Because Armani's stores are directly managed, the decoration style is consistent across the country, low-key yet luxurious, grand yet elegant. As soon as I entered the door, a pretty saleswoman with a sweet smile came to greet me, with a very respectful and enthusiastic attitude. Wen Liang pointed at Fan Bo and said with a smile: "Take this gentleman to try on some clothes. I heard that when you don't know what to wear, it's always right to wear your Armani. Let's let Mr. Fan experience it for himself today."
"I won't let you down! Sir, please come this way." The salesperson smiled and led Fan Bo inside. Another girl took Wen Liang to the rest area to sit down and rest. Wen Liang was thinking about several important things that were about to be promoted. He closed his eyes and rested up. Suddenly, he heard a voice with a very Northwest style shouting, "Zhida is called Armani, right? I finally found it. Ask your boss to come out. I have business to discuss with him."
The person who came in was a fat man in his forties, with Mediterranean-style hair and a belly as big as a yurt. The thick golden chain on his neck could blind a 4K gold buyer. The leather bag tucked under his armpit was bulging high, and one could tell there must be a terrifying amount of old man's money in it. He was also holding the arm of a fashionable, charming and beautiful woman, with her hair permed into the most popular big waves, wearing an expensive fur coat, and her calves wrapped in black stockings were eye-catching. The scarlet paint on her lips had a bloody taste.
This is the most typical dress of the nouveau riche in this era, but Wen Liang has no ill feelings towards nouveau riche. Everyone grows up in different backgrounds and conditions. Anyone who can get rich before others in the 1990s is considered capable. There is no need to require everyone to live like a gentleman.
A shopping guide girl came up and said with a smile, "How can I help you?"
The upstart slammed the bag in his hand onto the table and said in a gruff voice, "You can't do it. Find your boss."
"The store manager is not here today, so feel free to tell me if you need anything! Do you want custom clothes, or do you have any other needs?"
"Tell you what?" The nouveau riche put his hand on his chin and looked the girl up and down, his naked eyes seemed to want to strip her clothes off, "You look really pretty..."
The girl's smile froze on her face. Before she could say anything, the woman next to the nouveau riche got mad and said, "How can you, a waitress, make the decision? Do you know who this is? This is the top boss of Northwest Province. I'm telling you, are you worthy? Hurry up and call your boss out. He looks stupid. Millions of dollars of business have come to him, but he's still dragging his feet. Are you stupid?"
The nouveau riche chuckled, touched his hairless head, patted the charming woman on the butt, and said, "You Bao Shelie, stop nagging about your status all day long. How can you scare a woman like me?"
The charming woman moaned, pulled the upstart's hand and shook it, saying, "Dingye, you are so bad, hitting me there..."
The nouveau riche laughed loudly, with a bit of the spirit of "I will become a dragon if I hold a buttocks in my hand". The shopping guide girl had obviously never dealt with such a situation before, and she didn't know what to do. She looked at other girls in the store for help. However, everyone was obviously frightened by the nouveau riche's boldness, and no one dared to reply. You have to know that this was still an era when hooliganism could be shot, and daring to do this in public would strictly constitute the crime of molesting women.
Wen Liang was just feeling bored, and seeing the shopping guide girl's embarrassed look, he stood up and walked over, saying with a smile: "I am the store manager here. May I ask what can I do for you, sir?"
The nouveau riche stroked his chin and looked at Wen Liang again. Now Wen Liang understood. It wasn't that this top gentleman had a vulgar look in his eyes, but that he had a pair of eyes that were splayed outward, and when he looked at people, one side of his eyes was raised and the other side was lowered, as if he was going to strip people's clothes off.
"I want to be the agent of your brand in the northwest and open dozens of chain stores. What do you think, brother?"
"Agent... Armani is a luxury product. I'm sure you all know that it's quite expensive..."
The shopping guide girl pulled Wen Liang's clothes from behind, leaned over to his ear and whispered, "We don't recruit franchisees..."
Wen Liang nodded and patted the girl's shoulder, indicating that he knew what to do. The girl now just wanted to get rid of this weird couple, so she stood quietly by and watched Wen Liang fool them.
"Expensive?" Ding Ye grinned and said, "Even the spit of a hungry Northwest man is worth one ounce of gold. Money is just a plea! You name a price!"
The charming woman looked at Wen Liang with disdain and said, "Even if Ding Ye plucked a single hair, it would be thicker than your waist. Go to the west and ask around. Talking about money with Ding Ye, isn't that a joke?"
Wen Liang knew too well the mentality of the first batch of township entrepreneurs who got rich during this period, and he also knew too well the social atmosphere of this era where people dared to brag, cheat, buy planes, and bomb the Himalayas. To deal with such people, the most direct counterattack is to brag too. He sneered and said, "The franchise fee is 10 million, and each store you open will cost another 500,000."
The charming woman opened her mouth and subconsciously turned her head to look at the decoration of the specialty store. She couldn't understand why such a store would require hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment. Dingye touched his head again, but this time he didn't have the momentum when he patted the woman's butt. After a while, he muttered: "This... this, this price is not bad. If I open 30 stores at a time, can you give me a discount..."
