40. Should I buy the company?
What do I say?
You’re kidding me.
It seems like Jae-ha trusted me like a rock and was waiting for my call.
– Tell me the truth, you forgot, didn’t you?
“Well, what happened is that—.”
– You know what?
“What?”
– You have a habit of starting with “That’s the thing” when you don’t have anything to say?
“…”
Did I do that?
From nob le mt l. co m
Jae-ha had an unnecessarily sharp mind.
– Ha! If you don’t think it’s going to work, why don’t you tell me in advance? At least we had a chance to go to a nice place in Vietnam, but we missed it… Now all we have left is Bangladesh, but how do we get there?
“…”
I have a hundred words to say, but I can’t keep getting away with this.
Let’s buy some time.
“Aah! Dean! What are you forgetting? You were thinking about everything?”
– What? What? What were you thinking about? Tell me?
“Humph! I’m not sure, so I can’t reveal it now, but I’m going to Korea next week, so we’ll talk about it then. I’m in a meeting right now, so I’ll call you when I get there, you know!”
– Dude, it’s 10 p.m. in LA, and you’re talking about a meeting!
sh*t, let’s just move on.
“You’re working so hard? I’ll call you back, so don’t worry, just wait, okay?”
– Hey! Hey!
Tut-tut!
I hung up on Jae-ha, who was shouting something, and found my beer and chugged it.
I haven’t been this sweaty since I won the Powerball.
I think, think, think.
What the hell am I going to do with Jae-ha?
“Don’t drop the cubic crystal for nothing—.”
Anyway, Jae-ha is one of the few people I’m close to after my family, so I should do something for him, but I regretted that I was too impromptu last time.
What am I going to do with a man who is almost 50 years old?
He’s a very professional person, so he’ll do anything, but what’s the point?
I can’t make him study investment now, can I?
I’m just going to take care of your livelihood, so you can eat and play?
If you say that to me, you’re going to get a few beatings.
He’s got a huge ego.
It’s a funny story, but Jae-ha went to a prestigious university.
He’s from Goguryeo University in Anam-dong, where the president of Korea came from a few years ago.
What is he doing in a small business?
Isn’t he not from there, but from a branch school in Jeomyeonwon?
No, I’m not.
The company confirmed it when they received his graduation certificate.
Of course, not everything goes well just because you went to a prestigious university, but when I saw him at work, I couldn’t understand how he could be the head of the production department at such a good company with such sincerity, meticulousness, and ability to handle work.
So, after we got to know each other for a while, I once asked him over drinks.
“How did you get into the sewing floor? If you were a graduate of Goguryeo University, you should have been able to get a job, and besides, it was before the IMF, right? I heard that it was the time when you could get a job at any big company you heard of, even if it was just a four-year accounting school in the metropolitan area.”
“Hey! Who knew it would be like this? It’s just the way life goes, isn’t it? And I’m from a big company!”
“But?”
“I was hired by my boss’s family, and at the time, Korea was exporting a lot of clothes because it was the last time they were sewing on a large scale, but the company policy was that you had to know the product, so they sent me to a neighboring garment factory for three months of training.”
“So?”
“I thought it was kind of fun, starting from the yarn stage, making the fabric, dyeing it, and finally sewing it to make a finished garment. I know a lot of people who joined big companies and ran away to go to a factory, but I didn’t.”
“Huh—.”
This was at a time when the sewing industry was beginning to be classified as a speculative industry in Korea.
“At first, I was very confused. You know, the sewing terminology is a bit annoying. Mitsumaki, Nanainchi, Kairutba, Kadamai—.”
“C’mon! That’s understandable. That was before the internet, wasn’t it?”
“What’s the Internet? We were just getting our feet wet. I was having fun, so I studied hard. I studied fashion-related textbooks, and if there weren’t any, I bought them, and I got recognized, and I had a really fun job, and I went to the Magic Show, the world’s biggest fashion show in Las Vegas every year, but—.”
“You don’t have to tell me, isn’t that when the sewing industry in this country started to crumble?”
“Pooh-pooh! It was, and the group gradually reduced its share and then dropped out altogether, so they went to China, Vietnam, and Myanmar, which became the sewing mecca instead of us, and that’s how it happened.”
“…”
That’s how it happened.
A middle-aged man who has the ability and passion, but the first step was wrong and he became a sewing man.
In any case, it would be difficult to advise him to do anything else.
He still prides himself on being the best at making clothes.
After three beers and a lot of grunting, I decided to try and get some sleep.
Suddenly, I remembered a webcomic I enjoyed a long time ago.
Gaussian electrons!
“That’s right, it’s Gauss! Poohahahahaha!”
Why didn’t I think of something so simple?
Something that would make not only Jae-ha, but all of Everybody happy?
Moreover, I would be able to pursue my dreams that I had when I was at work.
I guess my head is hardened.
Now that that’s settled, let’s sleep.
A few days later, in early September.
I boarded a plane to South Korea.
