Time quickly moved to the end of June. The sportswear business had also entered a stable phase. By now, everyone who wanted to buy had bought. Walking down the street, five or six out of ten people were wearing sportswear sets. And most of those people had bought from her shop. This made Tian Tian both happy and very proud.
Good news lifted her spirits. Tian Tian was cheerful every day. She was just waiting for the Olympics to pass so she could take a good rest. By then, she’d definitely have enough money and could start looking into buying the vegetable plot.
She wasn’t busy anymore, but Zhou Haoting grew busier by the day. The home appliance factory had officially gone into production. Riding the wave of summer, they produced a batch of electric fans for the market. Currently, sales weren’t particularly good. Mainly because it was a new brand that hadn’t yet gained everyone’s recognition. Plus, Guangdong had plenty of fan brands, both domestic and foreign. But because of that same reason, more of their fans were actually sold to other places.
This result struck Tian Tian as quite funny.
In business, sometimes you really needed luck. Zhou Haoting’s fans weren’t much worse than domestic brands, but sales really couldn’t compare to the established brands.
“Alright, Hui. It’s not like they’re unsellable. Is it worth getting this anxious?”
That morning, Tian Tian made a round of the shop, saw there was nothing going on, and swung by the home appliance factory on the way. There she happened to see Hui taking inventory in the warehouse. He was muttering to himself while counting goods—it was almost hilarious.
“Oh, Sister Tian.” Hearing Tian Tian’s voice, Hui’s face fell. “So many electric fans piled up in the warehouse. It’s nerve-wracking just looking at them!”
Having gotten used to the fast turnover of clothes at Tian Tian’s shop, the fans’ slow sales felt especially sluggish. Many workers at the factory had grown restless. Some idiot had spread a rumor that their factory was going bankrupt. If Hui caught whoever it was, he’d definitely drive them out of the factory.
Tian Tian listened to Hui’s grumbling. When she heard someone had spread a rumor about the factory going under, she immediately frowned.
“Has the factory found out who said it?”
Hui shook his head. “Still investigating. But Brother Ting has already arranged for people to refute the rumor.”
Tian Tian nodded. Coming out of the warehouse, she walked to the cafeteria and just happened to hear several vegetable-washing aunties talking about the bankruptcy too.
She said nothing. She just quietly listened to all the various versions of the rumor. Then she walked to the factory director’s office.
Zhou Haoting was on the phone inside. Seeing Tian Tian come in, he gestured for her to sit and wait.
“Yes, the lowest price is 150 per unit. I really can’t go any lower. This batch of electric fans is genuine quality with solid materials. Alright, you think about it.”
After hanging up, Zhou Haoting said to Tian Tian, “Just looking at you, I can tell everything’s going smoothly.”
Tian Tian chuckled twice, leaned back in the chair, and crossed her legs. She propped one elbow on the armrest and rested her chin on her palm, looking at him. “Your side doesn’t look so smooth.”
Zhou Haoting reached up and smoothed his hair, letting out a self-deprecating laugh. “It’s fine. The goods can sit and sell slowly.”
That was indeed true. Guangdong had seven or eight months a year when fans were useful, so they really could sell slowly. But for business, the faster goods sold, the faster capital circulated, and the more money you made.
“Was that someone calling to place an order and ask for a quote?”
Zhou Haoting knew she was asking about the phone call and nodded. “Yeah, referred by Old Qin. But they want a low price and a kickback.”
Old Qin was Zhou Haoting’s classmate who worked at the police station. So the party being referred was likely a government department.
Zhou Haoting said, “If it weren’t for Old Qin’s introduction, I wouldn’t even want to do business with them.”
They wanted a lot, paid little, and occasionally, when you ran into difficult ones, they’d delay payment.
There was nothing Tian Tian could do to help with that. But after walking around the factory, she had a new idea.
—
On the other side, not long after Tian Tian left, the clothing wholesale shop received some not-so-good news.
“What?”
After having lunch with Zhou Haoting in the home appliance factory cafeteria, Tian Tian strolled back to the clothing shop. But the moment she walked in, she saw several sets of somewhat familiar-looking sportswear on the table.
After hearing Niuzai’s report, Tian Tian’s expression didn’t look good.
“The goods were obtained from a wholesale customer. They said they got the samples from someone from their hometown. The fabric looks the same as ours, and the price is a quarter cheaper than ours. So they brought them over to show us.”
