Chapter 129: Where There Is Expertise, There Is Profit

The Dongsheng Daily Necessities Company was about to accelerate its production at a breakneck pace.

The first night back home was peaceful enough. In those days, residential layouts rarely included a dining room; the front door opened into a hallway, with the kitchen to the left. A table could be squeezed in next to the stove for meals, and the family’s bathroom was located on the balcony outside the kitchen. Further down the corridor, there were two small rooms—the one on the left was partially annexed by the kitchen, while the one on the right, being larger and brighter, was given to Fengchu. The living room door facing the entrance could be closed and locked from the inside. Walking into the ten-square-meter living room, the master bedroom was on the left. It was diagonally opposite to Fengchu’s room, keeping them as far apart as possible to muffle any sound.

Having finally shooed away his chatterbox sister-in-law and his daughter, Rang Weidong locked the living room door. Dong Xueying, sitting on the bed with a flushed face, struggled to suppress her laughter as she watched him tiptoe around, using a large stack of towels to plug the gaps in the bedroom door’s transom and the threshold as if he were bracing against a flood. Only then did he return to the bed with a smug expression, whispering, "Keep it quiet later." Despite being a woman who had blossomed into maturity, Dong Xueying wasn't just shy; she felt as if she were burning up.

The next morning, Dong Xueqing inevitably gave them a judgmental eye-roll: "This house would fall apart without me! If I weren't here, who would help you look after the child? Is that any way for parents to act?!"

Rang Weidong ignored her and drove them straight to the city center office. Whether she was out shopping or organizing the business, Dong Xueying had her own unique strengths. She might find it difficult to innovate or start something from scratch, but once a task was handed to her, she would execute it with steady determination, even if the process was a bit clumsy at times.

Rang Weidong didn't linger at the guesthouse. Since his parents weren't at the spicy hotpot shop in the morning, he arranged to meet them there in the evening before heading to the university factory site.

He was greeted by the arrival of 10,000 wax paper bags (each holding ten pads), 10,000 business-card-sized color-printed labels, and 100,000 sheets of pre-cut wax paper. The entire factory sprang into action. Nearly ten "core workers" from Shangzhou, twenty or thirty newly hired local women and children, five or six helpers from the spicy hotpot shop, and even Shen Cuiyue’s three younger siblings—along with a crowd of university students—began frantically wrapping the goods.

It was just like wrapping White Rabbit Creamy Candies: they rolled up the sanitary napkins, wrapped them in wax paper, and twisted both ends. Each one earned a penny in labor fees. A pack of ten earned ten cents, and applying the adhesive label to seal the package added another two cents, totaling twelve cents for the manual labor. Including the cost of the color labels, packaging bags, and wax paper, the materials provided by the printing factory came to nine cents per pack. The production cost of the sanitary napkins themselves was twenty-seven cents. Setting aside machine wear and tear, purchase costs, venue fees, electricity, operator wages, and administrative overhead, the apparent basic cost was forty-eight cents per pack. With a retail price of one yuan, the gross profit was fifty-two cents. Rang Weidong offered a wholesale price of eighty cents per pack to the various Jiangzhou organizations, netting him a profit of thirty-two cents per pack.

By the end of the day, they had finished all 10,000 packs—100,000 pads. Representatives from the Jiangzhou Women’s Federation, textile mills, steel mills, universities, banks, and even public security and prison departments arrived before the end of the workday, paying cash on the spot to claim their shares.

One auntie sat silently from start to finish, her movements becoming increasingly skilled and nimble. In nearly ten hours, she completed 300 packs—that is, 3,000 pads wrapped and sealed—earning a daily wage of thirty-six yuan. She wept upon receiving her pay. The others, their hands cramped like chicken claws, also received their fair share of ten to twenty yuan based on their output.

Rang Weidong tried his hand at it, but after wrapping a few, he handed the task over to Shitou. He needed to pull Shen Cuiyue aside; the printing factory was already working overtime to ship out the next batch of 100,000 packs and 1,000,000 labels.

