"Even if they only take this one order, it will take them two days at most. If they work overtime the first evening, they can deliver the goods by the second afternoon. Four hundred yuan isn't a small amount, is it? That's two hundred yuan a day! Isn't that enough?"

"You're a carpenter yourself, so you can estimate it. Set a price for them that allows them to earn about two hundred yuan a day. That should be fine, right? For a bulk order, they wouldn't earn more than that anyway, would they?"

"If that really doesn't work, have them switch to working by the hour for a while and offer them a higher wage."

"If we make them work by the hour, they'll be even less willing. Even if we pay a bit more, it can't exceed one hundred yuan a day, can it? With overtime, that's only one hundred and fifty yuan a day! They'd feel it's an even worse deal," Yi Xiaoman said.

"Then what do they want?" Yi Anguo countered. "This won't do, and that won't do. Do they think they get the final say in everything? I offered them high wages; have I spoiled them? Even if they go to Xianyou in Fujian, they won't earn more than they do here, will they?"

"How much is the daily pay in Xianyou now? One hundred and twenty yuan at most, right? Even with overtime, it's just one hundred and eighty. I'm letting them earn more than two hundred yuan a day. What more could they possibly want?"

"All custom orders must be scheduled and delivered before their deadlines."

"What about the other standard-sized orders? We really can't keep up with production for those," Yi Xiaoman said again.

"How can that be a problem? If you have orders, you can find a way to make the goods," Yi Anguo said. "If the carpenters can't keep up, the woodcutters should be able to, right? Is the lumber cut and ready?"

"The lumber is mostly cut, but each master carpenter already has a large backlog of pieces to work on. There's no way to assign them more," Yi Xiaoman explained. "Besides, the pieces they're working on now are rush jobs; they simply can't stop."

"Why are you only telling me now that the problem is this serious? What were you doing before?" Yi Anguo said, frustrated by the lack of foresight.

"Xiaolin! Are you familiar with any of the other mahogany furniture factories around here?" Yi Anguo then asked Yi Xiaolin. "Especially the smaller ones, the workshops that lack a strong business and don't have much work."

"When I go to get wood sawed, I run into a few owners of small factories, but they're all over in Dongguan, which is a bit far from us," Yi Xiaolin replied.

"Dongguan isn't that far. Go contact them and see if they're willing to help us with the processing. We'll deliver the cut lumber, and they can assemble the furniture for us," Yi Anguo instructed. "We can offer them a higher processing fee, but they must guarantee high quality. They only need to build the unadorned frames; we'll handle the finishing and painting here."

"And our carvers will do all the engraving."

"Uncle Anguo! I've heard there are a lot of mahogany furniture factories in Jiangmen's Xinghui District and Zhongshan's Shunde District, and they're really cheap. Quite a few manufacturers in Dongguan buy finished products from there and resell them to customers at a high markup," Yi Xiaolin suddenly interjected. "We could just resell their products for a profit. It would be cheaper and more economical than producing them ourselves."

"Absolutely not," Yi Anguo said, shaking his head. "You get what you pay for. Their products are cheap because the workmanship is rough, the quality is poor, and the craftsmanship is substandard. That's why their prices are the lowest.

"Some customers who don't know any better are just looking for a bargain, so they're willing to buy that stuff. But people who actually know the trade would never buy it.

"If we pass off inferior goods by buying from those places and reselling to our customers, we'd be destroying our own reputation. So, even if we make no profit or fail to deliver an order, we can never do something like that.

"Just do as I say. And remember, even if we don't make a profit, we can't earn money that goes against our conscience!"

It's busy now, Yi Anguo thought, but when the financial crisis hits next year, the redwood furniture industry won't be so glamorous. Few people will buy redwood furniture, and many factories will go out of business as a result. Things in Guangdong Province were still relatively good. In contrast, the factories in Xianyou, Fujian, had no capacity to weather the risk of the financial crisis. The workshops there were mostly small, private operations with only a dozen, or at most twenty or thirty, workers. When the financial crisis arrived, these small workshop-style factories closed down in droves. Many of the carpenters and painters who had moved there from Guangdong Province came flooding back.

