Chapter 31 — Two Provinces Too Many
The ink on the Horizon Group paperwork was barely dry when Li Ming announced it at the Monday meeting:
"We'll open in two new provinces this year."
The managers blinked.
One tentatively asked, "Boss… are we ready for that?"
"Of course not," Li Ming said.
"That's why it'll cost a fortune."
The First Moves
The target cities were chosen almost at random — one in the east, one in the south.
Both were far enough away to make logistics painful, but close enough to send trucks without them freezing solid or melting halfway there.
To Li Ming, the choice was simple: the farther the store from the supply base, the more expensive every delivery became.
To his managers, it was a stroke of genius: pushing into two strategic markets before the competition could react.
Integration in Motion
The first shipments from the new dairy farm rolled out that month — fresh milk for cheese production.
The cold storage units hummed steadily, holding meat from a contracted slaughterhouse.
The same trucks dropped bread, sauce, and frozen pasta to every branch of the Italian chain.
Li Ming thought of it as sharing misery between the stores.
The operations manager thought of it as "economies of scale."
The Cost Spiral
Every step cost more than Li Ming had predicted.
New storefronts in the provincial capitals required hefty deposits.
Landlords in prime locations demanded premiums, and Li Ming, determined to lose faster, often offered more than the asking price to secure leases.
The bill for the first month of expansion was enough to make his accountant mutter about "cash burn rates."
Li Ming smiled. That was exactly the point.
The Unseen Advantage
Competitors began to whisper.
"How is Horizon Group opening stores so fast?"
"Where are they getting this steady supply in the off-season?"
No one realized that the "money-wasting" cold storage network and farm were already insulating the company from the supply shocks that plagued the market.
Foreshadowing the Leap
At the end of the quarter, the provincial managers gathered.
One raised his glass.
"Boss, two provinces down… when do we go national?"
Li Ming laughed it off.
But as he stared at the expansion map on the wall, the dots didn't look like random burns in his bank account anymore — they looked like a spreading fire.