Now that the entire production, raw material, and packaging process for the sanitary napkins was self-sufficient, they could fully unleash their production capacity.

"Why are you joining in the wrapping?" Rang Weidong asked. "Take a monthly salary of two hundred, and a hundred for each of your younger brothers. Let’s see how much we make at the end of the month, and then we’ll split the rest... let’s say 80-20. I need to take my share to pay for advertising and television spots."

Shen Cuiyue looked him in the eye. "I don't know if you're testing me, but I deserve my monthly salary. If you talk about splitting the profits like this again, it’s an insult to me. The words 'faith' and 'trust' will always be right here, and they won't be erased."

Two months after the injury, the bandages were gone. On the back of her fair, plump hand, the bean-sized, diamond-shaped scar remained, embedded in the center with a faint pink hue. If he weren't already living with his girlfriend, Rang Weidong might have leaned in to take a closer look.

He simply nodded and moved on quickly: "I hope it’s a wake-up call, too. We can make money without breaking the law. Look at the kind of people you're dealing with now."

It was true; the stream of visitors was constant.

It wasn't until Rang Weidong arrived that he thought to ask if the university or the local post and telecommunications bureau could install a phone for the factory. "We understand the installation fees," he had said. According to Dong Xueqing, even after paying the 3,500 yuan installation fee, one had to wait in line, and it was possible that one would have to offer "favors" to speed up the process, with wait times of up to half a year. Therefore, the high installation fee effectively prevented most private households from ever having a phone.

Now, the university simply made a call, and the telecommunications bureau arrived immediately to install it. The female cadre leading the team only asked that they be allocated a few daily necessities. When every unit relied on the "iron rice bowl" system, things inevitably devolved this way—various departments used their sliver of power to secure personal benefits for one another. Now that the sanitary napkin factory controlled the distribution of a special commodity, it naturally gained the right to share in all kinds of power equally.

The product was simply too popular.

Rang Weidong couldn't articulate these grand theories, but he knew how to act. He had just bought a brand-new red van, and he personally drove it to deliver goods to the ladies from the various units who had provided assistance. These were, of course, free of charge. Shen Cuiyue advised him not to give away too much—a hundred packs per location was sufficient.

He took the cloth bags, roughly the size of television boxes, and walked them right into the offices of the various contacts. His explanation was simple: the factory he supported had finally produced its first batch, and he was there to share the good news and ask the leaders to provide their professional feedback on the new product. Rang Weidong had learned these tactics from when he used to deliver tape recorders and snacks to old leaders.

The brilliance lay in the number: one hundred packs. It was neither too many—which would make it lose its value—nor too few, which wouldn't be enough to satisfy the recipient and their inner circle. This specific quantity allowed the ladies who received them to use them as social capital for redistribution.

The effect was astonishing. It easily solidified a vast network of relationships. The women he dealt with were all department heads in their respective organizations, and they quickly prompted their units to apply for the goods. After the Women’s Federation, the Bureau of Commerce, the Bureau of Light Industry, and partners like the textile mill, the university, and the steel mill had been satisfied, the various functional departments finally began arriving late in the afternoon.

Shen Cuiyue was remarkably adept at managing these allocations! When the department stores, supply and marketing cooperatives, and trading companies finally came looking the next day, she actually placed them at the back of the line, treating them like ordinary shops. Consequently, she offended people without even realizing it. After all, her perspective was still that of a former con artist; despite inheriting some business sense from wealthy families of the past, she knew far too little about the structure of the new era.

Rang Weidong didn't know the situation had become so complex. He first discussed the design of baby diapers with the students and teachers of the mechanical and electrical department, viewing it as a next-stage product that they could at least produce a few prototypes of. He was following Jin Zhuoqun’s example—setting the project in motion early.

