Fang Bai believed that his biggest gain in the past few days was not the two million loan.
Instead, it was the explosive increase in the number of his system connections.
The 12th connection came from Chen Shi, who provided Fang Bai with a lot of help.
The 13th and 14th connections were Ye Fan, the president of G Commercial Bank, who was also an elite connection.
He was able to help Fang Bai obtain a high-value loan, providing Fang Bai with tremendous assistance that other connections could not compare to.
Although Chen Shi provided help, Ye Fan was ultimately the one who made the final decision.
Working hard for three months was not as fast as getting money through a loan.
Thinking about those real estate companies in later generations, which one didn't have a bank debt ratio exceeding 70%, and countless of them exploded.
The 15th connection was Li Hui, the boss of Ning City Zhede;
The 16th connection was Shen Feng, a major shareholder of Han D Company;
The 17th connection was Shen Dong, the second shareholder of Han D Company, and Shen Feng's brother.
Han D's future development was quite good, with revenue reaching several billion yuan by 2022.
Of course, Han D could not catch up with later generations like Fang Tai and Aux.
The 18th connection was the factory director of a small state-owned enterprise. Fang Bai inquired at a tobacco shop near the factory gate. The shop owner asked him if he was looking for a factory leader. Fang Bai said, "To see the factory director, I need to buy a few cartons of cigarettes."
"One hundred yuan, take the slip." The shop owner simply replied.
Fang Bai put down one hundred yuan, took the paper slip handed over by the shop owner, but did not take the cigarettes.
At that time, after the father and son left the tobacco shop, Fang Shi didn't understand: "Why give cigarettes but not take them?"
Fang Bai looked back at the tobacco shop before telling his father: "Dad, the factory director's relative opened this tobacco shop. That money is actually for the factory director."
"Oh, I see!"
"Yes, many tobacco shops do this kind of business. They don't sell many cigarettes or alcohol, but their business is not bad. They all help people collect money. When doing business with these state-owned enterprises, asking these tobacco shop owners can get a lot of information."
"So, if you give one hundred yuan, the matter can be settled?"
"That's another matter. It's just the threshold to meet the person."
"I really don't understand how you know all these tricks."
"Just observe more, haha." Fang Bai chuckled. He had seen a lot in his previous life, and there were some tricks that he still didn't understand after living for decades.
The 19th and 20th connections were both owners of small home appliance companies.
Yesterday, Fang Bai's Ring Finger Golden Finger had already upgraded, but he had been busy and hadn't paid much attention.
This morning, he finally noticed a system prompt and was overjoyed.
He felt that the most difficult connections to gather had finally reached 20 for an upgrade!
"Damn, yes yes yes!"
Fang Bai couldn't help but shout on the bed.
[Prompt: The Ring Finger can be upgraded. Do you want to upgrade?]
Fang Bai silently thought "confirm," and the Ring Finger Golden Finger directly upgraded to Level 2.
Suddenly, he felt a warmth in his right ring finger.
A moment later, the warmth subsided, and he saw that his ring finger was slightly less swollen, almost like normal, and a bit more flexible than before.
This was no different from his Middle Finger upgrading to LV2; they were both the same.
After upgrading, it even gained a new function!
Moreover, it became even more powerful.
[LV2: Can know the other party's information from the past two days and current inner thoughts. Limited to 2 people per day. Alcohol tolerance + 1]
The detection time changed from one day to two days, and the daily limit became 2 people. His troubling alcohol tolerance problem actually increased.
Alcohol tolerance + 1?
After a detailed explanation from the system, Fang Bai learned that it meant an increase of 1 jin of strong liquor alcohol tolerance, and it would not harm his body or fill his stomach. It would directly convert into energy, as if poured into a subspace.
In other words, Fang Bai's alcohol tolerance directly increased from half a jin to 1.5 jin!
1.5 jin!
This level could be said to be a high-end level for a heavy drinker, not boundless, but an astonishing alcohol tolerance, at least he would no longer be afraid of drinking.
At drinking gatherings, he would basically be considered a drinking master, except for those extremely rare alcoholics.
"Holy cow, if anyone challenges me to a drinking contest again, I'll definitely take them down!"
