NOVPUBHe bit onto the collar of his uniform with his teeth, as a breeze passed through the open window and swept across his face, tousling his bangs.
Xu Qingfan quietly stared out the window, daydreaming, just like that peaceful afternoon more than ten years ago, and the eight-year-old him.
Time passed so slowly, yet so quickly...
...
Six months had flown by in a blink of an eye.
"Brother Qing Fan, do you think this drawing looks okay?" In Lin Wanning’s home, the little girl showed her freshly completed sketch to Xu Qingfan.
Zhang Yiyi also gazed at him with hopeful eyes.
"Not bad, not bad!" Xu Qingfan nodded after reviewing it.
"Ah~ finally finished!" Lin Wanning and Zhang Yiyi comfortably leaned back in their chairs, stretching in unison.
The anti-fraud edition of "Hilarious Daily" they had planned to do before the New Year had only been completed today, originally it could have been done by early May, but Xu Qingfan suddenly had the idea to place an advertisement for the duck neck store in the comics, so many of the previously completed drafts needed to be redrawn.
For instance, one of the fraud cases occurred on a bus, where a scammer opened a tampered bottle of Coke with "30,000 yuan" written on the cap. Pretending that the prize redemption location was too far, the scammer tried to resell the prize for 20,000 yuan in a low-price handoff, duping honest people with an accomplice.
Xu Qingfan then suddenly had the idea to change the setting to in front of the Good Taste Duck Neck Store, where the scam was foiled by the kind, beautiful, and righteous store manager Sister Xiao Qing. To thank the manager, the honest person decided to buy Good Taste Duck Necks, and then it led into a soft advertisement, "Wow~ you can get so much for five yuan, wow~ it tastes so good!"
As of now, their second volume of "Hilarious Daily" had already sold nearly four million copies, with almost one and a half million being consumed by Hong Kong City citizens. He felt that this round of advertising might just be surprisingly effective.
Zhong Wenqing initially opened just three duck neck stores to accumulate experience. From location selection and decoration to opening, it took over four months. Now the three duck neck stores had been operating smoothly for over a month, netting an average monthly profit of nearly four thousand yuan per store after deducting the cost of ingredients, labor, utilities, and rent.
The trial and error phase was over, and now it was time for large-scale replication.
Beyond Good Taste Duck Neck Food Corporation Ltd., they had also established a subsidiary. The funds for purchasing and renovating stores came through the subsidiary, which then rented the premises back to the duck neck stores at market rates, allowing for legal tax avoidance.
With Zhang Chunxue’s help handling the most cumbersome entrepreneurial procedures, and having given a heads up to her daughters, no one dared to come asking for bribes. Moreover, with the naturally delicious duck necks paired with the right marketing strategies, it was hard not to thrive.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without Zhong Wenqing’s hard work. In just six months, she had lost over ten kilograms, but because she originally weighed a hundred and thirty kilograms, she actually looked better after losing the weight.
The three of them took the drafts to Zhang Yiyi’s home, and after handing them over to Zhang Chunxue, the trio’s task was deemed perfectly complete.
"You little clever ghost!" Zhang Chunxue laughed heartily, amused by the hardcore advertisement placement in the comic.
"Hehe~ Oh, Auntie, the duck neck store is going to advertise, right? I think we can get the crew from ’Foreign Daughter-in-Law, Local Son’ to endorse it!" Xu Qingfan said with a mischievous smirk.
"Huh? Is that a new TV show?" Zhang Chunxue rarely had time to watch TV, and Zhang Yiyi even less so because of her poor hearing, she could only watch movies with subtitles, and the young girl preferred reading books over watching TV.
"Auntie, Ningning knows it, she’s always afraid of having to make good soup every day, ah making good soup oh oh~" Lin Wanning raised her hand and sang.
Zhang Chunxue felt it sounded familiar but couldn’t recall where she had heard it.
"Auntie, let me find it on your laptop for you!" Xu Qingfan turned Zhang Chunxue’s laptop around and typed ’Foreign Daughter-in-Law, Local Son’ into the browser.
Soon, information about the TV show appeared on the screen.
"Oh, I’ve seen it a few times and never knew what it was called. Alright, Auntie will have someone contact their crew," Zhang Chunxue said with a smile after reading the introduction.
