start with a pet store

Chapter 1026: It is easy to add icing on the cake, but there are too few people who help in times of need
Lu Jingxing didn't come back until Ji Ling was getting ready to go to bed.

"What's wrong? Is Xiaobai seriously ill? Why did you come back so late?" Ji Ling heard the door open and ran out hugging a pillow, without even having time to put on her shoes. She looked barefoot at Lu Jingxing who was changing his shoes.

Lu Jingxing raised his head and looked her over from head to toe: "Didn't you blow dry your hair? You'll have a headache tomorrow."

"Ah, I turned on the fan and the hair dryer was too hot. How's Xiaobai?" Ji Ling didn't expect him to ask her back, so she asked again.

"It's fine, it just has some indigestion. Let's observe it for two more days. I just gave it some probiotics, and the X-rays and tests showed no problems..." Lu Jingxing walked closer with a smile.

"Then why did you come back only now?" Ji Ling leaned her head on his hand like a kitten.

"A stuffed doll came here that swallowed a foreign object. I came back to help take it out." Lu Jingxing pulled Ji Ling to the sink, took out the hair dryer and started blowing her hair.

Ji Ling's hair was very smooth and sleek, just like it had been straightened, and it was shiny black. Lu Jingxing really liked the feeling of running his fingers through her hairline.

Seeing him blowing her, Ji Ling couldn't say that she was afraid of the heat, so she just stood in front of the mirror and let him play with her obediently.

"What did you swallow?" Ji Ling asked.

"You will never guess..." Speaking of the puppet that swallowed foreign objects, Lu Jingxing couldn't help but shook his head and laughed helplessly.

"Hmm?" There were too many, Ji Ling really couldn't guess.

"It swallowed a needle, the kind of sewing needle, with a long thread attached..." said Lu Jingxing.

"Ah? Swallowed it? How did the master find out?" Ji Ling turned around with eyes wide open, also in disbelief.

"The problem is that it wasn't swallowed into the stomach. The needle didn't go down, but pierced the upper palate and was completely inserted, and then the thread reached the stomach. When the owner brought it to us, he said that the little guy hadn't eaten for a day and didn't know what was going on. We initially thought it had indigestion like Xiaobai or something, but after taking an X-ray, we found that there was a long thread in its stomach, one end of the thread was in the stomach and the other end in the mouth." Lu Jingxing was a little confused at the time.

Because I couldn't see the needle at all, I had to take another X-ray of the head, only to find that one end of the thread was a needle, and the needle was completely inserted on the upper palate just in front of the cat's throat.

The owner called home and found out that the elderly person in the family had sewed a quilt in the morning, but later lost the needle and thought it had fallen somewhere. After searching for it for a while, they gave up looking. No one dreamed that it was in the cat's stomach.

The final result was that Lu Jingxing did it himself. After giving the little guy anesthesia, he slowly clipped the needle out. Clipping the needle was only the first step. The difficulty was that he found that the needle had been swallowed for a long time, and the thread on the needle butt was almost one meter long. It all went into the stomach and rolled up, but the thread could not be rolled up when it was pulled. He could only pull it out slowly, little by little. If he pulled it out too fast, he was afraid of cutting the little guy's stomach and esophagus. So what seemed like a minor operation took almost two hours.

But the final result was very good. The little guy became lively again after waking up from the anesthesia and was discharged from the hospital on the spot.

Ji Ling was stunned when he heard him say, "Have you checked Xiaobai carefully? Is it the same case?"

Lu Jingxing sneered: "This is the first time I've encountered such a situation. How can it be such a coincidence?"

"It's better to be safe than sorry..." Ji Ling pouted.

Lu Jingxing kissed her pouting lips and said, "Don't worry, I've given it a full body check, it must be fine. I fed it when I left, and it has already started eating. Maybe it's been eating the same cat food for too long, and it just wants to change the taste." He said with a smile.

"Oh, that's good. Go take a shower. You have to get up early tomorrow. Change your clothes and I'll wash them for you." Ji Ling smiled and pushed him towards the bathroom.

"I haven't got any clean clothes yet..." Lu Jingxing shouted as he was locked inside the door by Ji Ling.

"I've put it on the clothes rack for you. Throw out the clothes you want to change and I'll go to the laundry room to wash them." Ji Ling didn't like to use a washing machine to wash her summer clothes. She usually washed them by hand. She didn't expect that Lu Jingxing also had this habit.