Tian Tian carefully examined the clothes. They were indeed very similar to theirs. But they weren’t the one-to-one copies you saw on the market. They were practically stepping on their designs, changing a few corners and edges here and there. Then using the same fabric as theirs, and selling at a quarter of the price. Everyone knew where it was more cost-effective to buy.
There had been this type of counterfeit goods on the market before. But the price couldn’t go that low. And the ones in front of her were so cheap that they would obviously quickly attract a lot of wholesale customers.
And things were pretty much as Tian Tian thought. In less than a day, several regular customers called to ask about it. Some even asked if they could lower their prices. And in the following days, far fewer people came to the shop to wholesale.
“Sigh…” Niuzai sighed, reporting the situation of the past few days to Tian Tian.
That sigh was similar to the one Hui had let out in the warehouse that day. But it really wasn’t at the point of sighing.
“Let’s take inventory first.” Tian Tian instructed the others to count the shop’s stock. Then she went to the warehouse to take inventory with Ye Lifeng.
Having learned about this a few days earlier, Tian Tian had already told Lifeng Factory to slow down production. It was perfect timing—they’d been running three shifts for nearly three months, so giving the workers a break now was just right.
After that, she found some wholesale customers with good relationships to contact the people wholesaling these clothes.
Several days passed, and Tian Tian received some feedback.
This inventory count took a whole day. In the end, they counted a total of over thirty-seven thousand finished sets in stock. In addition, there were over ten thousand semi-finished sets. The rest was uncut fabric.
After confirming these quantities, Tian Tian had Boss Ye finish processing the semi-finished goods. On the other hand, she began contacting all the elementary, middle, and high schools in the district where the garment factory was located. She proposed donating a batch of sportswear to the students. And furthermore, discussing school uniform supply contracts with these schools.
Yes, by the 1980s, school uniforms already existed. And each school’s fees were actually not low. But this business wasn’t that easy to do either. Tian Tian didn’t plan to do it long-term—she just wanted to make the first wave of money, then hand the business over to Ye Lifeng.
He was good at dealing with official people. How to maintain those relationships wouldn’t be her concern.
Things progressed smoothly. At this time, there weren’t so many tricks yet. Tian Tian directly donated over ten thousand sportswear sets, and then negotiated school uniform supply deals with twenty-three schools.
When Ye Lifeng learned of such a big order, he was stunned.
“This… Miss Tian, why didn’t you call me to handle this together?”
Tian Tian waved her hand. “Weren’t you busy these past few days investigating the factory behind the counterfeits? This little matter I could handle on my own. By the way, any progress on your end?”
Although Tian Tian already had a suspect in mind, she still needed a definite answer.
Hearing this, Ye Lifeng nodded with a serious expression. “Still people from He Cheng.”
Tian Tian’s expression said “just as I thought.”
“This counterfeit factory is called Liren. The factory owner is a local. But I had someone look into it—he has a relative named Lao Hei in He Cheng.”
Lao Hei! Hearing that name, Tian Tian sighed inwardly. This was an old acquaintance! Lao Hei’s relative was the one who had competed with Zhou Haoting for the district machinery factory auction. After failing, he’d been taken away for a long time over the bribery matter. Later, word was that Lao Hei had pulled strings to get him out. And now he’d come to open a garment factory to annoy her.
Of course, this person was probably just Lao Hei’s front man. And Lao Hei’s motive was probably inseparable from Zhou Qiaoqiao.
As for why it wasn’t He Cheng’s boss giving the order?
Come on, her garment factory was small potatoes to the underworld. They wouldn’t bother going through such convoluted means. If they really wanted to destroy her, there were plenty of ways. The fact that they were pulling all these little tricks meant they didn’t dare do anything big. And with such petty thinking, the one behind the ideas had to be Zhou Qiaoqiao.
Tian Tian didn’t even know how she had offended this person. Stirring up trouble again and again like this.
No. She needed to hit her once, hard, and take her down completely.
Thinking of this, Tian Tian said, “Boss Ye, keep your people watching this Liren Garment Factory. On our factory’s side, once the last of the sportswear is made, use the remaining fabric to make school uniforms. For the specific uniform styles, send someone to coordinate with the schools.”
As for her, she’d have her hands free—perfect timing to send Zhou Qiaoqiao a big gift.
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