The emperor is biased and wants to kill me, but you chickened out when the army is at the city gates

Qin Xuan could tell from Hu Xu's expression that the old man must have run into some trouble.

"Tell me, what is it that would make you leave behind so much money and come to Beining City?"

Qin Xuan got straight to the point.

He didn't believe that the old man had come all this way just to deliver Hua Mingyue.

Hu Xu gave an awkward smile: "As expected, nothing can be hidden from Your Highness. There is indeed something I don't know how to handle."

Then he recounted the whole story.

It turns out that with the sale of coal briquettes and coal stoves, these two items are now not only found throughout the north, but are also in short supply in the south.

However, the ensuing trouble was that more and more counterfeit coal stoves appeared on the market, which greatly impacted the profits of the three major chambers of commerce: Mintai, Xuantian, and Baiyue.

"I remember telling you before that the coal stove was just bait, and the real money was in the coal briquettes. Could it be that the coal briquettes have been copied?"

Qin Xuan asked in surprise.

In his vision, it would be at least two years before coal briquettes could be replicated.

But by then, Qin Xuan had already amassed a fortune.

"Your Highness, no, but we are currently engaged in long-distance trade, and the food and supplies for people and horses are all expenses."

"Originally, although these coal stoves didn't make much money, they could at least cover some of the costs. But now, with all these small workshops popping up, we simply can't sell our coal stoves!"

Hu Xu said with a pained expression.

For a businessman, every single bit of profit must be meticulously calculated.

"You need to come back and ask me something so simple?"

Qin Xuan could understand Hu Xu's thoughts, but he didn't quite understand Hu Xu's approach. In his opinion, there were too many tricks to solve this small matter of business competition.

"Your Highness, I know you have extraordinary talent in business, but I am not like you. Please enlighten me, Your Highness."

Upon hearing Qin Xuan's tone, Hu Xu already had a good idea of ​​what was going on.

At the same time, he cursed Mo Gu and Huai Yun in his heart. Those two bastards always used their status as the direct descendants of the King of Chu as an excuse to force him to come to Qin Xuan to solve problems whenever he encountered difficulties.

"Hu Xu, do you know what it means to overcome all techniques with sheer force?"

Qin Xuan asked with a smile.

Hu Xu shook his head blankly, wondering what this had to do with the coal stove.

"Coal stoves are just an extra item here. Now that someone is using coal stoves to steal your business, won't you lower the price?"

"We can make back the money from the coal briquettes by lowering the price, but what about others? Can they hold out for a while, or even forever?"

Qin Xuan's two simple sentences made Hu Xu's eyes light up.

Yes, our main business is selling coal briquettes. If we were to engage in a price war, no coal furnace workshop in the world could compete with us.

I've been making so much money lately that I didn't even think of a solution.

"Go back and tell the artisan workshop that every coal stove they produce from now on should be branded to distinguish it from those of other workshops."

"In addition, you should recalculate the costs and build up a price barrier."

"Of course, if you want to get rid of these counterfeiters, then make up some stories and hire a few storytellers to spread them in teahouses, inns, and bridgeheads. I guarantee that no one will dare to compete with us for the coal stove business anymore."

Qin Xuan offered three solutions in one go, each one more ingenious than the last.

Hu Xu was confused, because he didn't understand the true meaning of the last two methods.

"Your Highness, what exactly is this price barrier?"

Hu Xu asked with an innocent look on his face.

Qin Xuan suddenly realized that he had gone a bit too far, but it was easy to explain.

"The so-called price barrier refers to a natural protection that naturally forms when the profit that can be obtained from producing a certain product is compressed to the extreme."

"For example, with our coal stoves, given our production capacity, the net profit of one coal stove can be one qian of silver or ten wen of copper coins, because our workshop is the largest in the world, and the cost will be spread out."

“But other production workshops that are smaller than us have a minimum profit standard of one tael of silver. Once it falls below this standard, they either lose money or continue to expand the scale of production to spread the costs.”

"But no matter how much the cost is spread out, there is a limit to everything, and as it stands, Beining City Workshop is the limit."

"So, if you set the price below one qian of silver, you can eliminate most of your competitors. If you can set the price at ten wen, you can slaughter all your competitors."

Upon hearing this, Hu Xu couldn't help but gasp, and his thoughts instantly began to wander.

He asked eagerly, "Your Highness, what is the third method? What should the storytellers say?"

"This requires us to use it in conjunction with the first method."

Qin Xuan was in a rare good mood today, so he decided to give Hu Xu a lesson in modern business: "When I asked you to add a brand to the coal stoves you produced, it was to make our coal stoves different from those of other workshops. This is called brand awareness."

"Once you have brand awareness, you can make up a few stories, such as someone using an unknown coal stove and getting poisoned, but the neighbor using our branded coal stove is fine."

"At the same time, you have to tell everyone that we were the first to invent the coal stove in the world. People always have an inexplicable sense of trust in the originator."

"In this way, when people buy coal stoves in the future, they will subconsciously choose those produced in Beining City, because they already have brand awareness."

"understand?"

Qin Xuan spoke in a rather broad manner, but he was afraid that Hu Xu wouldn't understand if he went into too much detail, so he could only speak in this way.

To Qin Xu's surprise, Hu Xu actually understood and even extended the meaning to other products, saying, "Your Highness, then we should also add this mark to all our refined salt and soap!"

"Haha, you get it right away."

Qin Xuan nodded and reminded him, "A brand is just one form. You can also use other methods, such as unique seals, labels, or anti-counterfeiting marks. Just like the official seal of the government on banknotes, this seal must be made so that no one can imitate it. At the same time, the paper used to make banknotes is also special paper."

Hu Xu's eyes grew brighter and brighter, and his chest heaved violently.

He seemed to be seeing a magical realm he had never set foot in before, a realm filled with incredible yet extremely useful business knowledge.

"Your Highness, I want to use 'Beining' as the brand name for all our goods. I want the whole world to know that anything from Beining City is unique."

Hu Xu said with great excitement.

Qin Xuan responded with satisfaction and said with a faint smile, "It's not easy to do that. You'll have to think about it carefully."

Qin Xuan never imagined that this very temporary lesson would give birth to a terrifying entity capable of controlling the world's wealth—the Beining Trading Company!