Shen Yi scoffed. "Shen Zhengfeng is a very selfish person. He definitely won’t inject any more capital into Donghong."
He was right.
「The Shen Family Home.」
Shen Zhengfeng stared at Li Xiaomei in disbelief. "What? You lost all of the three hundred thousand yuan I gave you?"
Three hundred thousand yuan was a huge sum. His paint factory only brought in two to three hundred thousand a year.
Of course, Shen Zhengfeng had investments other than the paint factory, but those were all minor. His total annual income couldn’t support this level of squandering from Li Xiaomei.
’Over two hundred thousand, gone in just a few months?’
Li Xiaomei’s eyes were red from crying. She said tearfully, "I don’t know how this happened. Everything was going so smoothly at the beginning. I did what you suggested and started a price war, but who knew this new product would sell so poorly."
"Which designer did you use for the new product?"
"It was..."
"We’re at this point, and you’re still not telling me the truth? How am I supposed to help you figure out what went wrong!" Shen Zhengfeng’s patience with Li Xiaomei was wearing thinner and thinner.
After all, she argued with his mother and his sister every other day.
He had to deal with company business during the day, only to come home to the sound of several women arguing at night. Shen Zhengfeng felt like he was going to go crazy!
Li Xiaomei hesitated for a moment, then said, "We stole the design from Jiu Yi. My plan was, if we sold the same clothes at a lower price, Jiu Yi definitely wouldn’t be able to sell theirs for much. But I didn’t expect..."
"Didn’t expect what?" Shen Zhengfeng, for his part, didn’t think there was anything wrong with Li Xiaomei having someone steal Jiu Yi’s design.
This was business, after all, and all’s fair in war.
In fact, Shen Zhengfeng was a little resentful of Du Liya and Shen Yi for taking the clothing company from him.
Li Xiaomei continued, "I didn’t expect them to design two styles at the same time. After we stole the first one, it was as if they knew. They waited until we had produced a large batch of clothes, and then after the New Year, they started working overtime to make the second set. In the end... it sold better than ours."
The moment Shen Zhengfeng heard this, he instantly understood what had happened. He yelled, "Li Xiaomei, are you stupid?! They obviously set a trap for you! And when you knew they were rushing to produce another new style, why didn’t you stop and make that one too?"
"By that time, our investment was already committed! We had stockpiled more than half the inventory and didn’t have the materials or the working capital to make anything else!"
Looking at Li Xiaomei’s whimpering face, Shen Zhengfeng was overcome with anger. The thought of those hundreds of thousands of yuan pained him terribly.
Listening to Li Xiaomei’s crying, Shen Zhengfeng yelled, "What are you crying for? Go make dinner! Get out of my sight!"
Li Xiaomei froze for a moment, then covered her face and ran into the kitchen.
’She’d only lost some money, and she was already miserable enough. How could Shen Zhengfeng yell at her like that?’
If Shen Zhengfeng had known what Li Xiaomei was thinking, he probably would have thought to himself, ’If I don’t control myself, I’m going to hit this stupid woman.’
But he was, after all, a man who had seen the world. He took a few deep breaths and composed himself.
’Although the money’s gone, I have to figure out a way to salvage this and minimize the losses.’
He’d ask Li Xiaomei later for the full story on Donghong’s situation.
Just then, the landline rang. Shen Zhengfeng answered. Hearing it was an old friend from the business world, the furrow in his brow relaxed a little, and he started chatting with him.
His old friend on the phone talked a bit about what he’d seen in the overseas markets, then changed the subject. "Old Shen, you’ll never guess who I saw by Seine Lake. I saw Du Liya! She was with her current husband. Tsk tsk, and she’s pregnant! Can you believe the coincidence?"
Shen Zhengfeng: "..."