Chapter 539 No Business

"Uncle Yutian, Aunt Meng, have you encountered any difficulties?"

Since it was discovered, Zhuang Yutian didn't try to hide it anymore. He sighed and said, "Ms. Ning is very smart and can see clearly. It really can't be hidden."

"Take a look inside this shop. Do you think there's something wrong?"

Zhuang Qingning raised his eyes and took a closer look. After carefully examining the shop from top to bottom, he exclaimed, "Huh?" "It seems that the goods in this shop are not fully stocked, right?"

Many of the shelves are empty, with no trace of cloth. To say that there is a shortage of stock is already a face-saving way of saying it; this shop should really be described as empty.

"Right, you've figured it out, right?" Zhuang Yutian said, "When other people come into the shop, they all say that my business is booming. The goods are selling so well and so fast that we can't even get new goods. Only we know that it's not that the business is booming, but that there is no business at all."

"No business to do?" Zhuang Qingning was more and more surprised. "How can you say that? Why is there no business to do?"

"This is a long story..."

Mrs. Meng brought Zhuang Qingning a cup of hot tea and told him the whole story in detail.

"Since the beginning of winter, it has been the peak season for fabric sales. The fabric shops in this county are all looking forward to doing good business in winter so that they can celebrate the New Year. So in the fall, they all start to stock up on goods in advance for use in the winter."

"But since the end of last autumn, when we placed our orders, many patterns and colors were out of stock, and the quantity we requested was also insufficient. The supplier said that there was too little rain last autumn, and the river transportation was not smooth, so the cloth from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and the two lakes could not be transported. Therefore, there was a shortage of goods during this period. We did not take it too seriously and thought it would be okay to order later."

"But the colder the weather gets, the less cloth there is. The orders that were originally scheduled for are all out of stock when the time comes. After much persuasion, we can barely get some. They are of no use at all. Because there is not enough cloth, we can only watch but not do the business before the New Year last year. Many of the business that was originally scheduled can only be postponed. Not only did we lose our smiles, but we also lost some money."

"Since the promised goods could not be delivered, we naturally couldn't just let it go. Your uncle Yutian went to ask for an explanation, but the other party was very unambiguous and doubled the previous deposit as compensation. However, since we have been doing business for several years, the deposit was originally small, so even if the compensation was doubled, there was not much money left. We could only add the money to compensate the customer."

"There is no stock in this shop, so we have to find a way to get some. But it is the end of the year, and cloth shops everywhere are doing good business. We don't even have enough cloth to sell, so we will naturally not sell it to us at a price lower than the price we sell to customers. But if we buy at the customer's price, it will be a loss-making deal. It is better not to do it."

"Well, business has been like this since last winter. I originally wanted to see if I could go to my peers to ask if there are any new suppliers, but my peers are all enemies. If my business can't continue, other people's business will naturally be better, so no one is willing to tell us about this."

"If we want to keep this shop going now, we can only ask your uncle Yutian to go to the capital and ask around. If we still can't find a supplier, we can only go south to see if we can find a more stable supplier. But it will take a long time to go back and forth, and the spring business will basically be completely delayed."

"If things don't go well, it's hard to predict business this summer."

Mrs. Meng sighed and said, "It all depends on whether we can meet a shop that doesn't want to continue its business and wants to sell its fabrics. But then again, if it comes to the point where it can't continue, the fabrics are either out of fashion or have problems, and it will be troublesome to take them over..."

"Why did they suddenly stop supplying the goods? And they refunded the deposit so quickly. There must be something wrong here." Zhuang Qingning raised his eyebrows and asked, "Is there someone behind this?"

"You really said it right." Zhuang Yutian said with a gloomy face, "I asked around and heard that Cao Jiande from Cao's family was behind this and was trying to cut off my family's business."

"This Cao Ji is the same as ours, and also runs a cloth shop. Cao Ji was originally the largest cloth shop here, and its business was quite good. Later, after Cheng Ji opened a cloth shop in the county town, the variety, quality and price of the cloth shop were much better than Cao Ji's. Cao Ji's business was not as good as before, so they could only reduce the variety of cloth shop and avoid Cheng Ji everywhere, and the business was still okay."

"Then I opened a cloth shop here, and the cloth I sold was similar to Cao's, but my shop was not as big as Cao's, and it was a new shop, so the prices of the goods I sold were not as high as Cao's. The goods were similar, but the prices were cheaper, so many people came here to buy cloth. After a while, they got used to it, and they also felt that your aunt and I were honest people, so they only bought here."

"You could say I stole a lot of Cao Ji's business. Last year, I did even better business with the mosquito repellent herbal bags. Cao Ji probably felt resentful and thought of a bad idea."

"This Cao Ji is really interesting." Zhuang Qingning showed a hint of mockery on his face. "Cheng Ji has taken away most of his business, but he dares not say anything. Your business is good, but he wants to force you to close down."

"Mr. Cheng can't win the fight, so naturally he picks on the weak." Mrs. Meng said angrily.

Zhuang Qingning curled the corners of his mouth.

The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!

This is what people are like. Because they are too far away, they cannot reach them even if they jump up, so they can only look up to the strong and cannot feel the slightest bit of jealousy. Instead, they are extremely jealous of the people around them who are almost at the same level as them but slightly better than them, and they only want to step on them.

"The most urgent thing is to find a way to solve the problem of cloth shortage in the shop." Zhuang Qingning pondered, "But speaking of it, I am very curious about one thing. We are located in the north, and the cotton production here is not weaker than that in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Hubei. Why do most of our shops have to import cloth from the south to sell?"

"Girl Ning, you probably don't know that although we do have a lot of cotton here and some people spin and weave it, the texture of the cloth we weave here is not delicate enough, and the colors are not bright enough. It's fine to use as bed sheets, quilt covers, or shoe uppers, and it's durable, but few people want this cloth, and we don't make new quilts every year. The amount used is far less than that of clothes, and the money earned is not as much as that of clothing materials."

(End of this chapter)