When Hantian Textile Company wanted to expand the scale of the garment market, it encountered a series of huge difficulties. However, they did not give up and continued to think about various methods, including investing in the development of industrial sewing machines and collecting different people's sizes. version, and develop a standard size version that covers as many people as possible.
In short, the goal is to reduce costs as much as possible while expanding the potential customer coverage group.
But is all this useful?
In fact, it is still difficult.
The difficulty in the ready-made garment market does not lie in cost or size coverage... but in consumption habits and the low cost of labor for women in the family.
Under the tradition of men farming and women weaving, women basically do not go out to work. For the female relatives of middle-class families, they can only do women's work to pass the time when they have nothing to do.
For women from low-income families in cities, even if the price of ready-made clothes is cheaper, as long as it is more expensive than fabric, they would rather buy fabric and then squeeze in time to sew the clothes themselves, saving a copper plate.
As for the farm market... don't even expect it. It is very difficult for even fabrics to enter the farm market, let alone ready-made clothes with higher added value.
For the rural market, cotton yarn sells better, followed by cotton... Even so, these products also face great competition from self-produced cotton in rural areas.
People even grow their own cotton... No matter how cheap your cloth or garments are sold, it doesn't mean much!
Unless your price is so low that farmers feel they would lose money by growing cotton directly, it would be more cost-effective to grow other crops, thereby reducing the output of self-grown cotton in rural areas.
Then you have to make farmers think that buying cloth or ready-made clothes is cheaper than buying cotton or raw silk and weaving their own cloth... which is obviously also impossible.
The rural market in China is very difficult to establish. Many things that urban families regard as daily necessities have no big market in rural areas.
What really has a market are some tools. For example, cloth is hard to buy, but new hand-made spinning machines and new hand-made looms are very easy to sell...
Whether they want to spin and weave cloth for themselves, or to sell it after weaving, the female relatives of rural families need new spinning machines and looms!
Therefore, in the rural market, among products related to the textile industry, these new hand-made spinning machines are the most popular, followed by new hand-made looms.
But these products are not something that big companies can occupy, because hand-spinning machines and hand-looms were promoted for free in the early days, but without patents, many machinery factories in small places can build one or two. , even the small workshops of carpenters and blacksmiths can build and sell them.
The various tools that sell well in rural markets include, in addition to spinning machines, cooking utensils, farm tools, and daily hardware tools.
Needless to say, cooking utensils are lacking in everything in a family, but there must be an iron pot and a kitchen knife...and these iron products are typical industrial products. The cost of mass production in large factories, even if it is processing The freight is much cheaper than the hard work of the blacksmiths.
As for agricultural tools, hoes, sickles, axes, machetes and other tools used in agricultural production are also a big consumer market.
Then there are five kilograms for daily use, that is, hammers, nails, locks and other miscellaneous iron products.
The above three major categories have huge sales volume in the rural market. It can even be said that these products are also important products in the machinery industry of the Da Chu Empire.
The above three categories of products are even important terminal consumer products that support the development of the Dachu Empire's machinery industry.
Look at the most powerful machinery company in China, Hantian Machinery Company. In addition to their machine tool business, what is their other core business? Kitchenware!
Including Chinese pots and kitchen knives that sell well all over the world and are exported to India, West Asia, North Africa and even Europe!
These two types of products are the cash cow business of Hantian Machinery Company. They may seem inconspicuous, and the overall profit rate is not high, but in fact the revenue and total profit they bring far exceed that of the machine tool business.
As for Lee's Steel, the country's largest private enterprise, what did they do before entering the shipbuilding industry after selling their ordnance business? Or how did you accumulate hundreds of thousands of assets and enter the shipbuilding industry with great fanfare?
They rely on various agricultural tools, daily hardware products, cooking utensils, etc... Their business types are actually highly overlapped with Hantian Machinery Company.
Even after their shipbuilding industry started, their various tool iron products business and their core business contributed more than half of their revenue to Lilan.
The three major categories of products, cooking utensils, farm tools, and daily hardware, supported most of the machinery industry in the Dachu Empire, and even supported super-large enterprises such as Hantian Machinery Company and Li's Iron.
And these products rely on the rural market.
Therefore, don’t think that the social status quo of men farming and women weaving in the rural society of the Great Chu Empire will separate rural society from the development of industrial society. In fact, it is not...
A rural society in which men farm and women weave has only left some industrial products without a market, but there is still a market for other products that should be there.
It depends on whether you have found the right product direction!
If you buy cheap and easy-to-use farm tools, you will definitely make money...
If you want to buy cheap and useful ready-made clothes, you must go shopping...
