Chapter 87: Come Work by My Side
Xiao Liang gave a fairly detailed account of everything he had done over the past month to build the new company, then smiled and asked, “If President Xu is interested in the health supplement market, why not invest a little?”
“I’ll pass,” Xu Jianqiang said, shaking his head. “I’ve already got more than enough messes of my own to deal with. I was hoping to ask you for advice, not take on even more. But I am curious how you plan to approach health supplements. Competition in this industry is fierce. You don’t suspect I’m here to steal trade secrets, do you?”
Aside from not wanting to step into an industry carrying policy risks—lest his old man find out and explode—Xu Jianqiang also had to consider that Suyun Biotechnology had only started with seven hundred thousand yuan.
If he put in a small sum, say two or three hundred thousand, as a purely financial investment and demanded twenty or thirty percent of the shares, wouldn’t that be outright bullying?
No one was a fool.
If he took such a large stake now with so little money, then refused to shoulder risks or provide shelter when policy trouble came, the partnership would only end in bad blood.
“With so many health supplement companies crowding into the market, everyone is showing off whatever tricks they have. In President Xu’s eyes, what trade secrets could there possibly be?”
If Xu Jianqiang had been willing to participate, Xiao Liang would certainly have adopted a different strategy later. But he was even more pleased that Xu Jianqiang knew his boundaries.
He smiled and said, “For now, we’ve barely put the sales team together. The factory can handle small-scale production. Our available funds are extremely limited, so we can only build step by step, starting with Dongzhou and Xijiang. Market promotion and publicity are more or less the usual set of moves. We’ll try it for a year or so and see.”
Xiao Liang wasn’t merely bluffing. The funds he could use were indeed that limited.
Even if Gu Peijun squeezed every possible yuan out of the juice factory’s production funds, they could only produce two or three hundred thousand boxes at a time. On Xiao Liang’s side, even if he scraped together everything he could, next month’s market budget would only be two or three hundred thousand at most.
How could they possibly make a huge splash from the start?
For the next phase, Xiao Liang’s main goal was to use the Xijiang and Dongzhou markets to run the entire business process from beginning to end, pushing every link to the highest efficiency possible for this era.
Besides continuing to accumulate usable capital and train and expand the team, it would also take time to build relatively stable, trustworthy relationships with upstream and downstream partners: suppliers of raw materials, packaging, equipment, media advertising, and the downstream distributors, wholesalers, and retailers.
Only after stable trust had been established across the supply chain would they be able to occupy larger amounts of outside capital to expand production and sales.
At present, apart from using the juice factory’s production funds and having the factory process products without immediate payment, what right did Suyun Biotechnology have to use anyone else’s money?
If they wanted to advertise in Dongzhou Daily or on television now, they had to pay a sizable portion upfront, and the remaining payments were strictly tied to the ad schedule. If they dared fall behind, the television station and newspaper would cut off their ads in an instant.
Deceptive marketing could work once, but not again. Before building stable relationships upstream and downstream, Xiao Liang neither wanted nor was able to stir up too much noise.
In this era, a newly founded private company without a county magistrate or mayor for a father had no chance of getting a bank loan. That was a fantasy.
There wasn’t much public information about Xu Jianqiang’s Fanhua Construction. Xiao Liang had asked around over the past month, but all he knew was that Fanhua Construction had been established under the Dongzhou Municipal Construction Bureau less than two and a half years ago, yet had already developed and completed Xinhuatong Tower in Dongzhou, with a total floor area exceeding thirty thousand square meters and a total investment no lower than fifty million yuan.
In 1994 Dongzhou, that alone was enough to prove that Fanhua Construction—or rather, the backing behind Xu Jianqiang—extended far beyond Dongzhou itself.
Although Xu Jianqiang’s car was merely an old Passat with somewhat stiff lines, and his secretary Zhou Hua, while capable and efficient as a professional woman, was far from the kind of decorative beauty some bosses liked to parade around. The image Xu Jianqiang presented was far less showy than Le You’s.
