July, August, and September were the traditional peak season for beverage sales.

Not every distributor or wholesaler was willing to go all-in, but most had already scaled up their orders to three or five hundred cases at a time—anything less simply wouldn’t be enough for the retailers downstream.

The bolder ones, the ones with real cash flow, were practically itching to take a full day’s supply off the table in one go.

By July 1st, things had already escalated. In just the first half of the month, cumulative net shipments had reached twenty thousand cases. And the three thousand cases that arrived that very day were snapped up almost instantly.

In 1994, the mainstream drinks were still the old-fashioned carbonated sodas that sold for thirty to fifty cents a bottle. A fruit juice priced at 3.5 yuan per bottle was still considered a luxury item—even in Xijiang, one of Jiang Province’s most economically developed cities. Only in recent years had ordinary consumers begun to accept it.

Not just Xu Lihuan and the others—even Gu Peijun, who had spent over a year in sales at the juice factory and already outperformed most of the veteran staff, could hardly imagine that a prefecture-level city could absorb twenty thousand cases in such a short time. And all of it was cash on delivery.

Of course, this wasn’t because Xijiang’s actual consumption power was that strong. The real reason was the distribution network—dozens of distributors and wholesalers, plus over fifteen hundred small neighborhood shops and eateries—collectively swallowing the supply.

And judging from the frantic pace of the last few days, Xu Lihuan estimated that even if another twenty thousand cases were released into the channel, paid either in cash or remittance slips, the distributors still wouldn’t have fully grasped what was happening.

If Xiao Liang had truly intended a one-shot deal without caring about downstream digestion, he could have easily replicated this model across five or six nearby prefecture-level cities at the same time.

Xu Lihuan, Wu Qiyan, and Zhang Feili had already begun to understand the system. With more manpower pulled from the factory and basic training in place, each of them could even lead a team and run their own territory.

Even if their efficiency was slightly lower than Xiao Liang’s, even if results were a bit weaker, under the two-month deadline, they might not just meet the original target of sixty to eighty thousand cases—they could potentially push it past two hundred thousand.

The factory hadn’t even resumed full production yet. Total inventory stood at just one hundred thousand cases. But if they really wanted to scale aggressively, they could either outsource production to other juice factories—or simply buy up existing stock from competitors at low prices and relabel it as Nanting products.

But Xiao Liang had no intention of playing a short-term game like that.

In the newly opened office on Zijiang Road, now serving as their headquarters, Xiao Liang sat at one end of the conference table, selfishly angling the electric fan directly toward himself.

After Xu Lihuan finished reporting the results of the previous phase, Xiao Liang casually asked Zhang Feili to hand him a glass of water to use as an ashtray. Then he spoke.

“The first day I came to Xijiang, I laid out the execution plan in that room upstairs. Zhang Feili was sitting below muttering that what we were doing… was basically deception.”

Zhang Feili’s face immediately reddened.

“At the time, I really didn’t understand,” she said awkwardly. “I’d barely left the province twice in my life. I don’t know how to talk properly. Director Xiao, you’re not going to hold that against me, are you? Fine, fine—I admit I was wrong. Punish me however you want, I’ll take it.”

“Oh? Then tell us,” Wu Qiyan teased, clearly enjoying herself as a married woman with children. “How exactly should Director Xiao punish you?”

Zhang Feili, realizing she’d sounded a little too coquettish earlier, grew even more embarrassed. She reached out and pinched Wu Qiyan.

“What nonsense are you talking about?”

Xiao Liang, expression unreadable, calmly shifted his gaze away from Zhang Feili’s delicate face. He tapped the table, signaling the topic was drifting.

“Enough joking around. This is actually a serious issue—Zhang Feili just happened to point it out early.”

He leaned back slightly.

“If we completely ignore downstream consequences and dump everything onto distributors and wholesalers, even if they can’t find any formal fault in us, it’s still hard to argue that this isn’t deception—or at least deception-like marketing.”

He paused.

“Of course, I’m not here to talk about morality or conscience. That’s not the point. The point is—if we don’t want to be just a small-time outfit making quick cash and walking away, if we actually want this factory and all of us to have long-term development, then what comes next is critical.”

His tone sharpened slightly.

“We cannot think about endlessly replicating this mess in other cities. Instead, we need to clean up Xijiang properly first. Once that’s stable, then we can talk about whether this counts as deception or not.”

Over the past few days, Xiao Liang had continued to pull more young workers from the factory.

Most of them had only junior middle school education, but they were quick-witted enough.

Given the situation, he couldn’t afford to be picky. Once they arrived, he assigned them to Xu Lihuan’s teams to help with street canvassing. The work wasn’t complicated after training, but it significantly reduced the burden on the core group, freeing Xu Lihuan from exhausting repetition and gradually shifting him toward actual coordination and management.

Xiao Liang knew this might cause misunderstandings, but the results of the previous phase had yet to fully show themselves, so he didn’t rush to reveal the next stage of the plan.

This was an era where marketing brilliance exploded everywhere—countless aggressive and even destructive sales tactics emerged—but Xiao Liang had never seen many companies survive after pushing that kind of approach too far.

So from the beginning, he never intended to blindly scale outward.

Aside from Xijiang city proper, he had only targeted five surrounding counties. If even that wasn’t enough to meet the cash-return target, only then would he consider moving into Dongzhou city.

For now, Xijiang alone was more than enough.

The additional dozen or so young workers he pulled from the factory were not meant for uncontrolled expansion into other cities. Instead, Xu Lihuan and Xu Xiaodong would each lead teams down into the five surrounding counties, while the main force stayed in Xijiang city.

The focus would shift entirely toward real market development.

They needed to expand actual consumer demand—not just leave stock sitting in distributors’ and retailers’ hands gathering dust.

County-level teams would inevitably perform worse than Xiao Liang himself leading them, but that wasn’t a problem. In fact, he didn’t want them to be too efficient there at all.

He wanted restraint. Controlled application of reverse marketing.

Because the real battlefield was the city proper.

There, they would begin genuine brand building—television ads, newspaper placements, outdoor promotions, and retail campaigns in busy commercial districts. All of it would create a ripple effect that would naturally spill over into the counties.

Ultimately, Xiao Liang’s goal was simple:

To truly activate the Xijiang market.

The juice factory’s production capacity, limited by local fruit supply from Shishan County, could not scale indefinitely. But if they could fully develop Xijiang and Dongzhou, demand would be enough to absorb everything they could produce.

More importantly, he wanted to build a real team—something that could stand on its own in the future.

He wasn’t interested in short-term tricks that left behind a mess no one cleaned up. The next phase would give them a complete picture of marketing as a system.

Yes, investment would increase several times over—maybe even tenfold.

But without that, there was no way to truly ignite the Xijiang market or achieve real, sustained sales growth.

And fortunately, Xu Lihuan, Wu Qiyan, and Zhang Feili hadn’t yet been blinded or overwhelmed by the “marketing-first” frenzy of the era. Instead, hearing Xiao Liang’s more grounded next-stage plan, they actually felt more at ease.

Because this time, it finally sounded like something stable.

Something real.