Chapter 87: Home (The guild master has finally paid it all back; please vote for recommendations)

In a partnership, mutual suspicion is only natural. American companies generally have many shareholders and do not favor the old family-business model. So long as the accounts remain in order and his own stake in the company is not diluted, Su Mu can accept it calmly.

The chances of the books going wrong are slim. After one company’s accountant finishes the ledgers, the auditor from the other company will still check them, and any large transfer of funds requires Su Mu’s signature for confirmation. On that front, there is not much to worry about.

What does worry him is the possibility of having his shares forcibly diluted. Holding forty-nine percent of a company worth three hundred thousand dollars and holding twenty-five percent of a company worth six hundred thousand dollars may seem nearly the same at first glance, but considering the growth potential of a supermarket, that small difference could one day cost him dearly.

Since he already knew the supermarket industry had a broad future, Su Mu naturally did not want Boss Han to own a larger share. When the company was founded, he specifically had the lawyer add a fairness clause.

The general idea was that if the majority shareholder injected more capital, the other shareholders also had the right to contribute in proportion to their holdings. The main purpose was to prevent some future day when Boss Han might suddenly decide to bring in outside money and steadily reduce Su Mu’s stake until he lost all real say in the business.

But for that clause to truly work, Su Mu would first need to have that much money on hand. Otherwise, the majority shareholder could still force through capital injections. He only had a little over ten thousand dollars left on him, so he definitely did not have the funds to keep investing. All he could do was find a way to delay Boss Han’s decision.

Su Mu did not panic, nor did he feel displeased. This supermarket called Buyfun could not even operate normally yet, so there was no need to worry needlessly at this stage. After all, whether it would make money once it opened was still uncertain.

If Boss Han or someone else injected capital that would bring a leap in the company’s development, Su Mu would not mind accepting financing. But Boss Han was destined not to come up with too much money. At most, it would amount to the slight difference between one supermarket and two.

So for the moment, it would be better to slow things down and see how this supermarket performed after it opened soon.

“These are the employees I just hired. They’re all quick on their feet. I didn’t want the ones who walk around like slugs.”

Boss Han did not know what Su Mu was thinking. He skipped over the topic of capital injection and continued, “I looked into it. Walmart doesn’t open until nine o’clock, but that definitely won’t do here. People go out early in the morning to buy vegetables and fruit, just for the freshness. So I’m planning to set our opening time at seven thirty.”

Su Mu was young, but he carried himself with unusual steadiness; the concern he had just felt did not show at all. He asked Boss Han, “The store is right here. If it’s not open for business, it’s just sitting idle. Opening at seven-thirty is fine. What about closing time? What do you want to set that at?”

“Workers do eight-hour shifts, so we’ll do two shifts. I’ve worked it out: from seven-thirty in the morning to three-thirty in the afternoon for the first shift, then from three-thirty in the afternoon to eleven-thirty at night. That way we finish just before the hour when there aren’t many people around at midnight.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to open at seven then? After eleven, there aren’t many people on the streets, and older customers all get up very early. My dad goes out for groceries first thing every day. Whether the vegetables themselves make money is secondary—better to pick up a few other things and bring them home too.”

When Boss Han heard that, he immediately rolled his eyes at Su Mu and said with some exasperation, “What do you mean, older? I’m about the same age as your dad, all right? Seven is fine, but then we’d need to start preparing around six-thirty. That would make us sound like a wet market. I can’t get up that early…”

As if to rebut Su Mu’s comment about older people rising early, he deliberately stressed the words “can’t get up.”

The idea of selling vegetables and fruit in the supermarket had come from Su Mu. In ordinary Chinese households, someone from the family buys groceries at least once a day. As long as the supermarket carried good-quality vegetables at low prices, there was no need to worry that they would not come. They might even pick up other things while they were there, which was all a potentially profitable marketing method.

By cultivating customer habits early, people would naturally think of coming to the supermarket whenever they wanted to buy something in the future. There were many similar cases in marketing books, and Su Mu copied and adapted a great deal from them. He had no experience in marketing, so he could only trust the books written by the experts.

The supermarket was coming together quite well. In the nineteen-eighties, the concept of the supermarket was not yet widely popular, not even in the United States. Walmart had developed so rapidly precisely because the world was full of untapped blank spaces.

As he continued discussing with Boss Han how to run the supermarket well, someone among the newly hired employees who were chatting nearby noticed Su Mu.

Her name was Li Juan, and she lived near the Su family. She was in her forties and had watched him grow up since childhood, so she knew Su Mu very well. At that moment she asked curiously, “What’s the Su family boy doing here? I heard he went to school in San Francisco. Don’t tell me he got expelled and came here looking for work?”

“He got such good grades, and even won a scholarship. How could that be?”

Another woman said, and after taking a look at Su Mu she realized it really was him. She turned to the woman surnamed Li and said, “Maybe he came to take a look. I just introduced his mother to work here. A thousand dollars a month, only eight hours a day, easy work.”

Women gathered together loved gossip the most. Just now they had all been standing with their backs turned, so Su Mu had not noticed these neighbors, and he did not know that his mother had been laid off and come to the supermarket he had invested in to find a job.

The last time he called home to ask about things there, she had only said everything was fine and not mentioned at all that she had lost her job. The most basic manual labor could be done by anyone; one day things might still be fine, and the next day you could be unemployed, with not even a proper contract in hand. Being laid off was perfectly normal.

Boss Han had met Su Dingcai a few times, so he could barely be considered acquainted with him, but he did not know Su Mu’s mother. He simply hired her as an ordinary worker. What a coincidence...

Night had already fallen.

Having seen everything he most wanted to see, Su Mu remembered that his family was still waiting for him to eat dinner, so after saying goodbye to Boss Han, he walked home.

He carried a backpack on his shoulders and stepped lightly along the road. The scenery on both sides was familiar, and although the neighborhood was far inferior to Menlo Park, it still made him feel at ease.

He had never been away from home for so long in all his life. As he neared home, his pace quickened considerably. From a distance, he saw someone standing beneath the most famous archway in Chinatown.

When Old Su saw his grandson, a smile first broke across his face before he forced it away and put on a stern expression. “You only remembered to come home after staying out for a month and a half. Wasn’t it hard to get used to sandwiches and fries over there? Look at you—you’ve gotten thin from hunger. Shouldn’t we have left your mother there to take care of you?”

That was not a rebuke at all; it was plainly affection.

Su Mu smiled. “I’ve actually gained a few pounds. The food there is really terrible, and expensive too. The school has a cafeteria, and I can take care of myself. There’s no need to send her there...”