This is also the reason why Hantian Textile Company has never targeted the rural market for its ready-made garments... Hantian Textile Company has gone through a lot of hardships over the years in order to sell cloth and cotton yarn in the rural market. ...and even this doesn’t work well.
The rise of Hantian Textile Company relies on the urban market, not the rural market.
The same is true for ready-made clothing this time. They are targeting the urban market, but even in urban markets that are more receptive to ready-made clothing, it is very difficult to open the market.
It is still difficult for them to change people's consumption concepts by themselves.
For Hantian Textile Company, it is difficult to change people's consumption concepts, but for some companies, this is not difficult, especially for companies that are at the forefront of technology.
In Songjiang Prefecture, at the headquarters of Luohua Shipyard, a group of people wearing scholar's robes and jade belts, looking like social elites, were sitting in two rows of a rectangular table.
One of the people sitting at the main seat signed his name on the contract with a dip pen, and then stamped a large company seal, his personal seal, and his fingerprint before adding the thick A stack of contract texts was handed over.
A middle-aged man at the main seat opposite took it over with a smile, and it was also a process of signing, sealing and fingerprinting.
After doing this, more than twenty men from both sides stood up together, all with smiles on their faces.
The middle-aged man in blue scribe's robe who put down his pen was the first to speak: "General Manager Song, happy cooperation!"
"I am already looking forward to the time when our iron-ribbed armed merchant ships will appear in the Indian Ocean and scare those barbarians!"
General Manager Song of Luohua Shipyard also smiled: "Don't worry, General Manager Fang, we have already started preliminary preparations before the contract is finalized today. Tomorrow we will sign an iron rib material supply contract with Zhenjiang Heavy Machinery Company. At most half After a few months, the keel of the first ship will be laid and construction will begin!”
"Furthermore, the construction of iron-ribbed wooden hull ships is faster than that of pure wooden ships. After all, there is no need to waste too much time waiting for the wood to be available. As long as the funds are in place, various iron parts can be supplied quickly, and various types of wood such as ship plates are available. It’s made from ordinary materials, there aren’t many special requirements, and we have enough in stock.”
"In terms of equipment and technology, we have also completed equipment upgrades. In particular, the steam hoist has been installed, and other types of specialized processing equipment have also been installed. Before this, we also built a frigate for the navy. Overall The technology is very mature.”
"The entire construction period will definitely not exceed one year. If everything goes well, we will be able to complete the construction of the hull in about nine months, and then start outfitting and sea trials. The final delivery time will definitely not exceed one year!"
Seeing the confident look of General Manager Song, Fang Liugui, the General Manager of Nanyang Trading Company opposite, nodded slightly.
He still has great trust in the strength of Luohua Shipyard. Otherwise, he would not have considered it to be the first issue related to the future of Nanyang Trading Company and more than ten other armed trading companies, or even to exaggerate, to say that it was related to the future situation of the Indian Ocean. A batch of armed merchant ships were handed over to them for construction.
One ship has a displacement of 1,800 tons, two ships have a displacement of 1,200 tons, and six ships have a displacement of 700 tons. A total of nine orders for armed merchant ships with iron-ribbed wooden hulls are also the first domestic orders for armed merchant ships with iron-ribbed wooden hulls.
It was funded and built by the Nanyang Trading Company and more than a dozen armed trading companies in other trade alliances, with a total value of more than one million Chu Yuan.
This kind of strategic order cannot be handed over casually. If the other party does not have sufficient technical strength, it will not be able to complete such a large order.
And Luohua Shipyard has this kind of strength!
In fact, apart from Luohua Shipyard, there is currently no other shipyard that can accept their huge order for iron-ribbed wooden hull ships.
Because currently there are only three domestic shipyards capable of building iron-ribbed wooden hull ships of more than 1,000 tons, namely Songjiang Naval Shipyard, Guangzhou Shipyard and Luohua Shipyard.
Even the Qingdao Naval Shipyard, another son of the Navy, currently does not have the technical capabilities to build large-scale iron-ribbed wooden hull ships of more than 1,000 tons. Qingdao Naval Shipyard, despite its name as a naval shipyard, Technology has always been very competitive. In the past, wooden battleships of more than 1,000 tons, that is, third-class battleships, were barely built. In short, quality problems often occurred, construction delays, etc. It is said that the top brass of the Navy were very dissatisfied with this.
As for the Ministry of Industry, the top management of Qingdao Naval Shipyard has been adjusted several times in succession. The general office has been replaced by five, but it is still the same...
