76: A good start

"I'll send you the address of the jewelry store. Just send me a message beforehand when you're bringing the wine over tomorrow."

"Okay."

After making a brief arrangement with Ye Su, Li Mengyao picked up the two paintings, said goodbye to Wan Yuanliang, and stood up to leave.

Ye Su was worried that if he stayed, and they ended up making small talk, Wan Yuanliang might start discussing his insights on antiques, which would expose Ye Su's lack of knowledge. So, he also found an excuse to stand up and leave.

Just as he stepped out of the antique shop, his phone received the address sent by Li Mengyao.

"Poyun Jewelry Headquarters."

He still had to deliver wine to Li Mengyao tomorrow, and since Chen Xinyi was not "convenient" tonight, Ye Su didn't plan on spending the night at her place.

After using a navigation app to determine the distance between his rental apartment and the Poyun Jewelry Headquarters, as well as the time it would take to get there by taxi, Ye Su hailed a car and returned to his rental.

...

"Men really are animals driven by their lower halves!"

Ye Su had given notice in advance that he wouldn't be coming over to stay the night.

After gritting her teeth and complaining for a while about how realistic that man was—not being able to do the things they loved, and not even seeing a shadow of him tonight—she checked the third-party prices for the facial masks again.

"The masks have really gone up to 499 each!"

While still at the company this afternoon, Chen Xinyi had been keeping an eye on the price of the masks, watching it climb all the way to 450 yuan, and even then, they remained out of stock.

The brand's loyal fans were also complaining incessantly on Little Red Book, while simultaneously asking everywhere when the brand would reclaim the agency rights and resume sales of the masks.

Upon learning that there was no hope of reclaiming the agency rights in the short term, and that they would have to wait until the brand owner finished their lawsuit with the channel agent or reached an out-of-court settlement before sales could resume.

Fans who had run out of masks and were originally taking a wait-and-see approach, hoping the price would come down, had no choice but to resign themselves to buying the masks at high prices from scalpers.

With this frenzy of buying from loyal fans, it created the situation Chen Xinyi was seeing now: the price of a single mask had risen to the 499 yuan that Ye Su had initially predicted.

"This man's foresight is just too good. He even guessed that the masks would rise to 499 yuan. Someone as outstanding as him will probably succeed at whatever he does!"

When she was with Ye Su, Chen Xinyi would only trade barbs and bicker with him; neither of them could expect to hear a kind word from the other.

But now that Ye Su wasn't around, Chen Xinyi was practically ready to praise him to the high heavens.

Chen Xinyi knew her own situation best.

If it were her, she would have happily sold all the masks as soon as the price hit 400 yuan, and then foolishly chuckled while counting the thirty-plus thousand yuan she had earned.

She certainly wouldn't have been as composed as she was now, holding onto the masks and waiting for the price to soar all the way to 499 yuan.

"No wonder he set down ground rules before hoarding the masks, not letting me ask about the selling price and requiring me to follow his instructions entirely. It seems he had already figured me out."

In the past, if she realized that Ye Su had figured her out, Chen Xinyi would definitely have been indignant and held onto a grudge, wanting to get back at him.

But now, watching the price of the masks skyrocket and seeing over fifty thousand yuan beckoning to her, Chen Xinyi didn't feel unconvinced at all.

If she could always have opportunities like this to make money, she wouldn't mind being figured out by him every day.

Chen Xinyi touched her face: "Anyway, he already figured me out a long time ago."

...

"Why is there still no movement?"

Unlike Chen Xinyi's ecstasy, as if the fifty-plus thousand yuan were already in her pocket, and Ye Su's calm composure, certain that this wave would definitely bring a big profit.

Among the trio of mask scalpers, the one most nervous at this moment was Ye Xin, who was the Salesperson in charge.

Seeing that third-party stores and scalpers on second-hand platforms had all raised the price of the masks to 499, while his own Tmall store and the newly opened Little Red Book online shop still showed no activity, Ye Xin couldn't help but feel anxious.

"I don't know how many days this wave of enthusiasm will last. If I don't hurry and sell the masks, who knows how much the price will drop by then."

Worried that if the masks weren't sold, and the return period passed, Ye Su's money would be tied up in them, Ye Xin felt increasingly anxious.

"I'll have those 'treasure moms' boost the sales volume with a few orders."

In the eyes of customers, a sales volume of 0 versus a sales volume of 1 often represents two vastly different figures, a difference even greater than that between 100 and 1,000 sales.

After all, people have a herd mentality. Only when they see someone else buy first can they logically convince themselves that they aren't the only ones suffering a loss.

Ding-ding—

After making up his mind, just as Ye Xin was about to send a message to a few 'treasure moms' who hadn't helped him boost sales in a long time, his computer sounded with a Wangwang notification.

He clicked on the message impatiently and, sure enough, saw that the other party had sent a link to the mask.

[Moon Instant Noodles: Isn't the original price of this mask only 298? Why is your store selling it for 499? Isn't that too expensive?]

Ye Xin had been running an online store for so long that he knew at a glance the other party was playing dumb, trying to bargain in this way.

[Dear, because of issues between the brand owner and the agents, this mask is currently out of stock, which has caused the price to keep rising. We have no choice but to raise the price along with them.]

[Right now, no one knows how long it will be before the brand resumes supply. The price might even continue to rise tomorrow. If you need them urgently, Dear, I suggest buying them today. We can arrange shipment tomorrow.]

After haggling over the price with the other party for a few sentences, the computer didn't sound with any more Wangwang notifications.

"Sigh, a two-hundred yuan premium really isn't that easy to sell!"

Just as Ye Xin thought the other party had been put off by the price, a notification of a new order suddenly popped up on the merchant backend.

"Huh, they placed an order!"

Looking at the user ID he had just been communicating with, seeing that they had ordered one mask, Ye Xin felt a surge of joy.

Having a real customer place an order meant that the price of 499 was indeed acceptable to the market.

Ding-ding—

[Moon Instant Noodles] had just placed the order when the Wangwang notification sounded again; other customers were coming to inquire about the price and shipping time of the masks.

In just ten minutes, Ye Xin's Tmall store sold 6 masks.

"Someone has started placing orders on Little Red Book too!"

Switching to the Little Red Book backend, seeing that someone had placed an order first before sending a message to ask about shipping time, Ye Xin excitedly clapped his hands together with a [slap].

Over the next hour, Ye Xin switched back and forth between the two platforms on his computer, selling 42 masks in succession.

"With a two-hundred yuan markup per unit, not counting shipping costs, that's 8,400 earned right there!"

Ye Su had already agreed that he would take twenty percent of the profits earned, which meant that in just this short time, the two stores had earned over a thousand yuan!

After doing e-commerce for so long, this was the first time Ye Xin felt that running an online store was actually so profitable!

Ding-ding—

The customer service messages from both platforms rang alternately, keeping Ye Xin busy and fired up. His ten fingers flew as he replied to customer messages, almost sparking the keyboard.

After working until eleven o'clock, the customer service messages on both platforms finally quieted down.

"131 units, these masks are just too easy to sell!"

Twenty-six thousand in profit, an 80/20 split—he could take over five thousand, and Ye Su and his friend could split a little over twenty thousand!

"Huge profits! It's still easiest to make money from women!"

Before, Ye Xin had felt that Ye Su and his friend hoarding a thousand masks all at once was too risky.

But now that they had started selling them, Ye Xin realized that they had actually hoarded too few.