Investment Life

CHAPTER 21

Ma Lei did not expect Chen Yuanming to respond this way, so he was a little surprised and immediately pulled the corner of his mouth up in a smile.

Was the kid going to whip out an emotional card or was he going to beg for mercy? After playing with him for so long, he knew the kid was scared. At the end of the day this was still just a child who had not yet grown hairs. The stench of his mother's milk had not yet dried. ... With a hint of playfulness, as if watching a joke, Ma Lei observed the teenager's nervous face for a long time before he put his arm around the waist of the beauty beside him and leaned against the sofa.

Although Ma Lei had not said a word, his body language had already given Chen Yuanming enough hints, so he composed his thoughts for a moment and started from the beginning.

"A few months ago, when I was still in my hometown, I made a small business deal with an elder to sell knitwear. A type of gloves that can be worn in the winter." Chen Yuanming gestured with his hands, "From here upwards the fingers are exposed so that you can still hold a pen. I called it half-finger gloves."

Scarface sitting on the side was clearly frowning as if he wanted to interrupt but he looked at his elder brother sitting on the opposite side and swallowed his words.

As though he had not noticed the changes in the expressions of listeners, Chen Yuanming continued to speak calmly.

"This kind of glove was very novel. At the time, no one had done something like that before. We made a total of more than 200 pairs at a go and it all sold out immediately. A single pair of gloves earned more than a dozen times the profit. The cost of production was only 100 yuan, but the net profit was more than 1000 yuan. Of course, there were no labor costs included.

With that said, Ma Lei's eyebrows twitched slightly, and his expression changed a little bit.

"Wasn't that great business?" Chen Yuanming smiled. "But the interesting part was still to come. Less than a month after the start of the school year, my classmates, alumni of the school, and even other people I didn't know all seemed to know how to knit this kind of glove overnight. At least half of them had a pair of these gloves on their hands. Yet we only sold 200 pairs and my school had at least 1,000 students."

Scarface couldn't help it anymore and laughed for a moment, "Nonsense, who can't knit a damned glove? How much profit you can grab on something like this!"

Chen Yuanming shook his head. "No, if we had continued to expand production, hired knitters, and improved the glove styles, while we may not have made a dozen times the profit, earning a few times the profit would not be a problem."

Scarface was immediately dumbfounded. Even if he was not that smart he could still calculate this. How much profit did they make by smuggling color TV's? 30%. What about cigarettes? 50% ... While he may not have heard that 100% profit could induce people into trampling on all the laws of the world, yet they were indeed taking risks for just 50% profit.

Anyone who had engaged in business could calculate the profit potential here.

Chen Yuanming did not pause. "Or maybe next year competitors or sellers with smaller profit margins would have emerged, but will this business ever be out of date? I don't think it will ..." He smiled, "Because the buyers are still there. How many people are there in that one city?" What about the population of the cities around it, or the more distant provinces or even the whole of China? This business cannot be monopolized by one family, so if you calculate it, how much profit could you make by continuing to do this? "

There was silence in the room and even the girls who were accompanying them to drink wine looked up in surprise at the boy sitting on the sofa. After a while, Ma Lei slowly opened his mouth.