It’s not that they don’t work hard, it’s that their technology lagged behind at the beginning, and they later lacked large sums of money for them to spend money to improve their technology. They could only make money by placing orders and gradually improve their technology. This can barely maintain the fifth largest company in the country. Given the status of the shipyard, it is actually not easy to be able to barely build third-class battleships.
In the past, Li's Shipbuilding, the third largest shipbuilder in China, lagged behind in following up on iron-ribbed wooden hull ship technology due to heavy investment in the machine tool industry. Although they had already gathered a company by attracting strategic investors and company bosses, New technologies were approved and technology upgrades started, but this takes time.
A conservative estimate would take more than half a year.
Looking at the domestic shipbuilding industry, the only shipyards that can build thousand-ton large-scale iron-ribbed wooden-hulled armed merchant ships, or warships with weakened firepower and more cargo, are Songjiang Naval Shipyard and Guangzhou Shipyard. Money, the Luohua Shipyard was built by force.
The production capacity of iron-ribbed wooden hull ships at Songjiang Naval Shipyard and Guangzhou Shipyard... is now contracted by the Navy.
The navy has now completely stopped the construction of pure wooden battleships, and has completely changed to iron-ribbed wooden hull ships, even transport ships... The navy has a lot of orders, and the order for third-class battleships alone is more than a dozen. , the number of orders for cruisers and frigates adds up to hundreds...
The Navy not only needs to continue to expand the size of the Navy, but also needs to build a batch of new warships to replace the warships that were in early service.
The quality of the warships built and put into service by the Navy in the early days was not very good. Many of them have reached the later stage of their service life after more than ten years of service and are in urgent need of replacement... It is not that these early warships are really unusable, but the maintenance in the later stages of service is too much. It's troublesome and very expensive... Not only does overhauling at every turn require a lot of money, but it will also seriously squeeze the battleship's attendance rate.
Warships also have usage costs. A warship worth 100,000 Chu yuan does not mean that it can float on the sea to perform tasks every day. In terms of the intensity of frequent use of the Dachu Empire Navy's ocean-going missions, basically After three years of service, at least half of the year will be spent on the slipway for maintenance.
This is still normal maintenance and service. If you add overhauls in the middle and later stages, then the maintenance time in the middle and later stages will be even more.
This means more time is spent on maintenance and less time on duty. Relatively speaking, the cost of use increases.
Therefore, when measuring the cost of a warship, the early procurement cost is only a part of it, followed by the personnel cost of the crew and the cost of ship maintenance.
This is why the Navy often uses the concepts of full life cost, monthly and annual service cost.
Calculate all the costs, and then calculate the cost of being on duty for one month, so that you can better measure the true cost of using the warship.
It's not like you spend tens or hundreds of thousands to buy a battleship, and then you don't have to spend any money...
Considering the cost of use, even if many of the warships built in the early days of the Dachu Empire can still be used, due to the poor early shipbuilding technology, high maintenance costs and time consuming in the middle and later stages, the cost of use is no longer as good as directly building a new ship. Iron-ribbed wooden hull battleship.
This is why the Navy placed massive orders after the iron-ribbed wooden hull warships came out, even squeezing the production capacity of Songjiang Naval Shipyard and Guangzhou Shipyard.
Because the Navy has a large number of old warships that are expensive to use and are waiting to be replaced... According to the Navy's plan, there are at least fifty Daye-class frigates that need to be replaced!
This is still a normal replacement... and the navy is still continuing to expand its size.
The navy has still not forgotten the plan of hundreds of battleships... They feel that the dozens of battleships today are not enough, and they are bent on expanding the number of battleships to more than a hundred, and then adding four to five hundred cruisers and frigates to coordinate operations.
Such a huge shipbuilding plan has not only occupied the production capacity of the two government-run shipyards, but also the production capacity of Luohua Shipyard.
Luohua Shipyard has received orders for more than twenty frigates and cruisers. In January, it even received an order for a third-class battleship from the Navy.
This is the first time that their company has entered the field of battleships.
You want to ask, why they can still accept orders from the United Trade Alliance when they have received so many orders for naval warships? It is naturally because the trading company has money and the price they give is high...
Luohua Shipyard is a serious private enterprise, and many of its shareholders are armed trading companies. They are just here to make money.
Although the Navy has many warship orders and the total price is high, to be honest, the price offered by the Navy is not high... If the price is too high, the Navy would rather wait until production capacity increases.
It is also because of this that the production capacity of Luohua Shipyard's tilde-hulled ships is not entirely reserved for the navy, but for those armed trading companies with deep pockets...
Make money, not shabby.
