Chapter 043 Sweater Yarn
Of course, the premise is that it can be sold.
The business system in Hong Kong is now well established. It is unlike the mainland in the 1980s, where everyone was reckless and could make money as long as they were brave enough. In Hong Kong, whether you can make money or not is uncertain. If you accidentally offend the local tyrants, that could be fatal.
It was still early, so she did not go back immediately. She took the fashion magazines and entertainment magazines she had just received and found the license plate of a bus nearby. The buses here are also called public buses.
When the bus arrived, she deliberately stood at the back, watching the people in front of her get on and put money into the car. After confirming that it was a bus with a fixed fare, she quickly found the price clearly displayed in the car, took money out of her pocket, and calmly got on the bus and put money in.
After getting on the bus, she looked up and found the time posted on the bus. She made sure that she would not miss the last bus for the round trip, then she sat in the corner of the last row of the bus, took out the fashion magazine she had just bought and looked down at it.
The car started smoothly and drove forward on the bustling street.
The people in the car started talking and gossiping. Because they were all familiar with each other, everyone spoke very fast, which made Tang Yuan dizzy for a while. He could only focus on the elderly people who spoke slowly and listen to the useful information from their words.
Most of the time, people chat about neighborhood gossip, occasionally mixed with some entertainment information and information about wealthy families, and the sources of this information are almost all from newspapers and television.
The Hong Kong paparazzi, who later became famous for their gossip and ruthless mouths, were already well-known at this time.
However, as long as it does not involve more in-depth things, the juicy gossip in newspapers and television is mostly regarded by the rich as capital to show off their charm, and not many people care.
Although polygamy has been abolished in Hong Kong today, the habit over the years has allowed many men to openly keep concubines. Their families do not care, and ordinary people as outsiders naturally do not care either. They just listen to it for fun in their spare time.
The bus passed through large and small stations along the way, all of which were places where people gathered, and there were also many particularly prosperous areas. The most obvious difference was that there were a lot of cars in these places.
Tang Yuan even saw some familiar license plate logos here.
Of course, there are also some big-name stores.
Sitting on the bus and watching the scenes in front of her, she always had a feeling that she would never be able to reach this level. With a sense of inexplicable illusion, she always felt that everything in front of her was unreal.
We arrived at another stop, the bus stopped, and people came up carrying large and small bags of fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish and shrimp.
"The fish is cheap today."
"I bought two. Chinese New Year is coming soon, so I can keep one for pickling."
"I bought two white radishes and cooked radish soup for dinner."
"Put some pickled meat in the radish soup, just two or three slices, and it will taste great. The difference in a bowl of delicious radish soup is that little bit of oil."
"The pickled meat is expensive now, it costs thirty-one kilograms."
"Has the price gone up again? I bought it two days ago for only 25 yuan per pound."
"The New Year is coming soon, and things are getting more expensive. Come buy more cabbage tomorrow, and make some pickled vegetables at home so that we don't have to worry about vegetables during the New Year. If you wait until the New Year to buy them, it will cost you a lot more money."
"Yeah, then I'll come tomorrow too, and we'll bring back more cabbage. We can start pickling it now so it's ready for the New Year."
…
The bus was already crowded, but luckily Tang Yuan's seat was far enough back and in the corner that she was not crowded. As she listened to everyone's chatter, the illusion and unreality in her heart gradually dissipated.
In this way, she took the bus all the way to the terminal, and then took the reverse bus back to the starting point. She did not get lost, and finally got some understanding of the situation in Hong Kong.
The place where she lived was not remote, but Hong Kong was not a big place. Compared with the prosperous and bustling places, her place was definitely remote. It was also because of this that the rent there was cheap.
She had read several newspapers with rental information in the past two days and wanted to leave where she lived and rent a house somewhere else with a slightly better environment. A house of 14 or 15 square meters would cost 800 yuan. She had to prepare at least several thousand yuan, otherwise she would be kicked out at any moment.
The question then was what she was going to do.
The clothes can be made, but how to sell them is a problem. The market is not crowded with people, but the competition is fierce. If she wants to compete with others for business, others may not agree.
High-end clothes have high profit margins, but she has no channels, so even if she makes them, she doesn’t know where to sell them.
She lowered her head and rolled up the magazine in her hand. When she looked up, she saw someone sitting at the door of the store knitting a sweater with a book next to her. She was reading while knitting with a frown on her face.
With her eyesight, she could clearly see the contents of the book, which was nothing but the weaving method of the sweater pattern.
This store is a sweater store, but there are not many sweaters in it now, only a few sweaters of very simple styles.
Is it really hand-woven?
She was surprised, and then she looked at the sweaters in the store. She put the magazine rolled up in her hand behind her back and walked forward: "Do you sell wool here?"
The person who was knitting a sweater looked up and said, "You want to buy wool? Just wool?"
