Chapter 61 Homemade Soap
"Yes! Of course!"

Almost without thinking, Wang Yongsheng said directly.

After seeing the "colorful shampoo cream" brought by Xu Qiang, Wang Yongsheng has tasted the sweetness from it, so Wang Yongsheng has no doubts about the new product proposed by Xu Qiang.

After all, in Wang Yongsheng's opinion, such good things can only be produced by large factories. It is impossible for small workshops of unknown brands to produce them. As long as it is something from a large state-owned factory, it can definitely not be wrong!
"Okay, I'll talk to my relative and ask him to bring some soap over." Xu Qiang nodded and continued, "But you know, the finished products packaged by their factory are sold at fixed locations. We can only bring out some unpackaged loose goods from the factory..."

"It's just a matter of packaging. It's easy to handle. As long as the price is right, I'll take as many as you have." Wang Yongsheng said confidently.

Compared to shampoo, the packaging of soap is much simpler. Even products from big manufacturers are just wrapped in a piece of paper. You don’t even need to go to the scrap yard for this thing. You can directly buy some ready-made colored paper in large quantities at the supply and marketing cooperative.

"That's settled then!" Xu Qiang said, raising the wine glass in front of him.

The next moment, several wine glasses clinked together crisply...

……

The reason why Xu Qiang wanted to do the soap business was ultimately to make money quickly.

The shampoo he produces is now very popular in the factory. Logically speaking, he can make a lot of money by just continuing to produce it in large quantities.

However, in Xu Qiang's opinion, for ordinary factory worker families, a can of shampoo is enough for them to use for a long time, and some can even use it for half a year to a year. In addition, there are not many employees in the factory who can afford shampoo, which means that the sales of shampoo will sooner or later face a bottleneck. At that time, sales will drop rapidly and the speed of making money cannot be sustained for a long time.

But soap is different. Its audience is obviously much larger than that of shampoo. If only one out of ten employees in a factory consumes shampoo, then at least four or five consume soap. In fact, in a large factory like Shengli Machinery Factory where employees have high income levels, soap is a must-have for almost every household, and the demand every month is astonishingly large.

Although soap is popular in factories, most households use White Cat Soap produced in Tianjin. This soap can be said to be the most common soap brand in China. It is wrapped in light yellow paper with a not-so-happy cat on the packaging. It has a faint smell of sulfur and looks very ordinary.

The White Cat Soap brand gradually disappeared from people's sight. Facing competition from brands such as Nice and Safeguard, it was gradually neglected by the market. Its single product and lack of characteristics became the important reasons for its loss of market competitiveness.

Compared to making shampoo, the process of making soap seems to be simpler, but before that, Xu Qiang still needs to buy some raw materials.

In addition to the materials used to make the shampoo cream, Xu Qiang also needs to buy some lard this time.

The taste of lard in rural life in the 80s was generally only available during the Chinese New Year. In those days, it was still a planned economy era with scarce supplies and shopping with coupons, so there was basically nothing to eat.

In those days, the only oils used for cooking were lard and vegetable oil. Vegetable oil was dark brown in color and had a strong smell, while lard was relatively high-end.

When people buy meat, they like to buy fatty meat in order to make lard from it. At that time, each employee of state-owned enterprises in the city was only given a few taels of oil coupons per month, which was not enough for cooking. Therefore, buying fatty meat to make lard became an important means of supplementing oil and water in the catering industry.

The boiled lard is placed in an enamel jar, and as it is cold in winter, it can usually be preserved for several months.

Xu Qiang didn't have many meat or oil tickets, but there was a black market in the town for exchanging various tickets. As long as he had money, everything else would be easy to solve. After returning to the peat field from the factory in the afternoon, Xu Qiang saw Liu Jun and arranged for him to go to the town to buy some lard tomorrow.

"You want to buy 100 kilograms of lard?" After hearing the number Xu Qiang reported, Liu Jun thought he had misheard, so he continued, "The food here is already quite good, with wine and meat for every meal. We simply can't eat that much lard..."

Liu Jun is quite satisfied with the current life at the peat field. Xu Qiang has set a food allowance of four yuan and fifty cents a day for them. You have to know that these days eggs are only a few cents each, pork is eighty cents, and a whole chicken is just over one yuan. The food allowance of four yuan and fifty cents is already equivalent to the level of celebrating Chinese New Year every day.

Even though the work here is a little harder, it is much more leisurely than the busy farming season, so much so that in the past half month, several people have gained a lot of weight.

As for cooking oil, there is no shortage of it. What does a hundred kilograms of lard mean? I guess they can't even use it up in a year!
"This lard is not for eating, it is for making soap. Just do as I say. The lard must be prepared before tomorrow afternoon." Xu Qiang said.

"Okay, I'll go tomorrow morning."

"Here is one hundred and forty yuan. The rest can be used to buy some wine for the brothers." Xu Qiang took out the banknotes he had prepared long ago from his pocket and handed them to Liu Jun.

The locals all know the price of lard. The retail price of peanut oil in grain and oil stores is 0.7 yuan per catty. The retail price of lard is 1.12 yuan per catty. If you exchange oil tickets on the black market, you only need a dozen yuan at most, so 140 yuan is enough to buy catties of lard.

Xu Qiang trusts Liu Jun very much. The two families have been getting along for many years and know each other well. Moreover, Liu Jun is a meticulous person, so Xu Qiang is absolutely assured to entrust matters like buying things to him.

"Uncle!"

At this moment, Erhu suddenly ran over from a distance and greeted Xu Qiang loudly.

"What's wrong?" Xu Qiang asked.

"Didn't you ask me to find out about the generator in Qinghe Village a few days ago? Today I got some news..."

"What news!?" Xu Qiang's heart skipped a beat when he heard that.

The importance of electricity for chemical production is self-evident, but there is no electricity in this remote area, so if we want to use electricity, we can only use a generator.

Before, Xu Qiang had wanted to buy a generator from the supply and marketing cooperative, but the price of the machine was too expensive, more than 5,000 yuan, so Xu Qiang had to give up.

Wang Zhong told him that the nearby Qinghe Village brigade was splitting up and had an old generator to sell. Xu Qiang was immediately interested and arranged for Erhu, who had relatives in Qinghe Village, to handle the matter.

"The production team does want to sell a generator, but this generator is a bit old, and the diesel engine is always leaking oil and can't be repaired. The motor is still fine..."

"How much are they selling for?" Xu Qiang asked directly.

(End of this chapter)