Chapter 3
After thinking it through for a long time, I decided to solve the seafood sales problem for Dad, the fishermen, and the aquaculture farmers myself. I would start a live-streaming business.
I didn't hesitate. That same day, I registered an account and set up my streaming equipment.
Back when Blue Harbor Seafood Select was just starting out and severely understaffed, I wore multiple hats. I worked over ten hours a day and handled procurement, operations, and even livestreaming.
I had done it all before. The traffic tricks and livestream scripts were still somewhere in my muscle memory. Now that I was back at it, things felt a little rusty, but still manageable.
The only problem was traffic. The new account had almost no exposure. The livestream room was dead quiet. After a long session, I only got a handful of orders, barely ten pounds in total.
Just as I ended the stream, my phone rang.
I picked it up without much thought, only to hear Mitchell's furious voice exploding through the line. "What the hell did you do, Louise? Our biggest supplier just cut off all our shipments!"
Their biggest supplier? That would be Dad's side.
I leaned against my chair and replied slowly, "Mr. Wright, I've resigned, remember? How am I supposed to know about current matters?"
"Bullshit!" he roared. "I know you're the one pulling strings behind the scenes!"
"Actually, I don't think I told you this, Mr. Wright," I said calmly.
"Your biggest supplier is actually my dad. I never asked him to cut the supply. That was his own decision. If you transfer my severance pay on time, I might consider asking him to resume supply for a while."
After I left, Dad did stop supplying the company, even though it meant taking a loss.
"Your dad?" Mitchell snapped again. "Louise Langford, you parasite! And you still denied that you took kickbacks? I bet you took more than just that!"
His tone then shifted into smug contempt. "But don't get too happy. Zach is far more capable than you. He's already found a new supplier, and the price is lower than yours.
"Good thing I caught it in time. Otherwise, you would've dragged the whole company down."
I didn't bother arguing and simply hung up.
Still, a supplier cheaper than Dad's price? That caught my attention.
The pricing Dad gave them was basically the cost at origin. There was no middleman margin at all. It was already about as low as it could realistically get.
So, where did Zachary even find a channel that could undercut that?
Before I could figure it out, the next day, the viewer count suddenly skyrocketed during my livestream. It went from a hundred to more than ten thousand…
However, they weren't there to buy. The comment section was instantly flooded with insults and abuse, scrolling so fast it turned into a wall of hostility.
"This is the unethical procurement agent. She took kickbacks and jacked up seafood prices."
"No wonder she got fired. Look at Blue Harbor Seafood Select now. Everything is so much cheaper. If it weren't for her, we'd have been eating affordable seafood ages ago!"
"Truly disgusting, exploiting information gaps to profit on both ends. Everyone, report her and shut her down!"
Someone was clearly steering a smear campaign against me. That thought flashed through my mind. I immediately switched to a burner account and slipped into Blue Harbor Seafood Select's livestream.
Zachary was on camera, holding up a live king crab, practically spitting as he spoke. "Guys, I promise you this. Now that we've gotten rid of a certain unethical employee, our seafood is officially the best value on the entire platform!"
Behind him, yellow croaker was listed at 9.90 dollars per pound, and king crab at 88 dollars per pound. The prices were indeed far lower than what I had set when I was still in the company.
I clicked into the product detail images and only needed one glance to understand what was going on. What a way to market those as "best value".
Honestly, I had to thank them for handing me a massive wave of traffic. I exited the livestream and immediately dialed a number.
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