Chapter 129: The Ragdoll
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
A small truck parked in front of Amazing Fate Pet Shop. There was an abstract cat painted on the vehicle’s side. It was a truck from the Pets’ Home Breeding Base.
Sun Yinian jumped off the passenger’s seat. Together with the driver, he started moving the pets inside the store.
There were no customers in the store, so Zhang Zian came over to help.
To avoid confusion with the current stock, he put all the kittens back into the display cabinet.
After unloading the truck, he gave Sun Yinian and the driver each an ice-cold drink. He was checking the pets on the packing list.
The number looked right. He then pulled up the photo album in his cell phone.
He had taken a picture of each pet he picked. Now he was trying to check and make sure they had delivered what he had chosen.
"Don’t worry. They are correct!" Sun Yinian was impatient.
Zhang Zian smiled and insisted, "A double check keeps us out of trouble."
Even reckoning makes long friends.
After double checking, everything looked fine.
Zhang Zian signed the packing list and then used an online transfer to pay the balance.
In fact, Zhang Zian didn’t have much cash on hand, even though sales had been great. He had to keep buying more stock, thus the cash wouldn’t stay in his account for long. Theoretically, his capital should be growing like a snowball, but he couldn’t really see it. The money had been going right back into inventory. As famous Chinese saying goes, "animals cannot be counted as money".
This saying is for the breeding and animal farming industries. It means that money is not secure in these industries. It may disappear overnight. If a breeding base or an animal farm caught an animal flu or a fire, or if there was a change in government policy or market, a millionaire would easily be destroyed.
A pet shop is the downstream industry of the breeding base industry.
Zhang Zian invested every penny he had in those pets. If the pets had problems, he would go broke. He might not end up killing himself to stay away from debt, but it would definitely destroy him.
The atmosphere relaxed. Sun Yinian and the driver each lit a cigarette and took a break. Zhang Zian was good when it came to payments. He didn’t bargain very much either. The last time they delivered pets, they saw that Zhang Zian’s business was doing great; as a result, they thought Zhang was making big bucks. No one knew he was almost out of cash.
"Boss, could you tell the breed of that golden cat?" the driver asked Sun Yinian with a cigarette in his mouth.
Zhang Zian kicked them out of the store when they started smoking.
"I don’t know," Sun Yinian shook his head. He could care less. "That’s none of my business."
"Yo! Look! That Dragon-Li is wearing a hat and a vest and watching TV!" The driver had good eyes. He patted his boss on the shoulder, and pointed at Old Time Tea, "No kidding!"
Sun Yinian turned his head and stole a glance. He was surprised, but he didn’t want to admit it. "Don’t bullsh*t! Cats don’t watch TV. It was just curious."
Zhang Zian emptied the cages and took them to the door. The breeding base had to take them back.
"Mr. Sun, may I ask you a question?" he said.
Upon hearing that, the driver threw away the cigarette, nodded at Sun and walked away to put the cages on the truck.
"What is it?" Sun Yinian replied.
Zhang Zian thought and asked, "Would you be able to find Ragdoll breeding cats? Other breeds are okay as well, such as Bengal cats or Maine Coon cats. These high-end cats are the money makers and there is not much competition."
Sun Yinian’s brows tightened. He didn’t respond immediately.
Zhang Zian waited patiently.
After a little while, he shook his head and said, "Very difficult."
That was it… Zhang Zian wasn’t surprised. If Sun could have gotten Ragdolls, he would’ve done it by now!
"Frankly, I asked before. A Ragdoll breeding cat would have cost hundreds of thousands a few years ago. Now the price might have gone up." Sun Yinian sighed.
Zhang Zian understood. It takes two breeding-grade cats to reproduce, a male and a female. Considering the time for pregnancy, labor, nursing, and recovery, a male cat should at least have three female cats.
A pet-grade Ragdoll could sell for over 20 thousand. The price for show quality and breeding quality Ragdolls had to be rocket high.
Due to the high profit, however, the Ragdoll market had been monopolized.
Cat houses that offered Ragdolls tried every way possible to repel new competitors through methods like purposely increasing the cost to enter market and strictly controlling the breeding cats. Almost all Ragdolls for sale were pet-grade and show-grade cats, which were already neutered before being released to the market. The breeding-grade Ragdolls were rarely available to the public.
A large amount of capital was a must if one wanted to enter the Ragdoll market.
Ragdolls are sweet and beautiful looking as well as gentle and obedient to the owner. That’s why they are an evergreen tree in the high-end pet industry.
Being able to offer Ragdolls is pretty much another way to look at the pet shop or cat house’s market position.
At this time, Pets’ Home Breeding Base was going through a total turnaround of their offerings. Their running capital was too tight to invest in some breeding-grade Ragdolls. Zhang Zian was also financially tight.
If he was lucky, he might be able to get Ragdolls from a cat house or try a breeding base that was farther away.
"That’s fine. Let’s take it one step at a time," Zhang Zian decided to not worry about it at this time. Worrying would not help anyways.
Sun Yinian and the driver both hopped in the truck and left the pet shop.
Zhang Zian sent a message to Sun Xiaomeng, "If you have a customer come in with a Ragdoll, please ask them where they got it from." There were almost 30 pets in the store, which was a lot more animals to take care of compared to when the store first opened and there were only three pets. It was a completely different story.
The workload had increased dramatically as well, especially when new inventory came in. All of the pets were about four months old. Most of them hadn’t had a bath since they were born, so they were quite dirty. Zhang Zian had to clean each one, which took a long time and hard work.
Zhang Zian was considering hiring another full-time worker as he wiped the pets’ bodies, and cleaned their faces and ears. In the end, he made up his mind to wait until he sold this batch.
In fact, Wang Qian and Li Kun were the ideal candidates for this job. They were simple-minded and quite silly. They thought Zhang Zian had special magic powers, so he didn’t have to think about how to explain the stunt issue. They were in their junior year of college. It might be too early to talk about a full-time offer.
How about hiring a graphic designer?
Speak of the devils…
Wang Qian and Li Kun ran into the store and said, "Master! It is not good!"