Investment Proposal (3)
I’m translating the chapter into the required HTML format and keeping the prose natural rather than literal. The main thing I’m watching is paragraph shape and ensuring the LVMH visit and the HanilGlobal confrontation are handled as separate beats.CHAPTER_TITLE: Investment Proposal 3
The calm that had settled over Haesol Textile did not last long.
A week after Seoul Fashion Week ended, work surged forward at an even fiercer pace.
Daeryung Trading opened a new offline store in Nonhyeon-dong under the brand name Aureum, where it began displaying and promoting Art Fabric sofas to the general public.
Perhaps because of that, the Art Fabric equipment that had just managed to work through Daeryung Trading’s second order and seemed ready for a brief rest started up again.
Then, in the middle of all that, Hanil Global suddenly sent over an official notice.
Sales of golf wear are expected to increase significantly this season, so additional supply of Aero Coolbreeze fabric is required. By April, 60,000 yards...
At once, Factory Manager Park Han-soo voiced his concern.
“There’s no way to turn out 60,000 yards by April. No matter how you look at it, that’s impossible. Even if we run three shifts around the clock, we’d still top out at just over 50,000 yards...”
Art Fabric took a considerable amount of time to produce even 1,000 yards, but Aero Coolbreeze was made entirely by machines from start to finish, so it could produce as much as 10,000 yards in roughly the same period.
The problem was that Aero Coolbreeze and Art Fabric shared the equipment in a 6-to-4 split, which made it impossible to turn out the volume Hanil Global wanted.
“I’ll explain it to Hanil Global,” Seung-hyun said.
“Will that be all right?”
Park Han-soo knew very well that clients did not react gently when they tried to squeeze more volume out of a supplier.
When the young president had first taken the chair, Taesung Apparel had already caused trouble by flagging certain fabrics as defective, so even if things had been a little tight, there was no real need to rush production.
Even the high-density silk blend they had supplied to Daeryung Trading had not come with a brutal deadline, so there had been no need to run the factory through the night.
As for Art Fabric, there was even less to say.
The fabric itself was truly art, so there was no way to press for an earlier delivery date.
But Hanil Global was one of the two most powerful fashion companies in Korea, an absolute upper hand in every sense.
It was hard not to worry.
“Yes. I’m the president, so I should handle it. There’s no issue in the contract, right?”
“None. If we write the volume into the contract, then when sales underperform, we’d have to absorb all that inventory ourselves. Which major company would willingly shoulder that kind of risk? It’s not written in the contract. If they need more volume, they just keep pressing us until we produce it. It’s always been that way.”
“Then we’re fine.”
Seeing the young president’s complete calm, Park Han-soo could not help but overlap him with the memory of Taesung Apparel’s QC team arriving with those sharp, cutting faces and Seung-hyun acting as if they were no more threatening than someone’s neighbor’s dog.
“You’ve already crossed swords with Taesung Apparel. If you also sour things with Hanil Global, it could get difficult.”
“I know.”
He said he knew, but Park Han-soo could not quite bring himself to believe it.
Still, there was nothing to be done.
So far, he had sat in the president’s seat and handled every obstacle with startling ease. At this point, all Park Han-soo could do was trust him.
After the factory manager left, the old man who had remained silent until now, Hwang Seok-jae, spoke up.
“The automobile industry and the textile industry are the same after all.”
Moved by his enthusiasm, Seung-hyun had approved his entry into Haesol Textile and given him the title of Finance Director, though he received the same salary as a brand-new factory employee.
Seung-hyun had said he could pay him more, but Hwang Seok-jae had insisted otherwise.
When the company grew, then he would ask for more.
For now, he was not here for the money, and it was enough that he had somewhere to report each morning and work to do where he was needed.
Since joining, he had remained faithful to a strict routine: arriving at 8:00 a.m. and staying until after 6:00 p.m. before leaving.
Even when people told him he could come in by 9:00 and asked why he arrived so early, he still showed up at 8:00, cleaned up the president’s office first, and put everything in order.
When the chief of accounting learned that he had once served as the head of finance at a major conglomerate, he stopped trying to assert seniority and instead practically bowed as he hurried to learn from him.
