Chapter 359: The Funding Gap!

Beiguan Village. Hot Pot Restaurant!

Gathered around the steaming copper pot, Li Yi was devouring the fragrant slices of meat!

Having gone hungry for most of the day, he was starving and devoured the food with great relish.

Across from him, however, Jiang Longcheng sat with a furrowed brow, completely lacking any appetite.

Just moments ago, Li Yi and the cotton mill had drafted a contract to purchase the factory’s surplus cotton fabric.

Although the contract was only a draft and hadn’t been signed yet, judging by Li Yi’s attitude, he was dead set on spending 500,000 yuan to buy that batch of substandard fabric from the factory.

“Brother-in-law, that’s 500,000 yuan! Aren’t you worried at all?” Jiang Longcheng said, his food tasting like nothing.

He now truly felt he’d set Li Yi up—this was 500,000 yuan, after all. If Uncle San found out about this, wouldn’t he break his belt in anger?

“Worried about what? Losing money?”

“Exactly. If we really do lose that money, even with your restaurant raking in a fortune every day, it’d probably take you years to recover!”

Yet Li Yi remained completely unfazed. “Don’t worry. We won’t lose a dime.”

“Well…”

Before Jiang Longcheng could finish, Li Yi set down his chopsticks and said, “Third Brother, do you know what the current market price for cotton cloth is?”

“Thirty-five cents a foot!”

“Right, and you need cloth ration tickets too!”

Li Yi continued, “But the batch of fabric I bought from your factory costs only about 14 cents per foot—and no ration tickets required!”

“But… but there’s a problem with the quality of this batch of fabric. No matter how cheap it is, nobody’s going to buy it!” Jiang Longcheng frowned.

“Just because no one buys the fabric doesn’t mean no one will buy the finished garments!” Li Yi said calmly.

“Ready-to-wear? Are you planning to turn this batch of fabric into clothes to sell?” Jiang Longcheng asked, somewhat surprised.

“Exactly!”

“If no one buys the fabric, does that mean people will buy the finished garments?” Jiang Longcheng asked skeptically.

“Heh, no—I meant for your factory to do more market research. Do you know what the current state of the apparel market is?”

“Well… not really!”

“I knew you wouldn’t know!”

Li Yi continued, “Right now, demand in the clothing market is huge, but there are very few people who can actually make clothes, and the styles they produce are extremely outdated. Do you know what that means?”

“What?”

“Business opportunity!”

Li Yi continued, “As long as my clothes are stylish and reasonably priced, I’ll be raking in the cash without even lifting a finger!”

“How do you know all this?” Jiang Longcheng asked curiously.

“Heh, if you’d just spent more time checking out the tailor shops in town, you wouldn’t be asking that!”

“That’s a good idea, but making ready-to-wear clothes isn’t easy,” Jiang Longcheng said.

“What’s so hard about it? I’ve got the raw materials; you’ve got the labor, the property, and the machinery. What’s there to worry about?”

“So you want to hire our factory workers to make clothes for you!”

“Exactly. Doesn’t your cotton mill have a workshop that produces work uniforms? It’s equipped with sewing machines and staffed by experienced workers. Do you think this could work?” Li Yi said.

“We’re happy to let you use the workshop and the workers, but do you have the 500,000 yuan for the goods?” Jiang Longcheng asked again.

“Don’t worry about the money—I can handle that myself!”

“That’s 500,000 yuan. Are you really sure you can handle it? If not, try talking to Lao Er—have him help you arrange a bank loan!” Jiang Longcheng said.

“No need!”

Li Yi then added, “I’ll handle the money myself. As for you, keep an eye on the factory—especially when we start making clothes. We must strictly control quality!”

“You can rest assured about that. Now that we’ve gotten rid of those parasites, the workers at the factory are still willing to listen to what I say!”

“Hmm, if we pull this off, your factory will be back on its feet!” Li Yi said.

“So you want our factory to start producing and selling clothes?”

“We’ll discuss that later. Let’s focus on getting the immediate tasks done first!”

“Alright!”

…….