Without pausing, he drove to deliver goods to a dozen more units before heading back to pick up his girlfriend from work. Old Qin had taken on the task of installing the phone that morning; his method was different. He simply arranged for someone to wire an existing phone line from another room to theirs, and then sold the "discarded" color TVs and refrigerators from the guesthouse to Rang Weidong at market price. It wasn't exactly illegal; he was just utilizing the procurement relationship the military outpost had that didn't require official approval slips. While he couldn't get wholesale prices, he certainly had the convenience of picking up items bit by bit. Then, he swapped the old appliances with the ones currently in the guesthouse. At most, he was just pocketing the difference between the new and old prices—a high-end scalper, if you will.

He was particularly envious when he saw Rang Weidong drive back in a brand-new red van. Rang Weidong turned around and handed him a large bag of sanitary napkins for the female staff at the guesthouse. Old Qin scratched his head, unable to stop laughing; he couldn't fathom why this guy was in this business, yet he knew perfectly well that it was an incredible venture.

He helped move the refrigerator and color TV into the van, and because he saw Rang Weidong doing all the heavy lifting himself, the two chatted a bit more about the sanitary napkin business. Qin Jianjun finally realized how large an enterprise this young man, who had opened a restaurant across the street, was running. In fact, he understood the scale of the operation better than Rang Weidong did. Rang Weidong could describe how the sanitary napkin enterprise could become a juggernaut, but he had never worked inside a juggernaut and had no real concept of it.

When Dong Xueying, who had also been busy all day, came down with her sister and daughter, the two men went their separate ways. Dong Xueqing grabbed the passenger seat, chattering away. The office phone was actually just a manual extension using the guesthouse’s number. When calling, one had to ask for the Dongsheng Company or state the extension number, and the operator would manually plug in the line. That five-hundred-yuan fee wasn't a post office installation fee at all! If it weren't for the military outpost, such a private installation would have resulted in a fine. Rang Weidong laughed heartily—that money likely went straight into Old Qin's pocket. In any case, the room extensions found in hotels and guesthouses of the future were already being dismantled for profit today.

Fengchu, unable to sit still, later climbed into the back to look at the TV, refrigerator, and the various-sized tape recorders he had brought from the restaurant—all without their original packaging, just foam-cornered. The household appliances were becoming increasingly complete, and she couldn't keep her hands off them, looking immensely proud.

Encouraged by this emotional value, Rang Weidong wondered if he should get a washing machine. What other appliances were there? For him, it wasn't a matter of money anymore; it was the fact that he couldn't get his hands on them.

His girlfriend sat quietly, continuing to review documents. Rang Weidong caught a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror and reminded her not to strain her eyes. She put the papers away and looked up. "I've been thinking seriously. Your freight transport team from Jiangzhou to Guangzhou—it should be called LTL (Less-Than-Truckload) shipping. Old Yu and the others mentioned this before. Even if you only have a small load, it can be combined into a transport fleet and delivered on time, and the freight costs are very low. That’s why he wanted a loan back then—to start a fleet of trucks and ships."

Rang Weidong chuckled. "Exactly. Buying up farm citrus and transporting sand and stone were products of that same line of thinking. But it’s easy to take steps that are too big. How many trucks or ships can you buy with a loan? Besides, now that I’m running a factory, I realize how troublesome management is. Managing trucks and ships would be even more difficult."

Dong Xueying felt otherwise. "But you can do this. If the Hongguang Factory provides four more vehicles, five trucks would give us a capacity of over twenty tons. Today, Xiaoging and I went door-to-door to investigate and inquire. We’ve identified sixteen clothing stores, four appliance dealers, and three second-hand shops from the list you inquired about. We left our number, and once we’re ready to start, we’ll go collect their cargo manifests."

Rang Weidong was delighted. "Then we need to rent a storefront for the transport department on the back street?"

His thrifty wife replied, "No need. This is the office. The guys and girls at the restaurant have nothing to do in the morning; let them go out and hand out business cards."

He was becoming a capitalist whether he liked it or not, squeezing out every bit of surplus value.