“How’s the company doing these days?”
“Same old, same old. It’s been a couple of days since the infant and child birth rate crashed and burned.”
Upon arrival in Korea, I took time out in the evening to meet with Jae-ha.
“Hey, isn’t the birth rate dropping too fast these days? It was around 430,000 a few years ago, but this year they’re expecting around 350,000?”
“It’s going to drop even more, because there’s a growing trend of young people not getting married and not having children at all.”
“Huh! What is the world coming to?”
“You’re a good one, aren’t you? Thirty-three years old, Mr. Solo Kang-Sik?”
“…”
He’s a master at making you say nothing.
“Anyway, the thing is, the others seem to be shaking a lot. The Jellyfish have already folded one of their four brands, and they’re about to fold another, and JD Style is rumored to be in trouble, too. The problem is, they haven’t even started.”
“And?”
“When the effects of the recent drop in birthrates start to trickle down to children, there’s going to be a lot of closures. In a few years.”
“What about Dae-Sung?”
“Well, we’re late to the party, so we’re still open, and our main business is department stores, so we’re not affected yet, but we’re still growing.”
“Huh?”
“First of all, we’re competitive in production. We only import yarn and produce the whole process domestically, and the cost is cheaper than most finished goods. I know it’s just me, but it’s the whole company. Does Mr. Hong give you a hard time? You did the interiors here, so you know what you’re doing.”
“Heh heh heh, I’m just a little bit like that!”
Brands that normally open their own stores in large malls such as department stores and supermarkets have to pay for all the interior costs, and it’s no joke.
I’ve seen places that cost from 30 million won to 40 million won for a 10-pyeong wall store.
However, I did a transfer that brought it within 20 million won.
My loyalists told me that I shouldn’t waste money because VMD does what VMD does, and VMD does it beautifully.
I found the furniture factory myself, begged, pleaded, and customized it.
I was so stressed that I couldn’t sleep because I was fighting with Mr. Hong, who was trying to cut me down to the bone just to get one payment.
It’s a funny story, but it became DaeSung’s competitive advantage when Mr. Hong was so domineering that he turned the entire company upside down for not utilizing the backyard.
“So, what do you think?”
“What? What do you think?”
“Do you think baby and children’s brands will survive in Korea, the outlook?”
“Not without a fight. If the birth rate drops to the point where the country doesn’t exist in a few decades, the government will do something about it at some point, and it will be a game of chicken, and once it’s cleaned up, the ones that survive will see the light of day again.”
“China is done, right?”
“What do you do when you have 18 million births a year? It’s hard to get in now because of THAAD, and they’re getting better at designing their own brands, and they’re getting better at quality, so they’re buying their own brands, and the rich are buying full Western brands. I think the Southeast Asian market will open up instead. I think we’ll be fine in the long run if the standard of living rises and we take advantage of the Korean Wave.”
“Hmmm—.”
The bottom line is that it’s not all hopeless.
I think so too.
Of course, I’ll have to get a little bigger.
“Dude, why are you asking me that, instead of telling me what you’re going to do?”
“Well, it’s the same story, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean, same story?”
“Jae-ha!”
“Why?”
“Do you want me to buy the company?”
“What, what? Buy a company? Our company? Daesung Apparel?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you drunk already?”
“…”
Is this guy serious?
The idea of buying the company came to me a few days ago when I received a phone call from Jae-ha’s brother.
I remembered an episode of Gauss Electronics, a daily webtoon I watched a long time ago.
An overweight man who won 60 billion won the lottery.
Despite winning the jackpot, he didn’t tell anyone and continued to work diligently.
One day, his boss asks him if he’s doing this for a paycheck, and he blurts out.
“You’re going to buy the company?
I don’t know why I suddenly remembered that webcomic, but it’s simple, right?
Why not just buy a company and solve all your problems?
And incidentally, it would give Jae-ha and all the other Daesung Apparel employees who were close to me some breathing room?
“I’m not drunk.”
“Then what do you mean, even if you make a decent amount of money, can you afford it? And even if you can afford it, are you crazy to buy this with all the money you have because of me?”
“Affordable? Don’t get me wrong. I can afford to buy dozens of small and medium-sized companies like Daesung Apparel. Even if a company like Daesung goes bankrupt after paying tens of billions, I’ll just have a beer and forget about it.”
“Well, what’s that—.”
“You know, just down the street from your brother’s place, in Mason, there’s a new center that’s been opened up recently for nursery school and daycare kids?”
“Yang Hye-won, you know about that, how long has it been in our neighborhood, and is it a ladder center, it looks big, and what’s with that all of a sudden?”
“You know what? I built it.”
“What? You built it?”
“Yeah, Yang Hye-won cost a little over 10 billion, the ladder center cost almost 30 billion, and now I’m building two more ladder centers outside of Eunpyeong-gu and in Namyangju for 70 billion, all with my own money.”
“Uh, uh—.”
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Jae-ha was speechless.