Carefree Prince In Tang Dynasty

Raising prices maliciously?

Only then did Li Xin realize that he had indeed asked Zhao Ke to be in charge of purchasing tea from tea farmers, and he had indeed told her that if the quality of the tea was good, the price would be negotiable, and that tea farmers should be treated preferentially. How did this become a malicious price hike?

"Is there some misunderstanding?" Li Xin was about to ask, but suddenly remembered something Zhao Ke said when he reported the situation to himself two days ago.

According to Zhao Ke, the price of raw tea near Chang'an is ridiculously low, and it is very likely that the price was deliberately lowered. Li Xin didn't care about it at the time, thinking it was just that the tea market was not in a good mood, so let her leave it alone and just try to make the price as reasonable as possible. Judging from what Cui Yingying said today, Zhao Ke's guess may not be unreasonable.

If it wasn't for the fact that the low price situation she had deliberately maintained was destroyed, why would Cui Yingying come to the door in person like this, and still have an attitude of asking for guilt? You must know that price fluctuations are normal market phenomena. How can there be any saying who should be responsible for this, or who makes things difficult for whom? unless.

Li Xin swallowed back the words that came to his lips, smiled, and said, "In order to avoid misunderstanding, let me ask first. May I ask how much Miss Cui usually buys raw tea?"

Cui Yingying said confidently: "It depends on the quality of the tea. It's almost seven or eight yuan per catty, and it's better than ten yuan per catty. There are also ten yuan."

When Li Xin heard the words, he knew it in his heart.

Things like tea trees are different from grain crops like rice and wheat. In terms of weight alone, the yield is not high. Assuming that the time cost spent on tending tea trees is roughly equivalent to the labor cost, then the unit price of raw tea, that is, tea that has just been picked and has not been processed, is at least several to ten times the price of rice. What's more, tending tea trees requires as much energy as growing food.

Li Xin estimated roughly in his heart that the cost of raw tea per catty would be at least six or seven renminbi, not to mention that the tea farmers still had to make money. Based on Cui Yingying's quotation, the profits of those tea farmers were too thin. Will you be willing to do such a business?

Obviously, it was Cui's family who used some means to forcibly suppress the price of raw tea, forcing out the profit margins of tea farmers.

Li Xin silently shook his head in his heart.

He has seen this method too much. The simplest is monopoly.

The word "monopoly" is very powerful. As long as it is used properly, it will be a huge profit. The most common method people see is to sell cabbage for the price of pearls through monopoly. However, as long as it works properly, it can also force others to sell you pearls at the price of cabbage, reducing costs and increasing profits in disguise.

Taking tea as an example, tea farmers only know how to grow tea and lack channels to sell tea, so the tea they grow can only be sold to businessmen like Cui Yingying who have access to channels. Under normal circumstances, there are more merchants competing, and the price of tea can be kept at a reasonable level. However, in some cases, such as when Cui Yingying used some means to make herself the only tea merchant in a certain area, a monopoly situation was formed.

Of course, tea farmers don't want tea leaves in their hands, they need to exchange tea leaves for money. At this time, Cui Yingying was their only choice. As a result, the dominance of raw tea prices fell into the hands of Cui Yingying. As long as anyone offered a price that she thought was unreasonable, then that person's tea would not be able to be sold, and in this way, she was naturally going to get the wind.