The most competitive products of the Phoenix Kingdom are various ironware, and later steel and alloy products. Sugar is also considered a specialty, but compared with metal products, the trade volume can only be regarded as a mild luxury product.
But that is for areas with a certain degree of maturity in commerce. Like the City of White Veil, Manhala Wowobasa, which lacks everything except live animals and dried meat, the Phoenix Kingdom has a lot more to sell. .
Such as furniture.
There is no cross-border trade in furniture in the Phoenix Kingdom. It is very difficult to transport and cannot be sold at a high price. When large households need good furniture, they purchase high-quality wood from abroad and have it processed by familiar furniture factories.
It's different when you arrive at the City of White Veil. This ghost place is located at the southern end of the Tall Grass Plain. Strictly speaking, it is one with the Tall Grass Plain with just a few more ditches. Wood is very scarce here.
Even though there are relatively reliable wood outputs dozens of kilometers south, the pricing of wood products in the City of White Veil is still on the high side.
The high volume is not enough for traditional merchants to travel dozens of kilometers to sell furniture that may be damaged on the road at any time, but if transported by vehicle, the profit margin is not low.
When the first batch of convoys arrived, the small businessmen realized that this was not just a low price, but a huge profit.
The currency currently in circulation in Wengji has not yet been included in currency management. Small businessmen can still make exchange rate differences based on their personal abilities. The smarter ones can still make money.
There are not many parts of Ongi in the Luna River and the Bathtub Sea, but there are thousands of kilometers of coastline along the outer sea. In addition to food, the ocean also brings gold, and trade and salvage are all sources. Ongi's gold output is greater than that of Luna South Coast's Fatal, but it lacks channels for outflow.
This results in the gold content of Wengji gold coins being higher. There are two types of gold coins, namely small round coins and generous coins.
The small round coin is a gold alloy, containing 60% gold, 20% copper, and 10% silver, with a total weight of 12 grams. They don't know what the rest is.
Dafangqian is relatively pure gold, with a gold content of 92% and a total weight of 22 grams.
20 grams of gold makes one coin!
Although the density of gold is high, one generous coin is not that big, but one generous coin is close to six fartel gold coins.
However, in practical applications, generous money cannot reach the purchasing power of six fatels.
The difference is not big, but it can also allow small businessmen to selectively earn an extra ten or two percent of the currency value difference after piling up the goods for the return journey.
Because trade has just begun, the price of iron products has not yet dropped too much. A standard iron pot can be sold here for almost a small yuan, which can be used to drag two live sheep away.
There are only local handicrafts made of meat products and bones, as well as a kind of spider silk thread called white yarn. It feels slightly sticky and is usually woven into cloth and used as a waterproof interlayer.
The unit price of white gauze is high, and the profit margin is good, but the quantity is a bit small. Generally, a family that can afford white gauze can only afford a few tenths of a kilogram. This is the stock for a year.
Therefore, a cart of iron products will cost a lot of money that cannot be used. There is no way to exchange all of it for goods, and the other party does not have Phoenix coins, so everyone can only earn some gold coins as hard as they can.
But as the transaction progressed, many problems arose.
The first is not enough money.
For those participating in this round of trade, based on the cargo capacity of more than two tons per vehicle, one batch contains more than 100 tons. The transport capacity of the merchants is low. The average amount carried by livestock trailers per person is 400 kilograms. However, there are many people, and the total amount is 200 tons.
With so many goods, in terms of price per unit weight, the cheapest ones are small wooden furniture specially made for herdsmen, including wooden boxes, small wooden cabinets, tea trays, etc. But just one kilogram of wood can be exchanged for more than one kilogram of dried meat. , the extra parts that cannot be shipped back will have to be exchanged for money.
Herdsmen mostly barter. Although there are precious metal currencies such as gold coins, the stock cannot withstand such large-scale differential trade.
Wengji merchants in the surrounding areas of the City of White Veil were moved by the news, but they were limited by transportation capacity and the efficiency of cargo funds, and they could not withstand it.
The third batch of convoys and the first arriving merchant team were therefore stuck in the city.
The two groups of people discussed it and concluded that the merchants had wasted a lot of time on the road anyway, and they didn't care if they stayed in the City of White Veil for a while longer. They might as well just let them take over the convoy's goods at a low price.
For the fleet, it doesn't matter if you make less money on one trip. Anyway, the round trip is very fast, and if you go back and hand over the car earlier, you can save dozens of yuan in rent. Although you may not be able to rent a car so smoothly next time, as long as you can get a car in a month or two, it won't be a loss.
"First Evolution"
The merchants had a hard journey and had already lost two areas to the convoy. The goods could not be sold at a particularly large price difference. If they could pick up the goods from the convoy at a suitable price, the journey would not be in vain.
They were all small businessmen, and they didn't have much cash after buying goods and renting animals. Fortunately, the reputation of the two security companies was pretty good, so they acted as guarantees, and both parties signed a lot of IOUs.
When the people in the convoy returned, they took the notes directly to the security company headquarters to cash them in cash. The merchants slowly repaid the money after they returned. Of course, there was interest, and it was the maximum interest rate, with a monthly interest rate of 3%.
There is actually some imbalance between interest and risk, but the security company is not particularly worried because the amount of the IOU signed this time is very limited.
The average IOU here at Hongshang's side is only more than a thousand yuan. In order to pay a debt of more than a thousand yuan, you have to risk deportation. Normal people know how to choose. Life outside is not as good as in the Phoenix Kingdom.
The locals had no money and could only digest trace amounts of goods, which traders exchanged for meat for survival and animal dung for fuel.
Mainly through orc merchants in other areas to pick up goods.
As long as they are businessmen, there is no one who is not treacherous. They have also discovered the dilemma of the merchants, and they will more or less join forces to lower prices.
The merchants are now burdened with arrears and are even less likely to compromise, so both parties are dragging their feet.
Of course, it’s not that there are no deals at all, it’s just that the road needs to be protected by a security company, and even if the goods are sold out in advance, you still have to wait for others. There are no temporary workers nearby, so it’s better to hold on to the price together with everyone.
The biggest support point here is actually the news brought by the third batch of convoys: the underground city cargo yard will change the main body of goods of the fourth batch of convoys, taking into account the digestion capacity of the City of White Veil.
Everyone even found out what the fourth batch of goods was, and the answer was that it was fodder!
Why haul fodder?
Because when the tall grass plain is dry as a whole, the free green grass in the Phoenix Kingdom can be sold at a certain price in the City of White Veil, which can at least offset the cost of the vehicle.
But there is no profit to be made, so why start the car?
After all, the Kingdom's own meat output is average in terms of type and quality. Xiaoqiang has a certain scale and has a demand for conventional meat products. You can make money by bringing the meat back here. You can even earn 20% more by transporting the meat to outside Xilukou via railway. , the overall income is definitely not as good as the previous one, but it doesn’t take much time to get back and forth, and as long as there is money, there will always be people willing to rent a car.
In fact, the freight yard made this decision to protect the interests of merchants. After all, the purpose of this trade was to let everyone realize the inefficiency of vehicles and livestock, and it was not to make people bankrupt.
When the fourth batch of convoys delivered the fodder to trade with local herdsmen, the merchants and merchants from outside the city of white yarn stayed up and delayed making money. Now that they saw the green grass, they knew they couldn't survive, so they relaxed and paid, and quickly The goods in the hands of the merchants were wiped out.
