Time quickly moved to May.
The weather was hot, and people in Shenzhen were already wearing short sleeves and shorts.
And Tian Tian’s clothing wholesale business was just as booming as the hot weather.
Around the time the white T-shirts were nearly sold out, plenty of copycats appeared on the market. But Tian Tian had already switched styles. She had taken Hui and the two Cai sisters on a trip to Yangcheng. After contacting several well-known garment factories there, she secured exclusive wholesale distribution rights for Shenzhen.
After that, the shop had been wholesaling clothes produced by those factories.
As for Ye Lifeng’s factory, it specialized in producing sportswear. Yes, after half a month of running around, Tian Tian had finally found a suitable fabric at a Hong Kong-invested textile factory. After that, sportswear production entered a steady phase.
This kind of thing had no technical difficulty. Once the style was decided, they could churn out piles of it. At present, inventory had reached ten thousand sets each for men’s and women’s styles—twenty thousand sets total. According to plan, the first batch of sportswear production was fifty thousand sets.
Because this project was large, it ended up as a three-person partnership. She, Tian Tian, held 60 percent, Zhou Haoting held 20 percent, and the remaining 20 percent went to Ye Lifeng.
However, Zhou Haoting had been busy setting up his small home appliance factory during this time, so he hadn’t put energy into the garment factory. Recently, things on Zhou Haoting’s side had entered a critical phase, and he was short-handed. Hui needed to be transferred back too. So a few days ago, Tian Tian had called back home.
By her calculations, Niuzai and Fengmei should be arriving soon.
Sure enough, speak of the devil. Tian Tian was still thinking about those two when, just as she came out of Ye Lifeng’s place today, she saw Hui pedaling over on a bicycle.
“Sister Tian, Sister Tian! They’re here! Your friends are here!” Hui spotted Tian Tian from far away and waved his arms frantically, grinning so wide his white teeth showed.
Hearing this, Tian Tian was delighted too. Good, they’d arrived.
She quickly pedaled toward her residence.
Behind her, Hui let out a strange wail, shouting “Wait for me!”—which nearly made Tian Tian laugh out loud as she pedaled ahead. To be fair, with a cheerful guy like Hui around, the shop really would lose a lot of fun once he left.
“Tian Tian…”
“Tian Tian…”
The moment her bicycle stopped at the courtyard entrance, she heard Niuzai and Fengmei’s excited voices.
Tian Tian looked up and gave them a brilliant smile. “You’re here! I was figuring you two would arrive these next couple of days!”
“The moment we got your call, of course we came running to you!”
“Exactly. Tian Tian, you’ve struck it rich! How could we not come grab onto your coattails right away?”
Haha, chatting and joking with friends she’d grown up with made Tian Tian feel very relaxed.
Hui watched from the side and grimaced. He thought this side of Tian Tian was really rare to see.
“Come on, come on, let’s go inside and sit in front of the fan.”
The sun was blazing overhead. Standing in the courtyard chatting was a bit silly.
“Sister Tian, then I’ll head back first!” Seeing the three reunited, Hui was ready to leave and not intrude.
“Stay for a meal!”
Hui waved his hand. “No need. I’ll go over to the shop. Perfect timing to get things organized so I can hand over to your friends. Brother Ting is already pushing me to get over there!”
For the first part, Tian Tian could have said plenty to persuade him to stay. But at the second part, she stopped trying. Mainly because although Zhou Haoting hadn’t put much energy into things these past two months, leaving Hui with her had been the biggest help of all.
“Alright, go on then.”
After watching him leave, Tian Tian went into the living room.
Now it was just the three of them in the living room, so talking was easier.
Both Niuzai and Fengmei knew they had come to help Tian Tian. As for that young man Hui just now, he was the person they’d be taking over from.
“Tian Tian, you have no idea. After word got back that you’d opened a shop here, the village was in an uproar.”
“Exactly. When they heard you wanted us to come help, plenty of people were shouting that they wanted to come too!”
Niuzai and Fengmei began describing the changes in the village over the past few months. Mainly because Tian Tian hadn’t gone back once since leaving. And she only called once a week.
A few loose-tongued people in the village had spread rumors that she’d eloped with someone.
So when Tian Tian called a few days ago saying she’d opened a shop in Shenzhen and needed the two of them to come help, the village had gone wild.
Especially those few spiteful gossips—they all shrank into quails. But Tian Tian’s parents still blocked their doors every day, cursing them and their ancestors for eighteen generations.
Listening to all the good and bad things from the village, Tian Tian found it quite funny. Anyway, her parents didn’t care about the rumors, so she didn’t care at all.
“Rest today. Tomorrow I’ll take you to see the shop.”
Tian Tian explained the situation here, then treated them to a meal. After eating, she took them to the rental next door to rest. Once she’d confirmed the two were coming, Tian Tian had rented the neighboring place from the village.
—
The next morning, Tian Tian took Niuzai and Fengmei to the wholesale shop.
The wholesale shop was as busy as ever. Oh, except for next door. Hong Jie’s shop next door had gone under back at the end of March. At the time, the shop had a huge backlog of batwing sleeves and only managed to sell them at a loss. Of course, Tian Tian had helped things along quite a bit.
For example, secretly poaching Hong Jie’s customers. Giving wholesale customers some discounted bundled goods. And in those bundles were styles from Hong Jie’s shop. That made the wholesale customers give up buying from Hong Jie. After all, Hong Jie’s shop had nothing but batwing sleeves.
