Chapter Nine Expanding the Business

E.D.Corporation's business increased by 300% when Bob took over production and sales. In the second year, Bob made another visit to Uptron. First to the town of Shorey, where he stayed at the same hotel, but without Irene this time.

He visited the factories who had given him trial orders earlier, and found that they approved of his ceramic coating products, finding it equal to, or better thran the materials they were previously purchasing from the Fortune 500 company, so they placed orders for their next months requirements, totalling two hundred thousand dollars with E.D.Corporation.

Bob was in a very good mood on the train journey to Dolin. Since Irene was not with him, he decided to stay in a three star hotel instead of the luxury hotel he had stayed in with her. Although only rated three stars, it was a large hotel, with over a hundred rooms, a twentyfour hour coffee shop and two speciality restaurants, but it lacked a swmming pool. All in all, it was quite comfortable, and Bob decided to invite his potential customers to dinner at their Chinese restaurant, which was reputed to be one of the best in town.

Five businessmen met with Bob at the Hotel. After some small talk and a good dinner, they got down to business. All of them were satisfied with the quality of the coating samples provided by ED Corporation, but two of the five opted to stay with their Internationally renowned suppliers, while the other three decided to go with ED Corporation, because the quality was good, and they felt they could trust Bob. Even with only three of the five customers buying his products, this was a very substantial gain over the previous years sales, so Bob was not too unhappy about loosing out two customers.

There was another small town in Uptron, with a factory which had bought ED Corporations products in previous years, so Bob decided to pay them a visit the next day. He booked an early morning train to Ailburg the next morning, and a train back to Dolin the same evening.

At ten the next morning, Bob found himself at Ailburg Station. This was a small town with very few taxis, but he eventually, found one that was willing to stay with him for eight hours, though he wanted an exhorbitant sum for it! They finally settled on three hundred dollars.

Bob gave him the address of the factory, but the taxi driver had no idea where it was, so Bob phoned the Factory manager, who explained the directions to the taxi driver. It seened the factoy was at a cul de sac, not frquently travelled.

Bob talked to the factory manager, who then showed him round the factory, explaining their problems and requirements. Since the Factory Manager was also the factoy's owner, he placed an order of 50 thousand dollars with Bob.

Bob asked him where would be good place for lunch, but the owner insisted that he take lunch with him and his family. Bob enjoyed the homely lunch with the factory managers family. The wife was very shy and said very little, but their two children, a boy and a girl were very boisterous, and full of questions, mostly about Koltron, as they had never been outside Ailberg!

After lunch, Bob said his goodbyes to the family, and got into his taxi. He had a few hours to spare, but Ailberg was a very small town, with no sites worth mentioning. This was, however, a University town, so Bob decided to visit the campus. However, compared to Bob's Universty in the United States, it was not much to look at, so he went back to the station to wait for his train to arrive. The train reached Dolin late in the evening, so Bob had a quick dinner at the Coffee Shop, and went straight to bed, as he had an early morning flight the next day.

Irene and Jeeves were waiting for him at Koltron City Airport, with the family's Mercedes Benz. On the drive back home, Irene talked about her problems at home. She felt that her mother in law and grandmother in law did not like her. Bob felt she was probably right about her grandmother in law, who was a very consevative old lady, who would be scandalised by the fact that Irene went alone with Jeeves, to the Koltron University, to prepare for her masters degree in biochemistry. To take her mind off her problems, and to celebrate the half a billion in orders, Bob had just gathered for ED Corporation, he promised to take her on a holiday to Darjeeling in India.