"Young people aren't that easy to bully either."
Fang Bai felt this was extremely useful. He often ran errands for business, and drinking was unavoidable.
Now that his Ring Finger had upgraded to Level 2, Fang Bai felt that his Ring Finger was becoming more and more abnormal, giving him a big surprise.
To upgrade to Level 3, the difficulty was the same: the number of connections needed to reach 40, which was a 2x increase. This was different from the increase levels of the Index Finger and Middle Finger.
But if he wanted to upgrade to Level 4, it would require 80 connections, and the later levels would become increasingly difficult to upgrade.
Moreover, Fang Bai had a concern: as his social status and wealth increased, what used to count as connections might no longer be considered connections if they provided too little help.
With his Ring Finger upgraded, Fang Bai got out of bed feeling refreshed, even though it was still a bit cold.
In winter, sleeping in was the most comfortable.
But there was still a lot to do today. Everyone in the family, except his younger sister, had to get up early to prepare for tomorrow's opening.
After breakfast, it was just past seven o'clock.
Fang Bai's parents had already gone to the shopping mall early in the morning to get busy.
After being away for a few days, Fang Bai also wanted to know how everyone's preparations were going.
He first walked through the two shop fronts. All the televisions had been repaired. They hadn't set up a stall in the past few days, so Fang Bai estimated that about 350 repaired televisions had accumulated.
Starting tomorrow, Fang Bai would pay double wages. Most of the part-time college students hadn't gone home, so when there were no televisions to repair, they would go to the shopping mall to help.
The useless television parts in the shop had already been cleared out and sold. The repaired televisions needed to be moved to the shopping mall for display, as there weren't many left in the shop.
Fang Bai locked the shop door and walked to the shopping mall.
The shopping mall was only three to four hundred meters from his home, so he arrived in a short while.
At the east gate of the shopping mall, some flower pots were placed, and a semi-circular inflatable archway was set up. Next to it was a large display board, about four to five meters long and two to three meters high, with posters pasted on both sides, pieced together: "February 10th, Xinghai Electric Appliance Market Grand Opening."
"Spring Festival Appliance Recharge Activity: Recharge 500 yuan, get 30 yuan;
Recharge 1000 yuan, get 70 yuan;
Recharge 2000 yuan, get 160 yuan;
Recharge 5000 yuan, get 500 yuan… No upper limit, only during the Spring Festival!"
Fang Bai's opening activity was this recharge activity. The pricing was the same as other shopping malls, but becoming a member and recharging was equivalent to a discount.
Since there were no electronic cards at the time, Fang Bai had Jing Tian prepare hard paper cards for 500 yuan, 1000 yuan, 2000 yuan, and 5000 yuan denominations. Recharges could only be made according to these four amounts. Each time a purchase was made, a number would be stamped on the card, so customers could know their remaining balance.
Correspondingly, the shop had a ledger to record the usage and balance of each card number. Once the card's amount was used up, it became void.
Inquiries were also convenient, and if a card was lost, it could be replaced.
In this era, this was the most convenient way to record cards.
Fang Bai organized this recharge activity mainly to raise funds. Customers would recharge to get discounts, and after buying appliances, they would still have a remaining balance, which would also promote consumption.
The balance could be refunded, but after deducting the gifted amount, though this would not be publicly announced.
The east gate was ajar. Fang Bai saw his parents already busy inside the shop from the outside.
On the first floor's rooftop, there were also many large display boards, all for promotional advertisements, such as [Buy cheap appliances, go to Oubei Wharf Xinghai Shopping Mall]
[Focus on small home appliances, Xinghai for thousands of families]
[Xinghai Electric Appliance: Not the cheapest, only cheaper]
[Quality establishes the world, Xinghai enters thousands of homes]
[To buy good home appliances, please come to Xinghai]
…
Fang Bai walked around the exterior of the shopping mall. His family's shopping mall was 18 meters from the road curb. According to the plan, the eight-meter-long foundation in front of the shop belonged to the owner's management and could be used for setting up stalls but not for building houses. The ten-meter space further out belonged to the public and could be used for road widening in the future.