This TV series, along with ’The Seventy-two Tenants’ that came out a few years later, had a considerable influence in the Liangguang Region for more than a decade. Choosing them as spokespersons was definitely better than choosing some stars who are constantly caught evading taxes or causing scandals.
Once Zhang Chunxue agreed, Xu Qingfan continued, "Auntie, I have another person in mind, an athlete named Liu Xiang. I believe he will definitely win at this year’s Olympics. Can we sign him on for an endorsement in advance?"
"How do you know he will win? You seem to know everything," Zhang Chunxue said amusingly, unable to resist pinching Xu Qingfan’s cheek.
"Because he’s really super fast," Xu Qingfan started looking up Liu Xiang’s information on the computer, "Auntie, look, he ran 13.12 seconds at the Rusti International Athletics Grand Prix in ’02, breaking the Asian record for the men’s 110-meter hurdles. And look at his ’03 race records, aren’t they getting faster every time? I think he might break the world record at the Olympics!" Xu Qingfan analyzed convincingly.
Although Xu Qingfan’s analysis couldn’t be said to be completely without merit, it was purely outrageous. If predictions were that easy, the bookies would have gone bankrupt and fled long ago. 𝓷ℴ𝓿𝓅𝓊𝒷.𝓬𝓸𝓂
But Zhang Chunxue still enjoyed listening to him. She said, "Liu Xiang’s endorsement fee is probably already between three hundred to four hundred thousand now. If your cousin Qingqing has no objections, then Auntie will help you make contact."
Zhang Chunxue, after all, was experienced in this business and could easily estimate the current value of someone like Liu Xiang. If he really could break the world record at this year’s Olympics as Xu Qingfan speculated, his endorsement fee could easily soar into the millions.
Xu Qingfan wouldn’t have discussed it with Zhang Chunxue if he thought he couldn’t persuade the other party, especially considering the huge leap from duck necks to sports!
He remembered clearly that Liu Xiang’s rise began that year when he matched the world record set by Britain’s Colin Jackson by running 12.91 seconds in August at the Classic Asia Games.
Until 2008, when he had to withdraw due to injury at the very games held in his home country and was mocked all over the internet, those four years were the peak of his commercial value. If you could spend just a few hundred thousand now to sign a few years’ endorsement contracts, it would be a steal.
"Auntie, please talk to Qingqing for me. If he doesn’t win, I’ll pay!" Xu Qingfan pleaded while holding Zhang Chunxue’s arm.
"What nonsense are you talking!" Zhang Chunxue smacked him lightly on the back of his head.
"Auntie~"
"Mom~"
Xu Qingfan gave a signal to the two, and seeing this, Lin Wanning and Zhang Yiyi joined in.
"Alright, alright, you guys have worn me down," Zhang Chunxue said with a laugh, shaking her head, "Auntie will pay, Xiao Fan, you come up with a new idea every day, you’ll spend all my money."
Since it was just a few hundred thousand, Zhang Chunxue wasn’t too concerned. Betting on athletes just before the Olympics was not uncommon in the industry. She considered it a small risk investment.
"There’s no one quite like mother~" Xu Qingfan led the singing of the nursery rhyme, with Lin Wanning and Zhang Yiyi also joining in on his beat.
"A child with a mom is like a treasure~"
Zhang Chunxue laughed heartily at the trio’s antics, feeling cheerful and wishing simultaneously that these happy moments could slow down.
...
The endorsement talks for ’Outsider Wife, Local Hubsand’ went extremely smoothly, and Zhang Chunxue’s advertising agency secured it for two years at three hundred thousand.
By the time Liu Xiang’s endorsement deal was finalized, it was nearly July. Zhang Chunxue sent staff to Rome to find Liu Xiang, who was preparing for a competition. They presented a Good Taste Duck Neck advertisement poster prepared in advance, and ended up securing four years of commercial usage rights to a photo of Liu Xiang with this poster for just one hundred thousand per year—a bargain price.
With a good wind, you can soar to the skies.
Riding the wave of Liu Xiang’s previously unnoticed hard work and subsequent rise to fame, Good Taste Duck Neck was set to expand across every corner of Hong Kong City in 2004.