So, we have a washing machine at home, but it is rarely used in summer, and both of us wash our clothes by hand.

Usually, the two of them washed their own clothes. Today it was a little late, and Ji Ling felt that she and Lu Jingxing had already established their relationship. It should be okay for her to help him with such a small matter as washing clothes. Besides, this is what a girlfriend should do, she thought to herself.

Lu Jingxing smiled and threw out his clothes: "That's hard work, ha..."

After saying this, he hummed a song.

Ji Ling blushed a little, picked up the clothes and went to the laundry room.

When Lu Jingxing came out of the shower, Ji Ling had just finished washing clothes. Lu Jingxing picked up the clothes and started to dry them.

"Oh, this is my ideal married life..." Lu Jingxing teased.

"You..." Ji Ling stomped her feet with a red face, ran back to her room and never came out again.

After drying the clothes, Lu Jingxing knocked on her door with a smile: "Good night, see you tomorrow..."

The next day, Ji Ling came to the kitchen with a fluffy hair and saw Lu Jingxing wearing an apron underneath: "Why are you here so early?"

Lu Jingxing turned around and said with a smile: "Good morning, did you sleep well last night?"

Ji Ling nodded: "Well, why are you here so early? I got up early on purpose to make breakfast. How come you are here earlier than me?"

"Of course you have to. You're going to school soon. I have to make breakfast for you in the last two days. Go wash up and we'll eat soon." Lu Jingxing smiled and scratched her nose.

After breakfast, the two went back to store one for a regular meeting, and then rushed to store two.

The place they were going to this time was a bit far, so Lu Jingxing brought Black Tiger with him.

Although there are four of them, Lu Jingxing always likes to bring Heihu with him whenever he goes to an unfamiliar place, as if he feels more secure this way.

Yang Pei and Lu Yin also arrived at the second store early.

Ji Ling saw Lu Yin and joked, "Did you punish him last night?" Lu Yin blushed and said, "Why are you so naughty?"

Ji Ling laughed: "Oh, oh, oh, you're still embarrassed."

The two of them hugged each other and laughed.

With four of us together, the road was lively and the several hours' drive seemed to go by very quickly.

"It should be just ahead. The navigation shows that we'll be there soon." Ji Ling said while looking at the navigation and pointing ahead.

Lu Jingxing nodded: "It should be."

There are actually quite a lot of processing plants in this place, which Lu Jingxing did not expect. It looks like a newly developed industrial park.

When he arrived at the factory gate, before he could make a phone call, a man in formal attire came up to him and said, "Mr. Lu, I'm Chai Jianming who's in contact with you. Thank you for coming here from so far away." He walked over excitedly and shook hands with Lu Jingxing.

Lu Jingxing shook his hand back and introduced him: "This is our administrative assistant Xiao Ji, this is Dr. Yang Pei, the manager of our second store, and this is Dr. Yang's girlfriend."

"Hello, hello, come on, let's go inside..." After Chai Jianming shook hands with Yang Pei, he nodded to Ji Ling and Lu Yin, and walked in with a few people.

As they walked, he introduced to Lu Jingxing: "This is actually a processing plant. Our main meat is white-feathered chicken, which is usually about 42 days old. It is transported from an SGS-certified processing plant to our factory for processing after high-temperature cleaning, automatic depilation, and removal of chicken legs and wings..."

Several people went directly to the second floor of the workshop, from which they could see the interior of the entire factory.

The scale of the factory is not large. Chai Jianming said: "The initial investment of my factory was about one million yuan. There are two extruders. I have always required that the raw materials must be good, but now the sales are not very good."

Apart from asking a few questions from time to time, Lu Jingxing spent most of the time listening to Chai Jianming.

He has done his homework. The cat and dog food market is relatively saturated now, with various brands of varying quality. It is not easy for a processing factory to run a good business.

The main problem for Chai Jianming and his team was not just sales. There was also a major conflict among several partners. Two of them did not want to be partners anymore for their own reasons and asked to withdraw their shares.

Because the factory has always been half-hearted and required a lot of initial investment, it has not made much profit in the past two or three years. Therefore, all shareholders are unwilling to invest more money in it. Chai Jianming became a lone hero, but he did not have much financial resources, so he naturally could not support it.

