The Famous Millionaire

Hyunwoo was confident of KOVE DREAM’s success but never expected it would grow so rapidly like this. As a result, the sales were snowballing even before he took care of the space issue.

For that reason, he had no time to establish a product management system.

Accordingly, the warehouse staff piled up the products in stock when they assumed a certain product would be in big demand, and when they received the order, they repackaged the products and shipped them out. The main job of the warehouse staff was to repackage the imports from Vietnam in accordance with the orders.

Hyunwoo wanted to skip the process if that was possible, and he found the answer: it was to repackage them in Vietnam rather than in Korea.

Hearing Hyunwoo’s explanation, Juhwan, the warehouse manager, tilted his head.

“It takes at least ten days for them to ship the products from here. Do you think the consumers can wait that long?”

“Well, we can let the consumers know about the delivery date when they place an order,” he replied.

Actually, Hyunwoo had been thinking about this problem for a long time.

KOVE DREAM currently sold the products in a couple of ways.

One was to sell the products directly to the factory from the port as raw materials, and the other way was to transport them to the warehouse then repackage them to the consumers. Hyunwoo planned to sell them in the form of preorders and quick orders.

For preorder sales, the KOVE warehouse would receive the orders first then inform the producers in Vietnam of the orders, so they could pack the products in Vietnam.

That meant a longer delivery time of at least ten days to deliver from the date when they receive the order, but that would save the cost of repacking the products here. Accordingly, the price was cheap.

Hyunwoo pinned great hope on the preorders because of the characteristics of the consumers.

They were mostly hotels, wedding halls, franchise shops, and large supermarkets.

As for quick order, the consumers could receive the orders quickly as they were shipped out from the warehouse where the products were piled up, but the price was more expensive because of the repacking costs.

Hyunwoo said, “As far as the preorder is concerned, we don’t have to step in here on our end. The consumers can place an order online, and when the producers in Vietnam receive the order, they can handle the order directly there.”

In other words, it was kind of like direct online sales.

“Does it mean you have no plan to expand the warehouse space and hire more staff for the time being?” asked Juhwan feebly, as if he was complaining about the ever-growing workload on his part.

Hyunwoo gave him a reassuring smile, though.

He called Sanggon Ahn, the construction builder.

“Can you build a warehouse, brother?”

“What kind of warehouse? Where?”

“It’s a KOVE DREAM warehouse. You don’t have to care about its shape. I want one that is big and strong for cheap.”

“How big a warehouse do you want?”

“Well, it should be at least 1,000 pyong (0.8 acres), and ten meters tall.”

Sanggon asked in a surprised tone, “Wow, it’s quite big, dude.”

Overhearing their conversation, Juwan and Sonjong also showed a big surprise, but Hyunwoo felt even that was not large enough.

KOVE DREAM now restricted the products only to large consumers, which meant that the products should go through wholesales shops and retailers to reach the general consumers.

And that would create at least 30 to 100% marketing margin.

Hyunwoo wanted to limit the marketing margin as much as possible so that the general consumers could buy the products at a cheap price while KOVE DREAM could reap more profits.

“How much time and money do you have in mind?” asked Hyunwoo.

“Well, I guess that kind of warehouse will need a steel frame. It will take about one month at the earliest, I guess.”

“You mean, it takes about two months at the latest?”

“Yea, I guess so. As for the construction costs, I guess it costs about 2 million won per pyong.”

That meant about 2 billion won, all told.

And that’s what Hyunwoo expected.

“Alright, brother. Let me draw the blueprint then. I’ll see you sooner or later.”

“Okay, just let me know.”

After the call, Hyunwoo looked at Juhwan and asked, “With that new warehouse, how many staff members do you think we need? I guess we can hire fifty, and depending on the situation, we can hire more.”

Juhwan was speechless as Hyunwoo was thinking far ahead of him.

Hyunwoo continued, “Let’s buy ten more trucks. The transportation cost is too much. I think our drivers can deliver the products directly to save money.”

Juhwan was of the same opinion. As KOVE DREAM only dealt with large orders, the shipping items were always oversized, which required the use of delivery vans from outside.

