Xuande

Chapter 264 Liangzhou's flagship product

The salt boiled after filtering impurities is a dimensionality reduction blow to the current salt of various qualities and origins throughout Dahan.

As long as the stalls are large enough to make it a flagship product in Liangzhou, it is unknown whether it will be sold nationwide or in the Western Regions in the future.

But if you want to spread the stall to this point, Liu Bei obviously still can't support it alone, unless he is the emperor.

Even if he is an emperor, he probably needs to cooperate a little bit with the major forces in the court. Unless he is a particularly centralized and prestigious emperor like Zhu Yuanzhang and Yongzheng, he can't handle it alone.

With Liu Bei's current state, it is obviously no problem to manage this industry.

But he needs a certain number of partners, and he needs to rely on this technology to form a powerful, "vega-domestic" interest group to distribute part of the benefits in exchange for the concerted efforts of some people to take advantage of this benefit , to destroy the original old salt interest group, snatch this "salt comfort zone", ask the original owner to go out, and then he will go in by himself.

This may be the best way to get out of the predicament.

Just do what you say, Liu Bei has always been a man of action, and he immediately started tossing about the filter.

As for what to use to filter, he just knows.

Because when they were students, the teacher once asked them to make their own filter tool belts for experiments, and later boiled salt water in a crucible, stirring and stirring constantly, so that they could watch the process of salt precipitation.

For the relatively boring era of writing questions in the classroom, it is still very interesting to be able to go to the laboratory to perform chemical experiments for a few classes, so although it has been a long time, the memory of that time still remains.

To filter salt water, you need activated carbon and sand, which seems to have both fine sand and coarse sand, and it needs to be divided into several layers.

Liu Bei doesn't know the industrial method of activated carbon. The activated carbon used in the experiment was provided by the teacher, but the teacher mentioned it, burned it half and half with firewood, then smothered it, and then crushed it. The effect is similar.

So Liu Bei asked his subordinates to go down to get fine sand and coarse sand. He took an afternoon out of his busy schedule to personally operate the production of activated carbon in the backyard of Fuzhong. a little bit.

Well, the astringent taste is not good, and there are obviously various impurities in it.

He dissolved these coarse salts in water to obtain coarse salt water, then found a crock, knocked off the bottom, covered the bottom with a piece of cloth, tied it with a rope, and then poured fine sand, activated carbon and water into it successively. coarse sand.

A simple filter was finished, and he poured coarse brine into it, watched the filtered brine filter out from the bottom of the jar, and finally got a jar of filtered brine.

The next step is to make a fire and boil the water, then stir slowly, waiting for the salt to precipitate.

It turned out to be a success.

After the salt grains were precipitated, Liu Bei picked out a portion and put it in his mouth to taste, overjoyed.

It’s not astringent anymore, the obvious astringent taste before has disappeared, replaced by a relatively pure salty taste, and there may be some impurities that have not been filtered out, but as far as the actual feeling of his tongue at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, he has already eaten There is no bitter taste left.

Beautiful!
The fly in the ointment was that the crock was burned and cracked during the final stirring, and some salt grains fell to the ground, which made him feel distressed.

It is still necessary to use a special salt basin for boiling salt. Liu Bei has seen that kind of salt basin. There are copper and iron ones, which are very large and durable.

But in any case, the filtration is considered a success. This quality of salt is enough to beat all kinds of salt currently on the market. The salt that Liu Hong ate as an emperor may not be as good as the salt that Liu Bei eats now.

The absolute flagship product of Liangzhou is also good for people's health.

Anyway, after tossing out this kind of salt, Liu Bei will not eat the salt in the past for the sake of his own safety. At the same time, he will arrange for his subordinates to eat this relatively clean salt as quickly as possible. , instead of eating the old salt.

As for mass production, it is not very difficult. The process of mining and boiling salt has already existed in this era, and it is nothing more than adding a filtering process.

