×2 cube and applied for a Canadian patent, obtaining a U.S. patent two years later.
The 3×3 Rubik's Cube was invented in 1974 by Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian professor of architecture and sculpture. He obtained a Hungarian patent in 1975, but he did not apply for international patents.
Isabella reported that the 3×3 cube had already begun being sold in Budapest toy stores a few months ago. Fortunately, due to the lack of promotion, sales were modest.
Upon hearing this, Lin immediately asked Isabella to travel to Hungary to meet Ernő Rubik and purchase the rights to the 3×3 cube. Not yet aware of its potential value, Rubik sold the full rights for just $500,000, an incredibly low price.
After securing the rights, Lin instructed Isabella to apply for international patents for the Rubik's Cube. He also commissioned Ernő Rubik to continue developing higher-level cubes—such as 4×4 and 5×5 versions.
Knowing how big the Rubik's Cube would become, Lin also had Isabella purchase Larry Nichols' patent to prevent future lawsuits once the cube became popular.
In Western countries, it's very common—when a novel or movie becomes successful, anyone remotely related to the copyright shows up with lawsuits to demand money. It's legal and low-cost to attempt.
Now that the international patents were being filed and the toy company was his, Lin was ready to begin production.
Although he held patents, there would always be counterfeiters—since Rubik's Cubes weren't hard to copy and cost very little to make. Lin's strategy was to mass-produce cubes in advance, and once the product gained hype, release a large volume to dominate the market and leave little room for counterfeits.
After carefully examining the blueprint, Master Gong confirmed that the factory could produce the 3×3 cubes.
Receiving this confirmation, Lin immediately instructed Director Huang to stop producing old toys and transition fully to Rubik's Cubes. All existing toy inventory would be cleared out.
Since the cubes would be sold internationally, Lin insisted on using safe and environmentally friendly materials, especially to prevent lawsuits if children were harmed while playing with the toy.
Although this would increase production costs significantly, Lin didn't mind—"the wool comes from the sheep," meaning costs would simply be reflected in a slightly higher selling price.