Dao of the Deal

Unfortunately, hunting down customers for Flower Mountain's perfume was still a task at which Yize was very much a novice. He knew that he couldn't ascend to the sky in a single leap, but he was still worried about the fact that he was barely putting a dent into the mountain of perfume boxes his sister had been preparing. All he could do was to keep giving it his best effort.

He woke early, packing up his bedroll in the pre-dawn gloom. The skies were overcast as he made his way into the heart of Jiuliu City, the sun only occasionally peeking through the clouds. He forced himself to ignore the alluring scents coming from the roadside stalls and press on to the main shopping square.

It wasn't the best shopping district in Jiuliu City. But it was the best out of those that allowed wandering peddlers to set up temporary stalls on the street. Yize maneuvered the cart into place and flipped down the gate at the back. He unfolded the blanket stored inside and set out his boxes of perfume, then propped up the sign next to them proclaiming that a box of perfume would cost five taels of silver. With that, he was ready to start making sales.

He took a look around the deserted street. Maybe he had been a bit too eager to get started in the morning. Well, it didn't make that much difference whether he waited here or waited in his camp outside of town. He took a seat next to the perfume boxes. He couldn't sleep like this, but he'd learned long ago to conserve his energy whenever he could.

The nearby shopkeepers were the first to arrive, giving him polite nods or considering looks as they unlocked their stores and started getting ready to start their day. It wasn't too long after that that the first potential customers began to stroll past.

Yize watched them go by. He wasn't an expert salesman, not by any means, but he did know that being too eager here would be more likely to chase away sales than land any great deals. Customers were a skittish lot.

More and more people walked by, barely sparing him a glance. Yize thought that their perfume boxes made for an attractive display against the expensive fabric, but his stall just didn't have the same visceral appeal as the aroma wafting from a nearby barbecue stand. Even the guy hawking cups of tea had the beginning of a line forming in front of his stall, while Yize stood by himself.

That was fine. How much money could that guy really make at twenty wen per cup? Yize only needed to make a single sale to add five taels of silver to his cash box. Just one sale.

He was brought out of his thoughts by the appearance of a familiar figure in front of his stall. He smiled as he pulled himself to his feet.

"I've been looking for you every day! My friends all ask me for just a bit of perfume and now I'm all out."

Standing in front of him was a well dressed young lady. Behind her was her maid, an older woman who was looking at Yize with disapproval. Not for any particular reason, as far as he knew. Just on general principles.

It didn't bother him. Not when there was profit to be made.

"I'm glad our product has proven so impressive," Yize said. "You'll just have to buy more this time."

The young woman crossed her arms over her chest, but the smile on her face gave the lie to her show of irritation. Yize didn't remember her name, but it was easy enough to remember his customers' preferences. After all, there weren't that many of them.

"Of course you would say that," she said, before shaking her head. "Two boxes didn't last nearly as long as I thought they would. Give me four this time."

Yize nodded and fetched the scale from the back of the cart. "Twenty taels."

She made a gesture, and the maid pulled out four ingots from her coin pouch. Yize checked the weight—not that anyone with a servant tagging along would bother shorting him, but if there was a mistake then he would be the one who had to explain it to the sect leader.

As expected, the ingots together came to twenty taels. Actually, a bit more. When Yize started adding broken bits of silver to the lead weights on the scale, looking to make it even out, his customer waved her hand again.

"Don't bother," she said. "Just make sure to give me the best you have."

Yize nodded, picking four boxes at random from the spread in front of him. "I wouldn't dare give you anything less."

She gave him a nod, accepting the boxes of perfume and handing them off to her maid in a single, practiced motion. She was a lively girl, but she had the arrogance in her bones that came from growing up in a wealthy family. Yize wondered, sometimes, how his sister would have turned out if she'd been raised in a honey jar.

He didn't dwell on the thought as he offered his customer a polite farewell and tucked the silver away in his coin pouch. He wasn't about to open up his lockbox in front of so much traffic, even if having so much silver on his person made him feel uneasy.

He had always been skeptical of the potential of the perfume business, especially in comparison to the already thriving market for hard alcohol. In moments like this, though, he felt like he could get a glimpse of the future that Muchen always had his eyes on. Four boxes of a product, put together by his sister in an afternoon as part of a larger batch with materials that were almost free, and it had been sold in an instant for more money than he used to earn in a month.

More money than he used to earn in a good month.

The only trouble lay in finding more customers. It was easy enough to spot a man who liked to drink, but finding women who were willing to pay a small fortune on cosmetics was a tougher task.

