Transmigrated as the Villain Boss's Precious Darling-Chapter 135: The Hawthorne Family
Tang Xiaonan glanced at Adrian Hawthorne, deciding not to expose his lie. He wasn’t telling the whole truth; he had made at least fourteen or sixteen yuan. But she understood him. A merchant would never reveal their bottom line.
Even if business was booming, they’d publicly claim they were just scraping by. But if business was truly awful, they’d insist it was going well—even better than in previous years. A customer might haggle a fifty-yuan item down to ten and walk away gloating, thinking they’ve gotten a huge bargain. But in reality, the owner is celebrating too, because they might still have a five-yuan profit margin.
You can’t be a merchant without a bit of cunning. A simple, honest person could never make it in business.
"Are we coming back to sell tomorrow?" Jim Thorne hadn’t had his fill of the excitement yet.
"Of course. I’ll develop more prints for tomorrow. This afternoon, I need to make a trip to Wraven to buy more photo paper and chemicals." Adrian Hawthorne sounded a little regretful. ’I was still too timid. I should have bought more supplies in Wraven.’ He didn’t know the situation in Vessaria, but the photo paper at the department store would definitely be expensive, driving his costs way up. It was still more cost-effective to buy from Wraven.
"Let’s just buy it from the department store. I want to buy some White Rabbit candy," Jim Thorne suggested.
"No, the department store is too expensive. If our costs go up, our profits go down. You can go buy candy, though." Adrian Hawthorne shook his head. Costs had to be controlled—on the premise of maintaining quality, of course.
Cutting corners on quality to control costs was a foolish move only a shortsighted idiot would make. The Hawthorne family had nearly been ruined by a quality issue once before.
The Hawthorne family was in the printing and dyeing business. The Chandlers of the North and the Hawthornes of the South—they were the two great giants of the industry during the Republic Era.
The Hawthornes were his family. Although the Chandler and Hawthorne families were competitors, they were also good friends. However, the Chandlers met an even more tragic fate. During the war, when the north fell, the fiery-tempered Old Master Chandler chose to burn his factory to the ground rather than let it fall into enemy hands. He watched as the factory he had built from the ground up was engulfed in flames and reduced to ash. The blow was too much for the already frail old man, and he passed away from illness soon after.
Fortunately, Old Master Chandler had sent his children to Portloria ahead of time. He himself, however, refused to leave, saying he would rather die in his homeland.
Although Adrian Hawthorne had never met Old Master Chandler, he had often heard his father recount tales of the man’s life and greatly admired this patriarch of unyielding integrity. He might have possessed a merchant’s cunning, but when it came to matters of national importance, the old master understood the greater good and refused to compromise. Compared to his own grandfather, Old Master Chandler had far more character.
The person who had nearly bankrupted the Hawthorne family was Adrian Hawthorne’s eldest uncle, the firstborn son of the main family line. Adrian’s father, Ethan Hawthorne, was from the third branch, making him the son of a concubine, and Adrian, in turn, a grandson from that same line. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚
This eldest uncle was more than ten years older than Ethan Hawthorne and was in charge of procurement for the company. He tried to save money by purchasing a batch of inferior dye, which ended up ruining an entire large order worth five hundred thousand silver dollars. According to the contract, the Hawthorne family had to provide full compensation. The incident nearly gave Old Master Hawthorne a stroke. He had to sell several houses and some antiques to cover the loss, and from then on, he looked upon the first branch with even greater disdain.
Because the sons of the first and second branches were not very capable and lacked business acumen, the sharp and competent Ethan Hawthorne stood out. He earned the deep appreciation of Old Master Hawthorne. If it weren’t for the changing times, the head of the Hawthorne family today would undoubtedly be Ethan Hawthorne.
But it was a matter of timing and fate. Ethan Hawthorne’s luck was just a bit off. He was born in an era of war and came of age just as a new regime took power. Although Old Master Hawthorne lacked integrity, he had an incredible knack for seeing which way the wind was blowing. The moment he sensed trouble, he sold the factories and emigrated overseas with his family. Ethan Hawthorne and his mother should have been able to go with them, but the first branch played a dirty trick. As a result, the second and third branches were unable to leave and remained in Tristone, under the fine-sounding pretext of "guarding the Hawthorne family’s ancestral estate."
’Heh. Old Master Hawthorne had already sold off most of the family’s ancestral estate. What was there left to guard? It was obvious they were just afraid that if the other branches went abroad, they would have to compete with the first branch for the inheritance.’
