Chapter 123: Funds Received and the Construction of the Super Factory Begins
Another week had passed, and it was now the end of April. The weather in Hong Kong had noticeably warmed up. People were already walking around in short sleeves, and on hotter days, it could feel stifling without a fan.
Knock knock knock—a sound came from the door, drawing Yang Wendong's attention away from his bookkeeping. It was Wei Zetao.
"Come in," Yang Wendong said with a smile, then reached behind him and pulled a cold bottle of Coke from the refrigerator. He handed it to Wei Zetao, who had just sat down across from him. "The sun's really beating down out there. You've worked hard—have some cold Coke."
"Haha, thanks!" Wei Zetao laughed as he took the bottle, opened it, and took a sip. "Ahh, that hits the spot. Drinking ice-cold Coke in this weather—what a treat."
"Yeah, I enjoy it too," Yang Wendong said with a grin.
From his past-life experience, he actually preferred Sprite during summer when it was properly chilled. He'd noticed early on that Sprite wasn't even available in Hong Kong yet. In fact, neither were aluminum cans. Coke only came in glass bottles or plastic ones—the latter more common.
He'd even had someone look into it, and sure enough, neither Sprite nor aluminum canning technology existed in the U.S. at the time. But both of these things weren't something he was suited to pursue.
Take the can, for instance—American beverage companies had already been researching how to store drinks in metal containers for decades without success. Likely due to issues with materials or production techniques.
And as for Sprite, it wasn't just about how good the drink tasted. Success depended on whether you could build the brand. With the right brand, even a passable flavor could become a hit. Even if he had Sprite's formula, the most he could do was recreate the drink—not the brand. That required something else entirely.
Simply inventing or patenting something wasn't enough to guarantee success. A lot of what succeeded in history did so because of the company backing it.
"Too bad I'm getting older," Wei Zetao said with a slight frown. "Can't handle overly sweet things anymore. A little every now and then is fine, but I can't drink too much."
Yang Wendong shook his head. "That's life. No matter how rich you are, you can't buy back time. But money can solve most other problems."
"True enough. Anyway, to business," Wei said, regaining his serious tone. "Liao Chong Hing Bank just called. They've approved our HKD 2 million loan. All we need to do is sign, and the funds will be in our account within three days."
"Hmm, looks like Liao Chong Hing finally scraped the money together," Yang Wendong said with a smile.
Wei nodded. "Yeah, the bank isn't exactly small, but recently a lot of their capital has been tied up in real estate through Liao Baoshan's new ventures. The rest is tied up in maintaining their day-to-day banking operations.
Our sudden request for HKD 4 million was a lot for them. Now that we're only asking for half, they could process it faster."
"What about Hang Seng Bank?" Yang asked.
"Manager Yip said the proposal has already reached Ho Sin-hang's desk. Mr. Ho has now assigned a team to investigate the market situation with Post-it notes. Once they confirm the data, there shouldn't be any issues," Wei replied.
"That sounds about right," Yang nodded. "It's not hard to verify how well Post-it notes are selling in the U.S. right now."
In fact, the demand wasn't limited to the U.S.—even in Hong Kong, more and more people were knocking on their door to inquire about purchasing Post-its.
But right now, they couldn't even fulfill U.S. demand, so naturally, Yang wasn't going to allocate inventory to anyone else. Even a small overseas shipment could spark demand in places like Europe or Japan, which, if unmet, would immediately attract cheap copycat manufacturers.
The current situation was manageable. At most, a few sharp-eyed buyers had sniffed out a potential opportunity. Even if some infringement happened, it wouldn't have major repercussions—at least not until Yang's team scaled up.
That was why Yang was so anxious to expand production. Because if he didn't, someone else eventually would. And then, he'd be dragged into annoying, expensive international lawsuits.
Wei said, "Ho Sin-hang is a very capable guy. He's made major contributions to Hong Kong's industrial development in the past. He's practically an insider. He should be able to assess the risks involved here."
"Let's hope so. I'd rather not have to keep jumping through hoops," Yang replied. Then, thinking of Liao Chong Hing Bank, he asked, "Is there any word on how much money Liao Baoshan has poured into real estate speculation?"
Wei shook his head. "No one knows. Aside from the senior financial staff at the bank, it's all a mystery. But Liao's development company is clearly very active—there are projects going up all over the island.
That said, she claims they're joint ventures. Who the partners are, we don't know. Whether it's true or not, no one knows. And how much of her own money versus bank funds were used—also a mystery."
Yang shook his head. "Doesn't matter. That kind of risk-taking from a bank is dangerous. Once the loans from both banks are in, we'll give 3M the details for our account with Hang Seng Bank and have them send checks there from now on."
Even though he knew Liao Chong Hing wouldn't face a run on the bank until 1961, Yang didn't want to be tied down to them long-term.
Especially once they started developing distributors in Europe, Japan, and other regions—or when the Rubik's Cube and future products came into play—Changxing Industrial would have a large client base. If all the payments were going through one bank, it would become a nightmare to switch later.
For now, Liao Chong Hing's open banking policy had helped him a lot. If nothing ever went wrong with them, he wouldn't have minded staying loyal. But since cracks were already visible, it was time to diversify. And in less than a year, he'd already made the bank plenty of money.
Wei nodded. "Got it. No problem. But if we do that, Liao Chong Hing will definitely notice."
"Let them," Yang said with a carefree smile. "What big company or wealthy individual in Hong Kong doesn't have multiple accounts?
If these banks want our business, they'll have to compete for it."
Just a few months ago, Yang hadn't exactly been groveling to banks, but he'd definitely been in a position of need.