"Of course," Tang Yuan nodded, "but I'm not very good at knitting sweaters. Can you teach me a little bit? It would be best if I could have a book to read so that I can learn it."
"I have books here, a lot of them." The other person stood up and took Tang Yuan into the house. He quickly took out a pile of books from the corner, which were full of weaving methods of various sweater patterns.
During this time, Tang Yuan glanced at the remaining sweaters in the store and said casually, "Sweaters are so expensive, I'd better knit them myself."
"It's expensive, but they're all handmade, which is very difficult," the other party immediately replied, "I knit all the sweaters in my store myself. As soon as the better designs are put up, people will come to buy them. They're willing to pay 100 or 200 yuan for them. But I really can't knit too many. If the designs are more complicated, it takes me three days to knit one. I don't make much money even if I sell it for 200 yuan."
Two hundred yuan for one, one every three days, two thousand yuan a month.
For a store owner, this amount is indeed not much.
"Is this store yours?" Tang Yuan asked.
"How do you know?" the other party was surprised.
Tang Yuan smiled. If it wasn't his own, he could earn 2,000 yuan a month by opening a sweater store. He might as well just find a job in a factory. Besides, it wasn't his own store, so it probably wouldn't exist by now.
"I guess it's yours. You look like a boss," Tang Yuan praised him, and then said, "Why don't you ask for help?"
"You have to ask people to be willing to do it. At first, they did, asking them to work at night, but the styles I wanted were complicated, and they only worked at night. It took five or six days to knit one piece, and they thought the money was too little, so they refused," the boss sighed. "Daddy and Mommy were happy with it at first, but maybe they saw that I was unhappy, so they said they would not let me do this business anymore."
Tang Yuan turned around and saw the photos posted in the store. He immediately saw the owner and the clothes she was wearing: "Did you knit it yourself? What a beautiful sweater."
"Yes, I knitted it. You think it's beautiful, right?" the boss said happily. "I like knitting sweaters so I wanted to open this store. The prices are not high. They are all affordable. I like people to wear the sweaters I designed. It's a pity... By the way, I have a lot of wool here. If I close the store, you won't need it anymore. If you need it in the future, come more often. Maybe I can give it to you at a lower price."
"I actually plan to buy it back and have my family make it," Tang Yuan said. Because of the language barrier, she spoke slowly and was deliberately vague at times, as long as the other party could roughly understand her. "My family has difficulty moving around, so they just knit sweaters to kill time. Boss, how much is one sweater? If possible, can I take orders for my family? Even if it's not much, as long as I can make money, my family will be very happy."
"Really?" The boss looked at her excitedly. "My prices are based on the style. The most basic ones are ten yuan each, and the more complicated ones are fifty yuan each. If you design something more complicated in the future, the price can be raised. It would be great if someone in your family could weave it! This way, my store can continue to operate!"
"Of course, fifty-one pieces is good, but my family may not be able to make it very quickly, so maybe we can make something simpler, such as weaving a single piece, so the price can be lower, for example, two complicated pieces can be counted as one piece," Tang Yuan took the initiative to suggest, "We can also weave simple ones, so the price can be cheaper."
"Okay, bring it here when the time comes and I'll weave it together," the boss was obviously very satisfied with Tang Yuan's suggestion, "Take it home and try it out today. Here is a relatively simple basic design, and a pattern I specially asked someone to make. The yarn..."
"I'll buy the yarn back. If it's okay, I'll pay you for the wages and the yarn, okay?" Tang Yuan said before she opened her mouth. "Today I just took your drawings for free. After all, we're not familiar with each other yet. I can't ask you to trust me for nothing."
"Okay, then I'll do as you say. I'll count the yarn." The boss looked at the picture and quickly took out the yarn he needed. "This is the front, and this is the back. These are the most complicated. If you can weave these two pieces, I can give you... thirty yuan."
“Is that too much?”
"Not much. After I finish the complicated parts, the rest will be simple. I can finish them quickly." The boss packed the yarn in a bag. "Give me five dollars for the yarn. When you finish, bring it to me and I'll give you thirty-five."
"Okay," Tang Yuan counted out five dollars, "By the way, my name is Wen Jiaqi."
"We have the same name. My name is Xue Shiqi," the boss said, cupping his hands happily. "I hope everything goes well for you, so that I can knit sweaters faster in the future. I hope this store can continue to operate and never close."
Tang Yuan smiled, guessing that she must be well taken care of by her family.
But now she has the same idea as the other party, hoping that this sweater store can be open for a longer time. After all, she still wants to make money from this sweater store.
The other party can't find anyone, but she can.
Aunt Qian and the others have not been knitting wool recently as they are all very free. As for Shen Wenyu, she was knitting sweaters every time she went to the scrap yard before. She stopped knitting these few times when she went back. I guess she had run out of wool to knit.
After all, even a good cook cannot cook without rice.