Volume 2 Chapter 53 High defect rate
“Sir chairman, you don’t have money?” Agnes who had been silently following him since he came into the Falling Rain Forest suddenly stopped and turned to look at Xu Yi. She dug around in her clothes for a bit before taking out a gold coin to hand to Xu Yi, “Here, I only have this much on me now, you can take it for now.”
Xu Yi looked at the gold coin in Agnes’ slender fingers in surprise before looking up at Agnes’ serious expression and saying in a confused voice, “What are you doing?”
“Didn’t you say to chief Siluka that you don’t have money? I don’t have any use holding onto these gold coins for now, so you can take them.” Agnes responded with a natural look on her face.
Xu Yi finally understood her meaning and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he pushed her hand back while saying, “Agnes, I said that I don’t have money, but more accurately it isn’t that I myself don’t have money, rather it’s the Frestech Chamber of Commerce that doesn’t have money. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Ah? The company doesn’t have money?” Agnes’ eyes popped open in surprise and she looked at the gold coins in her hand before shaking her head, “This bit probably won’t be enough. How about when we go see the elder later, you can talk to the elder about borrowing some from her? Didn’t you give the elder wages for our clansmen, it seemed to be several thousand gold coins.”
Seeing Agnes’ innocent face, Xu Yi couldn’t help finding it funny.
“Agnes, looks like you still don’t understand what I mean. When I say the company doesn’t have money, I’m talking about how we have no floating capital. It means that if the company really needs money to use, we can’t take out the capital. If the company really needs to use money, several thousand gold coins is far from being enough.”
“Then what do we do? If we can’t take out money when we need it, wouldn’t our company be in big trouble?” Agnes was a bit anxious, “Sir chairman, have you thought about what we should do?”
“Relax, it’s not as serious as you think, it’s just a temporary lack of funds. Then again, after another period of time, the company will be able to naturally earn plenty of money.” Xu Yi waved his hand as he comforted her.
“Oh, that’s good.” Agnes’ expression calmed down. She thought about it before doubtfully asking, “But sir chairman, why is the company suddenly out of money? I remember that our Frestech Chamber of Commerce has been earning a lot during the past few months. Last time I heard manager Sebas say that just last month, the company earned several tens of thousands of gold coins.”
“Then you didn’t pay attention to him saying how much we spent?” Xu Yi said with a smile, “Let me tell you, our company’s earnings haven’t been small in the past few months, but we’ve spent even more. Not mentioning anything else, we’ve already invested three hundred thousand gold coins into the Falling Rain Valley. Adding in the over a hundred thousand for the Falling Rain Road and the hundred thousand for the road between Banta City and Karma City, as well as the various expenses and fixed costs the company has, the company doesn’t even have twenty thousand gold coins in cash. We really can be considered out of money.”
Anges stuck out her tongue, “So there’s still twenty thousand gold coins, I thought there wasn’t even a single gold coin left.”
Xu Yi couldn’t help rolling his eyes. He thought that after Agnes followed him for several months, why did she still not care about worldly matters?
Could it be that the elves really were like the rumours? Because of their long lives, it was hard for them to change?
Thinking of this, Xu Yi couldn’t help looking at the dark Falling Rain Forest in front of him. If the elves really were like this, elder Illusia’s hope of letting the elves live in harmony with humans really would be hard to realize.
“I am also worried about this.” Elder Illusia gave a slight nod, “So I had Agnes follow by your side the entire time because human merchants have the most ideas among you humans and are the most flexible humans. If Agnes can live normally by your side and learn how to be flexible like humans from you, I believe that the other elves can do the same.”
“The problem is……I feel that Agnes hasn’t changed much from the first time I’ve seen her. Rather I feel that she’s become even more innocent compared to before.” Xu Yi said with a frown.
“No, just the opposite. Compared to back when she lived in the tribe, there’s already been a large change in Agnes.” Elder Illusia shook her head with a faint smile, “Agnes was just a very pure child before, she would only think simple thoughts about matters. But now, according to what you’ve told me before, she has learned to not appear as soon as you mentioned that you didn’t have money, rather she waited until you came to the Falling Rain Forest to express her thoughts. This can be considered her learning how to use proper timing from you humans.”
