Several days later, the Qin Manor received Qin Kaile’s reply letter—Dong Shi would soon depart to return to the manor and would bring back the two children as well.
When the news arrived, Qin Shuying was speaking with Nanny Mi.
Nanny Mi’s face showed signs of travel dust, but her spirits were excellent.
“…Miss, this past month, this servant has been borrowing your authority, and finally managed to properly handle the affairs you entrusted to me.”
Mi Luo presented the account books. Qin Shuying scanned them rapidly, reading ten lines at a glance, and quickly finished reviewing them. Mi Luo couldn’t help but secretly marvel—Miss was truly exceptionally intelligent and had a talent for business.
Even more formidable than the former Second Miss Qin!
Though Second Miss Qin had been shrewd back then, she lacked the current Miss’s ruthlessness. The current Miss showed no mercy when suppressing competitors.
Qin Shuying set down the account books and nodded with a smile: “Nanny Mi, you’ve done excellently.”
Her brown sugar empire had finally taken shape in rudimentary form under the tireless efforts of the Mi Luo couple.
Before New Year, Mi Luo had followed her instructions to recruit personnel and head to southern regions as well as cities near the capital, vigorously promoting the “Haoji” brown sugar brand and seeking alliances.
Her method was extremely different from the operating styles of large and small shops throughout the Great Zhou.
In the Great Zhou’s shops—setting aside small establishments—those branded goods from great families basically handled everything from production, transportation to sales through their own people in a single line of responsibility.
However, Qin Shuying’s operating method was to only handle production, not managing transportation and sales—whoever joined the franchise would handle those aspects. It seemed similar to producers.
But it was actually quite different.
Most producers only took responsibility for product quality and nothing else, especially in the food industry.
But to join the “Haoji” brown sugar franchise, franchisees had to pay a certain franchise fee, and “Haoji” brown sugar would provide them with the brown sugar recipe. In return, they had to display the “Haoji” brown sugar signage in their shops according to requirements and implement proper anti-counterfeiting production procedures.
Mi Luo served as the general manager of “Haoji” brown sugar and was now called Manager Mi. Shopkeeper Du served as the training general manager for brown sugar production, teaching the recipe to people sent by franchisees. He also served as the product inspection general manager, monitoring whether these franchisees produced brown sugar according to contract terms.
“Haoji” brown sugar had created a selling frenzy in the capital before New Year and continued selling extremely well for over two months afterward. Therefore, once this news spread, people came to join the franchise in an endless stream.
However, “Haoji” brown sugar had quite a few rules, one of which was not accepting franchisees from the capital. In other words, the capital’s brown sugar market remained firmly under Qin Shuying’s control.
Fortunately, Qin Shuying had anticipated this situation and made adequate preparations. She recruited a large number of personnel, gradually broke down the brown sugar secret recipe into five steps for the Du and Jin family sons to master. Between running errands and diligent study, Nanny Mi and Shopkeeper Du managed to cope.
After a month of bustling activity, franchisees from all directions—east, south, west, and north—had joined. Over twenty shops paid franchise fees totaling eighteen thousand taels.
These franchise fees weren’t one-time payments but had to be paid annually, though the fees decreased as years increased. So as long as the “Haoji” brown sugar brand could be maintained, Qin Shuying could receive ten to twenty thousand taels in franchise silver annually.
These franchisees weren’t accepted randomly but were carefully calculated by Mi Luo. For example, a town with one hundred thousand people would be granted at most one franchise store. This pattern continued mainly to prevent unfair competition.
This operating method had been gradually developed by Qin Yaoyao in her previous life through intermittent dealings with many overseas merchants. What Lu Changxuan didn’t know was that Qin Yaoyao actually understood foreign languages.
This had originally been out of necessity. When Qin Yaoyao did business with a thin foundation, she naturally did whatever was profitable. The Great Zhou was prosperous, and some foreign countries sent people across the seas. These people were either wealthy merchants or rich individuals, and their money was the easiest to earn.
Qin Yaoyao went to great lengths to deal with them, wanting to earn more money. Through these interactions, she learned foreign languages. After these foreigners came to the Great Zhou, some engaged in commerce, some in study, and some in travel. But though the Great Zhou was open, it had many restrictions on their commercial activities within the country.
For example, they couldn’t establish shops with more than twenty people in the Great Zhou, had to pay ten percent more in taxes than Great Zhou merchants, and merchants weren’t allowed to enter schools… and so on.
So even though these foreigners might be wealthy enough to rival nations in their home countries, they found it difficult to display their abilities in the Great Zhou. But their business experience benefited those with intentions like Qin Yaoyao.
Qin Yaoyao had long wanted to put this franchise method into practice, but she had no secret recipes and lacked the large amounts of silver needed to establish the foundation and open up the market, so she could only sigh in vain.
Now, with such a good opportunity, Qin Shuying could fully display her abilities, feeling great satisfaction.
More importantly, her language talent was good. Now, borrowing from her previous foundation in foreign languages plus diligent study from the foreign language dictionary left by Qin Yongzhou these past few months, she not only gained much understanding of those difficult books but also made some new discoveries about Qin Yongzhou’s death.
But…
“Lu Ye, go get the red envelopes.”
Lu Ye crisply responded and happily brought over a tray with red silk, on which several red envelopes were neatly arranged with names marked on them.
Qin Shuying picked up the red envelopes and handed the one marked with Nanny Mi’s name to Mi Luo: “Nanny Mi, you’ve worked hard during this period. The brown sugar business depended entirely on you and your husband to open up the market. This is a small token of my appreciation.”
Nanny Mi knew the red envelope contained bank notes and quickly waved her hands: “Miss, my monthly salary is already generous enough. How can I let Miss spend extra money?”
Qin Shuying smiled: “Nanny, when you’re outside, you have to deal with all kinds of people. This hardship is something we inner quarters folk can hardly comprehend. Nanny, please don’t refuse—this is what you deserve. I’m still counting on you to earn more money for my security!”
Nanny Fu also said: “Nanny Mi, your abilities are something even ten of me couldn’t learn. Miss constantly speaks of your hardships. Please don’t refuse—this is Miss’s heartfelt intention.”
“This…”
Mi Luo’s eyes grew moist. Miss had bought their entire family, and this kindness alone was impossible to repay. So when Miss assigned her this task, though it was hard work, it allowed her to display her commercial talents and gave her great satisfaction.
Moreover, the whole family was together, living without worries, and she could teach her sons skills—she was extremely content. She worked conscientiously without daring to slack off in the slightest.
Mi Luo accepted the red envelope and knelt down with a “thud,” kowtowing three times to Qin Shuying: “This servant thanks Miss! This servant thanks Miss on behalf of our whole family!”
Qin Shuying accepted her kowtow, then gestured for Nanny Fu to help Mi Luo up, smiling: “Nanny Mi, you’re now Manager Mi. It won’t do to keep kneeling at every turn—don’t do this again in the future. Your gratitude is premature—thanks to you, everyone here has red envelopes.”
With that, everyone laughed, and even the melancholy on Ziteng’s face disappeared.