The next morning, Fang Bai told his father that things were settled and they could start promoting.
Last night, Fang Bai's parents learned that their son had invited government leaders for drinks.
Fang Shi felt quite useless; these matters had to be handled by his son personally, but as a farmer, he didn't understand any of it.
His son said he could handle it himself and didn't need his participation.
Fang Bai's parents didn't know where their son learned all this, thinking it might have been while he was working in the factory.
This morning, Fang Bai was going to inspect the mall's renovation.
Meanwhile, Fang Shi no longer supervised the mall's renovation; he had been on-site watching others work, and when the construction supervisor came, he would consult him, learning a lot.
Two months later, he could even read construction blueprints.
Of course, he still couldn't remember some of the more complex symbols on the blueprints.
If he were asked to design, he certainly wouldn't be able to.
Fang Shi's current task was to find two motorized tricycles, which needed to be covered with large, pre-designed posters for city-wide promotion for three to five days.
Additionally, he needed to find dozens of human-powered tricycles as per his son's request, negotiate prices with these drivers, and have them paste posters on their vehicles for mobile promotion, paying them 4 yuan per month.
The task of pasting posters and distributing flyers was also Fang Shi's responsibility, but the design of the posters and flyers still had to be done by Fang Bai.
All the above tasks were manageable, but Fang Shi was not very keen on his son's idea of hiring handsome men and beautiful women to hold signs as a promotional method, feeling it was indecent and that people might not be willing to do it.
With a great responsibility thrust upon him, Fang Bai reluctantly took on this task, as it was his own ill-conceived idea.
In this era, the newer something was, the more attractive it was.
Additionally, there was a lot to do, including recruiting and training store employees.
Especially for cashiers, Fang Bai's mother suggested that trustworthy relatives should fill the roles.
Fang Bai felt it was unnecessary; in the future, as the mall expanded, the number of cashiers needed would increase, and where would they find so many trustworthy relatives?
Mall product sales must be accompanied by a receipt; selling without one would incur a fine, and goods couldn't be taken out of the mall without a receipt.
Otherwise, if a thief took goods, the security guards wouldn't know if they had been sold.
Accounts would be reconciled daily, so it wouldn't be easy for cashiers to embezzle money.
This was how things were done in later generations, and it could be done now, as long as rules were set.
Ultimately, after listening to her son's explanation, his mother felt it made a lot of sense; after all, even selling TVs from a street stall required a receipt, and at the time, she hadn't quite understood the meaning of it.
The task of reconciling accounts at the end of each day or shift would be handed to her; she just needed to be responsible for the collection of money.
Her son also told her some things: work division and responsibilities must be clear, one should not interfere with others' work arbitrarily, nor criticize employees casually, but rather observe and inquire more, clarifying before asking, saying that people come to work for money, not to be annoyed.
After Fang Bai assigned tasks to his parents, he realized the workload was too heavy.
It would be difficult for his parents alone to manage a large mall, so he had to add educated and cultured management personnel.
Especially during the preparation for opening, the workload would be enormous, and the family of three alone couldn't handle it all.
As for Fang Tingting, Fang Bai's task for his sister during her holiday was to photograph the development history of the photography company.
Earlier, she had wasted over a dozen rolls of film, but now her photos were barely acceptable.
Other matters didn't require her help; studying well was enough, and Fang Bai didn't want his sister to get involved in business too early.
Once the mall business picked up, it would definitely expand.
Fang Bai planned to build out the second to fifth floors and continue to acquire land.
Even if it couldn't be connected to the mall, as long as there were three or more contiguous plots, they could be acquired for other purposes.
This mall was a testing ground to accumulate experience.
If it went well, it could radiate to surrounding cities, which mainly depended on his parents' abilities.
Fang Bai would not be able to focus his energy on the mall in the future; he wanted to establish enterprises.
When the middle finger upgraded again, perhaps more powerful functions would appear, which would be of great help in developing new products.
Regarding mall management personnel, Fang Bai set his sights on part-time students.
After a period of observation, he felt that several of them could be recruited.
Of course, college students nowadays were not very willing to work for private enterprises.
If they graduated in these years, they could still be assigned to stable government jobs.
Fang Bai asked Jing Tian, and he said they would report after graduating in June, and job assignments were generally finalized within two months before graduation, some even earlier.
Currently, Jing Tian and other graduates were somewhat worried about being assigned to township or even rural units, or to county-level units with poor efficiency.
Graduates with connections had no need to worry about job assignments; even the worst wouldn't be that bad.