Xu Yi was speechless. This was a skill humans had innately, how did it become something this worthy of praise when it came to Agnes?
“This is because you are humans and we are elves.” Elder Illusia answered Xu Yi’s question with a very general and real answer.
Xu Yi shook his head, as he still couldn’t understand the thoughts of elves.
“Alright, putting the change with Agnes aside, we should talk about business.” Xu Yi took out a cover for the new generation Magic Fan from his backpack and handed it over.
Elder Illusia took it to look over before curiously looking at Xu Yi, “Is there a problem with this plastic cover?”
“There’s no problem just looking at it alone, but……” Xu Yi came forward and pointed at a finely made flower design on the top right of the cover as he said, “It’s a problem that this part isn’t the same as the other Magic Fan covers.”
Elder Illusia looked at the finely carved flower pattern and was very confused.
“I don’t see any problems, this flower is carved very beautifully.”
“This flower itself is the problem.” Xu Yi said with a serious expression, “Elder Illusia, when I asked your Night Song Tribe to make these plastic covers for the Magic Fans, didn’t I give you some blueprints to follow?”
“Un.” Elder Illusia stood up to flip through a box and took out several pieces of paper, “They are still here.”
“I ask the elder to look it over, is there a flower design on the covers on the blueprints?” Xu Yi asked.
Elder Illusia looked at the blueprint and shook her head, “The blueprint doesn’t have any.”
“So that means when making this Magic Fan cover, the elf responsible didn’t follow the blueprint, right?” Xu Yi kept asking.
“It seems to be that way.” Elder Illusia nodded before revealing a look of confusion, “But chairman Xu, I still don’t understand what’s the problem. There is an extra beautiful design on this Magic Fan cover, could it be that it doesn’t make the Magic Fan more beautiful?”
“It isn’t a problem if it’s said like this, but honourable elder, this Magic Fan is not a single unit and is a mass produced product of our company, so that makes it a very large problem.” Xu Yi said with a serious face.
Seeing the serious expression on Xu YI’s face, elder Illusia thought about it before sitting down and saying to Xu Yi with a serious look, “Chairman Xu, I don’t understand what you mean. Please explain it to me.”
“Alright.” Xu Yi didn’t hold back and picked up the Magic Fan cover as he said, “Elder, if there was a Magic Fan cover with this design and one without it, if these two Magic Fans had the same price and you wanted to buy a Magic Fan, which one would you pick?”
“Clearly the one with the design because it looks better.” Elder Illusia replied.
“Good. That means that at the same price, it is impossible for the Magic Fan without the design to be sold, right?”
“Not necessarily, perhaps there are humans that like ones without designs.”
“Un, we can’t rule out that possibility. But elder Illusia, don’t you have to admit that the price of these two Magic Fans should be different? Because of the difference in design, their price shouldn’t be the same.”
“Yes.”
“Then the problem appears there. This Magic Fan cover is being used with Magic Fan covers without designs to make the same mass produced product, so if we put these covers on, then that means it’ll be difficult to set a price on this batch of Magic Fans. This is because people won’t accept that they can buy products of different value at the same price.” Xu Yi raised the plastic cover in his hand, “So when our company is producing Magic Fans, this kind of cover is treated as a defective product and it isn’t used.”
“Defective product?” Elder Illusia looked at Xu Yi in surprise, “Chairman Xu, in the skilled hands of us elves, how could there be a defective product? You must have made some kind of mistake?”
Xu Yi slightly knit his brows and said with a serious expression, “Honourable elder, it doesn’t matter if you’re willing to admit it or not, but this is the standard of our company. Any parts that don’t follow that standard will be considered a defective product!”
Seeing how serious Xu Yi was treating this, elder Illusia considered this a bit before giving a slight now, “Alright, since we are making things requested by your company, we should follow the standard you have set. You are right.”
Xu Yi looked at elder Illusia and confirmed that nothing was wrong with her before continuing, “Actually this cover is just one of the situations that isn’t considered that serious, the more serious ones are when the entire cover’s shape is distorted. We can’t assemble them with the other parts of the Magic Fan at all. After our final examination, we’ve found that among the twenty thousand Magic Fan covers you made this time, the defective products reached 30%. So honourable elder, I came this time to ask you…..what is going on?”