Ferdinand was caught by Princess Clementine, given a harsh lecture, and forced to attend several boring aristocratic banquets before she finally let him off for the time being.
It wasn’t without gain; at least he obtained a talent from his mother.
Franz Kafka—doesn’t the name sound familiar?
It’s the same name as an Austrian Jewish novelist.
But they aren’t the same person.
The Franz Kafka here is a Hungarian in his forties who has been managing Princess Clementine’s properties with great performance.
Ferdinand had an in-depth conversation with him, preliminarily recognized his abilities, and then persistently pestered Princess Clementine to borrow him.
He planned to let him give it a try; if he performed well, then the head of the department store supermarket would be found.
In the 19th century, the market economy wasn’t that developed.
Family businesses were the mainstream, and talent mobility wasn’t very high.
High-level talent could only be found by picking up overlooked gems.
In 1881, there were only over 13,000 university students in Austria.
At first glance, it seemed like a lot, but a closer calculation revealed that only two to three thousand students graduated successfully each year.
Distributed across various majors, there were only a paltry eighty to a hundred people specifically in management.
Excluding those who were already nobles or businessmen themselves, there were very few people who truly needed to find a job.
University students at that time were truly the “chosen ones.” Government departments and major financial groups were all scrambling for people; basically, their destinations were determined before they even graduated.
Ferdinand had to temporarily extinguish the idea of going to schools to recruit and honestly train them himself.
The first thing Franz Kafka did for Ferdinand was to recruit personnel, but things did not go smoothly.
On this day, Franz ran over and gave Ferdinand an aristocratic salute, “Respected His Royal Highness Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony, Franz Kafka sends his greetings.”
“Mhm, you can choose to call me Your Highness or Duke.
The full title is really too inconvenient.
Franz, is there something you’ve come to see me about today?” Ferdinand said casually.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness, I cannot complete the task you assigned on schedule,” Franz Kafka said with some difficulty.
“What?
It’s just recruiting over a thousand people, how can you not complete it?” Ferdinand asked, somewhat puzzled.
His evaluation of Franz had already dropped a few points.
He had given him half a month to recruit, and now less than half the time had passed, yet he was already coming to talk about difficulties instead of figuring out how to solve them!
“Your Highness, according to your requirements, I’m afraid it’s impossible.
So far, only three hundred and eighty-two people have been recruited.
Moreover, since yesterday morning, there have been very few applicants.
I’m afraid there aren’t that many highly educated talents still looking for work in the Vienna area!” Franz Kafka explained.
Pausing for a moment, Franz suggested to Oliver: “Your Highness, for the remainder, do you think we could lower the standards?
This would also allow us to cut some salaries, save on expenses, and won’t affect the supermarket’s operations!”
Ferdinand’s minimum requirement for recruitment was a secondary school education.
Because the salary offered was generous, the first recruitment of a hundred people was completed quickly, making him overlook the fact that in this era, secondary school graduates were actually considered highly educated talents.
At this time, graduating from secondary school meant one could easily find a good job.
Its value was even higher than that of graduates from 985 or 211 universities in later generations.
After hearing Franz’s reasoning, Ferdinand’s anger dissipated.
This was caused by his own negligence.
He secretly reminded himself to remember this lesson and not bring concepts from the future into this era.
Making a joke of oneself was a minor issue; if things went wrong, he might even capsize in a ditch.
Correcting mistakes when they are known was one of Ferdinand’s virtues.
Since Franz’s suggestion made sense, there was naturally no reason to refuse.
“Mr.
Franz, your suggestion is very good.
I’ll leave the rest to you.
Go ahead and act boldly according to your ideas!” Ferdinand’s tone was much more polite this time.
The management talent for the supermarket was secured, but the financial personnel were still very troublesome.
In this era, there were no computers, and accounting relied entirely on manual labor.
The workload was heavy, and every supermarket had to be equipped with reliable financial staff.
For a while, it was difficult for Ferdinand to find so many people.
For the previous five supermarkets, the accountants were all given temporary on-the-job training.
They could barely keep accounts and had nothing to do with professionalism.
Thinking about it was quite distressing.
It seemed that expanding Volvo across the globe still had a long way to go!
However, thinking about the supermarket’s profits, Ferdinand suddenly perked up again.
The first Volvo supermarket broke even in its first month of operation.
The other four had only been open for a short time, but their returns were also good.
“As expected, the easiest business to make money in is a monopoly!” Ferdinand thought to himself.
But he also knew that these good days would probably last six months at most.
Once others joined in, profits would definitely drop.
He continued to pay attention for another two months or so.
Supermarket operations had become standardized, and Oliver had already handed over daily management work to Franz.
Of course, he didn’t forget to promote two people from the earliest employees to serve as assistants for Franz.
The supermarkets would definitely continue to expand, so how could he not reserve talent in advance!
The supermarket business was temporarily settled, but Ferdinand did not idle.
The supermarket profits were good, but compared to what he wanted to do in the future, it was still a drop in the bucket.
Thinking of Bulgaria, Ferdinand felt he still wasn’t working hard enough!
After all, he was a transmigrator who had seen the big picture.
How could he be satisfied with a mere income of over ten thousand pounds a month!
Of course, if it were before he transmigrated, he would have been extremely satisfied with an income of over ten thousand pounds a month.
Everything was different now.
He was, after all, a prince and a duke, the future King of Bulgaria.
How could his vision be so narrow!
Ferdinand was very envious of those transmigrator predecessors who could create tens of millions or even hundreds of millions in assets with some random inventions, while it was his turn and he could only do some small business.
Although the House of Koháry also had tens of millions of pounds in assets, those were all nominal.
A large area of territory and castles simply couldn’t be liquidated unless he intended to stop mingling in aristocratic circles.
In fact, with various investments plus land income, the House of Koháry’s annual income was only over a million pounds.
After deducting expenses, they could probably save about two to three hundred thousand pounds a year, which was considered top-tier in the Austria-Hungary Empire.
Ferdinand couldn’t do inventions anymore.
He knew about things like adding an eraser to a pencil, but Hymen had already registered the patent in 1867, so it had nothing to do with him.
Silk stockings were even more of a joke.
Given the chemical engineering level of the time, even if they could be produced, the price would probably not be much lower than gold, and whether they could be worn was another matter!
Since that path was blocked, Ferdinand decided to continue focusing on the basic necessities of life, such as a grain processing plant.
Although the profit wasn’t high, even a mosquito’s leg is meat!
Grain was produced on his own land.
After processing, it could be sold directly in the supermarkets, forming a small industrial chain and increasing risk resistance.