Chapter 83 Su Shiseido
Why? Why? Su Luo had to reflect again that she didn't choose the right time to travel through time. She couldn't plagiarize any Tang and Song poems, and she didn't have the ability to build cars and airplanes. She finally came up with a relatively difficult one, but was told that it was something that existed hundreds of years ago... Su Luo bit the bullet and asked Wu Yong what the wine steamer was. Wu Yong gestured and talked, as if he was the one who traveled from the future. Finally, seeing Su Luo's dejected look, he said, "I'll take you to see it and you'll understand."
Hearing that there was something exciting to see, everyone in the courtyard, except for the Su family, went out to inquire about where there was a winery. Most manufacturing industries tend to cluster together, for example, for dyeing cloth, a whole street is full of dyeing shops; for printing books, a whole street is full of printing offices; the same is true for the winery, which is located in a remote corner of Nanjing City. You can smell the lees from a long distance away. Before entering the alley, Su Luo's feet stepped on cotton. By the time he found out about the "wine steamer", Su Luo was already half drunk.
The so-called wine steamer is actually a simple distillation equipment. Wine steamers come in different sizes and materials. The ones Su Luo saw were mostly made of bronze. There are two urn-shaped containers, one large and one small, with a long thin tube in the middle with lids on both sides. The thin tube is wrapped around a circle of cold water trough to condense steam into water droplets. Wineries use it to improve the purity of the wine.
Since we can make wine with a higher purity, we can also make flower dew or essential oil. Su Luo's face flushed red when she was steamed by the wine. She said proudly, "I'll buy this thing." After saying that, she wanted to hug the hot wine steamer. Everyone stopped her. Su Luo struggled and said, "I also have 6,000 silver coins now. I belong to the middle class. Don't be stingy and let me buy it..."
People don't show off their wealth. No one has ever been heard to brag about their wealth. Although six thousand taels is not a lot for a truly wealthy person, it is still quite shocking to the people around Su Luo who are used to the life of the proletariat. Seeing that the guys in the wine shop were all pricked up their ears and looking over here, Zhou Chongwen quickly covered Su Luo's mouth, and he and BMW carried her back one on each side. Bao Zixing and Wu Yong stayed to find out where they could buy a wine steamer. The owner of the wine shop was a little frightened when he saw Su Luo leaving with nonsense. He wiped his cold sweat and said that different families use different models of this thing, so most of them are custom-made. I have a small one here, and I can sell it to you if you need it urgently. After that, he pointed in the direction where Su Luo left with sympathy and said, "I have a relative who has the same problem. He is just like a normal person normally, but he gets sick when he says he will."
Bao Zixing took out the money with an embarrassed look on his face, without even bargaining, and secretly swore that he would never come here with Su Luo again.
With the distiller, everything was simple. Of course, Su Luo could not help much. She was only responsible for providing ideas. All experiments had to be conducted by Dr. Wu himself. The distillation work went very smoothly. It was spring, and flowers were in full bloom. There were plenty of raw materials. Some petals and leaves were picked and mixed with water and put into the steamer of the wine retort. Then they were heated. After passing through the condenser, the flower water vapor turned into floral water, and a small amount of floating oil floated on the top.
Su Luo shouted loudly to tell everyone that the essential oil had appeared. Although he couldn't think of a good way to separate the oil and water for the time being and could only scoop it out slowly with a small spoon, the essential oil had appeared after all, which was considered a small success.
Essential oils cannot be used directly. They must be blended with base oils first to prevent the irritation of essential oils. Base oils can be almond oil, wheat germ oil, olive oil, etc. After hearing this, Wu Yong immediately went to the street to buy some almonds that he could understand, and threw them into the distiller to continue distilling the oil. The result... of course failed. Even Su Luo knew that nut oils had to be squeezed out, but he had never heard of distilling them. This was also because Wu Yong was too excited about the distiller and forgot everything.
That night, Su made a big bowl of almond tea with cooked almonds, which Su Luo enjoyed very well. And the next morning, Wu Yong set out with his almonds on his back, heading towards the direction of the sun, to find a place where he could extract oil.
