Chapter 332: Chapter 331: Broadening Horizons

Qin Yao returned home at noon for lunch and found that everyone, except for Second Lang, looked exhausted.

Suspiciously, she asked, “Did you all go to the fields to plow?”

Ah Wang shook his head. This was his task, and no one else should try to take it over!

He enjoyed plowing the fields, watching the hard ground being effortlessly turned over by the iron plow was quite satisfying!

Qi Xian and Da Lang, who secretly competed against each other under the guise of martial arts training, exchanged a glance of mutual understanding, wanting to say something but were too tired to speak, simply leaning back on their chairs with a synchronized sigh, “Sigh~”.

It was clear these two had overtrained, so Qin Yao patted them on the shoulder reassuringly, “Keep it up, you’ll get used to it eventually.”

She looked up at Liu Ji, who was sprawled over his abacus in the main room, and asked, “You don’t practice martial arts, so why do you look like this?”

Liu Ji barely mustered enough energy to look at her and, not daring to keep silent, truthfully answered, “The teacher asked me to calculate military expenses, starting from ten people to a hundred, and now I have to calculate for a thousand, ten thousand, even a hundred thousand!”

“Every time I calculate, the teacher says it’s wrong, then wrong again, and continuing on it’s still wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…”

The word “wrong” had its tail stretched infinitely, echoing thrice around the house, causing Qin Yao to abruptly shout, “Then just stop talking!”

“Give me the abacus.” Qin Yao extended her hand, and Liu Ji, delighted, quickly offered up the abacus with both hands, only then remembering to ask, “What do you need the abacus for?”

Qin Yao smiled slightly, “That’s none of your concern.”

She took the abacus and left.

Exiting the house filled with groans, she looked at the mountains in the distance, turning golden, and immediately felt refreshed.

Earlier that morning, she received a letter from Bai Shan sent by a messenger, along with some money.

It was for the fifty stationery boxes he took last time, totaling five hundred cents, ten cents each.

It seemed he sold them for around fifteen cents, but he couldn’t have made much profit.

However, since the stationery boxes were made from leftover book box materials, with very low costs, selling a large quantity at a small profit wasn’t a bad strategy.

After such a long time, Bai Shan finally sold those fifty stationery boxes, indicating the market wasn’t very receptive to them.

However!

The letter from Bai Shan presented an entirely unexpected sales direction—packaged gift boxes.

The stationery boxes weren’t sold as stationery boxes; Bai Shan had visited several counties in Zijing Mansion and couldn’t find a market for them.

Until by chance, while he sat in a teahouse with a business partner, he saw a bookstore promoting a budget-friendly wool brush from another province.

This brush didn’t come with a pen pouch because a pouch would cost more, so it was sealed in a simple wooden box.

That box was very basic, likely made from the worst scraps, but brushes with boxes appeared more high-end than those without any packaging.

At that moment, an idea struck Bai Shan, and he quickly asked his servant to bring out Qin Yao’s stationery box to show his partner.

To promote this unsold stock, he carried it with him wherever he went, hoping he might meet someone who’d buy it all, strengthening his bond with Qin Yao.

If things worked in his favor, he could use this as a bargaining chip to negotiate prices and make more money.

The servant handed over the stationery box, and his business partner immediately asked, “Manager Bai, did you get a new brush?”

They mistook the stationery box for a brush sold at the opposite bookstore, thinking it was packaging.

Bai Shan was instantly pleased at the thought of a new sales route.

If he told his partner it was a stationery box, the partner might lose interest, but if he said it was a brush box, they would surely be curious.

So he smiled and opened the stationery box, which just happened to contain an inkstone, brush, ink, and a few blank pages alongside his personal seal in a small compartment.

Miss Qin’s stationery box was, indeed, quite practical, but nobody would specifically buy such a box for personal use.

But this didn’t stop him from bragging to his partner that he specifically bought a brush just for this box; buying a gem only for the case described him perfectly.

Once the idea came to him, sales strategies opened up, and he immediately wrote a letter, sending it with a business caravan to pass on to Qin Yao, urging her to stock up. He’d come for them in mid-September, requesting as many as possible.

Bai Shan had already brokered deals with the two largest local pen factories, with orders in hand, all prepared except for the stationery boxes.

Oh no, they should now be called stationery gift boxes.

Qin Yao arrived at the warehouse, where Liu Qi was on duty, reporting numbers while she calculated, eventually determining the exact current inventory.

“Right now, there are a total of six hundred and twenty-five units. Selling them to Bai Shan at eight cents each, this batch totals…” Qin Yao smiled delightedly, “Precisely five taels.”

Liu Qi gleefully smiled, quickly jotting down the numbers with a simple charcoal pencil, asking Qin Yao, “Should we release all of them from storage?”

Accountant Qian Wang was also nearby, looking at Qin Yao, ready to issue an outgoing order if necessary, to facilitate end-of-month accounting.

Accountant Qian Wang had decided to stay temporarily at the stationery factory. The mute refugees from Huangque Town would be leaving at the beginning of October, and he planned to ask them to deliver money and a letter to his family.

Manager Qin’s offered salary was thirty percent higher than what he earned in Huangque Town, so he intended to work a while longer to save some money.

Despite being away from his family, he considered it worthwhile if they could have a good New Year’s and enjoy a year free from disasters and hardships; his other wishes couldn’t be too extravagant.

Qin Yao nodded, signaling Qian Wang to issue the storage release order, then instructed Liu Qi to arrange the goods.

“In a couple of days, Manager Bai’s people will come with a cart to load the goods, and our factory’s first batch of ten thousand book box orders for Fulong Trading Company has been completed, right?”

Liu Qi nodded, “We finished yesterday, and I personally oversaw the undelivered goods to ensure they were of quality before entering storage.”

A few defective ones remained, around a hundred or so, and Liu Qi asked how to handle them.

It was tricky; the agreement with Fulong Trading Company stipulated that the factory couldn’t sell book boxes privately during the contract period.

Qin Yao said, “Those with minor defects could be offered to our workers at cost price, and those with more defects should be recycled into production.”

Liu Qi agreed, not thinking much of it, simply following Qin Yao’s instructions.

Accountant Qian Wang slightly frowned, before cautiously saying once they were alone:

“Manager Qin, selling defectives to workers could cause issues.”

Qin Yao paused, asking what issues there might be. Qian Wang explained, “Wherever there are profits, there’ll be some unscrupulous individuals. If workers purchase book boxes at a low price and secretly sell them below market price, it could cause trouble for the factory.”

“And…” Qian Wang hesitated, glancing at Qin Yao, who appeared unaffected, before continuing, “It might lead to an increase in defectives.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep