Ecorem, who had a beard, stared at the cross-sea bridge of the Bosporus with a sad and angry expression. This bridge connected the Eurasian continent, and cargo ships passed slowly under the bridge.
In all directions.
Due to the geographical relationship, it is more convenient for the commerce and trade of the countries along the Black Sea to pass through the Bosporus. This strait is related to the economic lifeline of hundreds of millions of people in the surrounding area, and commercial transportation is particularly busy.
Grain, oil, machinery, clothing, and all kinds of goods flow through this. The local chickens guarding the strait make a lot of money from this, and they are very happy to collect tolls.
But now Ekrem hates the cargo ships passing through the strait, because many of them serve the 'Holy Light' Group. Goods shipped from thousands of miles away are impacting the local chicken's economy like a tide.
There is a garment factory in Ekrem, located in Istanbul. His factory is not big, employing more than a hundred garment workers and using old sewing machinery for production.
Ekrem's garment factory is a typical "two-end factory". Its fabrics and accessories need to be imported, and its garment products are exported. Since the product quality is not high, it has always followed the low-end and low-price route.
This was originally an industry that could be passed down for several generations, and with hard work it might be possible to upgrade it to mid- to high-end, but now it is suddenly facing bankruptcy. The reason is that a large number of second-hand clothes suddenly appeared on the market.
Seventy percent of local textiles are of a similar model. If exports are cut off, the entire industry will die.
In the past, Ekrem was proud of his own garment factory's ability to reduce costs, but now he discovered that there were others with lower costs than him - second-hand clothing in Odessa was sold based on weight.
One kilogram is one dollar, and each package is 200 kilograms. It cannot be disassembled and selected. It is only sold in packages.
"Someone actually buys this kind of clothes?"
Ekrem is considered a small factory owner. He made money and bought all European famous brands. All the food at home was high-end goods, and even his children were sent to study in Germany. But he couldn't stand the fact that his products could not be sold.
go out.
He couldn't believe who would buy second-hand clothes. They might be discarded clothes, they might be clothes of dead people, they might be contaminated clothes. In short, they were not good things.
Some media in Istanbul have noticed this and started to publicize it in newspapers, calling on the public to boycott. But the fact is completely opposite. Some people actually buy this kind of clothes.
Ekrem discovered that workers in his own garment factory were wearing such second-hand clothes. He became furious on the spot, scolded the workers as being unpatriotic, and asked the workers to cut off low-priced clothes and buy his own products, otherwise he would be fired.
In order to keep his job, the worker had no choice but to cut up his clothes. But this was of no use. He might have turned around and left and went to the flea market to buy another one. Anyway, these second-hand clothes were very cheap, and at most they would no longer be worn to work.
Because of this incident, Ecorem discovered that there are still many poor people in the city. This silent group earns the meager income, consumes the cheapest goods, and uses the cheapest services.
Only when the poor stopped buying Ekrem's products did he realize the existence of this group.
The use of second-hand clothing not only does not cause trouble to the poor, but also improves their quality of life, allowing them to save money and use it in other areas.
Ecorem specifically went to the flea market to investigate. Those second-hand clothes were hand-selected, boiled in high-temperature water, and cleaned with chemicals to ensure the quality as much as possible. They are really not just sold casually.
Clothes of the same type and size will be classified as much as possible, so that there will be no particularly tattered clothes, let alone stains, blood and dirt. For the poor, the price-performance ratio is particularly high, which leads to smooth sales.
If you are lucky, you can find some high-quality high-end fashions among the clothes you pack. Profiteers will select the fashions, carefully sort them out, and send them to specialty stores to sell them for hundreds of times the price.
As long as there are excess profits, businessmen from different interest groups will spontaneously form a sales chain. Simple blockade is completely ineffective, and Ecorem can only be incompetent and furious about this.
If second-hand clothes were only sold in the country, Ekrem would be angry at most, but he wouldn't care too much. Because his garment factory specializes in exports, and its customers are mainly in North Africa and the Middle East.
But starting from November, customer orders dropped off a cliff. By December, half of the factory's equipment was even shut down. Ecorem had to lay off half of its workers and cut the wages of the remaining workers by nearly half.
.
But this is of no use and the situation is getting worse.
This situation was not something that Ekrem could solve. He went to the Textile Association to inquire about the news, and the information he received shocked him even more - the industry-wide depression had suddenly occurred.
Since November, second-hand clothing shipped from the East has occupied the local low-end textile market. The quantity is astonishingly large and overwhelming.
Every day, more than a dozen 10,000-ton cargo ships arrive from the Far East. Their destinations may be Southeast Asia, South Asia, or the Persian Gulf, or they may dock in the Mediterranean or the Black Sea.
Every day, hundreds of millions of second-hand clothes float on the sea and are loaded and unloaded at ports around the world to meet the needs of low-income groups in various countries. Once this market is robbed, it will be difficult to get it back.
The native chickens are not the worst, Egypt's textile industry is the worst.
But Egypt's fortunes are good. Their textile industry is not strong and their losses are limited. On the contrary, because the price of cotton has increased significantly recently, it is still profitable in the end.
The country also exports a large amount of cotton and cashmere, but the textile industry is its lifeblood. It is the "wardrobe" of Europe, and millions of people in the country rely on it for employment and food.
Without any warning, the foreign market disappeared, which was too fatal for Ekrem. As for small business owners like him, there are at least tens of thousands of local chickens in the country, and most of them are crowded in the low-end market.
"No, we can't tolerate this kind of unreasonable competition." Ecorem watched the cargo ships on the strait all afternoon, thinking about how to stop them all. "We should sanction the opponents who sell second-hand clothes."
.”
From November to December, there were too many local chicken factory owners who had similar ideas. Ekrem easily gathered a group of "friends" who had experienced the same situation and made demands to the government through industry associations.
It's just that when this request was submitted, there was no response at all. Some well-informed people went to inquire about it, and the news they got was that there was nothing the upper levels of the local chicken could do, and they themselves felt that it was a big headache.
The 'Holy Light' has not even been punished by US sanctions, and it is even more confusing to replace it with a local chicken. I originally thought of getting some oil and water on the 'Varyag', but the other party did not follow the routine.
It is an anecdote through the ages that a company dared to confront a country head-on.
This is not just a passive response, but a proactive attack - if you dare to stop my aircraft carrier, I will destroy your industry.