Walking on the way home, Yang Sichang couldn't help but ask: "Madame kicked me lightly in the store just now, what's going on, is it that this Li family's shop has a short behavior, although the husband is not a big official, but no one is allowed to bully Madame." ”

"Xianggong, you are wrong, guess how much cloth we bought for six dollars."

"Aren't they two, a total of eighty feet?"

"There is a problem with their ruler, not that it is short, but that it is long, and it is an inch longer than the average ruler. We bought eighty-eight feet of cloth for six thousand silver. plus half a horse that won the lottery, a total of 128 feet, and then buy 20 catties of cotton. In addition to making two deep clothes of fine linen for you and Yun'er, it is also enough to make a new cotton coat for the second, third and two girls (children and small provincial cloth). Two packets of laba porridge were also given. Today, I heard that Xianggong came out to see this newly opened department store, and it was really the right place. ”

Yang Sichang was stunned when he listened, since ancient times, there has been no business or treachery, who doesn't want to take advantage of customers, only those century-old stores do more to do more to do Tong Suo without bullying, this Li Jing juvenile doll, the newly opened store is willing to lose money to ship. But when I thought about it carefully, it suddenly became clear.

"Madame doesn't know, this Li family currently has no one in the court as an official, and it is new to Jinling, the place of life is not familiar, the new store opens and does not have the popularity and reputation of a century-old store, I am afraid that it is not good to open the situation, if the price is reduced and the market is broken, and people are jealous, this Li Jing is not simple, come up with such a way, open the situation, Mrs. looks, within a month, this department store will definitely be able to catch up with those big cloth villages."

"Xianggong, even if this has an effect for a while, but after a long time, sooner or later it will still be known by peers."

"How can there be a secret in this world that will always be kept, what Li Jing needs is time, and when his peers know, Li Jing has already gained a firm foothold in Jinling, what he needs is to open the situation in the shortest possible time. If you are willing to give up, you will get if you are willing to give up. Don't be afraid to pay, as long as there is a return, madam, you see, in the future, he Li Jing will definitely earn back a thousand times. ”

Mrs. Yang suddenly realized, but she still felt admiration in her heart, it was easy to say, but a few people dared to throw the money into the water first.

Li Jing stayed in the Dagongfang store for a day, and most of the people who came today came in the spirit of lottery and gifts. After all, whoever buys is not buying, you can know if the quality is good or not, and you can't deceive people. However, starting in the afternoon, the situation changed somewhat. Many people buy a dozen feet according to the actual needs of the family and the plan of saving money in their hands. However, when I went home, I found that there was one more than one percent.

The department stores sold grey fabrics and low-grade homespun fabrics, and a small amount of silk was sold at the same price as the market. The customers and the location of the store are carefully considered, and the people living around are middle and lower class people. In this era, materials are scarce, especially clothing is never enough, and a piece of clothing is often worn by parents to their children, and then passed on to younger siblings. Patches stack upon stack of patches. "Three years of the new, three years of the old, and another three years of mending the seams." When it is broken and can't be repaired, cut it to make socks. By the time the socks were broken again, the cloth had become a small piece of cloth, a small cloth head. That's it, and I can't bear to throw it away. At this time, use a piece of large yellow paper and brush it with paste. Glue the rag head and the rotten cloth pieces on top layer by layer and glue them into a one-centimeter-thick cloth board. Every household has this kind of cloth board, and the cloth can be pasted at any time, and if there is a rag head on the road, someone will pick it up and take it home immediately.

What is the use of these rag boards, and when it is time to make shoes, cut them with scissors according to the size of the feet, which is the sole of cloth shoes with a thousand layers of soles. The mille-feuille bottom means that these rag boards are made of countless layers pasted together. Will the excess scraps from the sole be thrown away, of course not, it will be directly pasted as a new material into a new cloth board.

Some of these people are coolies, some are pig slaughterers, some are small traders, and some are small traders and merchants, and they are willing to tear up more than ten feet and one or two pieces of cloth to make new clothes for adults and children all year round, and the old clothes are passed on to the children who are gradually growing taller. This time the price of the department store was relatively affordable in the Jinling cloth shop, and this time it was secretly given an extra percent, which was obviously a discount for the opening of the new store. In the future, there may not be, so many people buy cloth in the morning, go home and find that there is more, discuss with the family, and come over in the afternoon to buy more.

As time passed, the number of customers in each store began to gradually increase, and even after the Laba Festival, Laba porridge was no longer given. However, after the popularity decreased greatly the next day, it gradually began to rise again, and the closer to the Spring Festival, the more people there were, and there was a long queue outside on the 27th of the lunar month. A lot of people have closed the door to the palm light, and they haven't lined up yet.