After seeing Jiang Longcheng off, most of the customers in the store had also left.

Li Yi immediately called over Long Zhanjun, Li Yeqiao, and the others!

Since they were going to go all out, they needed to see how much capital they had on hand.

After briefly inquiring about the shop’s business over the past few days, Li Yi turned to Li Yeqiao and asked, “How much money is in the account right now?”

Li Yeqiao immediately pulled out a ledger, glanced at it, and said, “Not counting today’s earnings, the shop currently has a little over 30,000 yuan!”

“Hmm, withdraw all that money tomorrow. I have a use for it!” Li Yi said.

“Alright!”

Then Li Yi added, “Dalong, from now on, you’ll be in charge of the shop’s books. Starting tomorrow, Brother Li is going to be working on other business ventures with me!”

“Next up, we’ll be buying fabric, hiring workers to make clothes, and handling sales—we absolutely can’t do this without a proper bookkeeper.”

“Got it!”

After saying this, Li Yi began calculating the funds at his disposal.

There was 30,000 yuan in the shop, he had a little over 20,000 yuan on hand, and with the 10,000-plus yuan in his savings account as a contingency fund, the total came to just over 60,000 yuan.

According to the contract terms, he was required to pay the cotton mill a lump-sum payment of 200,000 yuan upon signing.

In other words, he was currently short by 140,000 yuan.

How could he come up with 140,000 yuan in such a short time?

Li Yi thought of the dried goods at home!

Over 100,000 jin of dried mushrooms—even at current market prices, they could fetch 170,000 to 180,000 yuan.

Admittedly, selling them now would fall short of his expectations—he’d likely have to accept several tens of thousands less.

But considering the profit margin from making finished garments, Li Yi decided to sell the dried goods anyway and get the cotton mill up and running as soon as possible.

So, Li Yi decided to head to the dried goods market tomorrow morning to have a chat with Fat Jin.

“Fat Jin” was the man Li Yi had specifically gone to meet at the dried goods market last time. His full name was Jin Jishun, and he was one of the few licensed vendors in Beijing.

Although the state had imposed particularly severe restrictions on the private economy over the past few decades, by the time of the Reform and Opening-Up, the private sector had virtually disappeared in China, and the private economy was negligible.

However, this did not mean that the individual economy had completely vanished. For instance, the “Notice on Further Cracking Down on Counter-Revolutionary Economicism and Speculative Activities,” issued in 1970, explicitly stipulated that apart from state-owned commerce, cooperative commerce, and licensed vendors, no unit or individual was permitted to engage in commercial activities.

This shows that even during the most difficult times, there were still some people in the country engaged in commercial activities.

However, these individuals were all authorized by the state and were primarily concentrated in individual handicrafts and small vendors acting as agents for state-owned stores.

For several generations, the Jin family had been in the business of buying and selling mountain produce and dried goods. Most of the time, they supplied goods to the supply and marketing cooperatives in Beijing, but they also sold them on their own.

Though they kept a low profile, they were a formidable force.

In his previous life, after leaving the cotton mill, Li Yi had been in the mountain produce business for a while. He’d had some dealings with this guy and knew him fairly well.

Jin Fatso was incredibly cunning in business; most people couldn’t outsmart him, and Li Yi actually admired him for that.

But cunning aside, he was a man of his word.

He’d pull out all the stops during negotiations, but once a contract was signed, he never went back on his word.

More importantly, Fat Jin has real clout. Though he keeps a low profile, he’s one of the most powerful buyers in the capital’s dried goods market.

Once a deal was struck with him, Li Yi wouldn’t have to worry about selling the 100,000 catties of mushrooms he had on hand.

What Li Yi didn’t know was that just as he was desperate for cash, Fat Jin was also fretting over a shortage of stock!

Just as Li Yi was thinking about going to talk to Fat Jin, the other party was already on his way!

PS: I’m screwed. I haven’t left the house for over a hundred days straight and thought I was fine. I was even bragging to the editor yesterday, saying I’d definitely never catch it, but today… Due to health reasons, I’ll do my best to keep updating!