Actually, there was nothing wrong with gaining experience at the grassroots level; many people rose rapidly after a few years.
Last year's college graduates, after becoming regular employees, had monthly salaries plus subsidies ranging from tens of yuan for less desirable positions to hundreds of yuan for good ones, with an average of around 150 yuan.
However, the probationary period varied: some were only two or three months, others a year, but most were six months.
Nevertheless, if they could become leaders a few years later, their income would certainly not be as simple as it appeared on the surface.
Therefore, it was normal for college students of this era to look down on positions in private enterprises, unless they were not doing well and the private enterprise offered very good benefits.
At nine o'clock in the morning,
Fang Bai was going to the mall to inspect the renovation, having already made appointments with the various project managers.
His parents had already seen it many times and raised some issues.
But it still had to pass his inspection.
A few days ago, Fang Bai and his parents roughly calculated the cost of the mall, including all expenses for land, design, main construction, and renovation, totaling 575,000 yuan, which was quite over budget.
Therefore, Fang Bai currently had less than 400,000 yuan in disposable cash.
This money seemed like a lot, but purchasing appliances required a large amount of capital.
For example, a 29-inch new color TV cost six or seven thousand yuan to procure; even if they didn't buy many, they needed at least two to make a statement.
Refrigerators, televisions, and washing machines were the three major appliances of the 1980s, and they still were.
However, these three major items were not cheap to procure, and they were also popular goods, so large quantities had to be stocked.
The retail profit margins for home appliances at the terminal were still relatively high in those days.
For instance, VCDs, which would only be launched a few years later, had an ex-factory price of seven or eight hundred yuan but sold for around three thousand.
A 29-inch imported color TV, with a procurement price of six or seven thousand yuan, sold for twelve thousand.
As long as goods could be procured directly from the manufacturer, terminal sales profit margins were mostly above 100%, which was terrifying.
Unlike the fierce competition in later generations, where the home appliance industry was arguably as competitive as any other, and prices were transparent, leading to extremely low profit margins.
Nowadays, information was not widely circulated, and it was a seller's market, so earning money from information asymmetry was extremely lucrative.
Therefore, Fang Bai wanted to procure more goods before the end of the year and run a promotion when the store opened.
How much he could earn depended on the amount of capital he had and whether he could get the goods.
It was almost the end of the year, and manufacturers were also going on holiday, so Fang Bai didn't have much time left.
Xinghai Shopping Mall covered an area of 1050 square meters.
Excluding the cashiers, toilets, stairs, warehouse, etc., the actual commercial usable area was over 700 square meters.
Fang Bai estimated that at least 1.5 million yuan in capital was needed to procure appliances to support this electronics mall; three to four million yuan would not be too much.
Of course, if he had seven or eight hundred thousand yuan, it would barely suffice, otherwise the mall would appear very empty.
Therefore, his 400,000 yuan was simply not enough; he had to take out a loan.
Some time ago, he visited a bank branch, and the branch manager said that if there was collateral, loans were easy to get.
However, the approval process was really slow; it had been two weeks, and it still hadn't been approved.
Fang Bai had been busy with the opening recently and planned to follow up tomorrow.
If the loan wasn't disbursed within three days, he would switch to another bank; the gifts that needed to be given had already been given.
If the other party was too greedy, Fang Bai wouldn't tolerate them.
In those days, all banks had lending quotas, and many banks failed to meet their quotas last year.
Now it was a new year, and new, challenging quotas had been assigned.
Therefore, this was also why Fang Bai wanted to wait until after New Year's Day, when the new quotas for each bank were issued, to apply for a loan, as it would be easier then.
But unexpectedly, he encountered a difficult one, which was quite unlucky.
If there wasn't enough time for a loan, a few hundred thousand yuan would have to do; if the mall looked empty, then so be it.
In any case, he had to procure goods before the manufacturers went on holiday.
Fang Bai had already called to inquire about the holiday schedules of various manufacturers; currently, there was still enough time, and state-owned enterprises tended to have later holidays.
He planned to procure goods the day after tomorrow, spending that few hundred thousand first, rather than just waiting for the loan to come through.
Fang Bai also considered whether manufacturers would be willing to extend payment terms, but after thinking it over, he felt it was unlikely.
Currently, appliances were in high demand, unlike the fierce competition in later generations where manufacturers, to compete for mall display counters, would even provide goods to merchants first and collect payment later, or even only after the goods were sold.
Merchants delaying payment meant that the debtors were the 'bosses'.
Haha, now, the manufacturers are the 'bosses'.