Chapter 272: Chapter 272: Hitting the Sales Trail—Soap Is a Hit

Today, they sold five hundred bars of soap, earning a total of seventy-five yuan.

Their soap business had officially taken its first step—not only did they recoup their costs, but they even made a small profit of twenty-five yuan.

Next, they just needed to keep producing more soap and work hard to sell it.

“We still have five hundred bars left that haven’t sold yet. Why don’t we wait until those are gone before making more?” Chen Fengqin had come to realize over the past few days that running a factory and making money wasn’t easy.

Now that they’d finally broken even, she was worried about spending more money and not being able to earn it back. She was starting to have second thoughts.

“Fengqin, do you believe in our product? I have a lot of confidence in it!

Whether it’s quality or price, we’ve got both covered. I really believe we can break into the market and sell well.

Soap isn’t food—it takes at least a month to produce a batch. If sales are good and people want to reorder, but you don’t have any stock, it’ll be too late to make more and deliver on time,” Gu Qinghuan gently persuaded.

Xu Huainian had spent the whole day out selling with Gu Qinghuan, and the more he worked with her, the more he realized she was no ordinary girl.

He trusted that she wouldn’t speak without reason.

And as a man, he tended to look further ahead—he also thought the soap business had real potential.

After thinking it over, Chen Fengqin agreed with Gu Qinghuan’s suggestion.

The next day, Xu Huainian went to the commune to call the supplier, ordered another batch of raw materials, and wired the money over.

While waiting for the materials to arrive, Xu Huainian and his wife carried baskets on their backs, going from street to street, visiting more than a dozen nearby brigades to sell soap.

They sold at the same retail price—twenty cents each.

Xu Huainian had originally wanted to sell to the villagers at a cheaper price, just ten cents a bar, as a way to benefit the community. After all, they’d still make a profit.

But Gu Qinghuan immediately shot down that idea.

“We have to keep the retail price consistent, or things will get messy.

If people find out it’s cheaper from you than in the store, everyone will think the store is overpriced and stop buying there. How would you make money then?

Our main profits come from wholesale.

If someone thinks the retail price is too high, they don’t have to buy. It’s that simple.

Once you open this door, it’s hard to close it again.

I understand you want to help the villagers, but that’s a surefire way to destroy our business.

And what if someone tries to take advantage, buying from you at ten cents and reselling elsewhere? These are our neighbors.

So the best way is to keep prices the same for everyone—whether they buy or not is up to them.” Gu Qinghuan knew that sometimes, being too kind could lead to disaster.

Xu Huainian’s heart skipped a beat at her words.

He realized he’d been too naive—Gu Qinghuan was right, that door couldn’t be opened.

“We can’t lower the price, but we can give out free samples.

When we make soap, don’t we end up with lots of trimmings? They might not look pretty, but they work just as well.

If you sort out those scraps, you can give them away as freebies when villagers buy soap. That’s basically like giving them a discount.

They pay the same but get more.”

“Qinghuan, you’re really sharp—I never thought of that!

You’re right, we shouldn’t waste those trimmings, they’re perfectly usable.

This way, nothing goes to waste, the villagers get a little bonus, and our factory still makes money. Everyone wins!” Chen Fengqin slapped her thigh, suddenly enlightened.

Xu Huainian had been run off his feet lately.

He was managing all the brigade’s production tasks while also handling the soap factory.

Luckily, Chen Fengqin was a capable and supportive wife, running the factory smoothly with their son.

Whenever they had time, the couple would go out to the various brigades to sell soap.

Bit by bit, they sold dozens more bars, and the feedback was positive.

Seeing this, people in the brigade started asking for a bar of soap each, just to get something for free.

Xu Huainian wasn’t about to indulge them.

The soap business was about making money, not charity. In the end, the profits would be shared by everyone anyway, so it didn’t matter what they said.

He ended up just giving each family some soap trimmings, which settled the matter.

Xu Mingshan hadn’t paid much attention to their little factory, thinking it was just a small-time operation—he never expected it to actually succeed.

He heard Xu Huainian had already sold quite a bit of soap, and everyone’s feedback was good.

He’d tried some of the soap trimmings himself—it was just like the stuff from the supply store, lathered up nicely, and cleaned well.

He couldn’t help feeling a bit sour.

Why should Xu Huainian get to run a business and make money without him?

More importantly, he felt a strong sense of crisis—if Xu Huainian’s factory succeeded and made money, his own position would be in danger.

