Chapter 328: The Mobile Exhibition Booth
Jim calculated for quite a while, and presumably unable to quite figure it out in his head, he drew a calculator from his bag.
Handheld calculators were still a rare luxury at this time. Even the cheapest models cost nearly four hundred dollars.
Ji Tong had seen them before at the Canton Fair.
As for the domestic exhibitors, they either used pen and paper or an abacus.
This was also the first time Su He had seen a calculator since transmigrating into the book, but she lacked even a shred of interest in it.
With the system around, she had absolutely no use for such a contraption.
After finishing his calculations, Jim began ticking and marking choices on the quotation sheet.
For the ordinary products, he selected adhesive-bonding across the board, while for the relatively high-end items, he opted for pure handcrafting.
His bargaining tactics were also quite calculated; he didn’t try to haggle over the high-end products by even a single cent, but he squeezed the ordinary products ruthlessly, attempting to slash the price by thirty percent.
How incredibly shrewd was Su He?
With one look, she could tell he wanted to place a massive bulk order for the low-end products and take only a tiny fraction of the high-end items.
“Mr. Jim, what I’ve given you is actually our absolute rock-bottom price. Take this product priced at 2 dollars, for instance. The material cost alone comes out to 1.17 dollars, labor is 0.36 dollars, and logistics costs 0.23 dollars. This isn’t even factoring in taxes, water, electricity, and facility overhead.”
“You must leave us at least some margin for profit, shouldn’t you?”
“I understand how you feel, of course. If you don’t do a bit of bargaining, you’ll always feel as though you’ve lost out.”
“Furthermore, you are our very first client of this year’s Canton Fair, so it’s only right that you receive some preferential treatment.”
“How about this? You saw our other hair accessories earlier. If you add an additional order for a portion of those other styles, I will concede a one-cent discount to you.”
Jim: “…”
There isn’t a single person in the entire world as stingy as you!
After all that talking, not only are you egging me on to buy other hair accessories, but you’re only willing to give me a measly one-cent discount?
He was naturally unwilling, but no matter what he said, Su He refused to budge. A one-cent discount was her absolute limit, and it carried the prerequisite that he had to buy a bundled portion of the other accessories.
Jim was so exasperated he nearly wanted to walk away from the negotiation entirely!
Then, he heard Su He say, “Mr. Jim, I know you are highly dissatisfied, but you ought to look at this with a different mindset.”
“If I were to agree to a drastic price cut, it would only prove that my previous quote was artificially inflated, which would indicate a flaw in my personal integrity. Would you feel at ease doing business with someone whose integrity is compromised?”
Jim: “…”
Something feels slightly off about that, yet I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Refusing to give up, he continued to haggle. “Su, I haven’t mentioned the order quantity yet. If we go by my previous proposal, I intend to order five thousand pieces for each of the few items I marked.”
“But if you insist on this current price, I can only take a maximum of one thousand pieces per item.”
Su He said with a smile, “Mr. Jim, what I quoted is our absolute floor price. Even if you want ten thousand pieces per item, the price remains the same.”
“It’s like I said before: our Anxin County Textile Factory currently has limited production capacity, and we don’t intend to accept too many orders at this session of the Canton Fair.”
“If you continue to hesitate, we might simply find ourselves unable to accept your order.”
“After all, we won’t make much money from this order of yours anyway; it’s merely a matter of taking a loss just to make a bit of noise.”
When the translator, Little Lin, translated these words for Ji Tong, he exerted every ounce of effort to maintain a normal cadence.
They won’t make much money?
The cost of this stuff shouldn’t amount to much at all, right?
How on earth does she manage to say this without even a change in her expression?
Ji Tong was thinking along the exact same lines.
He had worked in the foreign trade department for years. Although he didn’t know much about hair accessories, he could make a reasonable estimate. Looking at the quotation sheet in front of him, the profit margin had to be at least fifty percent!
If Su He knew what they were thinking, she would definitely teach them a lesson.
The cost they were looking at was merely the physical cost of materials, whereas this quotation included the cost of design.
Accessories sold based entirely on their design!
Jim had never encountered such a stubborn, unyielding negotiating partner in his life; she was completely impervious to both soft and hard approaches.
