Someone Else's Dumplings, Part 4
On the top floor of Hanil Global’s headquarters in Gangnam, Kim I-su, the managing director who had been walking around with the face of a condemned man and no energy in his body for days now, still had his head bowed.
"I’m sorry. At this rate, I’d say it’ll be at least two months before we can match the quality Haesol Textile is currently supplying."
President Jeong Man-sik rubbed at the corner of his eye with an index finger, sounding irritated. "You really know how to do other people a favor, don’t you? You sell the product for them, improve their technology for them, even help them pull in investment."
The investment had technically been secured by their own efforts, but Kim I-su didn’t dare say so. He only kept his head down.
"I’m already annoyed enough that I don’t even want to take the goods, but I can’t do that. And we can’t even produce sixty thousand yards. Damn it, we really are the Republic of Korea’s representative pushover. How am I supposed to report this to Chairman? Give me some idea, will you? You think the rest of you will be fine if I get my head chopped off?"
"I’m sorry. I’ll figure out some way to—"
"You said there wasn’t one! A factory that can make Aero Coolbreeze instead of Haesol Textile, you said it would take at least two months!"
"..."
Han Se-gyeol, the executive director with thick, slightly wavy hair, said with an expression of clear disapproval, "Then why go all the way there rubbing shoulders with them if you weren’t even going to throw a single punch? Honestly..."
"Then why didn’t you go?"
"Ahem. You said you were going, sir... I did say we should target the beauty right away, didn’t I?"
"What, so if we go now and shower them with gifts like you said? You think that’ll turn their hearts our way?"
"That depends on the gift... but that handsome foreign guy probably offered a diamond ring and a Gangnam apartment, so money alone isn’t a game we can win."
"Then what?"
"Does that young president have any family?"
At that, President Jeong snapped his head around toward Kim I-su.
"That’s it! There’s nothing like family when it comes to moving someone’s heart. What’s his family situation?"
But Kim I-su looked as though he’d been buried alive, and in a feeble voice said, "Well... his only father passed away not long ago, and it seems that Jung Seung-hyun, the current president, inherited the company. That’s why he’s president at such a young age."
"Nothing? Not even one thing?"
"No. He has no siblings, and his mother died a long time ago."
The excitement on President Jeong’s face cooled in an instant. He turned back to Han Se-gyeol.
"He has nothing."
"Tch. That does make it harder..."
"You’ve been pretending to know everything, talking about how gifts would work and how they wouldn’t."
"The timing was bad. If you wanted to change his mind, you should have done it before the diamond ring. The other side already went through the proposal, and now you expect them to turn around because you told them to? And you said you only cursed him over the phone, not slapped him. If he has no family, then there’s no emotional leverage either. Give it up."
"Sigh. There isn’t a single person I can rely on."
President Jeong Man-sik shook his head back and forth.
"If I tell him to split it with us, he won’t share?"
"He won’t!"
"Damn, they’re greedy bastards. Forget it and focus only on Motion-X. Who knows? The old man’s been paying close attention to sales lately, so maybe he’ll be pleased if Motion-X boosts revenue."
"Would he be the kind of man to miss the gold and then get happy over a lump of silver? And what about that son of his?"
"Enough with that bus that already left."
"Ugh, fine. Enough."
President Jeong was still fuming, but he agreed with Han’s view that any more whining would be embarrassing in front of subordinates.
Then, glaring at Kim I-su as though he might devour him whole, he warned, "Hey, Manager Kim."
"Yes, sir!"
"If Motion-X sales don’t come in at more than double Taesung Vian’s, you’re dead to me. Got it?"
"I’ll make sure... it happens."
Kim I-su swallowed hard, feeling a murderous chill crawl down the back of his neck.
***
The next morning.
Director Hwang had Seung-hyun seated in front of him while he unfolded the contract and explained it line by line.
"First, LVMH accepted our valuation proposal for the company at forty billion won. The investment amount will be ten billion won."
"I thought they wouldn’t accept it..."
Their own valuation of Haesol Textile had been twenty billion won.
They claimed that was still a decent appraisal, but Hwang Seok-jae had argued that it should not be accepted.
Art Fabric, which they so desperately wanted, was already generating sales, so, in Hwang’s view, it could not be evaluated using past revenue alone.
It had to be assessed on future value, not present value. Seung-hyun accepted Hwang’s position completely and pushed the point hard with LVMH.
Because of that, he had expected LVMH to deliberate for a long time, but they had accepted Haesol Textile’s position far more quickly than expected.
"The investment will take the form of new share issuance. In other words, they aren’t buying out existing shareholders’ stakes; the company will issue new shares, and LVMH will take ten billion won worth of them. That means ten billion won in cash comes into our company, and in return they get a stake of more than twenty percent."
"So it’s a new share issuance... That means we’ll actually have cash we can use for equipment or R&D."
"Exactly. Marketing and overseas expansion will also become much easier. They seem to be evaluating Haesol Textile’s future very positively. Overall, the basic terms don’t look bad... but this design licensing clause and the right of first negotiation for new materials are a little concerning."
When Jung Seung-hyun shifted his gaze to that section, Hwang added an explanation.
"Setting everything else aside, if this part is interpreted broadly, LVMH would get the exclusive right of first negotiation for any technology Haesol Textile develops going forward. If that conflicts with the timing of when we want to use it, it becomes a problem."
Seung-hyun studied the document with a serious expression.
"So... even if a newly developed fabric is ours, we’d still have to ask LVMH first whether they want to buy it?"