This time it was Wen Liang's turn to be dumbfounded. Thirty companies would cost 15 million, plus a franchise fee of 10 million, which would be around 20 million. This was 1996, and there were people who could spend money like this, but none of them were as easy to fool as this guy. With his intelligence and business negotiation skills, how could he throw 20 million without blinking an eye
Wen Liang asked tentatively, "What kind of business do you do in the northwest, sir?"
Ding Ye smiled innocently and said, "It's nothing. I opened a few gold mines. It's hard work to dig and seep. It's not easy to make money."
Damn, people really can't be fooled by appearances. Although Wen Liang was not familiar with the gold mining industry in the 1990s, he knew that gold mining was a profitable business in those days. You should know that the "Mineral Resources Exploitation Registration Management Measures" was not officially promulgated until 1998, and it was not until 2000 that the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Management Regulations for the Application of Gold Mining Approval" again, which slightly curbed the popularity of private mining. It can be said very frankly that as long as you are a little luckier and buy a gold mine with a higher grade and richer reserves, it will be easy to accumulate a fortune of hundreds of millions in one or two years.
However, this industry is in a gray area after all, with fierce open and covert struggles and huge risks. Otherwise, Wen Liang could just take Ning Xi to open a mine. Why bother working so hard in the real industry
After finding out the truth, Wen Liang was no longer interested in playing the game. However, given the situation, if he directly said that this was a directly-operated store and did not want franchisees, a fight would probably break out on the spot. He had to take a roundabout approach.
"Well, I can't make the decision on this matter personally, so I have to report it to the Italian headquarters. If it's convenient, please leave your contact information and we'll let you know when we get a reply."
Ding Ye's eyes, as big as copper bells, suddenly widened and he said, "You flea on a drum - you are talking nonsense. We eat noodles without adding salt - we have already made an agreement, and now you are saying that you can't make the decision?"
Wen Liang pointed at the eagle in the store and said with a smile: "Armani, it's a brand! You are the boss and you can make your own decisions, but we are employees and the ones who make the decisions are in Italy."
Ding Ye thought about it and pointed at the phone on the table and said, "Then you guys call now and wait for the news."
The shopping guide girl said boldly: "We are contacting Italy, and it will take ten days or half a month to go back and forth. Why don't you go back and wait? We will notify you as soon as we have any news."
Ding Ye was still unwilling to give in, and two more people came in from outside the door. One was his old acquaintance Lei Fang, and it was time for him to arrive according to the time calculation. The other was Zhu Zixuan, the person Wen Liang least wanted to see.
After the car burning incident, Zhu Zixuan asked Wen Liang and Lei Fang to go find her together, but Wen Liang had a lot of work to do in Beijing and had no time to deal with her, so he stood Zhu Zixuan up. According to Lei Fang's revelation, Zhu Zixuan lost her temper, and if Lei Fang hadn't said so many nice things, I really don't know how to deal with Wen Liang.
"What are you all doing crowding at the door? Alessandro, is my dress ready?"
Zhu Zixuan started yelling as soon as she entered the store. The shopping guide girl hurriedly said, "Hello, Miss Zhu. Our store manager is out. Your custom-made clothes are ready. Please wait a moment. I will pick them up right away..."
Zhu Zixuan then saw Wen Liang, and the surprise in her eyes flashed away. Then, with a fierce look, she reached out to grab Wen Liang's collar and said, "Great, I finally caught you."
Wen Liang took a step back calmly, giving Zhu Zixuan an opportunity to catch him. He chuckled and said, "Hello, Miss Zhu. I haven't seen you for a few days. You are getting more and more beautiful."
Zhu Zixuan snorted and said, "Do you need me to tell you that I'm pretty... Brother Lei, help me teach this kid a lesson!"
Lei Fang smiled bitterly and said, "It's good that I didn't get taught a lesson by him. Be good, get your clothes and go back first. Mr. Wen and I still have things to do."
Strangely enough, Zhu Zixuan was unruly and willful, but she obeyed Lei Fangyan's orders, stomped her feet hard, and followed the shopping guide. At this time, Ding Ye, who had been silent since Lei Zhu entered the door, suddenly said tremblingly: "You... Are you Mr. Lei?"
Lei Fang glanced at him and said calmly: "Do you recognize me?"
Ding Ye instantly became excited and said, "I saw you from afar at the welcoming banquet hosted by Mr. Yang the night before..."
"Oh, Old Yang from the Northwest," Lei Fang said nonchalantly, "What's the matter? I saw you had a conflict with my brother just now?"
"No... No," Ding Ye was sweating. No matter how dumb he was, he knew that Wen Liang couldn't be the manager of this store. Besides, how could he afford to offend someone who even Lei Fang called his brother? "Misunderstanding, a misunderstanding..."
Wen Liang did not have any bad feelings towards this Ding Ye. Although the approach of seeking Armani to join was wrong, the idea was right. The clothing industry would develop rapidly in the next ten years, and a market worth nearly 100 billion was waiting to be occupied and divided. As long as one entered early, huge profits were inevitable.
Meeting this person was an accident, but the road after the accident can be controlled by oneself. (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to vote for recommendation and monthly tickets on Qidian. Your support is my greatest motivation.) (To be continued)