The work he did by arriving so early was studying the textile industry.
He read not only about the fabrics and yarns produced in the factory, but also about the machinery itself. Like an endlessly curious child, he was always either buried in a book or grabbing someone by the sleeve to ask questions.
Because he was so intent on learning, even the people who had initially been wary of him as a former conglomerate executive soon opened up and answered him sincerely.
“This place is probably a little tougher. There were days at home when my father would take a call from a client on the primary side, and I’d wonder how someone could push people so mercilessly. Of course, I haven’t seen much of that myself. I suppose I’ll get my own taste of it soon enough.”
“You don’t seem very worried.”
“What’s the point of worrying? That won’t make them produce faster. More importantly, are things ready for tomorrow?”
Tomorrow was a very important day.
That was when LVMH’s investment review team was scheduled to visit the factory.
“Don’t worry. Everything is ready. And honestly, Haesol Textile’s potential is so enormous that the documents we prepared probably won’t matter all that much.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Nodding, Seung-hyun picked up the company phone.
After taking a quiet breath, he called Hanil Global’s materials management department.
“Hello?”
Even from the voice alone, he could tell the man on the other end had no patience to spare.
“Hello. This is Jung Seung-hyun, president of Haesol Textile. May I speak with Mr. Go Dong-jin?”
“Who’s this?”
And that was the level of courtesy he got in reply from someone answering a call from a company president.
“Yes, well, we reviewed the official notice you sent us, and you said you need 60,000 yards by April...”
“Yes.”
“That’s going to be difficult.”
“What did you say? Why would it be difficult?”
The irritation in the voice sharpened instantly.
“Our factory capacity just isn’t at that level. Even running 24 hours a day in three shifts, 50,000 yards is the limit. Anything beyond that is impossible.”
“Ah, seriously... so that’s it? You just say it’s difficult and that’s the end of it?”
Seung-hyun understood perfectly well.
When a prime contractor with its own brand dealt with a subcontractor supplying fabric, even if the subcontractor’s president was an older man, tossing around “Hey, hey!” and speaking down to them was not treated as some major offense.
Why was that?
Because that was just how the business worked, he had been told.
By his father.
Seung-hyun had not called to pick a fight.
He knew from the information embedded in the fabric itself that Art Fabric’s marketability was strong, but he still could not say with certainty how far the company could go relying on Art Fabric alone.
Even without Park Han-soo bothering to point it out, he knew there was no reason to make an enemy of Hanil Global, one of the two fashion giants that divided the Korean market between them.
“I’m sorry, but the factory has its limits. We’re already considering expanding the equipment through investment, so...”
“No! Do you think we’re idiots? You’ve got ten looms, so why can’t you produce 60,000 yards?”
“Four of them can’t be used for Aero Coolbreeze. Only six...”
“Then use the other four!”
Seung-hyun finally understood exactly what people meant when they said a voice could make your eardrums feel as though they were about to fall out.
Startled by the sheer volume, he moved the receiver away from his ear and said, “Those are being used to produce fabrics for other clients. It’s difficult.”
“What did you say? Wow... no, President Jung. Are you sure you can take responsibility for this?”
“Of course I can, since I’m the president, right? There’s no clause in the contract saying we must unconditionally meet whatever volume Hanil Global wants, so even if you keep pushing, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Hah! Hey, President Jung! You can’t do this! What exactly do you think you’re doing? I don’t care about any of that, just dump 60,000 yards at the Jecheon factory by April. Damn it, if you say you can’t do it, I won’t let this go. I mean it!”
The man sounded ready to come after him with a knife if he had to.
Seung-hyun was not angry so much as hollowed out by the thought that his father had probably endured scenes like this countless times.
“Well, we’ve informed you verbally, and I’ll send the official notice later today. I thought you should know.”
“No, seriously...”
Seung-hyun did not listen to the rest of the shouting and quietly hung up.
“I can hear how angry he is from here,” Hwang Seok-jae said with a slight smile.
“Sounds like he’s not just angry, either. I’m starting to wonder if he’s planning to come storming into the company.”
“You don’t seem worried.”