Yet, he deeply coveted Su He’s design sketches as well as China’s cheap labor costs. In the end, he gritted his teeth:
“Su, let’s go with the price you stated! However, I have one condition: you can only supply these identical products exclusively to me; you cannot sell them to anyone else.”
Su He smiled. “Do you think this request is reasonable? What you are purchasing is merchandise, not my intellectual property rights. If you wish to buy out these patterns entirely, you may, but you must pay an additional buyout fee of one hundred thousand dollars.”
Jim: “…”
Pretend I never said a thing!
He had initially wanted to exploit a loophole, since China didn’t place much emphasis on intellectual property rights at the moment, but he hadn’t expected to hit a brick wall immediately.
“By the way, Mr. Jim, I think you shouldn’t order too large a quantity either.”
“Although you can seize the market early on because the design patterns are completely unique, these few products haven’t been tested by the market yet, so there is still an inherent risk.”
“Therefore, I feel a maximum of five thousand pieces per item is sufficient; any more would be unnecessary.”
Human psychology could be a funny thing sometimes—if Su He had urged Jim to buy more, he might have scaled down his order.
But now that Su He was advising him to buy less, he stubbornly wanted to buy more instead.
He felt Su He was right. While identical designs hadn’t hit the market yet, he should stockpile more goods. He would undoubtedly make a massive killing during the upcoming Christmas season!
Consequently, he absolutely insisted on raising the quantity to six thousand pieces per item. Even the few expensive brooch styles were raised to five hundred pieces each, and Su He couldn’t even dissuade him.
Ji Tong was completely dumbfounded as he watched this unfold!
This was the very first time he had ever seen a seller urging a buyer to buy less!
Ultimately, the final amount of the contract was set at one hundred and fifteen thousand three hundred dollars.
At this point, the train conductor, Wang Qiang, called Director Feng over.
Because the official company seal was in his possession.
Su He had actually wanted to stamp it with the Huaihua Branch Factory’s seal. However, the Huaihua Branch Factory lacked foreign trade qualifications, so it had to be stamped with the Textile Factory’s main seal.
The advance purchase contract was written in both Chinese and English, so Director Feng could understand it.
His hands shook uncontrollably.
Forget about stamping it; he couldn’t even manage to open the zipper of his briefcase for the longest time.
Su He had no choice but to take matters into her own hands, pulling out the official seal and bringing it down with sharp, definitive thuds.
Jim repeatedly emphasized the delivery timeframe, because he wanted to catch the Christmas season.
Su He generally left herself a margin of error when handling matters. Therefore, she only promised to deliver one-third of the goods before Christmas, with the remaining items to be delivered before February of the following year.
In addition, if any force majeure events occurred—such as cargo ships encountering storms at sea, heightened tensions between the two nations, and so forth—the contract could be extended indefinitely.
Jim felt he had never suffered such a humiliating, suffocating ordeal in his entire life!
But for the sake of money, he could only accept it.
Ji Tong also felt a wave of emotion. He had witnessed countless business negotiations. Even when dealing with high-demand commodities that foreign merchants fought tooth and nail over, he had never seen anyone like Su He, who firmly kept the upper hand entirely in her own grasp from start to finish.
Su He drew several small straw-woven ornaments from her briefcase and presented them to Jim. “Mr. Jim, these are products from our Handicraft Factory, a little souvenir for you.”
Jim said in surprise, “I frequently attend your Canton Fair and have seen plenty of straw-woven products. But this is the first time I’ve seen this particular style; it’s quite exquisite.”
Su He replied with a beaming smile, “If you have friends who wish to purchase them in bulk, you can have them come find me.”
Jim: “…Alright.”
And here I thought it was a gift for me, but it turns out to be bait for fishing!
After Jim left, Su He exchanged a few polite words with Ji Tong before leading Director Feng back.
Director Feng was somewhat more steady than Director Tian; he didn’t stumble or lose his footing, but his eyes were a bit glazed.
A mere half-hour ago, he was still worrying about being unable to find a suitable booth that aligned with their products. Yet now, they had just secured a hundred and fifteen thousand three hundred dollar order?
What did they even need an exhibition booth for?!
Little Su herself was a mobile exhibition booth!
