Chapter 397: Chapter 397: Dacron and Radios
The warehouse was piled high with goods, all strewn about haphazardly. Most of it was fabric, laid out in sacks on the floor, with some cardboard boxes stacked nearby. Adrian Hawthorne opened one of the sacks, revealing vibrant fabric. The patterns were much more vivid than anything sold in the department stores of Wraven and Vessaria.
"How much are these?" Adrian Hawthorne asked.
"The boss said for regular customers, it’s three hundred and twenty a sack. Each one weighs between ninety and a hundred jin, and you can’t pick and choose," Ace said.
Adrian Hawthorne quickly did the math. ’One jin of polyester fabric yields about ten chi of material. Assuming a sack weighs ninety jin, the cost comes out to thirty-five cents per chi. At the department store, you need coupons to buy polyester, and even the cheapest kind is sixty-eight cents per chi. Fabric with patterns this vibrant would cost over seventy cents, at least. He was looking at a 100% profit margin. He was going to make a killing.’
"I’ll take five sacks."
Adrian Hawthorne calculated his funds. He would get five sacks of fabric, which would leave him with four hundred yuan. He wanted to use the rest to get some radios. The market for them was excellent; plenty of people had been asking him about them. As long as he could get the stock, he knew he could sell it.
Ace blurted out, "Only five sacks?"
’Regulars always bought ten sacks or more. No one ever bought just a few. What was this kid’s relationship to the boss?’
Adrian Hawthorne replied calmly, "Just five sacks this trip, but there will definitely be more in the future."
Ace smiled and told Adrian Hawthorne to pick out the patterns himself. Goldie Thorne and Jim Thorne both went for the heaviest sacks, figuring heavier had to be a better deal. Adrian had initially picked a heavy one as well, but after a moment’s thought, he swapped it for a lighter one.
"Are you nuts?" Goldie Thorne whispered. "The price is the same for every sack, so obviously you pick the heavy ones. You lose out with the lighter ones."
"Let’s get three light ones and two heavy ones."
Adrian Hawthorne wasn’t entirely sure himself, so he decided on a compromise. Once he confirmed whether his theory was correct, he would know how to pick his stock in the future. Experience, after all, was best learned from taking a loss.
After picking out five different patterns, Adrian Hawthorne asked, "How much are the radios?"
"We’ve got assembled radios from Hong Kong. The quality is pretty good, they’re just unbranded. Twenty yuan apiece. We also have imported Japanese ones. Those are expensive—a hundred yuan apiece. Which kind are you looking for?"
"Can I see both?"
Ace brought out two types of radios. One was clearly cruder—the assembled one. The other was the imported model, a Hitachi. Adrian recognized the brand; it was famous in Japan. ’No wonder it’s so expensive,’ he thought.
’Still, a radio that expensive wouldn’t find a market in a small city. His family had once owned a Hitachi, purchased for 150 yuan at the Gallerion Mall using overseas remittance coupons. The quality had been superb.’
Adrian Hawthorne switched on the assembled radio and expertly turned the tuning dial. A clear sound emerged. He scanned through a few more stations, finding Chinese opera, pop songs, and storytelling. The audio was crisp. Ace hadn’t been lying—the quality really was excellent.
"I’ll take these. Give me twenty."
Adrian Hawthorne took out two thousand yuan and gave it all to Ace.
Ace quickly counted the cash, then got twenty radios for him. "Where are you all staying? We’ll deliver everything over in a little while."
Adrian Hawthorne told him the name of the guesthouse. Ace nodded and called some other men over to load everything onto a flatbed cart. Goldie Thorne and his nephew helped out, their heads still spinning. Two thousand yuan was the most money they had ever seen in their entire lives, and it had been spent in the blink of an eye. It all felt like a dream.
"Are we even going to be able to sell all this? What happens if it doesn’t sell?" Goldie Thorne muttered quietly. It wasn’t his money, but he was worried all the same.
"There’s no way it won’t sell," Adrian Hawthorne said, full of confidence. "The department store charges seventy cents a chi for their polyester, and they require cloth coupons. I’ll sell mine for seventy cents a chi, no coupons needed. Now tell me, do you think anyone will buy it?"