“Wow, that’s a good idea. Why don’t you go ahead and buy the trucks right now?”

Hyunwoo giggled at that and said, “Let’s build the new warehouse first.”

Then, he called someone in the realtor business. In fact, he had asked the realtor to find a big office to house the Ani & Funny office but had heard no updates from him.

“Brother, did you find a good office for us?”

“I tried to find the right one, but couldn’t yet.”

“You can find a more expensive one then.”

“Price is not the matter. There are no listings at this time. Why don’t you move outside?”

If he moved the Ani & Funny office to the suburbs, it would create a big inconvenience for the students as well as the staff.

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

The realtor then proposed an abrupt idea.

“Are you interested in a lot? I see a very good lot was listed for sale near your house. Why don’t you buy the lot and build a new office of Ani & Funny?”

“What kind of lot is it?”

The realtor said it was a farmland 2,000 pyong (1.6 acres) in size, which was listed for sale for 1.6 billion won. In Hyunwoo’s mind, it was not that bad, but Hyunwoo was not interested. Moreover, he didn’t want to buy the lot for the purpose of investment without any particular reason.

“Brother, I’m not interested in investing in real estate.”

When he hung up the call, Hyunwoo saw a couple of women entering the warehouse.

They were the new hires recommended by Sonjong.

“How are you, sir? My name is Sumin Kim.”

“Hello, I’m Heeyoung Chu.”

As soon as he saw them, he felt that the KOVE DREAM single men were pretty lucky. Both of them were beautiful and young.

“How old are you?”

“I’m 25”

“I’m 26.”

“Are you married?”

“Not yet,” said one. The other also replied in the negative.

Hearing that, not only the single employees but also Raymon and his friends shouted for joy.

Hyunwoo asked them some basic questions.

Both of them graduated from vocational high schools because of their poor family situations, and as soon as they graduated, they got a job at a customs office. They had about five years of experience in dealing with trade. Thanks to their experience they were as knowledgeable as Sonjong as far as trading was concerned.

What pleased Hyunwoo all the more was their working attitude.

Hyunwoo thought they were jobless, but they worked as part-timers at convenient stores every night. They said they had been working like that even when they were hired as full-time staff at the customs office.

“As far as your extra work at night doesn’t bother your work here, I don’t want to stop it. I can assure you that you can make more money if you focus on the work here. It’s up to you anyway.”

“Got it.”

“Can you train them here, Sonjong?”

Leaving her to take care of them, Hyunwoo left the warehouse.

He stopped by the N&C Korea for a while then headed back to the office of Ani & Funny.

When he arrived at the office, he found a memo sent by the social service department of Ansan City. That department was familiar to him because he received the subsidies from them when he built the current two-story building on the condition that the first story was reserved for the senior center.

When he noticed the memo, he instantly recalled the senior center downstairs.

He called the number on the note. He was told to come to the city office to discuss some pending matter.

“Sure. Can I come now?”

“Yes, please.”

He quickly headed to the city office.

With a bag of cherries, as a gift, he stopped by the social service department.

Its chief officer didn’t recognize Hyunwoo, but the manager who got to know Hyunwoo at a drinking partya long time ago recognized him.

“You worked at Aurum company before, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. You remember me!”

Only then did the chief officer recognize him, too.

He said, “Wow, it was you. How come you became such a big man in about two years?”

Then, he kept praising Hyunwoo in the presence of his staff.

Obviously, it was thanks to the popularity of the music video Duckling Fly. As it became so famous, Ani & Funny became widely known, and Ansan City with the animation company in its jurisdiction became more interested in Hyunwoo and the company.

After exchanging some pleasantries for a while, he realized why they wanted to talk to him.

It was something that Hyunwoo never expected, though.

“You know the first floor below the Ani & Funny office is the senior center, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Actually, we keep receiving a stream of suggestions from the seniors there. They are asking us to move the senior center. There is one building nearby which is small and old, but they say they don’t care. They want to move to that place as soon as possible. And they have made the request because of Ani & Funny.”