This spirit touched Su Luo so much that he immediately asked BMW to accompany them. He didn't know how many monsters and demons he would encounter and how many hardships he would experience. Su Luo almost cried as he saw them off and was mentally prepared to not open the shop for a long time. He also repeatedly told BMW to take good care of Dr. Wu and to find a successful oil extraction method no matter how many difficulties and dangers there were.
BMW scratched his head and asked if there was any road construction in the city? Even if the road was blocked due to the road construction, we could take a detour and return in the afternoon.
"Ah?" Su Luo blinked hard.
"When I came here, I saw a grain and oil workshop outside the city. They can squeeze soybean oil and rapeseed oil, so they can definitely squeeze almond oil."
Su Luo was petrified for a moment, responded calmly, turned around calmly, and calmly pushed the door with one hand in an unfathomable manner, leaving the two people with a calm background.
"The boss lady is such a mysterious person." She heard Wu Yong say in a low voice.
BMW said nothing, and walked away with Wu Yong, sweat all over his head.
As it turned out, the roads in Nanjing were very smooth, and the two returned before noon, and even caught up with lunch, saying that they would go to the grain and oil workshop to get oil in three days. They talked about the huge oil press in the workshop throughout the meal, while Su Luo buried his face in the rice bowl throughout the meal and refused to communicate with them.
Please, let her live a normal life as a time traveler. She hasn't been in the spotlight for a long time.
Three days later, the almond oil was brought back, and it smelled so good that people wanted to drink it. Su Luo gathered everyone together, mixed the essential oils Wu Yong had extracted in the past few days with almond oil, and applied hot compresses to Wu Yong's upper body. Su Luo had done many essential oil treatments before, and always felt that hot compresses and massages were the most comfortable ways to enjoy essential oils. She originally wanted to give Wu Yong a full body treatment, but Wu Yong looked as if he suspected she had some bad intentions, so she gave up.
After finishing the hot compress, Wu Yong was very confident about the future of essential oils. He fully expanded his thinking and, before Su Luo spoke, he came up with the idea of mixing several essential oils to make compound essential oils. He also added the floral water after oil and water separation into the previous products to give them a more natural aroma.
Thanks to the preparation of flower dew and essential oils, Wu Yong's goal of 100 new products was finally achieved. Of course, there were many duplicate products. For example, the same facial medicine had seven or eight scents, such as orange, plum, and jasmine. He considered them all new inventions, which made Su Luo speechless. There were also the latest developed scented dews, which had peony, peony, and crabapple scents...
"What kind of fragrance is this?" Su Luo held a small bottle and sniffed the transparent dew inside . "It has no smell."
"Why not?" Wu Yong took the bottle, put it in front of his nose and fanned it gently with his hand, then took a deep breath , "Number 98."
Su Luo turned over the bottle cap in his hand, and it was indeed number ninety-eight.
"What on earth is this?" Su Luo took the bottle back in surprise and tried to inhale, but still found nothing.
“Winter melon smells good.”
Su Luo froze for a moment, "What?"
"Winter melon scent." Wu Yong was very proud. "This is my new discovery. Some people like the scent of flowers, and some people definitely like the scent of fruits and vegetables."
Su Luo frowned and looked at the bottle in his hand. Some people do like fruity scents, such as orange, grape, and apple, but does anyone like vegetable scents? Others smell sweet flowers and fruits when they go out, but you smell roasted eggplant when you go out. Do you like it?
"How is it? Do you smell it?" Wu Yong came over to take credit without caring about the consequences.
"The smell is still too light." Su Luo gritted her teeth and returned the bottle to him, "Why don't you add some onions, ginger and garlic? That smell will attract people."
Since Dr. Wu's scientific research work has entered the final stage, Su Luo's store opening work has finally been put on the agenda.
