As soon as Fina came in, Xiao Yan’s Dragen-Li jumped down from her desk and docilely followed Fina. In a new environment, as always, Fina walked around and pickily looked at the room décor.
Xiao Yan smiled looking at Fina and whispered to Zhang Zian, "no wonder there were so many people out there looking at your cat. She is a real beauty! The way she sits is so elegant and proud."
Zhang Zian explained, "don’t be fooled by her look. She is arrogant and not elegant!"
Fina’s pretty face was her biggest advantage!
Upon hearing his words, Fina glanced at him and then jumped on the couch. She landed right across from Xiao Yan’s chair - the seat saved for the most respectable person in the room in the Chinese culture.
"What you just said means VIPs bring in the most value to the business?" Zhang Zian asked after thinking about Xiao Yan’s words again.
She nodded slightly, "that’s right. When you talk to the public, of course you tell people all customers are important; however, not all customers are created equal. That’s just how it is," she bent down and stroked her cat, "I love my cat, but in front of yours, she seems to be not as cute anymore."
Zhang Zian was not sure how to react to that one. He smiled and looked at Fina and Fina gave him back a hard look.
Xiao Yan
didn’t pay attention to the minor communication between him and Fina. She continued, "some people are wealthy and generous. Some are rich but tightfisted. Some are poor and are willing to give, while some are less-fortunate so they are cheap. All businesses want to expand their customer base and turn all four types of people into customers. This really is impossible. In fact, all you need to do is to secure the first type, strive for the second, pay attention to the third and drop the fourth."
Zhang Zian agreed, "that’s absolutely right. I have the same feeling you spoke my mind. When I took over the pet store I wanted to serve only the high-end customers, not like Stars Pet Chain Supermarket who tries to get every bit of the market."
Xiao Yan smiled, but she only agreed to some of his ideas, "my salon is a quite sizable local beauty salon. It is nothing compared to Stars Pet Chain Supermarket. Stars Pet could develop into such a huge enterprise. Its networks, capability and financial ability are all on an exquisite level. However, if it wants to take over the whole pet market…unless they have supports from the central government or some superpower corporation, otherwise, I would say it is extremely difficult. Mr. Manager, you have to be careful. They could do things that you never expect to hurt you."
Zhang Zian was also alert. Stars Pet Chain Supermarket controlled
controlled the situation. He could only respond to their attacks.
Xiao Yan pointed at the private rooms and said, "look, this is what I meant by networks. Ultimately it is the network of people who could help you when you need them. My VIP customers are wives of the wealthy or the higher-level official, and some are the 2nd generation rich. If you keep them happy, they are willing to treat you well. When someone’s trying to attack me, I could use their network and power to get out of trouble."
"Attack you?" Zhang Zian could tell there were stories behind those words.
"Yes," she looked at the night view outside of the window and started telling her story, "you know, competition is just natural in the business world. If you win, someone else must lose. This is a brutal path to success. If success is on top of a hill, you are just starting and I am only half way up. At the beginning, you may still see some friendliness from the competitors. As you get closer to the top people begin to fight against each other and will push the competitors down the hill whenever they can."
She turned her eyes back and looked at him in the eyes, "Mr. Manager, you have to remember this. It is easy to deal with competitions, but you will be vulnerable if someone’s trying to trick you. Most businesses died because of
because of the setups from competitors! Your situation is much more challenging than what I handled. I only had to deal with competition from local stores. You are facing a big shark like Stars Pet Chain Supermarket."
Obviously, Xiao Yan had done her homework before Zhang Zian came. She knew his store was small and growing rapidly. Also, Zhang Zian was providing something unique that any other pet store could not compete. Jealousy from competitors would come sooner or later. She wanted to warn him about the attacks in the dark.
Both Revolutions and doing business are not easy jobs. Some people may not be able to win, but they sure want to try everything to kick out their competitors using whatever method they could get a hold of.
Xiao Yan started her life working in a beauty salon after high school. At first, she worked for someone and then opened up a small salon after a bit. She then slowly grew her little salon to today’s Glamour Beauty Salon. It took hard work and persistence that most people wouldn’t even understand. Although owning a huge salon like this, she still had quite a bit of debt and debts were nothing new to business owners.
She was attacked by many people in this long and lonely road to success.
Some people would not attack her directly though instead spread rumors so the government agents would not let her go. As soon
go. As soon as they found a small flaw, her business would go to the end.
Fortunately, she was an honest person and ran the business in the correct way. That was how she stood her ground in those attacks. Someone even reported her using the salon for prostitution, gambling and drug dealing. Sometimes the police would come a few times a month…that was a time that she was really tired of life. Fortunately, she had her Dragen-Li cat to support her. Otherwise she might’ve given up a long time ago.
People only paid attention to her success and ignored her hard work behind it.
She told Zhang Zian that her store had never done anything illegal because she was too scared of having all the nightmares come true one day and she would lose her business.
"Mr. Manger, you might feel weird by me wasting time to tell you this. What do I want from you?" she once again read Zhang Zian’s mind.
Zhang Zian nodded and smiled embarrassedly.
"That’s simple. I think one day you would turn into my network resource," she was straightforward, "it is better to grow your network recourses from the humble time, right?"
Although she didn’t tell Zhang Zian, another reason she told him the story was that she could see in him the younger version of herself, a girl trying to build a beauty kingdom. This girl was still alive deep in her heart.