He said with a sad face: "Now we need to pay for raw materials in cash, but we may not get paid immediately after shipping. Slowly, it is getting harder and harder to make ends meet."

After walking around the entire factory, they returned to his office.

After sitting down, Lu Jingxing asked some more professional questions, such as how many workers there are now, what is the approximate daily output, what are his current plans, whether the opinions of several shareholders are consistent, etc.

After nearly two hours of communication, Lu Jingxing had a clear idea in his mind.

Seeing that they had understood almost everything, they stood up and said goodbye.

"It's almost time for dinner. Why don't you stay and have a quick meal before leaving? My home is nearby..." Chai Jianming stood up, feeling somewhat reluctant to see Lu Jingxing and the others leave.

"No, let's go to the county town and I will give you an answer in a week at the latest. Do you think the price can be lowered? I also need to discuss this with our shareholders. To be honest with you, your factory is still a little small for us. The production volume may only be enough for ourselves. If I want to sell it to the outside, I may have to invest more. So, I have to go back and discuss it to see what the shareholders think." Lu Jingxing told the truth.

"Okay, okay, I understand. Thank you for your support. I'm really sorry to have troubled everyone to come all the way here. I apologize for the neglect." Chai Jianming sent everyone to the car and kept thanking them.

Back in the car, Yang Pei said, "He's a factory director, why should he be so humble? He's still a boss after all."

"It's hard to make money now. He has invested so much here, all with loans, and even mortgaged his house. Now if those shareholders want to cut off his funding, he won't be able to get up. If no one takes over this factory, his equipment can only be sold as scrap metal. Even if this factory is rented out, there won't be much money, and it will be even harder to sell it. He signed a 30-year contract." Lu Jingxing shook his head and said.

"He also said that those shareholders were good friends of his and were related to him. How could they just watch him do this?" Ji Ling was a little confused.

"People are realistic. He hasn't made any progress in the past few years, so people don't see any hope. It's easy to add icing on the cake, but there are very few people who provide timely help." Lu Yin said.

"Well, it is true. This is the reality." Ji Ling sighed slightly.

"I have calculated that his daily output based on the current situation may just be enough for our three stores. But if we really take over, we will definitely have to add machines, and the investment may be higher than the total price of taking over his factory now. So, we still have to carefully calculate whether this can be done. However, I have also calculated that if we now directly purchase goods from manufacturers, the price difference is actually not a small expense." Lu Jingxing said after thinking for a while.

"I think this can be done. When you were talking just now, I roughly calculated the cost. Based on his current output, plus all the expenses, and based on the current labor cost, it is much more cost-effective than if we directly get the finished product. As for the machine, it depends on how it is made..." Ji Ling continued with Lu Jingxing's words.

"If you two think it's ok, then just do it. Anyway, our needs will only increase in the future. Chai Jianming seems to be a down-to-earth person. According to his plan, he will continue to manage the production in the factory, and he will no longer be needed to go out to do business. This should be okay." Yang Pei also said.

Lu Jingxing nodded: "Yes, I think so too. It's not bad to have the factory here. It's only a two-hour drive away. There are not only factories but also warehouses here. The rent is much cheaper than Long'an. Moreover, he has handled factories and warehouses before, so even if there is a backlog of goods, it's no problem. If we start all over again now, the investment will only be greater."

"Then there's nothing to hesitate about. Just make your decision." Yang Pei stretched lazily. "Let's find a place to eat first. I've been in the car for several hours and walked around the factory for several hours. I'm really hungry."

"Okay..." Lu Jingxing said with a long smile.

A few of them found a local restaurant, ordered a local chicken and some home-cooked dishes, and had a happy meal.

I walked around the local area a few more times in the afternoon. The more I walked around, the more satisfied I was with this place. The transportation is convenient and it is not far from the highway. It took more than two hours to get here by the national highway, but it only took one and a half hours to go back by highway.

The next day, Lu Jingxing and Ji Ling worked out a plan, and he went to Song Weiyuan's company in person to find Song Weiyuan.

Anyway, he had to find him regarding investment matters. It wasn't that he had to ask him to invest, but for this kind of thing, he felt that he should find someone who specialized in investment to back him up and see if it could be done.

Of course, there is also Zhao Jingming. However, as for Zhao Jingming, generally you just need to make a phone call and talk about the situation, because he can't give any advice. At most, he will say, "You do it, and I will discuss with the old man how much funding you need."

(End of this chapter)