That night, Su Luo showed everyone all of Wu Yong's scientific research results, and Wu Yong explained them one by one. When he had gone through one-third of the way, Su Luo wanted to skip this step, but Dr. Wu's rigorous style made him stick to it. He explained everything from washing face, bathing, washing feet, wiping face, wiping eyes, wiping body, removing spots, whitening, and caring for hair... After explaining a hundred kinds of things one by one, everyone was basically asleep.
Wu Yong woke Su Luo up and sat back in his seat with satisfaction. Su Luo yawned loudly, slapped the table repeatedly, and asked everyone to continue the meeting.
"Do we need to mass-produce our products?" Bao Zixing asked, stretching his waist.
"No, we won't sell it." Su Luo gently pushed Zhou Chongwen, who was responsible for taking minutes of the meeting. The guy's head nodded, but he hadn't woken up yet.
"Not selling?" BMW and Wu Yong looked at each other. Wu Yong stood up anxiously, "Madam boss..."
"Don't worry." Su Luo waved his hand like a big boss. "No, we don't sell. We don't sell ordinary rouge and powder. There are no good sealing conditions now. The shelf life of skin care products is very short, only one or two months, especially floral dew, which only lasts about seven or eight days. It is very likely that they will expire and deteriorate before we sell them. So before we develop a more effective preservation method, we can't mass produce."
Wu Yong's eyebrows immediately knitted together in worry. Su Luo went over to pat him and said, "Don't worry. We are going to open a beauty salon now. Our target customer group is the wives of officials and businessmen in Nanjing. We will sell products and services at the same time. We will use our products, combined with various massages and beauty therapies, to provide them with professional skin care."
Everyone looked at each other in bewilderment. Bao Zixing raised his hand uncertainly, "Those wives of officials and businessmen have all the care they want at home. Why would they patronize us?"
"Because of two words," Su Luo held up two fingers, "professional. Women all love beauty. Even if they know the best beauty methods, they still can't help but try others'. This is our opportunity. Once we have the first batch of customers, word will spread, and coming to the beauty salon for treatments will become a major focus of life for the wealthy wives in Nanjing. In addition..." Su Luo turned around and asked Bao Zixing, "How long has Dazhong been gone?"
Bao Zixing calculated, "It's been two months."
Su Luo nodded, "It's time to come back." When Su Luo arrived in Nanjing, Dazhong was sent by her to Taicang to find Li Shizhen who was living in Wang Shizhen's house. The main purpose was to return home with Li Shizhen and bring back the complete set of "Compendium of Materia Medica". Su Luo had contacted the bookstore in the name of Qin Huai in the morning, and they were just waiting for the books to arrive and start printing immediately. Dazhong also had another mission, which was to ask Li Shizhen to help recommend a few meridian masseurs and acupuncturists. Women have many problems, which cannot be solved by simply applying skin care products. Su Luo's current idea is to break the entrepreneurial model of Qiangui, have gimmicks, secret recipes, and concepts, and create her own, non-replicable core competitiveness. She believes that as long as she sticks to it, the beauty salon business will definitely be booming in Nanjing!
Just a few words made everyone present excited. Bao Zixing finally found the direction of his life after a few months of idleness. He said in high spirits: "Boss, have you thought of a name for our beauty salon? It should be a name as loud and auspicious as Qiangui."
Su Luo smiled and pursed her lips. "The previous industry was called a money cabinet. Naturally, we hope that our Su Group will be like a silver cabinet that collects money, making only profits and not losses. Now for the beauty salon, I hope it will be full of gold, silver and wealth, and will be called Shiseido!"
Su Luo clenched his fist and vowed to make Su's Shiseido bigger and stronger, and one day he would sell its products outside the Ming Dynasty and all over the world. The goods are divided into three grades. The first-class high-quality goods are reserved for domestic compatriots, the second-class goods are given to European and American friends... Oh, there is no old America yet, and the third-class inferior goods are sold at a higher price to an island country around the Ming Dynasty, allowing heavy metals to harm their female faces. Finally, they hold fans and surround the inferior goods and shout "Su's Shiseido, full of!"
