Chapter 224 Trade Fair

Not only Qi Hai Commerce, but after receiving the news, many merchants from Jiu Zhou Commerce also entered the exhibition, relying on their good relationship with the senior management of Qi Hai Commerce. In this experimental trade fair, a total of 122 large and small merchants and independent traders participated, setting up a total of 417 booths and stands, displaying more than 40,000 kinds of goods. Qi Hai Commerce's trade fair can be regarded as a full demonstration of the commerce's strong strength to merchants from all over the world, and also allowed a large number of merchants, including those Hu merchants (Central Asian merchants), to see opportunities.

The number of commodities related to Ye's Workshop alone reached 2,200, most of which were high-tech products of this era. This was even with IKEA, under Ye's banner, only taking out some commodities suitable for long-distance trade.

Various styles and levels of mantel clocks and marine chronometers from Tissot Horology attracted a lot of attention. At this trade fair, Tissot Horology even showed and released the first portable clock of this era, a small clock in Ye Tao's memory that should have been about the size of a soda can.

Ye Tao didn't know whether Yi Zhan Lou (Chess Battle Pavilion) was in line with the habits of Hu merchants and more Western people. However, his equal treatment of his merchants allowed Yi Zhan Lou to occupy a booth as well. In this booth, in addition to setting up a chessboard for two people to play against each other and hanging up a schematic diagram of the Grand Strategy game, only some Army Chess sets and rule manuals for Army Chess and Grand Strategy games translated into Frankish and Persian were displayed. However, many Hu merchants had already seen the booming business of Yi Zhan Lou in Yicheng, and their tentative purchase of some chess sets and rule manuals was a large order for Yi Zhan Lou.

If the two most eye-catching booths at the entire exhibition were to be named, then Ye's Workshop would also be counted. Ye's Workshop has now successively produced and finalized various marine measuring instruments, geological and topographic measuring instruments, military rangefinders, and more than 30 other kinds of precision measuring instruments. It is preparing to establish a specialized sales organization called "Bosch Instruments". Although these instruments are expensive, they were sold out on the opening day of the exhibition, except for the samples. The instruction manuals, product catalogs, and technical specification manuals printed by Ye's Workshop were even more in short supply. Once they tasted the benefits of the sextant for navigation and understood the benefits of the rangefinder and fire-control computer for naval warfare, the future sales performance of "Bosch Instruments" will be immeasurable.

Another booth was a new growth point of Ye's Workshop: porcelain. Originally, the technology of Ye's Workshop for producing porcelain was quite extensive, mainly to meet the low-end and mid-range markets. However, as Ye Tao became a partner of the Guan family in Baishi City, the situation completely changed. Ye Tao, Tan Weixin, and Guan Yinhang discussed splitting the Guan family into two parts. After Ye Tao's process improvement, the output of Yun Kiln more than tripled, and it was finally able to meet some targeted supply orders in Dongping, and there was still some surplus in production. This surplus was meticulously packaged and became extremely precious gifts.

The production and sales of Guan's original low-end and mid-range porcelain, which was not well-known, was merged with the Imperial Kiln under the Inner Treasury and the porcelain workshop under Ye's Workshop. The production process and management of Ye's porcelain workshop, some special porcelain formulas of the Imperial Kiln that were specially supplied to the royal family, and the craftsmanship of the Guan family were organically combined, and it faintly became the leader of the domestic porcelain industry. The three families moved the porcelain craftsmen and equipment to a newly built town near Danyang. The moved craftsmen, plus their respective families, actually occupied most of the town all at once. Therefore, Ye Tao and Tan Weixin named this town "Jingdezhen" without any politeness. And this trade fair was the first concentrated appearance of the porcelain produced in Jingdezhen.

Bone china, blue and white porcelain, and eggshell porcelain can all arouse the amazement and reckless pursuit of Hu merchants who have not seen much high-end oriental porcelain, and the vases and plates produced by Yun Kiln that were displayed along with them were even regarded as "artifacts." However, the most eye-catching thing in the Jingdezhen booth was Ye Tao's showy display of colors. In the booth, a row of shelves outside was placed with 24 kinds of unglazed and simply fired porcelain blanks, while in the back, eight rows of vases were placed in a stepped shape, a total of 256 vases with exactly the same shape and no two colors the same. Ye Tao almost used vases to create a set of color cards. Two hundred and fifty-six colors, according to the electronic game terminology, is eight-bit color. How much time and energy he put into finding suitable glazes and formulating production processes to achieve eight-bit color in this era. The gradual birth of various colors was somewhat commonplace for everyone in Ye's Workshop, but when these things were placed together in a set of color cards, even those technicians who were trained by Ye's Workshop and specialized in glaze modulation had a feeling of dazzling and fascination. As for the merchants from all over the world, especially those who knew something about porcelain, they were admiring and racking their brains to think about how these colors were made. Looking at the expressions of awe, confusion, incomprehension, and helplessness intertwined on these people's faces, Ye Tao felt that his efforts were definitely worth it.