In other words, there was an open space in front of the shopping mall that could be planned for use, which Fang Bai designated as a parking lot, with designated areas for bicycles and motorcycles, and also a dozen small car parking spaces.
Fang Bai had consulted the local department before marking the parking spaces, and the department leader was happy about it, as the public didn't have to pay to pave the concrete ground.
At this moment, his father saw his son coming, glanced at him, and then went back to work, opening and rolling up several rolling doors. Fang Bai stood by the roadside, clearly seeing the interior of the shop through the large floor-to-ceiling glass.
In the old television area, the large color TV screen that Fang Bai had previously repaired was placed facing outside the shop, with two 29-inch color TVs on each side, creating a focal point to attract passersby.
Entering the shop, the floor was not tiled but made of concrete sealed and hardened, looking very bright. This type is often used in future clean rooms, being both cheap and aesthetically pleasing.
Currently, tiles were expensive and of poor quality, and not wear-resistant. There were also no large marble-imitating tiles for sale at the moment.
Therefore, a concrete sealed and hardened floor was better. It was also easier to spray paint and mark lines on it, and if there was damage, future repairs would be much easier.
Liu Fengqing was busy attaching price tags to the new color televisions. Seeing her son enter, she asked with a smile, "Son, is this price suitable? The gross profit is really high."
She knew the wholesale price of televisions. Her son had given her a small pricing booklet with the sales prices of various appliances. For example, a 29-inch Panasonic color TV was selling for 11,888 yuan!
Some imported 21-inch color TVs ranged from over three thousand to over five thousand yuan.
Old televisions only sold for about 1,100 yuan, a significant difference.
The profit margin on new televisions was quite high, but not as high as some other home appliances.
In 1989, to regulate the circulation of color televisions and ease supply-demand relations, the state issued policies to implement exclusive sales of color televisions and levy additional consumption tax and a domestic development fund outside the price.
For example, imported 12-14 inch color TVs were subject to three to five hundred yuan in customs duties, so the market price of a new imported 14-inch color TV reached about 1,500 yuan, while domestic color TVs were relatively much cheaper.
However, the picture quality of domestic color TVs was too poor to catch the eye of wealthy people.
Fang Bai told his mother: "Other businesses sell them this way. We just opened, so we can't be special and start a price war, letting them focus their firepower on us."
Liu Fengqing pouted: "You're right, it would be foolish not to make money."
Fang Bai smiled and walked around the shopping mall, checking for any problems, and still found quite a few.
As it approached nine o'clock, employees arrived and began organizing the shopping mall.
At ten o'clock, Fang Bai gathered all personnel for a meeting.
The newly hired full-time employees included four security guards, two cashiers, eight salespeople, and two general laborers. The several college students preparing to sign agreements were not included.
Fang Shi was the general manager, responsible for the overall operation of the shopping mall. Liu Fengqing was in charge of item pricing, Li Meng was the sales supervisor, Jing Tian was the technical supervisor, Chen Yang was the warehouse supervisor, and so on.
Adding the several part-time college students who had not yet returned home, the staff reached thirty people.
Fang Bai explained the opening day procedures: ribbon-cutting at nine o'clock, grand opening at nine-thirty, and normal operating hours from nine A.M. to seven P.M., a total of 10 hours.
Currently, there was no habit of shopping at appliance malls in the evening, so they would not operate at night.
After explaining the procedures, Fang Bai discussed some issues that needed rectification.
Finally, Fang Bai said some encouraging words to the employees before dismissing them.
After the dismissal, Fang Bai went to each appliance area to check again, pointed out the problems he found, stating they must be rectified today, and also asked employees some questions to avoid problems when they opened tomorrow.
By eleven o'clock, hundreds of spectators had already gathered outside the shopping mall. They came after seeing the promotional advertisements and heard that there would be lion dances and free prize giveaways tomorrow.
For this prize giveaway activity, Fang Bai had people prepare prizes worth from one mao to one yuan, all daily necessities like toothbrushes and small packets of laundry detergent, with a total value of about one thousand yuan, mainly to gather popularity.
He planned to hold a grand lottery event during the Spring Festival to attract another wave of money and also boost the shopping mall's popularity.