The wages in Xianyou, Fujian, had indeed been high, but that was because they were trying to poach skilled carpenters from Guangdong. Without offering high pay, no one would have been willing to go. Moreover, the working environment there was far worse than in Shenzhen or Dongguan. In terms of prosperity and entertainment, it was certainly no match for Guangdong Province. Many carpenters who had worked there would rather earn a little less in Guangdong than ever go back. Working there was, to put it bluntly, toiling away in rural villages. Those private workshops were all run out of the owners' own homes, so they weren't proper factories in any real sense. Anyone who wasn't highly adaptable simply couldn't last there.

On top of that, CCTV exposed them during the Spring Festival. To cut costs, those factories were buying cheap, rotten wood, which they would patch and piece together to make their furniture. After the CCTV report, their business naturally plummeted. No consumer, after spending a great deal of money, would be happy to receive a pile of rotten wood; it would be infuriating.

In terms of the craftsmanship and quality of redwood furniture, Shenzhen and Dongguan in Guangdong were still the best. Redwood furniture factories in many other places had to poach master carpenters from Shenzhen and Dongguan by offering high salaries.

Although Yi Anguo had initially only planned to stockpile redwood to profit from the price difference, now that he had started this factory and was employing all these people, he had a responsibility to produce furniture. At the very least, it created more jobs and made a small contribution to social development. Unexpectedly, the business was not only doing better than he imagined, but it was actually thriving to the point where supply couldn't keep up with demand.

The profit from producing and selling redwood furniture was very substantial. Even pieces made from ordinary African Hedgehog Rosewood yielded excellent returns when sold. Although the year wasn't over, a quick calculation suggested that earning ten to twenty million by year-end would be no problem at all. And that was just the net profit from furniture sales; it didn't include the appreciation of his stockpiled wood. With so many orders coming in that he had to outsource production, perhaps the profits by the end of the year would be even greater.

Starting in September, Yi Anguo began to gradually reduce his stock holdings, liquidating his positions to exit the market with his profits.

The first to be sold off was Z Gold. He had acquired the shares at an average price of just 6.28 yuan, and he sold them at an average price of 156.98 yuan after holding them for just over two years. His initial holding of 10,000,000 shares had increased to 12,800,000 shares after a bonus issue of 2.8 shares for every 10 held. With a per-share profit of 150.7 yuan, the total profit exceeded 1.9 billion yuan—a return of more than thirty times his investment.

Next, he liquidated his holdings in Panhai Construction. He had bought the stock at an average of 2.55 yuan and sold at 69.78 yuan. His initial 30,000,000 shares had grown to 36,600,000 after a bonus issue of 2.2 shares for every 10 held. This resulted in a profit of 67.23 yuan per share, for a total of over 2.4 billion yuan, another gain of more than thirty times.

By October, he had sold off Caiyun Copper. The average purchase price was 3.37 yuan, and the selling price was 96.89 yuan. He initially held 20,000,000 shares, which became 26,000,000 after a bonus issue of 3 shares for every 10 held. The per-share profit was 93.52 yuan, with total earnings surpassing 2.4 billion yuan, yet another increase of more than thirty times.

After that, he cleared his position in Z National Shipbuilding, which had an astonishing fifty-fold return. He bought in at less than eight yuan per share, holding 10,000,000 shares. Following a bonus issue of 3.2 shares for every 10 held, his total holdings grew to 13,200,000 shares. He sold at an average price of 298 yuan, realizing a total profit of over 3.8 billion yuan.

Finally, he sold G Ship International. He had bought in at an average price of 2.27 yuan per share. His 30,000,000 shares became 38,100,000 after a bonus issue of 2.7 shares for every 10 held. He sold at an average price of 101.33 yuan, netting a profit of 99.06 yuan per share. The total profit exceeded 3.7 billion yuan, a return of more than fifty times his investment.

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