A young man from Henan heads to South Korea to study, lugging two bags of spicy latiao snacks. He discovers that the cafeteria is too expensive, the instant noodles are awful, and his classmates have never tasted anything good.
So he starts selling latiao in his dorm, five yuan a pack, and clears 250 yuan on the first night.
The campus belle places an anonymous order, and he delivers it in a garbage bag. A rich kid comes looking for trouble, but one pack of latiao is enough to win him over. A professor accuses him of neglecting his studies, so he gives an impromptu fifteen-minute lecture on supply chains using economics.
A Korean company copies his product and then tries to frame him. In court, he pulls out a pack of latiao from 1986. “My grandpa’s generation was already selling these.”
He wins the case and gets the campus belle, too. When her father asks how he plans to support her, he says he’s going to build a chain of snack shops across China and Korea. Her father replies, “That’s exactly what I said back in my day.”
In three years, he goes from carrying goods in a woven sack to opening a shop in Myeong-dong.
No miracles, just latiao.
Zhao Dalei says: First get yourself established, then think about the rest.
Good, good, good, good