I See through Everything

"I gave Sister Hong half and kept the other half. Their company is so generous—they sent two pounds of Morchella to every one of their regular customers."

"What?! Two pounds?" Dong Dingxin looked completely baffled. "Is Morchella cheap? I thought it was pretty expensive."

"It’s over two hundred yuan a pound online."

Dong Dingxin’s eyes widened. "Holy crap! They really sent that to *every* regular customer? Even if they don’t have that many, that’s still a hefty expense!"

"Heh. They have a *lot* of customers."

Dong Dingxin grabbed his phone, went on Tao Net, and quickly found the Hailufeng Specialty Store. He looked at the massive sales volume and saw the comment section was filled with recent videos and photos of people showing off their gifts. A quick scroll revealed over a thousand comments of this type.

"How much did they give away? Two pounds per customer is over four hundred yuan. Even if they grow it themselves, the cost has to be over a hundred yuan, right? I just scrolled through—they must have sent out hundreds of thousands of these. That’s got to be tens of millions of yuan!"

"They’re not short on cash," Zhao Xinyan said as she organized the items in her bag.

"Not short on cash?" Dong Dingxin was confused at first.

But then he saw the items listed in the Hailufeng Specialty Store: premium White Truffle at 3,000 yuan per kilogram, premium edible glass eels at 25,000 yuan per kilogram, and farmed eel fry at 23,000 yuan per kilogram. When he saw the "10,000+" sales count next to these items, it all clicked.

"Oh, so they’re that company that sells White Truffles. No wonder they’re so extravagant."

Zhao Xinyan packed up some nuts. "It’s an exclusive business, so of course they’re rolling in it."

After looking for a while longer, Dong Dingxin looked up. "Still, their products are all pretty expensive. Only the tomatoes are a bit cheaper. I don’t see the average person buying from them."

"They specialize in high-end products."

"You know, come to think of it, my company might actually do business with Hailufeng Company."

Zhao Xinyan opened the refrigerator to put away the items that needed to be kept cold. "Doesn’t your company deal in lab equipment? What business would you have with Hailufeng Company?"

Dong Dingxin slapped his fist into his palm. "I remember now! A while back, a lab construction company from Peng City ordered a huge batch of equipment from us. I remember they were building a lab for Hailufeng Company. That’s why the name sounded so familiar!"

"Your company does so much business in a year. How do you remember that one so clearly?"

"It all goes back to that lab construction company. The head of their purchasing department bought a whole batch of used equipment from us, but Hailufeng Company found out. Afterward, our company had to wrangle with the construction company for over a month. That’s why it stuck in my head."

"Was the head of purchasing at that company trying to profit from both sides?" As an accountant, Zhao Xinyan was well aware of the shenanigans that went on in some purchasing departments.

"Probably," Dong Dingxin said, taking a sip of Fanta. "BURP... In fact, I should be thanking Hailufeng Company this year. They’ve been steadily buying a lot of lab equipment and consumables from us."

In fact, Hailufeng Company’s growth had indeed created a host of opportunities.

For instance, Dong Dingxin’s lab equipment company had supplied Hailufeng Company with over eighty million yuan worth of equipment and consumables.

Other beneficiaries included solar panel manufacturers, lead-carbon battery producers, agricultural material and machinery suppliers, aquaculture equipment and consumables vendors, tinplate can suppliers for the canning industry, food-grade retort pouch suppliers, and cardboard packaging suppliers.

These were all directly associated businesses.

Take the retort pouches for kabayaki eel, for example. The supplier’s wholesale price to Hailufeng Company was 0.38 yuan per bag, with a profit of 0.12 yuan on each.

But with the enormous demand—at least 500,000 to 600,000 pouches per month—that translated to a gross monthly profit of over sixty thousand yuan.

And this demand was still trending upward, largely because their many fish ball products also required plastic packaging.

Moreover, unlike other companies that dragged their feet on payments, Hailufeng Company paid promptly. For upstream suppliers, they were a rare, top-tier client.

After all, delaying payment was common practice in every industry, with typical delays of one to three months, and sometimes even half a year.

A simple delay would be one thing, but sometimes, while a payment was being held, the client would suddenly go bankrupt or skip town, making the debt nearly impossible to collect.

This put many upstream suppliers in a precarious position. The sudden bankruptcy or disappearance of a major client could even bankrupt suppliers who had a less diversified business structure.

Hailufeng Company’s payment policy for suppliers followed the "1361 Plan," especially for rapidly used consumables.

The first "1" stood for one month.

The "3" stood for a 30% advance payment.

The "6" stood for a 60% payment upon delivery.

The final "1" stood for a 10% final payment upon acceptance.

If there were no issues, the entire process would be completed within one month.

For example, with the packaging bags, if there were no quality issues after use and the product’s quality rate met the contractual standard, the supplier would receive the final 10% acceptance payment within thirty days.

The emergence of Hailufeng Company sustained a large number of related businesses.

This was why so many regions tried everything to attract large corporations. A major company didn’t just bring its own industry and employees; it also stimulated a whole host of upstream and downstream businesses and created individual opportunities.

The companies that supplied Hailufeng Company all had a very prosperous New Year.

And when these companies prospered, their employees, to varying degrees, reaped some of the benefits. Life got a little better for the average worker.

By the same token, the local Egyptian Catfish farmers in Shanmei were effectively upstream suppliers for Hailufeng Company, though they were all individual operators.

All told, these individual Egyptian Catfish farmers had received roughly 236,250,000 yuan in payments. A total of 2,473 farming households were involved, with an average income of 95,533 yuan per household. With a gross profit margin of around 40%, each household earned approximately 38,213 yuan.

And that was just for about half a year. On an annual basis, that income could double.

Although many of these farms were family operations, with everyone from the young to the old pitching in, they were at least making real money.

For the residents of Magong Town and the surrounding villages, the Spring Festival of ’26 was a prosperous one, and they believed it was just the beginning of the good times.