Jinling has the famous eighteen squares, all of which are workshop areas and residential areas where handicraftsmen gather. Like the brocade workshop in Jubaomen, the dye workshop by the Qinhuai River, the silver workshop by the drinking Hongqiao, the iron workshop at the intersection of Changle Road, and the copper workshop in the alley in the south of the city. The craftsmen in these places have to do the work, and they will only buy the cheapest grey fabric, go to the dyeing workshop to pay a small amount of money to print and dye, and go home to make clothes. So there is one in almost every workshop in a department store.

Grey cloth is the most primary product, and the production of grey cloth is either a family or a small workshop. On the contrary, if your grey fabric output is large and the quality is good, these printing and dyeing workshops will give you a good price to receive a large number of goods. After all, the level of agricultural development in this era was low, and planting alone could not meet the demand for clothing. Clothes are not a cheap expense. Knowing that the emergence of petroleum chemical fiber has completely solved the world's clothing problem.

The ancients believed that the wealth of the world is constant, and the more you earn, the less others earn, in fact, it is correct to understand that the per capita output has always fluctuated in a general area for thousands of years. It's basically constant. It wasn't until the advent of the steam engine that the power of capital began to manifest, creating more products in more than a hundred years than in previous millennia.

Li Jing has always believed that no matter what kind of society, what can really keep the people fed and clothed is the progress of technology, and nothing else can be eaten. Development is the last word, and all problems will be solved in the course of development. As long as society moves forward, there is no problem that cannot be solved, and there is only a problem that the situation does not give you time.

Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong can't solve any practical problems, they can only reduce the population, of course, when there is no rooster crowing for thousands of miles, the problem will indeed be solved as a whole. Every time the population of this continent begins to approach 100 million, it is the beginning of a new cycle, running without beginning and end.

The popularity of sales exceeded Li Jing's expectations, and more than 100,000 pieces of cloth were basically sold out on the day before the Spring Festival and Chinese New Year's Eve. The grey cloth is basically sold out, and the silk is affected by popularity, and by the way, it is better than usual. Sold 50% more than the previous year. The old shopkeeper in charge of Nanjing was so happy that he couldn't keep his mouth shut all day long.

The popularity of the lottery during this period also brought a lot of happiness to the unentertained public, although two-thirds of them went home. But one-third of the winning rate is not low, but the vast majority of them are given a foot of homespun cloth, which is only enough to make a pair of socks. There are only ten horses for one horse, and only a hundred for half horses. A lot of people are going to buy half a piece of cloth for the lottery, but they bought a piece directly from passionate consumption, thinking that the cloth can't be broken at home anyway, and it will be the same if you don't use it this year and next year, if you win another horse, you can make a lot of money, people in this era are not very good, and you don't want to think about it, hundreds of thousands of pieces of cloth, the person who won the first word award is the individual, how small the odds are.

Later, there were too many people in the lottery, which has affected the normal business of the Dagongfang store. Li Jing decided to change the location of the lottery to the newly purchased land on Huashi Street, which had just been cleared and turned into a vacant land. The shed was built here with bamboo poles and mats, and the place was large enough, and 10,000 pieces of cloth were placed on the site at the same time, which looked very impactful. Whenever someone wins the lottery, there are guys who bang gongs and announce that so-and-so has won the lottery with a loudspeaker rolled up in iron sheets. Winners, please come to the stage to receive the prize. Li Weier and Li Yueer were in charge of commanding, the four maids and their men were in charge of redeeming the prizes, and Bai Yu stood on the temporary wooden platform to give out prizes to the winners on the spot, and the scene was extremely hot.

The group effect is terrible, for example, many people cry together, and some people are sad even if they are not sad. A lot of people even buy a piece of cloth directly here and draw a lottery. Some people don't win the lottery and keep buying one horse after another, and the activity almost becomes a lottery ticket sale.

Of course, in the end, most of them won a C prize. It's just a matter of comfort. This kind of momentum of everyone bent on winning the jackpot frightened Li Jing, and he even regretted releasing the devil of the lottery ticket. Fortunately, the goods were basically sold out before the Spring Festival. The event is also over. Otherwise, I'm really afraid that something will happen, and the government will ask.

The land of Huashi Street is completely famous, and almost everyone in Jinling knows this unlucky land because of the lottery, but now this is the most popular place in Jinling.

Five days before Chinese New Year's Eve, the Phoenix and Feilaishan ships once again docked at Shimonoseki Pier. This time, 100,000 catties of vegetable oil and new cloth were brought in. There are also local specialties of Meixi. The newcomers are all wide fabrics woven by new looms. The old lady saw the sweetness from the vegetable oil, and used tens of thousands of taels of silver from the public middle school to build 100 new looms, and 20 have been made so far. There are not many new wide cloths this time, only 300 large horses, the big horse is the name of Li Jing's grandfather's new invention, and one large horse is equal to sixty small horses. They are all large cloth rolls four zhang wide and twelve zhang long.

As soon as these wide-width cloths were listed in 55 stores, Jinling City became a sensation.