For a while, there was a storm brewing in the brigade, and Xu Huainian was struggling to hold on.

Gu Qinghuan had to take care of two kids and teach her graduating class, so her time was tight. She could only help with sales on weekends.

She made time to visit Lu Jianye to check on how the soap was selling.

To her surprise, Lu Jianye had a big surprise for her.

He placed an order for another thousand bars of soap, without even trying to haggle—same price as before.

It turned out the soap in his store had already sold out, and since Lu Jianye didn’t know Gu Qinghuan’s address, he’d just been waiting for her to show up.

Actually, it was the trial handwashing station Gu Qinghuan had set up that made all the difference.

Lu Jianye’s place was a grocery store, and customers often got their hands dirty while shopping.

Right in a prominent spot, there was a handwashing station with soap ready to use. People figured they might as well try the Yujie soap.

After trying it and liking it, they’d see the same soap on the counter for just twenty cents a bar.

It looked good, worked well, and most importantly, was cheap.

Many people would grab a bar or two, or even stock up.

Naturally, it sold out quickly.

Gu Qinghuan hadn’t expected her casual trial setup to have such a great effect.

She immediately signed a contract with Lu Jianye, promising to deliver four hundred bars first and the rest later—after all, they didn’t have enough stock on hand.

Lu Jianye was straightforward—since he knew Gu Qinghuan well, he paid her in full upfront.

Xu Huainian’s eyes went wide when he saw Gu Qinghuan bring back a hundred and fifty yuan.

He never imagined they’d get such a big order so quickly—a thousand bars! After this order, they’d make at least a hundred yuan in profit.

Let’s do it!

By now, the loaches in Xujia Village and the surrounding fields had been almost completely caught—there were hardly any left, and the few that remained were too small to fetch a good price.

So they’d stopped catching loaches and eels for now, focusing entirely on the soap business.

Of course, they’d already made enough money.

Just from catching loaches and eels, each family had made over a hundred or two hundred yuan.

Gu Qinghuan herself had earned nearly a thousand yuan—everyone was happy.

Now, the soap factory was finally getting on track.

Thanks to the low price, attractive appearance, and the weather getting hotter by the day (meaning people used more soap), word of mouth spread, and Yujie Soap suddenly became a hit.

With Lu Jianye increasing his orders, other supply stores nearby also started placing orders—some even wanted to increase their orders.

The factory suddenly received orders for several thousand bars of soap.

And that wasn’t all.

Lu Jianye brought Gu Qinghuan even more orders.

Supply stores and grocery stores in neighboring counties, and even the head of the department store, all came to Gu Qinghuan through his introduction to place orders.

This was no small sum—the orders came in like snowflakes. When she totaled it up, there were nearly ten thousand bars of soap ordered.

When Gu Qinghuan brought back the orders and deposits, Xu Huainian couldn’t believe his eyes—their little workshop had actually received so many orders.

But with more orders came new problems.

They didn’t have enough tools, not enough molds, not enough racks and baskets for drying the soap.

All of these needed to be made or bought.

Xu Huainian personally made another trip to the provincial capital to haul materials. The quantities were too large for shipping—it was cheaper and faster to fetch them himself.

Now, there was another big problem.

The three of them clearly couldn’t make that much soap in such a short time.

The hardest part was mixing the soap batter—each batch took about an hour of stirring, which was time-consuming and exhausting, and had to be done well or the soap would fail and waste materials.

Buying equipment was out of the question—they weren’t making enough to justify that kind of investment.

So, they decided to go all in and expand production, hiring more people to help. Labor was cheap in those days.

Getting a big mixer wasn’t realistic—even if they could find one, it would cost hundreds or even a thousand yuan, which they couldn’t afford.

But hiring people was much more affordable.

With enough funds on hand, they reorganized the old canteen, partitioning it into several rooms.

One room was for storing materials, another was a secret workshop for the initial stages of soap-making to protect the recipe.

Another room was set up as the soap-mixing area, where Xu Huainian planned to hire strong young men from the village to do the mixing.

Other areas were filled with racks for drying soap.

The whole canteen was transformed into a soap factory, and it actually looked pretty professional.

At the morning assembly, Xu Huainian announced to the whole village that they were hiring.

Now that the factory was making a profit and about to bring in thousands of yuan, Xu Huainian was willing to pay good wages—one yuan per day.

That might sound like what a strong laborer could earn in work points, but it was a completely different kind of job."

"Chapter 273: Double Blessings for Zhu Chunlin, School Landslide