Clay sculpture is certainly not simply playing with mud. As an intangible cultural heritage of Chinese civilization, there are actually many profound skills in making clay sculpture.
Just for the raw material step, you have to select the right clay, and then it has to go through weathering, pulping, filtering, and dehydration. Especially in the last step, you have to add cotton wool and repeatedly pound and knead it to make it "cooked mud." It's very difficult to get to the point where no cotton wool can be seen at all.
During the entire processing process, auxiliary materials are also needed, such as wood, bamboo, rattan, lead wire, paper, silk flowers, etc.
In terms of complexity, it is in no way inferior to the various figures produced in China.
It can even be said that clay sculpture is the ancestor of the model industry.
Logically speaking, to do this, Xu Shang only needs to open a store like other businesses, recruit some employees, and start professional and elite management.
But after thinking about it, Xu Shang decided to try a different approach.
First of all, the profession of clay sculpture can actually be divided into many steps, of which the most difficult step is of course the production, so the selection of people for this step must be done first. However, many steps that actually use labor, such as digging soil and making raw materials, do not have high thresholds.
Furthermore, Xu Shang could feel that the "reasonable wages" he offered had stimulated the villagers of Tianya Village to a certain extent. As the ancients said, "It is not the lack of wealth that is worrying, but the inequality of wealth." Now that some people have made money, many more people can only watch helplessly. This is obviously not right.
Xu Shang therefore simply started a part-time job project. Except for the final 'clay sculptor' who was selected separately for training, all the others were split up. The project remuneration was based on the basic hourly wage plus labor performance. At the same time, in order to ensure that everyone could get a share of the benefits, the working hours were limited, and each person was only allowed to do a maximum of 3 hours of part-time work per day.
Although everyone was not very satisfied with the job that did not provide them with "five insurances and one fund", since the salary offered by Xu Shang for odd jobs was very high, everyone still worked very hard.
Xu Shang actually wanted to quickly train a group of "clay sculptors".
Because even if he maximized the efficiency of making clay sculptures, it would not be able to keep up with the speed at which orders came in. However, cultivating talents is not something that can be done in a hurry, so for now he can only take it slow.
However, after subcontracting other tasks such as digging, processing, packaging and express delivery, Xu Shang's efficiency increased immediately as he focused on making clay figures.
Xu Shang also discovered that when it comes to making money, Xu Shang discovered that this thing can make much more money than making pancakes!
There is a very true statement in the post criticizing Xu Shang in the forum.
That is, the cost of the clay figurine is really low, especially compared with the selling price of eight yuan for a blind box.
Soil, cotton wool, wood...none of these looks valuable.
After all, what this thing is selling is a craft!
Probably the biggest costs are packaging and express delivery. The packaging boxes are custom-made, but a clay sculpture can only use a certain amount of cardboard, so this is not expensive. As for express delivery, there is no way around it. Even in 2006, it might cost an ordinary person ten yuan to send a package.
Even if Xu Shang negotiated with the courier as a merchant, the most he could get was 5 yuan for one item. So Xu Shang had no choice but to resort to the evil selling method of later generations - blind boxes, and the minimum order was three.
After all, if he sells it individually and adds the delivery fee, he really doesn't make much profit.
Facts have proved that the way of playing with blind boxes is still a bit outrageous. Xu Shang even saw someone buying twenty blind boxes in one go.
This is before Xu Shang came up with any tricks, such as the 1% chance of getting an SSR, or the small probability of a gold special edition, the Eight Vajra, or a set of twelve zodiac signs.
Xu Shang conservatively estimated that he could earn at least 6 yuan for each clay figurine.
He is almost embarrassed about the amount of money he earns!
Therefore, Xu Shang didn't mind paying his fellow villagers a higher salary.
"Eighty, eighty? I only worked for three hours? You give me eighty yuan?" A nimble aunt looked at the salary in her hands and felt unbelievable.
"Auntie, you are the best among all the people. The base salary is 10 cents an hour, plus 50 yuan for performance-based compensation. This is the money you deserve!"
The aunt still couldn't believe it. She wiped her hands several times before taking the money and asked carefully: "Xiao Xu, you pay me so much salary, you won't lose money, right?"
Xu Shang thought that it was impossible to make a loss, with such an outrageous profit margin, if I doubled your salary, I might not even lose money.
Of course, all of this does not take into account Xu Shang’s personal technical contribution. What is truly valuable is his personal craftsmanship.
The others also had subtle expressions when they received their wages.
Although that aunt was the only one who received 80 yuan in salary, there were a large number of people who received 50 or 60 yuan, and 40 or 50 yuan was the most common situation. Of course, there were also some people who slacked off, but the lowest salary was 36 yuan.
You have to know that this salary is just for three hours of odd jobs.
In Sanma Town, if you want to get a salary of 40 yuan, you have to do odd jobs for at least one day. Eight hours is basically impossible, unless it is physical work that is paid by piece. No boss is so generous.
So everyone was eager to express their desire to turn this profession into their main job;
"Brother Xiao Xu! I want to continue!"
"No! You've done it all! What are others doing? Each person can only register once a day! Follow the registration order! Those who didn't register today will be postponed to the next day!"
Everyone could only leave disappointed, but then they immediately cheered up and quickly told their relatives and friends the good news.
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