Xiao Liang laid out almost everything about the next phase of **Naojianling**’s production and marketing to Xu Jianqiang without reservation.
“The health supplement market is chaotic right now. Exaggerated advertising has become the norm. Our Naojianling’s main effects are improving gastrointestinal function, promoting sleep, and relieving fatigue. It has no other messy claims, let alone curing every disease under the sun. But the effects we advertise are indeed based on years of research by Professor Xu Yushan of Dongzhou Institute of Technology and have been reviewed and approved by relevant experts and the provincial drug administration. President Xu can take a few boxes and try them.”
“If you don’t exaggerate at all in your advertising, won’t the market be even harder to crack?” Xu Jianqiang asked curiously.
“I never expected to build the market overnight. I only want to start slowly with one product in two small markets, Xijiang and Dongzhou. Who told me to start from such a low point, yet still be unwilling to spend my life slowly grinding away at the township level?” Xiao Liang said frankly.
Xu Jianqiang thought about it and found that reasonable. He assumed Xiao Liang had spent the past two years working at the township level and that his family background was likely ordinary.
Starting so low, being only twenty-two years old, and already owning his own company with a product about to enter the market next month—wasn’t that proof enough of his ability?
Xu Jianqiang then couldn’t help wondering: if he had been in Xiao Liang’s position, and had just suffered such a blow two months earlier, could he have done this much?
Forget everything else. At twenty-two, an age when nearly everyone would look down on him, could he have built a team of sixty or seventy people from nothing in just two months?
Only then did Xu Jianqiang realize that, although he wasn’t optimistic about the health supplement market, if he were standing where Xiao Liang stood, he would fall far short. Looking down on Xiao Liang because of this was even more inappropriate.
Of course, when Xiao Liang said the company’s seven hundred thousand yuan had been “raised” with great difficulty, Xu Jianqiang took it as ordinary fundraising.
“Do you have time to visit my place today?” Xu Jianqiang invited. “You know Fanhua Construction is based in Xinhuatong Tower now, right?”
“I found out long ago. I just didn’t have the nerve to disturb you,” Xiao Liang said. Seeing Gu Peijun appear briefly outside his office door, he turned to Xu Jianqiang. “President Xu may have to sit here for a while. The company has a thousand loose ends right now, and I may not be able to leave immediately.”
“No problem. It’s still early. As long as I can get you to Xinhuatong Tower today, that’s enough,” Xu Jianqiang said with a smile, telling Xiao Liang to handle his work first.
Xiao Liang used the internal line to ask Xu Lihuan and He Xueqing to bring some materials to his office and give Xu Jianqiang a more detailed introduction.
Then he went to the meeting room next door. Gu Peijun, Zhang Feili, and Zhang Feili’s cousin Zhang Wei were seated inside.
“How did it go?” Xiao Liang asked.
Zhang Feili’s official position at the juice factory was head of the General Affairs Section. After such a scene today, Gu Peijun, as factory director, naturally had to go to the police station immediately to inquire.
After what had happened, Zhang Feili didn’t want to bring any negative impact to the company or the juice factory. At the station, she told Gu Peijun she wanted to resign.
Whether her resignation would be accepted depended on Xiao Liang. So after Zhang Feili finished giving her statement, Gu Peijun and Zhang Wei accompanied her over to see him.
“After I came back from Xijiang, I asked Zhou Bin for a divorce. He refused the whole time. I never expected him to make such a scene today. I thought too simply about all this, and I’ve caused a very bad impact on you and the factory. The best solution now is for me to resign from the juice factory…”
Zhang Feili bit her lip as she spoke.
Zhou Bin had cursed and beaten her several times before. Today he had dragged her through the street to the front of the cultural center, all but openly accusing her of having an affair with Xiao Liang and demanding a divorce because of him.