It is not a difficult problem for the salt produced in this way to sweep Sansuke and Mikawa in a relatively short period of time. If you win these two markets, you will have the possibility to further expand the national market.

Of course, Liu Bei did not rush forward in this regard, and he did not feel that everything would be fine if he had the technology in his hands.

Like rose peach wine, although the product is a good product, it is not easy to manage business success in this era, and there are many ways worth studying.

Technology is one thing, human interaction is another, politics is another.

A successful businessman needs all three.

In the past, Liu Bei only managed business within one county at most. Once the scope expanded, the situation would be different, so Liu Bei decided to find a professional businessman with experience in doing business across multiple regions to inquire about the specific situation.

There are not too many such candidates, and even if they are reliable, there are even fewer candidates.

Liu Bei thought about it, and thought of Meng Tuo. This guy must have experience in dumping apple wine from Liangzhou to Luoyang to do things, so Liu Bei sent a letter to invite Meng Tuo to come to Liangzhou to discuss important matters.

Meng Tuo was very excited when he received Liu Bei's letter. He packed up and set off on the road. He hurried along the way, and soon arrived in Ji County, where he met Liu Bei.

Then Liu Bei discussed with him about cross-regional delivery and sales of goods, and wanted to ask Meng Tuo for advice on this aspect.

Meng Tuo thought that Liu Bei was thinking about selling apple wine in the future, so he didn't think much about it, so he talked to Liu Bei about some tricks in it.

After his narration, Liu Bei learned that transporting goods across regions for sale these days is really not as simple as he thought, it is really very difficult and costly.

Just an escort along the way is the big part of the cost. If the journey is safe, it's okay, but if you encounter some bandits and strongmen who will drag you for a while, you will die, and the cost will increase sharply.

That's why rose apple wine is not expensive in the place of origin in Liangzhou, but it becomes sky-high when sold in Luoyang.

Of course, the escort fee is only one aspect. This fee is manageable, and it doesn’t have to be a lot of expenses. The most important thing is to make these foreign products astronomical, or the card tax fees of the places along the way.

According to the Han system, a tax of [-]% of the total value of the goods needs to be levied on passing through the pass and crossing the land.

As far as this is stipulated by the law, in practice, the fee will generally exceed 20.00%, and in some places it is even close to 30.00%. Meng Tuo has also encountered a [-]% checkpoint.

Commodities travel all the way, the more checkpoints and crossings they encounter, the more black-hearted bureaucrats they encounter, the more taxes and fees they need to pay, and the merchants will not bear it themselves, so they will push up the prices of commodities, and finally fall into the hands of consumers Here, isn't it a sky-high price?
Of course, because the target audience for this type of commodity consumption is limited, higher taxes and fees do not hinder the sale of these luxury goods.

"Items like rose peach wine are usually only enjoyed by dignitaries and dignitaries. These people are generally not short of money. What they value is the scarcity of these things and the fact that these things are really good things. For this reason, they are more willing Spending sky-high prices for it makes them feel good about themselves.”

Meng Tuo smiled treacherously: "So let's not lie to you, if good things like rose apple wine are sent to Luoyang for sale, it is often necessary to add some more on the premise of adding up all the costs, and then add some Sell ​​it to dignitaries."

Liu Bei smiled.

"How much is this some?"

"The benevolent see benevolence and the wise see wisdom."

Meng Tuo said in a low voice: "If you don't want to earn more, then don't increase the price much. If you want to earn more, then learn from the government's tax collection, create a clever name, work harder on the apple wine, and make some for the apple's origin. Differentiate between places with high-quality apples and apples with average quality, so that you can sell roseberry wine in certain places at a higher price."

Liu Bei nodded slowly.

"According to this, if rose apple wine can be sold to the entire Dahan, wouldn't it be possible to sell it at the price of gold in some places? Wouldn't it be a huge profit for us?"

Meng Tuo shook his head with a smile.

"It's basically impossible to sell rose peach wine to the whole man. Even if there are a few bottles, it's useless."

(End of this chapter)