Chapter 216 — The Business Plan

Padrick took the booklet, but although he stood in considerable awe of Gao Yang, when it came to a field he excelled in he was still rather conceited. He told himself that he had dealt with merchants for half his life, that he was thoroughly familiar with establishing trade routes and with the whole business of buying, selling, stocking, and disposing—no trade model, however novel, could be all that complicated in his eyes, and devoting an entire booklet to explaining it was making a mountain out of a molehill. Yet he did not dare say so openly and could only nod respectfully: "Very well, I will look at it now. Duke, you may rest entirely assured—I have a fair measure of confidence in matters of commerce."

As he spoke, his eyes caught certain key words on the booklet: chain distribution, regional agents, circulation networks, revenue-sharing models, and market expansion...

Gao Yang said nothing, only watching quietly as Padrick swiftly read through the not-very-thick booklet.

Padrick skimmed through it once in a few minutes, then spent three times as long on the second reading.

When he was about to begin the third reading, Gao Yang interrupted him: "Mr. Padrick, what are your thoughts?"

Padrick rubbed his eyes and looked at Gao Yang somewhat blankly, as though for a moment he had forgotten he was in the reception hall of the ducal residence. His mind was full of those incredible terms and concrete operational plans, and only when he realized that Gao You had called him did he break out in a sudden cold sweat: "Y-yes, Duke! I have finished reading, I have finished!"

"I know you have finished. I want to know your thoughts."

"Th-this..." Padrick glanced down at the booklet in his hand, yet suddenly found himself bereft of words. "These ideas are indeed something I had never conceived of; they seem bizarre... and yet feasible? But..."

The plump gentleman hemmed and hawed for a long while, then finally drew a deep breath: "All right, I admit that logically there is no problem with it. If it were truly realized, it would swiftly grow into a commercial monster of the southern regions—no individual itinerant trader, settled merchant, or even regional merchant guild could stand against such an organization: tightly structured, efficiently circulating, acting in unison, and backed by a great noble besides. But I must also speak honestly: these ideas are almost impossible to realize. You require everyone in this sales system to be under unified direction—the lowest shops commanded by regional agents, the regional agents commanded by a general manager appointed by you—yet never before has any merchant accepted such bondage. Of course, this much we might barely achieve through monetary incentive and contract. But you also require the lowest shops to do business with the common people—that..."

Padrick spread his hands: "Alchemical potions are not foul-smelling ointments brewed by village herbalists. Even poorer mercenaries cannot necessarily afford them—how could commoners possibly afford them? Even if we sold to commoners, none of them would buy!"

"That you need not worry about. Since I have said that the new-style alchemical potions can be sold to commoners, I have naturally considered the price. I can guarantee that they will be cheap enough that ordinary commoners can bear it if they grit their teeth, and that nobles everywhere can equip their troops with such potions."

Gao Yang did not make too grand a claim, did not promise that "even serfs could afford alchemical potions," for that was unrealistic. Not every domain was like the Cecil domain; in the vast majority of places in this world, serfs' private property was virtually nil. However cheap Gao Yang made the alchemical potions, those serfs still could not afford even a bottle cap—and in this respect, Gao Yang was for the moment powerless.

To enable commoners (or townsfolk) of middling circumstances in other domains to afford alchemical potions was already his greatest goal at present.

At Gao Song's words, Padrick's first reaction was still to question whether it was possible, but seeing the unwavering expression on the other's face, he wisely did not voice this. Instead he evaluated only the trade model in the booklet: "Very well, then I will say this: what is written here is full of wisdom. If what you meant to sell were grain and cloth rather than alchemical potions, my estimation of it would rise another notch. But I have one last question... do you have that many alchemical potions?"

This "commercial scholar" spread his hands: "To 'feed' a sales system like this would require no small quantity of alchemical potions."

Gao Yi smiled faintly and waved a hand at the two attendants who had come in with him: "Go bring those crates of samples in."

"How... how many crates?"