Chapter 75 Conning the Merchants – Part 2 (1/2)

Chapter 75 – Conning the Merchants – Part 2

The merchants read the details in the scroll, then their eyes were glittering from greed.

”Are you sure that you can give us such perks?”

The merchant leader was baffled. The promise was unbelievable. He even thought that Tong was stupid and naïve.

In the scroll, Tong gave them the right to buy the renowned soap in bulk at the price of 20 gold a piece, which were only lower than the market price by half.

In exchange for that right, they had to sell any food product to the city government with the amount of at least 10,000 tons with the fixed price that the city government had set.

For 10,000 tons of food that they sold, they could buy 1,000 bars of soap from Tong. If they brought in 20,000 tons, then 2,000 soap bars could be purchased. The more they brought the food here, the more goods they could take back.

The fixed price that the city used was 5 tons of any food for one tael of gold, which the merchants would suffer deficit if they complied with the condition. However, the profits from the margin of the soap would make up for their loss.

”I forgot to tell you one thing. I'm the one that sold all of my soap to Yuan family. You catch my drift?”

Tong's revelation made the eyes of merchants opened wide. After processing the information with their brain, they could see the big picture now.

”I see. So you don't want to deal with Yuan family, you've come to us instead. Most importantly, you are the creator of this goods.”

Tong shrugged and kept quiet. He pretended that he did not want to answer or gave them any more hint.

The merchants had wicked smiled on their face. They whispered among themselves for 10 minutes, then they concluded their decision.

”We accept these conditions. We want to buy the soap from you right away, and we also want to buy the soap recipe.”

Tong raised his hand up to stop them.

”I'm afraid I can't sell you any soap at the moment. First, all of you have to sign the contracts, that you acknowledged and accepted these conditions with your own free will. Second, you have to sell the food to the city government before we can sell you any soap. We need to know the amount of food that you have, so we can fulfill our conditions. And also, you need to make a reservation in advance. It takes times to make each batch, so first come first served. As for the soap recipe, I will put it in the incoming auction. It would not be fair if I sell it to any of you right now.”

Lu Zhi walked forward and handed a scroll to each of the merchants with a pen and ink. They were the contract that Tong had written beforehand.

The merchants did not reread the contract. They signed it immediately and frantically tried to reserve a large amount of soap at once. Tong had them signed another contract, which indicated the amount of soap they wished to buy and the amount of food that they would bring.

After the signing was done, all of them rushed back to their stores and formed up multiple convoys to the nearby cities. They were planning to buy every kind of food and provision from other cities or counties, and then they were going to transport all of them back to Julu.

In the contract, the five of them had reserved for 50,000 bars of soap, which were higher than what the Yuan family used to trade with Tong.

Seeing how frantic the merchants were, Tong grinned. Meanwhile, Lu Zhi gazed at Tong with an odd look.

”Are you sure that this is the right idea? This is a lucrative business. Why did you promise them that you will put it in the auction?”

After two days that Tong came under his tutorage, Lu Zhi realized that Tong was already better than him in terms of creativity and domestic management. However, in terms of his character and culture, he needed improvement. There were also many things that he lacked, but Lu Zhi planned to teach him slowly. For now, he would sit on the side and would criticize him if he did something weird or out of ordinary.

”It's alright, master. In the future, one of our workers will eventually leak out the recipe. Before that happens, I'll just reap as many golds as I can at the moment. Once it the recipe gets into the hands of noble, I'll just sell these cheaply to the commoners.”

With this trade, Julu city would acquire 500,000 tons of provision. Tong would also profit from the soap trade by 899,900 gold, which had already deducted the soap processing costs and the provision costs of 100,000 gold. If the merchants knew that the cost of 50,000 soap was actually only 100 gold, they would die from anger.

Fifty thousand soap bars could be made within a month and a half as long as he had enough helpers. The ingredients were also easy to gather as they were sold commonly in the market.