They will build ships for whoever gives more money, regardless of whether you are a navy, an armed trading company, or some other shipping company.
After all, they spent 200,000 to 300,000 Yuan in real money to solve the technical problem of the ribbed wooden hull ship. Later, they expanded their production capacity and built many dry docks, recruited a large number of workers and technical engineers, etc. , these all cost money.
With so much money invested, don’t we have to take advantage of the fact that the two government-run shipyards have no production capacity for the market because they are responsible for political tasks such as naval warships, and other shipyards have not yet formed production capacity? 1
Therefore, for Luohua Shipyard, they would rather delay the order for naval warships and give priority to completing the order for armed merchant ships from the Trade Alliance.
They had heard rumors that the Nanyang Trading Company and a large number of other armed trading companies were expected to formally merge and then establish a very large armed trading company. This would appear to be in India and even in West Asia, North Africa and other regions. Have a blast.
There will definitely be no shortage of orders for armed merchant ships.
The Luohua Shipyard's guess is good. With the help of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, the Ministry of Industry, the Army and the Navy, and the previous trading company alliance model which has achieved great success, the Great Chu Empire Dozens of armed trading companies have entered into actual merger negotiations.
According to the plan of the empire's top brass, dozens of armed trading companies with armed trading licenses will be merged into two trading companies.
One is the Western Trading Company, which is an armed trading company specifically targeting India, West Asia, and Africa.
One is the Oriental Trading Company, which is an armed trading company preparing to face the Americas.
Both companies will be operated as official holdings, with private capital participating in the stock dividend model. They will also be listed in the future to absorb more funds, and at the same time, it is also to give private capital an opportunity to participate and obtain dividends from Lilan.
From then on, in the Great Chu Empire, only these two armed trading companies that were completely controlled and operated by the government could legally hold overseas armed licenses.
They can recruit and organize mercenaries and conduct military operations legally and freely overseas.
To put it bluntly, these two companies will become the pioneers of the Chu Empire's overseas colonization in the future...
The reason why we use armed trading companies to conduct overseas colonization instead of using the official administrative model from the beginning is mainly due to the huge cost of overseas colonization. If we only rely on colonial taxation and other methods to conduct overseas colonization, we will lose money until we lose our pants.
Even if the imperial government has a big business, it cannot afford official-led overseas colonization... If nothing else, just sending tens of thousands of people to fight overseas would be a waste of money... relying solely on colonial tax revenue Subsidies cannot be recovered even if they are collected for a hundred years, unless the army directly grabs them...
How to carry out overseas colonization when the cost of official colonization is huge?
The approach of the empire's top officials was to subsidize through monopoly business interests.
For example, in the future, trade in the Indian region will be fully handed over to the Western Trading Company. In order to ensure the stability of the Western Trading Company, the Chu Empire will block the Strait of Malacca and prohibit other ships of the empire and ships from other countries from entering. between Southeast Asia and India.
Monopolizing trade will generate huge amounts of money, which can be used to attract immigrants, establish colonial strongholds, maintain colonial rule, and wage war against all kinds of messy natives of the kingdom.
Launch overseas colonization with Lilan who monopolizes trade.
This is the idea of the senior officials of the Dachu Empire!
It was precisely because of this idea that eventually led to the merger of dozens of armed trading companies... This was actually not a voluntary choice of each armed trading company. For example, the Liu family, one of the major shareholders of Luohua Shipyard, Liuhe Trading Company is doing well, why should it merge with your Nanyang Trading Company?
But...he can't help it if he doesn't want to...Anyway, after this year, the official will revoke your overseas armed license. If you don't have an armed license then, you can only become an ordinary trading company or simply a shipping company.
Or just merge with Nanyang Trading Company obediently, and then occupy a certain share of the new company, and get a dividend every year or something.
Although the Liu family is deeply unwilling, they also know that they must not get into trouble with the empire officials. The empire's top leaders have made it clear that they want to integrate the armed trading companies and monopolize the armed trade. If you resist, you will be careful not to ruin your family...
Of course, although they lost the armed trading company, the Liu family also received a lot of shares and subsequent dividends. In short, the money was not small.
In this regard, the empire's top officials are still very generous.
Under this overall situation, in April of the 19th year of Chengshun, the Da Chu Di Newspaper officially published the news that thirty-six armed trading companies merged to form the Western Trading Company, and 27 armed trading companies merged to form the Eastern Trading Company.
And it is planned that both companies will be listed on the stock exchange in a few months!
As soon as this news came out, ordinary people may not feel it deeply, but people who are well-informed or people with a keen political sense can predict that the empire is going to launch a large-scale overseas colonization operation!
