Knight of the Light - Chapter 916
Istanbul.
The bearded Ekolem stared at the bridge across the Bosphorus with a sad and angry expression. This bridge, together with the Eurasian continent, is slowly passing by freighters under the bridge, sailing in all directions.
Due to geographic relations, it is more convenient for the commerce and trade of the countries along the Black Sea to pass through the Bosphorus. This strait is related to the economic lifeline of hundreds of millions of people in the surrounding area, and commercial transportation is particularly busy.
Grain, petroleum, machinery, clothing, and various goods flow through this. The native chickens guarding the strait made a huge profit for this, and the tolls were collected very pleasantly.
But now Ekrem hates the cargo ships passing through the strait, because many of them serve the ‘Holy Light’ group. Goods shipped from thousands of miles away hit the local chicken economy like a tide.
There is a garment factory in Ekolem, in Istanbul. His factory is small, employing more than a hundred garment workers, using outdated sewing machinery for production.
Ekrem’s garment factory is a typical “two ends outside.” His fabric accessories need to be imported, while garment products are exported. As the product grade is not high, it has always been a low-end low-price route.
This was originally an industry that could be passed on for several generations, and it might be able to upgrade to mid-to-high end, but it is suddenly facing bankruptcy. The reason is that a large number of second-hand clothing suddenly appeared on the market.
Seventy percent of the textiles of Tuji are similar patterns. If exports are cut off, the entire industry will die.
In the past, Ekoram was very proud of the ability of his own garment factory to reduce costs, but now he has discovered that there are people who have lower costs than him-second-hand clothing in Odessa is sold by weight.
One dollar per kilogram, two hundred kilograms per pack. You can’t disassemble and choose, just sell it.
“Someone buys this kind of clothes?”
Ekoram is a small factory owner. He made money, he bought all famous European brands, all his food at home was high-end products, and even his children sent to Germany to study. But he can’t stand that his products cannot be sold.
He couldn’t believe who would buy second-hand clothing. It may be abandoned clothes, it may be the clothes of a dead person, it may be the clothes that have been contaminated, it is not a good thing anyway.
Some media in Istanbul have noticed this and started to promote it in newspapers, calling on the people to boycott it. But the fact is quite the opposite. Someone really buys this kind of clothes.
Ekoram discovered that workers in his garment factory were wearing second-hand clothes. He flew into a rage on the spot, yelling at the other party for being unpatriotic, and asking the workers to cut low-priced clothes and buy his own products, otherwise he would be fired.
In order to keep their jobs, workers have to cut their clothes. But this didn’t work. Maybe he turned around and left and went to the flea market to buy another one. Anyway, the second-hand clothes were very cheap, and at most he didn’t wear them to work.
Because of this incident, Ekolem discovered that there are still many poor people in the city. This silent group takes the meager income, consumes the cheapest goods, and uses the cheapest services.
Only when the poor stopped buying Ekrem’s products did he realize the existence of this group.
The use of second-hand clothing not only does not cause problems for the poor, but also improves their quality of life and saves some money for other purposes.
Ekoram specially went to the flea market to investigate. Those second-hand clothes were hand-selected, boiled at high temperature, and cleaned with chemicals to ensure the quality as much as possible. It’s really not just sold out casually.
Clothes of the same type and size will be classified as far as possible, and there will be no particularly tattered clothes, and there will be no stains, blood stains and dirt. For the poor, the price is particularly high, which leads to smooth sales.
If you are lucky, you will find some high-end fashions of very good quality in the packed clothes. The profiteers will select the fashions carefully and organize them again, and send them to specialty stores for hundreds of times the price.
As long as there is excess profit, businessmen of different interest classes will spontaneously form a sales chain. Simple blocking is completely ineffective, and Ekoram can only be incompetent and furious about it.
If second-hand clothing is only sold in the local chickens, Ekoram will be angry at best, but he won’t care too much. Because his garment factory is specialized in exporting, the customers are mainly in North Africa and the Middle East.
But since November, customer orders have fallen off a cliff. By December, even half of the plant’s equipment was shut down. Ekorem had to lay off half of the workers and cut the wages of the remaining workers by nearly half.
But this is useless, the situation is still getting worse.
This situation cannot be resolved by Ekoram. He went to the Textile Association to inquire about the news, and he was even more shocked by what he got-the sudden depression of the whole industry.
Starting from November, second-hand clothing shipped from the East has taken over the low-end textile market of native chickens, and the quantity is astonishing and overwhelming.
Every day, more than ten thousand tons of freighters arrive from the Far East. Their destination may be Southeast Asia, or South Asia, or the Persian Gulf, or they can dock in the Mediterranean or the Black Sea.
Every day, hundreds of millions of second-hand garments float on the sea and are loaded and unloaded in ports around the world to meet the needs of low-income groups in various countries. Once this market is robbed, it will be difficult to grab it back.
Native chickens are not the worst, Egypt’s textile industry is the worst.
But Egypt’s life is good, their textile industry is not strong, and losses are limited. On the contrary, because of the recent substantial increase in cotton prices, it is still profitable.
Native chickens also export large amounts of cotton and cashmere, but the textile industry is its lifeblood. It is Europe’s ‘closet’, and millions of people in China rely on it for employment.
Without warning, the foreign market said it would be gone, which was too fatal for Ekoram. Small business owners like him have at least tens of thousands of domestic chickens, and most of them are crowded into the low-end market.
“No, we can’t stand this kind of unreasonable competition.” Ekoram watched the freighters on the side of the strait for an afternoon, thinking about how to stop them all, “We should sanction the opponents who sell second-hand clothing. .”
From November to December, too many native chicken factory owners have similar ideas. Ekoram easily gathered a group of ‘friends’ who had the same experience, and asked the government through industry associations.
It’s just that this request was submitted, like a mud cow entering the sea, and there was no response. Some well-informed people went to inquire about it, and they got the news that they couldn’t help the upper class of the local chickens, and they felt big.
The ‘Holy Light’ has not even died of U.S. sanctions, and it’s even more intangible when it comes to a local chicken. I originally wanted to get stuck on the’Varyag’, but the opponent didn’t play cards according to the routine.
Anecdotes of the ages, a company dare to stand firm with a country.
This is not just a passive response, but an active attack-if you dare to stop my aircraft carrier, I will rectify your industry.
Come, hurt each other!
See who can’t stand it first?