Chapter 1796 — The Situation Is Dire, Part One
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"What?" Tang Zhi had not expected Kang Divine Physician Pharmaceutical Company to strike back at a time like this, nor had she expected the counterattack to be so thorough. For a moment she did not know what to do. "Mr. Lai, could you wait a little? Let me discuss it on my end and then get back to you?"
"Fine, little sister, I'll wait for your call!" Fatty Lai said.
Tang Zhi hung up. Gu Mengyao saw that Tang Zhi's expression had turned somewhat grim and asked, "What happened?"
"Kang Divine Physician Pharmaceutical Group has cut the price of their Golden Wound Salve, and on top of that they've rolled out a whole string of specific medicines to go head-to-head with Dr. Guan Pharmaceutical..." Tang Zhi relayed what Fatty Lai had said to Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu, then added, "Yao Yao, Wei Zhao is unconscious right now, and something this big has blown up at home. What are we supposed to do? Even Fatty Lai can't make up his mind..."
"Then... can't we just cut our prices too?" Though Gu Mengyao was a daughter of the Gu Group, her grasp of business matters was only half-formed. "If they lower their prices, we go lower still. That ought to win us back some of the market, shouldn't it?"
"That... I don't know either..." Tang Zhi cast a worried glance at Wei Zhao. At last she understood that old saying — misfortunes never come singly. Everything had been fine before, and then hardly had Wei Zhao succumbed to his qi deviation than trouble came knocking.
"Sister Yun, why don't you have Fatty Lai call Uncle Chu and talk over a countermeasure? Uncle Chu has been in business for years, after all — he's rich in experience..." Shen Yushu suggested.
"That's right! Daddy could help think of something!" Gu Mengyao's eyes lit up at Little Shu's words. "Even Wei Zhao doesn't understand business all that well — that's why he left everything to others. If cutting prices can work, why not let him and Daddy look into the rest of it together?"
"All right, then I'll call him back right now!" Tang Zhi dared not delay, and hurriedly dialed Fatty Lai again.
"Big sister, any news?" Fatty Lai asked.
"Wei Zhao really can't do it right now — he can't take a call. But Yao Yao, Little Shu and I have talked it over. You could call Uncle Chu and discuss how to respond. Or else — should we cut our prices too?" Tang Zhi asked.
"Discuss..." Fatty Lai smiled bitterly. He was a seasoned hand at business himself, and the Liu family was hardly short of commercial prodigies — the second son of the Liu family was a veteran of the trade as well. But as things stood, without a matching lineup of new products to hold their own against Kang Divine Physician Pharmaceutical Group, cutting prices alone would not win back many customers. Were they supposed to undercut Kang Divine Physician Pharmaceutical Company even further?
Kang Divine Physician Pharmaceutical Company's Golden Wound Salve was currently priced at forty-nine, while Dr. Guan Pharmaceutical's wound medicine was ninety-nine — a twofold gap. Unless Fatty Lai sold at twenty-nine or thirty-nine, there was surely no way to turn the situation around.
But at twenty-nine or thirty-nine, once the channel fees were stripped out, almost nothing would be left. And Fatty Lai was now up to his neck in debt: practically every production plant had been mortgaged the moment it was built, then a loan taken out to build the next. Had this mishap not occurred, Fatty Lai's model of expansion — though it yielded little profit at first — would have filled his coffers to overflowing over the next few years.