Some merchants from Chun Nan and Bei Liao were interested in the various heavy weapons that Ye's Workshop could produce. Catapults, ballistae, and Shenbi bows (God's arm bows) and other long-range strike weapons, except for a few merchants in Dongping, no one else could produce them. As for ballistae, it was Ye's Workshop's unique product. The arms business has always been a lucrative one, but Ye Tao, knowing this, dared not and did not want to make money in this area. He already knew the ambition of Tan's father and son to unify the Central Plains, so there was no need to add trouble to his future "family" members. For these "merchants" who obviously had official backgrounds and could openly talk about smuggling weapons, although he could not take out ballistae, catapults, and the like for sale, he could still make a fortune on consumables such as arrows and spear shafts of various specifications. The labor cost of Ye's rolling machines for producing these things was almost negligible. In Dongping, considering that the prices of these military consumables could not be suppressed too much, they were only supplied to the Blood Unicorn Army and Yicheng Navy, city defense forces, and other armies with relatively strong relationships, but there was no such concern for foreign sales of these things. The low price of various specifications of arrows and spear shafts produced by Ye's Workshop really surprised those "merchants" who knew a little about this industry, and in addition to the surprise, there were naturally large orders. What made Ye Tao even more satisfied was that the two merchants from Bei Liao actually proposed to exchange wood for arrows. For Qi Hai Commerce, which is now booming and has too many places to build, and has many ships to build, this is much more cost-effective than collecting money and then buying wood.

Excellent and unique goods, orderly exhibition arrangements, and low-key but solid marketing made Ye's business group a role model for many businesses to learn from. Ye Tao already understood that instead of spending a lot of effort to make those merchants believe that what he said was useful, it was better to let everyone see the results and then learn what was effective. At this exhibition, Ye's, as not the strongest member of Qi Hai Commerce, achieved the best results, with on-site orders and intended orders reaching a staggering 14 million taels. Although there were 600 mantel clocks of various levels in the large sum, this achievement still caused a gasp when it was announced at the internal meeting of Qi Hai Commerce. However, everyone had to be convinced that not only mantel clocks, but almost all the goods sold by Ye's Workshop were impossible for others to imitate.

The participating members of Jiu Zhou Commerce were excited about making a lot of money in this kind of exhibition, and at the same time, they realized the power of this form of exhibition, and even more realized that Qi Hai Commerce could be described as far-sighted in absorbing Ye Tao as a member. On the day before Ye Tao was about to set off to return to Danyang, he became the first person to be a member of both Qi Hai and Jiu Zhou, the two major commercial groups in Dongping. And Jiu Zhou Commerce, with Tan Weixin sitting in charge, had a much clearer arrangement for his position than Qi Hai Commerce. His position was surprisingly "Chief Technology Officer."

Ye Tao stayed in Yicheng and Crescent Island for a total of one and a half months. During these times, he laid a good foundation for the construction and development of Crescent Island with his abundant work enthusiasm. As for the creation of the trade fair and exhibition business model, in Ye Tao's view, it was just ordinary.

Originally, Ye Tao wanted to go back to Crescent Island for another half a month and return to Danyang after the lighthouse and watchtower were structurally capped, but the letter from Tan Weixin he received in Yicheng made Ye Tao feel a little strange. In Tan Weixin's letter, there was not a single sentence mentioning the court's commercial policy, not a single sentence mentioning the progress of her promotion of Dongping's monetary reform, and not even a single sentence mentioning any Chamber of Commerce dynamics unrelated to Ye Tao. It only described that in these days, she gathered the boring aristocratic children gathered in Danyang to engage in drama.

"Drama?" Seeing the words mentioned in the letter, Ye Tao frowned. It is true that Tan Weixin still retains a lot of petty bourgeois sentiments, but she is not a person who squanders her energy arbitrarily. Especially her frail body makes her always carefully do only what is necessary. Now that she is burdened with many things, where does she have the energy to engage in drama?

Ye Tao glanced at the plots of the plays mentioned by Tan Weixin and knew that Tan Weixin had already copied *Thunderstorm*, *Oedipus Rex*, and even *Shajia Pond*... In fact, the name is drama, but it also incorporates other forms of performance. At least, the famous battle of wits in *Shajia Pond*, except for changing some nouns, was completely copied. Thousands of miles away, Ye Tao naturally could not feel and imagine the huge sensation caused by the premiere of *Shajia Pond* that Tan Weixin said, when that classic "battle of wits", when the three people spun around and sang the carefully designed words in an extremely tight rhythm. However, Ye Tao still felt a trace of difference from Tan Weixin's shift in interest.

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