Jiangg Ruxue drove, heading toward the bank. Her mind was a complete mess.
In truth, she was hardly a successful entrepreneur. First, she lacked the practical knowledge that comes with a higher education. Second, she had no clear business logic or commercial instincts. And third, she didn’t have the background or resources to propel her ever upward.
To be a competent captain in the turbulent seas of business—to steer the ship clear of storms, ride the currents, and navigate to a safe harbor—one needed at least two of the three things mentioned above.
So why had Meiruxue Company managed to stay afloat for so long without collapsing?
Years ago, the beauty industry was in complete chaos. Most people had no concept of brand loyalty, and online shopping was nowhere near as developed as it is today. The best sales tactic was to have connections with the managers of major department stores and get your products to fill their cosmetics counters. Consumers bought based on the department store’s reputation, not brand recognition.
All it took was a little money for packaging and marketing, and a brand could become a sensation overnight.
Besides, a major reason women bought such skincare and makeup products wasn’t because they were particularly effective, but because everyone around them was using them. Even if the effects were negligible, it was enough if the product offered some peace of mind.
Meiruxue started with hydrating skincare products, collaborating with third-party manufacturers. The products themselves were unremarkable, mass-produced goods, but Jiangg Ruxue leveraged the Liu Family’s social connections to earn her first fortune.
After getting a taste of success, she became unstoppable. During her daughters’ childhood, she dedicated most of her time to networking and marketing for the company.
The company truly flourished during that period.
The company launched new products: a tone-up cream, moisturizing lotions, setting powders, its own line of cushion foundations, and skincare serums. It jumped from a small business to a second-tier brand.
The building the company now occupies was purchased back then.
But the good times didn’t last. As the economy developed rapidly and the general quality of life improved, people became acutely aware of the difference between good and bad cosmetics. Meiruxue’s various products were unsophisticated, often caused allergic reactions, and more than one batch had to be recalled by market regulators.
Only then did Jiangg Ruxue finally shift her focus to research and development for her cosmetics.
It was laughable, really. A brand that countless people were applying to their faces had been outsourcing its own formulation and testing.
Just as Jiangg Ruxue was dismissing it as a minor setback, online shopping exploded in popularity. E-commerce giants emerged one after another, dealing a significant blow to brick-and-mortar stores. Gradually, her products stopped selling.
Even in the most remote, backwater towns, people could buy major brands online. The top-tier women’s brands were fiercely competitive, and by then, it was too late for her to get on board.
To make matters worse, during the company’s boom years, she had impulsively opened physical branch stores in countless small towns.
That investment wiped out nearly everything she had previously earned.
Her old social connections were no longer useful. Fortunately, on someone’s advice, Jiangg Ruxue began closing branch stores en masse and downsizing the company to weather the changing times.
Most of the new product lines were discontinued, and the company began to specialize in skincare.
Admittedly, this move saved the company.
However, Jiangg Ruxue didn’t grasp the wisdom of this move. All she could think was, ’Since the money has already been spent, isn’t it a total waste to just throw away the investment in those products? Between that and the closed stores, the company can’t absorb so many losses.’
It had been one of her partners—a brilliant woman the sisters hadn’t seen in years—who had pushed the resolution through at a meeting against everyone’s objections. Time proved her right, but that "auntie," seeing the company was doomed to fail sooner or later, had sold her shares and left long ago.
If it hadn’t been for her, the company would likely have gone bankrupt much sooner.
By catching the last train of the e-commerce boom, Meiruxue Company managed to stabilize. It hadn’t suffered any devastating blows in recent years, but Jiangg Ruxue continued to make one foolish move after another.
She knew nothing about business, yet insisted on micromanaging her professional staff. Utterly self-assured, she failed to realize she had secured her position through connections, not intellect.
She excelled at office politics and scheming, but she was truly terrible at business.
In recent years, the scandals had piled up: Meiruxue’s cosmetics disfiguring customers, some remaining branches secretly using banned ingredients, and falsified business plans used to defraud investors. Time and again, Jiangg Ruxue threw money at the problems to make them go away, oblivious to the fact that the damage to her brand’s reputation couldn’t be so easily erased.
Over time, the brand’s image had been utterly ruined.
In recent years, with the difficult economic climate, competition had become even more cutthroat. Countless large companies had gone bankrupt. In nearly every conceivable market sector, a winner-takes-all dynamic had emerged, leaving no room for small companies to survive. Strong brands became more entrenched in the public consciousness, leading consumers to simply stick with the major names they trusted for quality and customer service, without needing to shop around.
In other words, it was impossible for a company like Meiruxue to survive indefinitely. How could a short-sighted boss lead her employees toward a brighter future? How could a company plagued by scandal expect infinite tolerance from its customers?
Jiangg Ruxue hadn’t considered any of this. For years, she had been searching for the next big trend, convinced her failures were due to bad luck, not flawed strategy. The projects she had invested in years ago were still bleeding money, but she stubbornly refused to cut her losses. She even poured her own savings into them and cooked the books to deceive other investors.
In the end, when her own savings ran out, she even threw in the inheritance her late husband had left for their two daughters.
Legally, that money should have been transferred into her daughters’ names as soon as they came of age.
The sisters had always thought their mother was selfish for holding on to the inheritance their late father had left them. What they didn’t know was that even if Jiangg Ruxue had wanted to give it to them, she couldn’t. A substantial portion had already been used to cover the company’s losses.
Though Jiangg Ruxue had countless flaws, she had never been stingy with her daughters. She gave them each a monthly allowance, one for the older sister and one for the younger.
Her personality was a study in contradictions.
The accident that killed the sisters’ father hadn’t been a deliberate plot by Jiangg Ruxue, though she had indirectly caused it. After a fight, she had told her husband to go run off to his mistress, and he’d gotten into the accident on the way there.
When you thought about it, it was obvious. Jiangg Ruxue would never have harmed her husband, not even for her own benefit, because she needed his resources to make her company succeed.
None of this, however, stopped the sisters’ paternal grandparents from suspecting her. They had never approved of Jiangg Ruxue to begin with.
She wasn’t as selfish and cold as Jiangg Ning and Jiangg Yao believed, either. Perhaps she was that way with outsiders, but she did love her family—just in a twisted, dysfunctional way.
Perhaps the car accident that shattered their family had caused her to revert to her cold, hard shell just as she was starting to show a sliver of maternal warmth. Or maybe she simply never knew how to be a mother. She was only nineteen when the sisters were born, and her marriage had been a shotgun wedding.
...
The moment before she stepped into the bank, Jiangg Ruxue paused at the revolving door. She adjusted her sunglasses, her expression once again becoming shrewd and aloof. But deep down, she knew that after years of squandering, the inheritance was all but gone.
The only things that could save her now were to either marry off her two daughters—using the same method she had used to acquire resources in the past—or for her project to succeed and the capital to start flowing back in.
The first option was no longer possible, and she knew it. As a mother, she had lost all authority over her daughters; she could no longer arrange the lives of Jiangg Ning and Jiangg Yao as she had when they were little.
That left only the second option.
’This is the last time I’m dipping into the savings.’
Jiangg Ruxue silently reassured herself as she walked into the bank manager’s office.