C6 Set the Price

Boiling fish balls in plain water!

Just a pot of boiling water, no spices added, and in go the fish balls, bubbling away.

Dong Xiaorou hesitated to cook too many, opting to drop in just five fish balls, worried they wouldn't be palatable and didn't want to waste them.

"How long do they need to cook?"

Lee Zhi checked the time and speculated, "I reckon five minutes in boiling water should do it!"

The adjacent room was small, barely twenty square meters. It had once served as an office in the factory, but now it was crammed with a bed and various other items, making it feel even less spacious.

The setup was far from ideal. The gas stove sat on the floor, and the iron pot was one Dong Xiaorou had brought from home. They crouched around the pot, watching the water come to a boil, then carefully timed the cooking of the fish balls.

"Five minutes are up!"

"Let's fish them out and give them a try!"

"Hey, don't jab them with your chopsticks; we're not out of bowls!"

Tasting the fish balls, they were unlike anything eaten raw. With no added seasonings or additives, they were delightfully springy and smooth, their natural savory flavor shining through, surpassing any other meatball product he'd ever tried.

"How do they taste to you?" Lee Zhi asked Dong Xiaorou after chewing and swallowing a whole fish ball.

Dong Xiaorou nodded, "They're delicious. I can't speak for everyone else, but I absolutely love them!" She grabbed another one with her chopsticks, biting into it eagerly. Even without any spices, the fish balls were easy to swallow, their inherent freshness more than satisfying.

Lee Zhi didn't compete with her for the fish balls. There were plenty more being made; he could have as many as he wanted. But this moment, this simple joy, wasn't something that would always be there.

In ten years, or perhaps even longer, Lee Zhi would remember this day vividly, as if it were yesterday—a woman by his side, squatting in front of the gas stove, cooking fish balls, her anticipation and every move radiating happiness.

It's only when you've hit rock bottom that you truly know who's with you.

"Our product should get a good reaction from the market," Dong Xiaorou said, turning off the stove, having eaten four out of the five fish balls. It wasn't that Lee Zhi let her; he simply didn't snatch them away.

"What are your thoughts?" Dong Xiaorou asked Lee Zhi earnestly.

"About what?"

Dong Xiaorou tucked her long hair behind her ear and explained, "We can only profit from these fish balls if we sell them. The factory's production line is up and running, so shouldn't we start thinking about how to market them?"

"Sell?" Lee Zhi scratched his head, chuckling, "That's easy. We'll just take them to the market. With the fish balls tasting this good, how could we worry about finding buyers?"

Dong Xiaorou thought her young boss was a bit naive, shaking her head, "But how exactly do we sell them at the market? Wholesale or retail? What's the pricing strategy? How many can we sell in a day? You like the taste, but will others agree? Have you considered all this?"

"I haven't," admitted Lee Zhi, taken aback by Dong Xiaorou's questions. Selling fish balls seemed simple, but clearly, there was more to it than he had thought.

Dong Xiaorou gave Lee Zhi a look that screamed 'I can't believe I'm losing to you,' and with a coquettish roll of her eyes and a wry smile, she said, "So, you started this factory without preparing anything? What were you thinking, that this was some kind of playtime?"

Lee Zhi bit back the retort that it was she who was playing house, thinking to himself that if they were, he'd have her warming his feet as a maid.

But Dong Xiaorou didn't give him the chance to speak. Pondering for a moment, she said, "We need to set a price for the fish balls our factory is making. Before we do that, I need to know our daily production capacity and the cost to make these fish balls!" She looked up at Lee Zhi and asked, "Boss, you don't have a problem sharing that info with me, right?"

"No problem at all!" Lee Zhi chuckled awkwardly. Without her, he'd be blindly wading through the business, rolling up his pant legs and feeling his way through. At least now he had someone to strategize with. "You're quite knowledgeable!" Dong Xiaorou didn't strike him as the typical woman from a small fishing village.

With a huff, Dong Xiaorou muttered, "Obviously. I'm a college graduate with a degree in Business Management, thank you very much."

She swiftly moved on, not allowing Lee Zhi to digress. "Let's skip the chit-chat and get down to business. What's our factory's production capability? How many fish balls can we churn out in a day?"

Lee Zhi explained, "In theory, the processing plant can run 24 hours a day, but we have to shut down the machines for three hours every other day for cooling and maintenance. Assuming we have enough raw materials, we can produce 15 fish balls per minute, each weighing 0.5 liang, or 25 grams..."

Dong Xiaorou cut him off, her brow furrowed. "Fifteen fish balls a minute, weighing a total of 375 grams, doesn't even make a kilogram. That's 45 kilograms an hour, and at full tilt for 21 hours, we'd only produce 945 kilograms, barely over 470 kilograms in total."

The daily output of less than 500 kilograms was way under Dong Xiaorou's expectations. But then again, this wasn't really a factory—it was more like a small workshop capable of making fish balls.

"In the market, fish balls go for about 10 dollars per kilogram, and wholesale prices hover around five to six dollars," Dong Xiaorou calculated before asking, "So, how many fish balls can we get from one kilogram of fresh fish?"

"500 grams of fresh fish yields 280 grams of fish balls."

Lee Zhi didn't come up with the formula himself; it was the Nebula I9 Intelligent Factory System in his head that provided the numbers.

"Fifty percent efficiency? We're paying 2.5 dollars per kilogram for fish, and two kilograms of fish only produce a bit over one kilogram of fish balls. The raw material costs alone are nearly five dollars. Add in labor, electricity, factory space, and equipment wear and tear, and we're looking at six dollars per kilogram for fish balls... Boss, this isn't adding up. Maybe we should just shut down the factory now and cut our losses. What do you say?" Dong Xiaorou concluded with a suggestive wink.

Lee Zhi wasn't in the mood for her playful antics. Her calculations had soured his mood entirely.

"How can it be that we're not making money?" he wondered aloud.

Dong Xiaorou blinked innocently and spread her hands. "You're the boss, I'm just an employee. Why we're not making money is beyond me!"

"No, no, this isn't right. There's definitely a problem somewhere." Lee Zhi shook his head, furrowing his brow in thought. "The raw materials check out, the production levels are on target. The pricing... that's it, the pricing!"

Lee Zhi looked up, his voice tinged with excitement. "Why on earth did we set the selling price so low? Have you lost your mind? It costs us over six dollars per catty to produce these fish balls. Selling them at this price, we're bound to take a loss!"

Dong Xiaorou's eyes widened in frustration as she glared at Lee Zhi. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

Lee Zhi chuckled awkwardly and tried to appease her with a grin. "Hey, don't be mad. I was just speaking off the cuff. You know, you're kind of adorable when you're angry."

"Cut the sweet talk. I'm not buying it," Dong Xiaorou shot back, giving him a dismissive glance.

Lee Zhi could see she wasn't truly upset and continued with a smile. "We can't just go by the market price when setting the cost for our fish balls."

"Then what should we base it on?" she asked.

Lee Zhi shook his head. "Nothing. The fish balls we're making, are they anything like what's out there in the market? Not at all. They're not even in the same league. Our fish balls are genuine, made with real, quality ingredients—just fresh fish. So, our pricing has to reflect the value of our product!"