“What good would worrying do? We’re not going to produce what they want just because they’re screaming for it. More than that, are preparations for tomorrow going well?”
“Still, it’s not good for relations to turn sour. Taesung Apparel did something it never should have, so there’s no future in dealing with them, but nothing has happened with Hanil Global yet, so I just hope things don’t go wrong.”
“You realize the screaming I just got on the phone doesn’t count as ‘going wrong,’ right?”
“According to them, this is just how they’ve always done business. I’m not a Buddha, so of course I’m not completely unaffected. But Haesol Textile is no longer just another subcontractor, is it? Since the road ahead is laid out so clearly, a few angry calls don’t trouble me much.”
“Haha. That’s a good way to look at it.”
He smiled, a deep crescent forming at the corners of his eyes.
Though still young, Seung-hyun had a way of carrying himself that was neither recklessly combative nor humiliatingly submissive, and it was a pleasant thing to see.
The next day.
About ten minutes after the appointed time of ten o’clock, a convoy of luxury sedans and vans appeared in the distance.
The first to step out of the sedan was a tall, French-looking man Seung-hyun had met once before: Gabriel Moreau of LVMH.
Then the van door opened, and one middle-aged white man and two Asian men stepped out carefully.
Their briefcases, crisp suits, and polished shoes made it obvious they were here for business.
In particular, the middle-aged man, wearing metal-rimmed glasses, had the kind of presence that came from slowly scanning the building’s exterior before even stepping inside.
“President Jung, hello.”
Gabriel smiled first and held out his hand.
“Hello. It’s been a while.”
Seung-hyun greeted him warmly and shook his hand.
Gabriel turned to the side and introduced the others.
“This is Jean Marais, one of the managers in our LVMH Group’s M&A and investment strategy division. He came directly from France to assess whether Haesol Textile is worth investing in. And these two are mainly here to help with finance and legal matters.”
Seung-hyun bowed politely in greeting.
Jean Marais’s face was stern, but he returned the greeting with proper courtesy.
“It’s a pleasure, President Jung Seung-hyun. I wanted to see the factory for myself before reviewing the documents. A craftsman’s skill and artistic sense can’t be captured by numbers.”
Jean Marais’s tone was stiff, but his English was fluent and effortless.
“Of course. Please come inside. I’ll walk you through Haesol Textile’s production process step by step.”
Under Park Han-soo’s guidance, the group first toured the digital textile printing line.
Seeing the largely automated flow from fiber supply to dyeing and printing, they wore serious expressions.
They snapped a few photos and asked a few simple questions here and there.
“What is this machine?”
“This is a steam finishing chamber. It controls temperature and humidity to precisely regulate diffusion effects and stabilize patterns. We use it when making Art Fabric.”
“I see.”
“If you look at this sample here...”
Just as Park Han-soo, who had been following Seung-hyun from behind, was handing over a sample he had prepared in advance, a shout suddenly rang out from outside the company.
“President! President!”
At the sudden, out-of-place cry during such a crucial moment with investors on site, the faces of every employee in the factory froze at once.
Then came the people entering through the factory gate.
One of them was familiar.
It was Kim I-su, an executive from Hanil Global.
He spotted Seung-hyun standing inside the factory, blinking as he held a pile of samples, and approached with heavy, stone-faced steps.
But as he drew closer, the foreign faces around Seung-hyun made him pause in confusion.
One of them looked vaguely familiar, though he could not place him at once, so he put it aside for the moment.
“President. What exactly is going on here?”
“Pardon?”
“What is this thing you’re making right now, damn it...”
Kim I-su roughly flipped through the sample in Seung-hyun’s hand, and then something flashed through his mind like lightning.
He looked again at the foreigner he had thought seemed familiar.
The foreigner, feeling that the situation had become strange, quickly composed his expression and said, “I think we met once before... was it an event at Shinsegae Department Store, about three years ago?”
“Back then... at the Louis Vuitton event...”
“That’s right. Gabriel Moreau.”
For a moment, Kim I-su struggled to organize the impossible situation in his head.
But then he looked back and forth between Seung-hyun and Gabriel and felt his pupils violently shake.