Yize took his seat again on the back of the wagon. Instead of leaning back and relaxing, though, he leaned forward, carefully studying the crowd of people as they passed by. If his regular customer was already out and about, then there ought to be other people like her in the crowd.

He could make the argument in his head all that he wanted, but further customers stubbornly failed to materialize. The crowd of pedestrians moved past with studied indifference. One or two stopped to read his signboard, but they shook their heads and kept moving before Yize could even begin his sales pitch.

He looked with some envy at the stores lining the street. He knew that he was selling a high quality product. Some of the poor sales were certainly due to his own inadequacy as a salesman, but he thought that the lion's share of the blame lay with his poor cart. It was fine for what it was, but it was a far cry from the luxurious environment of a high end cosmetics store.

Yize knew what a potential customer looked like. Young ladies, well dressed, ideally followed by a servant or two. All of his existing customers matched that description and he figured most of the people willing to spend multiple taels on perfume would be more or less the same.

He could pick them out of the crowd, but he couldn't make them shop at his stall. Most such young ladies barely gave his cart a second glance. When they did, it was with obvious disdain.

There were people out there who were willing to apply a product purchased from the back of a cart to their skin. There were people out there willing to pay five taels for a box of perfume. There were precious few people who fit both categories.

Yize did his best to look approachable. He went over a few potential tweaks to his sales pitch in his head, but it was no use when nobody would stop to listen.

His second visitor of the day turned out to be his first visitor. The young lady had returned, her long suffering maid in tow. She had also brought along a friend, their arms linked together as they walked down the street.

"Oh good, you're still here!" she said, before turning to her friend. "This is the stall I told you about."

His newest potential customer was looking over his wares with a neutral expression on her face. It was probably only the presence of her friend that kept her from scoffing out loud.

That was fine. At least Yize had something to work with.

"Welcome, welcome," Yize said. "This perfume is from Flower Mountain. You won't find its like anywhere else."

He continued on, ignoring her look of disbelief. "I can answer any questions you might have, but let's get to the most important thing first. The product itself."

He pulled a box from the back. He had set it aside to be used for free samples. Sadly, it was still three quarters full. He carefully lifted the lid before holding out the box.

"You can smell it for yourself. Feel it for yourself," Yize said. "There may be a finer perfume on the market, but I've never run across it."

It was remarkable what a standardized recipe could do. Yize had always known that his sister was an excellent cook, but he never would have figured her for a budding young alchemist. Under Muchen's directions, though, she was able to mass produce a perfume that was better than anything else he'd seen for sale in Jiuliu City.

Sure, other merchants had the idea of making flower scented oil, but they never did anything but suspend flower petals in oil. The resulting product could barely be called a perfume. The mainstream for body scents was a horrible musky scent that had taken weeks to clear itself from Yize's nose the one time he'd dared to expose himself to it.

What Flower Mountain had to offer was a pleasant, consistent floral breath. The scented oils lasted for a good long time and they were strong enough to distinguish themselves but not so strong as to be overpowering. And, after all, who didn't like the scent of flowers?

Yize didn't have much confidence in his stall. He had some confidence in his own abilities. But he was completely confident in the strength of his product.

He waited patiently as she brought the box closer to her face and gave it a careful sniff. A smile blossomed across her face and she dipped a finger into the scented oil. She rubbed it against her thumb for a moment before testing the smell.

"This is the perfume you've been showing off," she said, turning to her friend.

Yize stayed quiet, content to let his customer extoll the virtues of his wares. She didn't disappoint, responding to her friend by puffing herself up and patting herself on the chest.

"Of course it is," she said. "Would I ever lie to you?"

"There was the time-"

"That obviously doesn't count," she said, looking a bit flustered.

"What about when you told me that-."

"Let's not dwell on the past," she said, waving her hands in the air. "Haven't I found something good this time and shared it with you?"

His new customer gave a harrumph and turned back to Yize. "How much for a box?"

Yize smiled, doing his best not to give away the cold sweat that had formed on his back as he listened to his unreliable partner trying to close the deal. "Five taels each, miss."

"That cheap?" she said, before gesturing at her own maid, who had been tailing along beside the pair with a long-suffering expression on her face. "I'll take two."

"If you plan on sharing with your friends," Yize said, "you may need to buy more than you expect."

She turned and gave her friend a knowing look before focusing back on Yize. "I'm not a generous fool like Min. Still, I might as well buy a third box."