The humiliation was unbearable. At this moment, Zhang Feili could only grit her teeth and swallow her tears.
“Oh. I thought it was something serious,” Xiao Liang said. “I don’t approve your resignation. Starting tomorrow, you’ll report directly to Suyun Biotechnology and work as my assistant. You’ll take charge of the HR and administration department for now.”
He looked at the battered, disheveled Zhang Feili and continued without giving her room to argue.
“If there’s nothing else, go home and rest today. I still have things to discuss with Director Gu tonight. Also, the company is preparing to hire Wu Songlin, head of the town judicial office, as legal counsel. From now on, you don’t need to contact the Zhou family directly about your divorce. Entrust it to Director Wu. We can’t pay him legal fees for nothing. Your job is to focus on your work. The company isn’t paying you for free either.”
Then Xiao Liang turned to Gu Peijun.
“Xu Jianqiang from Fanhua Construction—the President Xu I mentioned to you before—is here with his secretary. He invited us to visit his company…”
Watching Xiao Liang and Gu Peijun walk out, Zhang Wei was stunned.
This hotheaded kid truly didn’t put the Zhou family in his eyes at all.
If Zhang Feili resigned from the juice factory, even if Zhou Jianqi and his son suspected something between her and Xiao Liang, as long as they hadn’t caught them in bed, they wouldn’t openly tear things apart any further. After all, Party Secretary Wang Xingmin was still there keeping pressure on the town.
But now Xiao Liang was not only transferring Zhang Feili directly to his side as an assistant, he was also asking Wu Songlin, Suyun Biotechnology’s legal adviser, to represent her in the divorce case. Wasn’t that the same as slapping Zhou Jianqi, his son, and that tigress county government office director right across the face?
This kid already had a blood feud with Fan Chunjiang, and he truly didn’t care about making another one with the Zhou family?
Zhang Wei had been a rough character in town in his early years. When he was in school, his uncle Zhang Qiang had often chased him down to beat sense into him. After leaving the army, all he had wanted was to open a boxing gym and talk brotherhood. But now he was almost thirty.
After getting married and having a child, he had a business of his own that looked respectable enough, and his thinking had matured.
Many times, he looked down on people like Zhou Jianqi and Chen Shen. But doing business in town required relying on such relationships, so he had to be careful and keep a sense of proportion.
Even when Xiao Liang had once publicly refused to give him face, afterward Xiao Liang would come downstairs after work to play a few rounds on the arcade machines and occasionally visit the boxing gym on the third floor. Zhang Wei had always greeted him with a smile. He was no longer the impulsive, hot-tempered young man he had once been.
Now that this involved his own cousin, he had no choice in where he stood. But he knew all too well what it meant in Yunshe to become sworn enemies with both Fan Chunjiang and Zhou Jianqi.
Before, Xiao Liang and Gu Peijun could be said to rely on Wang Xingmin in Yunshe, so they didn’t need to fear Fan Chunjiang too much. After all, Wang Xingmin and Fan Chunjiang had never been on the same side, and from beginning to end, Wang had intended to use the Xiao Yujun case to suppress Fan.
But if Xiao Liang offended both Fan Chunjiang and Zhou Jianqi to death, would Wang Xingmin still protect him?
To be honest, if Zhang Wei didn’t know his cousin’s character, and if Xiao Liang hadn’t spent so much time working late in the cultural center building recently, appearing under Zhang Wei’s nose almost every day, even he would have begun wondering whether the two of them really had something going on.
He hesitated, looking at Zhang Feili, whose cheeks were still streaked with tears.
“Why don’t we first go see how your parents are talking with Zhou Jianqi?”
After such a major incident, Zhou Jianqi and Zhang Feili’s parents had of course been notified and had rushed to the police station immediately.
After the statements were taken, Zhou Jianqi had forcefully demanded that Zhang Feili’s parents go to his office for a talk. Zhang Wei had no idea how that conversation was going.