In the end, when the goods couldn’t sell, she had no choice but to dump them at low prices. The money from the clearance sale wasn’t even enough to pay back the garment factory. In the end, Hong Jie could only slink away in disgrace.
Where she went after that was unclear.
Now the shop next door was empty, and Tian Tian was already preparing to rent it. That would get things ready for the sportswear launch in half a month.
“So many people!” Fengmei hadn’t been out of the village much. Seeing such a busy wholesale shop, she felt like her eyes couldn’t keep up.
Niuzai had spent a long time around the smuggled goods street, so he was used to scenes like this. And whether it was out of professional habit or not, not long after arriving, he quietly pointed out several shops selling smuggled goods to Tian Tian. Some Tian Tian already knew about, and some she didn’t.
“Wait, no. I’ve been here for months—how do I not know they’re selling smuggled goods?”
Niuzai chuckled. “Good eyes!”
Tian Tian spat. “My eyes are even better.” But after spitting, she didn’t forget to warn him. “There are several underworld gangs dealing in smuggled goods around here. Keep your eyes sharp when you come and go. Don’t accidentally let something slip. One of them is called He Cheng, and we have some bad blood with them.”
Xiao Ming went without saying. And that Brother Hei had been nursing a grudge against Zhou Haoting and her ever since the factory auction. He only held back because he didn’t dare move against Zhou Haoting.
Niuzai had naturally heard of He Cheng. He nodded to show he understood, then began the handover with Hui.
Everything went smoothly after that. Niuzai took charge of overall control at the wholesale shop. Fengmei ran around to the garment factory with Tian Tian. And Hui went back to help Zhou Haoting.
Half a month passed quickly, and the time for the sportswear’s mass launch arrived.
—
“Stack them all in the back warehouse. Yes, just unload them here.”
“Niuzai, you’re in charge of counting. Tianlan, Tianmei, you two come over here—iron these sample clothes and put them on the plastic mannequins.”
“Yes, over here…”
Early in the morning, Tian Tian had brought everyone to the wholesale shop to get ready.
The wholesale shop had changed a lot by now. After renting out Hong Jie’s shop next door, the two shops had been opened up into one, with plenty of display racks and lighting added.
Now the whole shop looked quite upscale. People who didn’t know better might think it was some brand-name retail store.
Tomorrow was the official launch day for the sportswear. So today they had to get the shop in order. Besides that, the most important thing—the various posters—were also ready.
Promotion for the sportswear had started on May 1st. Hiring celebrities for posters or TV ads was temporarily unaffordable. So Tian Tian had contacted every elementary, middle, and high school in Shenzhen. She invited a group of good-looking, high-achieving students to come pose for posters.
This move only required paying some labor fees and giving each person one sportswear set. But the effect was astonishing. Before the shop even opened, people were calling every day asking when the sportswear would go on sale.
And it just so happened that the sportswear’s target market was exactly these teenagers. So before sales even began, the sportswear was already a hit.
Even today, as they were cleaning up, plenty of people came to the shop asking about the sportswear.
At this point, photos of the sportswear hadn’t been released yet. The clothes given to the models would be distributed only on opening day.
So many people had heard that this shop’s sportswear was very good-looking. But not a single person had gotten their hands on the clothes.
And because it was so hot, someone at Ye Lifeng’s factory stole sample clothes to take and copy.
But Ye Lifeng, having learned his lesson once, wouldn’t let that happen. He dealt with the people in just a few moves.
Anyway, Tian Tian didn’t concern herself with that. If they could keep things under wraps one more day, that was one more day. Tomorrow was the most important day.
—
“Everyone, please keep order and line up.”
“Don’t worry, we have plenty of stock. There’ll be goods whether you come early or late.”
On opening day, Tian Tian found she didn’t even have time to drink a sip of water. She was either busy entertaining old customers or being pulled aside by new ones asking endless questions. Occasionally, she even had to help maintain order in the shop.
It was just too busy.
But seeing that burlap sack stuffed full of cash, Tian Tian instantly felt like she could keep going.
“This style is perfect for girls. There are three summer options: shorts, a mid-length skirt, and long pants. Each one has different colors and patterns. The fit looks great too. Look at how energetic I am today, right?”
Tian Tian smiled as she introduced the products to new customers. Today, everyone in the shop was wearing sportswear. Different colors and styles looked especially good on each of them. That’s right—several village girls had been brought in to help today. And several village women had been placed in the crowd as shills.
Yes, this was a heartfelt performance by Zhou Haoting’s mother and several aunts. The traffic they brought in was not to be underestimated.
All in all, today was destined to be a mad rush.
Busy making money, Tian Tian didn’t notice that a car had driven over from the border crossing. It stopped not far away, and the person inside kept staring at her.
“What are you looking at?” Inside the car, a middle-aged man asked the young girl beside him who was staring at the wholesale shop, his Cantonese not quite standard.
The girl pulled her gaze away from Tian Tian and gave the middle-aged man a bright smile.
“Brother Jian, nothing. Just envious of that clothing shop owner. She’s about my age, yet she can run such a big shop.”
The middle-aged man, Brother Jian, lit himself a cigarette before saying casually, “You young pretty girls should be dressed up beautifully, accompanying men. Drifting around out there doing business—that’s men’s business.”
Hearing this, the young girl froze. All the words she had bottled up couldn’t come out.
Fortunately, just then, a car of the same model drove up from the opposite direction. It quickly stopped. A handsome man got out and walked over.
“Boss, welcome.”
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