Hwang Seok-jae nodded. "That’s right. It may not be a problem immediately, but long term it could become a restriction. Even when they don’t use our new materials themselves, the contract could make it difficult to provide them to other brands."
"So there really is no investment that’s good for us without a catch. If we get tied up by some small clause like that..." Seung-hyun muttered, "we could end up in a situation where we can’t actually use our own technology properly."
Hwang said firmly, "Exactly. That’s why we need to negotiate it carefully. LVMH’s proposal itself is a major opportunity for us, but if we don’t fine-tune the clauses, the burden will grow along with the sales. We just need to proceed while protecting our core processes and proprietary technology."
Seung-hyun closed the document and took a short breath.
"Please draft the necessary revisions based on this version first. I’ll ask Gabriel Moreau’s side to reopen negotiations."
Hwang Seok-jae nodded. "Yes. I’ll have the outline ready by today."
***
That night.
After work, Yoon Jung-mi came home carrying a pile of Dualtex sample fabric she had taken out of the car.
It was failed material, but after hearing about the fabric composition from the factory manager and touching it herself, it seemed more durable than expected, and she couldn’t bear to throw it away.
"A-young, make me some T-shirts with this."
Lee A-young, who had been sitting by the sewing machine fiddling with her smartphone, lifted her head slightly at her mother’s request.
Her expression looked indifferent.
"Huh? T-shirts, all of a sudden?"
It wasn’t unusual for her mother, who worked rotating shifts, to come home with a pile of fabric. She had seen this sort of thing plenty of times before.
Even when she was younger, it had been a common sight for her mother to bring home leftover fabric from the company and turn it into cushions, rugs, or curtains. A-young had watched that happen countless times over the course of her life.
She was only surprised by how much fabric there was this time, far more than usual, and then surprised a second time when her mother wanted T-shirts made out of it.
"Wasn’t this the fabric the president was just going to throw away? I said it was too good to waste, so I’d bring it home and make something out of it. Didn’t you hear me?"
"I’m stuck in the office all day because of the company investment issue lately. But you really want to make this?"
"Yeah, I can’t let it go to waste. I’m thinking of making work uniforms for the staff and handing them out. So draw up a design."
Her sewing skills were nothing A-young could ever compare herself to her mother’s with, but since middle school she had been interested in clothing, and it had become routine for her to sketch one design after another while her mother sewed according to them.
"Ugh, annoying."
A-young let out a long, reluctant sigh.
But Jung-mi ignored it and dropped the fabric down in front of her.
"Hurry up! If it gets left lying around and ends up getting thrown out, what a waste that’d be. Come on, draw something already."
"Fine, fine. But I’m keeping it really simple."
Lee A-young reluctantly pulled out paper and a pencil.
If it was just a so-called ordinary T-shirt design like the ones she always saw on the older women, she figured a rough sketch would be fine.
"Just make it a round-neck tee with a little extra room, and maybe make the sleeves a little longer so it feels like workwear."
"Sure, do whatever you want."
Jung-mi sat across from her daughter and watched with half-expectant eyes.
To be honest, there had been moments since childhood when she’d thought, "She’s pretty good at art," but she had never considered it some extraordinary talent.
Just someone who drew a little better than other people.
Still, it was useful now, so she was grateful.
"Round-neck tee, roomy fit... okay, something like this?"
Although A-young still looked deeply reluctant, she began moving the pencil and roughly sketching out the design.
At first, she drew the neckline and sleeve openings by eye alone.
But once she actually got into it, she had to account for the fabric’s slightly rough surface.
If I leave the texture too raw, it’ll look kind of ugly...
If the shirt was too stiff and clumsy, it would be unpleasant to look at, so she naturally began giving the sleeves a slight curve.
"Mom, since the outer surface of this fabric is a little stiff, what if we round the sleeve ends like this?"
"Round them? In a curve?"
"Yeah. If you cut them straight, they could poke out in a way that feels awkward. If you soften them with a curve, wouldn’t it look more comfortable?"
Jung-mi watched with interest as the sketch gradually took shape beneath her daughter’s fingertips.
Her daughter had definitely been reluctant at first, but once she started, she kept adding little details here and there.
"Then what about the neckline?"
"Don’t cut it too narrow here either. Make it a little wider. Let it breathe. Some people are going to sweat a lot in this."
"Right. Since it’s workwear, ventilation matters."
Her mother grinned and looked back down at the paper.
A-young was still approaching it purely by instinct without any grand theory behind it, yet she was surprisingly careful.
"All right, let’s shape the neckline like this... and keep the sleeve length a little short."
"Okay."
"Since it’s free size, the overall length can be about this much... hmm... plain fabric is a little boring, so should we add some kind of mark?"
"What kind of mark?"
After a brief moment of thought, A-young recalled the young president’s expression as he had carefully studied the machine.
Then she smirked and wrote the English words "lesser factory" across the chest.
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
When her mother asked, A-young shrugged. "It means red panda factory."
"Why a red panda all of a sudden?"
"No reason. Anyway, I’m done. Finished! Don’t ask me for anything else!"
As if her work was over, A-young tossed the pen she’d been using into the pencil case and disappeared into her room.
"Yeah, yeah, good work~"
Jung-mi called loudly after her daughter, then smiled and looked at the sketch again.
At first she had thought it was just a reluctant scribble, but once the daughter had added a few touches, it had taken on a surprisingly solid shape.
"All right then. Let’s make it once."
After marking out the shape in chalk according to her daughter’s drawing, she began cutting the fabric.
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