50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 577 Belinda Changes Careers

On April 2, Belinda and her mother, Carolyn McKinney, arrived at LaGuardia Airport in Queens.

This is a small airport closest to downtown New York City, less than 5 kilometers from Manhattan. It has two runways and mainly handles domestic flights within the United States.

Due to the impact of wars in the Middle East, crude oil prices are soaring. As a result of cost transmission, the price of jet fuel has also increased, leading to higher operating costs for airlines.

Anyone who has flown knows that there is a fixed fee in the airfare called fuel surcharge, which is charged based on mileage regardless of the ticket price.

The increase or decrease of fuel surcharge is unrelated to ticket price; it only relates to the level of international oil prices. It is a regulator used by airlines to balance oil prices.

As a result, the rise in oil prices was directly reflected in airfares.

For domestic flights, besides business travel, the main driver of their load factor is tourism. And the price of airfares directly determines tourists' travel intentions and methods.

So when Sun Zhiwei arrived at LaGuardia Airport to pick up passengers, he found the airport desolate, with fewer than half the number of passengers waiting to board the plane as he had expected.

This is New York, and LaGuardia Airport is specifically designed for domestic feeder flights. This kind of economic downturn is quite alarming.

Sun Zhiwei looked at the situation at the airport, lost in thought. He had discovered an opportunity within it.

After picking up Belinda and her mother Caroline, he took them to an apartment building on West 79th Street in Manhattan.

This is a six-story rental apartment building, one of the properties he took over from Toby, who owned a jewelry store.

For years, he had entrusted the rental of this apartment to Huang Mingyu, the president of Cathay Bank's New York branch.

Some time ago, after deciding to have Belinda come and help, he asked Huang Mingyu to leave an apartment for him to use, which was the one he had reserved for Belinda to live in.

Belinda's previous salary at the appraisal shop was not enough to buy a house in New York, so if he wanted Belinda to come and help him, he had to provide her with a place to live.

Fortunately, he didn't lack housing, so he simply reserved an apartment for the mother and daughter.

He led the mother and daughter up to a room on the second floor of the apartment building, which had three rooms in total.

The place is fully furnished with all the necessary appliances, including a bread maker, so the mother and daughter could move in with just their bags. It's an ideal temporary place to stay.

The reason it's described as temporary residence is because he paid the manager of the Magnificent Jewelry store an exceptionally high salary.

With a base salary of $10 per year, plus sales commissions, Belinda will be able to buy her own house in just six months.

If she wants to buy a house with a loan, the waiting time will be even shorter. The manager of a well-known jewelry store is a valuable client for the bank.

Belinda, who had never worked in the jewelry industry before, was extremely nervous and unsure whether she could do a good job in her new role.

The reason she agreed was due to the trust Sun Zhiwei had placed in her over the years.

After learning about Belinda's ideas, Sun Zhiwei had a good talk with her, especially comparing clients in the two industries.

Although the appraisal shop is not large, it comes into contact with a wide variety of customers, many of whom are wealthy.

If we categorize customers by their demographics, there is a significant overlap between the customers of appraisal shops and those who make payments at jewelry stores.

After all, antiques, appraisals, and jewelry are not things that poor people can afford. "What you lack right now is just some professional knowledge of the jewelry industry, which is exactly what I value the least."

"That so-called professional knowledge is nothing more than the content of a few books, which anyone can memorize in a week or two. But knowing jewelry knowledge is not a necessary condition for becoming a store manager."

"Many people know about jewelry; you could say that every customer who walks into the store knows more than you, but none of them could become the store manager of a Magnificent Jewelry flagship store."

Sun Zhiwei was attracted to Belinda's management potential. In terms of job content, the work in an appraisal shop is much more complicated than that in a jewelry store.

Customers who come to jewelry stores all have the same need: to buy jewelry. However, customers at appraisal shops have a wide variety of needs.

Belinda could handle the demanding customers at the appraisal shop, so dealing with customers at the jewelry store was a much easier task.

"So you don't need to be nervous. Being a jewelry store manager is much easier than being a jewelry store manager. If sales drop, just run promotions. There's no shortage of customers here."

"Think about it, if you can sell antiques from your appraisal shop to those picky customers, what's wrong with getting them to buy diamonds, gold, and jewelry?"

Whether it was Sun Zhiwei's last sentence that boosted Belinda's confidence or not, she became more proactive about her new job starting the next day.

Considering his commuting needs, Sun Zhiwei left the blue Buick that brought them there for Belinda to use for commuting.

The following day, Belinda became the new store manager of the Magnificent Jewellery store in Tribeca.

She quickly learned new knowledge, became familiar with the employees and the business, and soon took control of the jewelry store.

Sun Zhiwei didn't pay much attention to her specific work. Belinda was very capable, and he had just figured out why Belinda suddenly had confidence.

Because deep down, Belinda always believed that the antiques she sold in the appraisal shop were all fakes.

She can sell counterfeit goods worth tens or hundreds of dollars for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars; she has every right to be proud.

The jewelry we sell now is genuine diamonds and gold, which is much easier than selling counterfeit goods. What's there to worry about not selling it?

Therefore, he began to have great confidence in this job.

After gaining initial control of the jewelry store, sales began to rise steadily, but she wasn't particularly happy; a smooth transition wasn't her goal.

Therefore, in the second month, she called Sun Zhiwei and made a request.

That is, to have Sun Zhiwei transfer all four of his Georgetown University classmates from the Washington appraisal shop to the jewelry store in New York.

Those four girls were trained by Belinda herself when she was the store manager, and she found them very easy to work with. She felt that those four girls were more suitable for the jewelry industry than the current sales staff in the jewelry store.

Sun Zhiwei mentally translated her words and came to the following understanding:
"There are so many diamonds, and they're so cheap, yet they're sold at such high prices. Isn't that practically the same as counterfeit goods?"

'Those four Georgetown University girls in Washington are particularly adept at tricking people into buying counterfeit goods.'

"Therefore, those four girls are well-suited to their majors and highly skilled; they can be of great use."

Alright, he had to listen to the excellent store manager, so he made a phone call to Washington.

(End of this chapter)