Once the Post-it note expansion was complete, even if they still needed to work with banks in the future, it wouldn't be with the same desperation.
From now on, they could stand tall—just like Lao Gan Ma, the chili sauce empire that once sold so well in Yang Wendong's past life that it was the banks begging to work with her. Of course, that was during the brand's heyday. In the years before Yang's time-travel, Lao Gan Ma had already begun to decline.
"Yeah," Wei Zetao said. "Now we just wait for the loan disbursements."
"Exactly," Yang Wendong nodded. "With money, most problems get solved."
By early May, under the combined efforts of Wei Zetao and lawyer Zhang Weida, the total HKD 4 million loan from Hang Seng Bank and Liao Chong Hing Bank had finally been approved and disbursed.
However, the funds were required to remain in the bank accounts of the respective banks and would be monitored—only permitted to be used for approved purposes, such as constructing the new factory, purchasing equipment, and sourcing raw materials.
The restrictions were quite strict, but that was to be expected. Even in Yang's past life, housing loans were tightly controlled to prevent borrowers from misusing the funds and causing defaults. Banks weren't in the business of seizing collateral—they were in the business of earning interest.
On the morning of May 7, when Yang Wendong arrived at the company, Wei Zetao excitedly came in holding a folder.
"Mr. Yang," he said, grinning, "here's the blueprint for our new factory. Take a look—if there's nothing major, we'll proceed with construction based on this plan."
"Let me see. We've been waiting quite a while for this, haven't we?" Yang said, taking the drawings. He and the management team had discussed the general layout months earlier, but those were just rough sketches drawn on top of a basic land plot map.
They had since commissioned a professional firm to handle the actual architectural details, though the loan process had kept them too busy to follow up closely.
Wei Zetao smiled. "The real estate sector has been booming, and construction firms are swamped. Our blueprints were squeezed into the schedule with lots of overtime from their designers."
"Mm." Yang nodded and began examining the architectural diagrams in earnest.
In this era, there were no personal computers. All mechanical and architectural drawings had to be done by hand—an incredibly time-consuming process prone to error, requiring frequent revisions.
As the blueprints were spread out on the desk, Wei Zetao stood up and began explaining. "Mr. Yang, here's the—"
Yang Wendong listened attentively. After a while, when Wei was finished, Yang said, "I won't interfere too much in the technical details, but there are two points I care about. First: fire safety. Make sure we install more than enough fire extinguishers, and position them properly.
Second: emergency exits. We'll eventually have a large workforce, so the stairwells need to be wide and numerous. Absolutely nothing can be stored on them—ever. And don't use wooden railings. Replace them with iron. Don't cut corners here. Even if it slightly reduces usable floor space, it's worth it."
Fires were common in Hong Kong's factories during this period, often causing serious injuries or deaths.
He couldn't control other factories, but his own had to be different. This was a matter of conscience. "Exploiting" workers to some degree was one thing—it still meant providing food and jobs. But to ignore their safety? That would be outright heartless.
Wei Zetao nodded. "Don't worry, Mr. Yang. We're very mindful of safety. Our products are flammable, and now that we've scaled up, we can't afford to take chances.
We're already conducting monthly safety training for all employees, and open flames are strictly prohibited inside the facility."
"Good." Yang nodded again, then looked at the plans. "According to these drawings, we'll be building six six-story factory blocks. That's a total of 500,000 square feet—20 times the size of our current plant.
It may not be enough to fully supply the U.S. market yet, but it'll be a huge step forward."
Wei smiled. "Right. And we can start looking at expanding into Europe, Japan, and other regions. Quite a few potential distributors have already come knocking.
And judging by the market potential, Europe and Japan combined may not be far behind the U.S. We'll have to play it by ear, but it's possible we'll need to build even more factories."
"No problem," Yang said, smiling. "As long as we finish this one successfully, we won't be so strapped for cash the next time around.
Once we've gone through this process once, it'll be much easier to scale up again."
Supplying a global market—even with a relatively simple product—required enormous production capacity. Building a factory on this scale wasn't something that could happen overnight.
If Yang didn't have the confidence and foresight he did, he would have followed the typical strategy—expanding production slowly in step with the market. He certainly wouldn't have dared to borrow millions at once to build a facility large enough to handle a portion of the U.S. market on day one.
Luckily, Post-it notes, while widely used, weren't a high-frequency purchase item like beverages. If they were, ten factories might not have been enough.
Wei added with a grin, "Yeah. With the profit margins on Post-it notes, as long as growth continues steadily, we can pay off our HKD 4 million loan in under a year.
And once we prove our repayment capacity, the banks will be begging to lend us even more."
"Haha, yeah. Banks love to help winners," Yang said with a chuckle. "Still, in the future, we need to leverage bank capital as much as possible. Growing only by reinvesting our own profits would be way too slow."
Wei nodded. "Understood. I'll go ahead and sign the construction contract. We'll arrange round-the-clock work shifts to complete the factory as quickly as possible."
"How long will it take, roughly?" Yang asked.
"About a month and a half to two months," Wei replied. "The land leveling process began right after we bought the plot, and although it's not quite done yet, we're getting close.
Once the land is fully prepped and the foundation is poured, the building itself will go up fast."
"Good. That saves us a lot of time," Yang nodded. "Get to it. The sooner we finish the plant, the sooner we can start turning a profit."
"Understood." Wei smiled, satisfied that this part of the plan was locked in. Then he asked, "Mr. Yang, the new factory is on track—should we now push forward with the next stage of the Rubik's Cube promotion in Hong Kong?"
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