On the sofa, Ning Xi was skimming through the studio"s monthly accounts, looking solemn.

Three hundred thousand dollars of her capital had been depleted by half and the studio was still not profiting.

Gong Shangze felt he was to blame. "I"m sorry, Boss. I"m not good at marketing..."

Even though they had won a very prestigious award, the current market seemed to be entirely taken over by History. Plus, History was secretly blocking their orders. Ning Xi was obviously aware of this fact.

After all, a fas.h.i.+on studio was not only about designs; they could not miss out on the elements of development, design, production, and sales.

"Based on our studio"s current situation, even though there is a positive correlation between small self-operating boutique models and profit margins, the investment is too huge and the need for human resources was high too, so it was obviously not very suitable for us," pondered Ning Xi.

Gong Shangze nodded in agreement. "Yes, what is most suitable for us now is still the model of selling on commissions and the most important pre-requisite of this model is that our brand must have enough persuasion power and a good reputation!"

Or else, who would choose their Spirit Studio brand for commissioned distribution?

Before this, they had taken the key steps to prove their capability. Now, what they needed to do was to exhibit that capability to attract agents.

"So, now what we need the most is a prominent figure to advertise our brand...sigh, sadly, now I"m not very famous, or else we could save so much on advertising fees. Shangze, do you have a suitable candidate?" Ning Xi sighed.

For example, how did the clothes in ancient times trend? It was when a certain concubine or even the queen in the palace wore a certain material or style of apparel at a national country"s banquet and amazed everyone. It would then start to quickly pick up in popularity among the dignitaries all the way to the commoners...

This was called star power.

Gong Shangze hesitated to say a name: "Qin Shengyue."

"Qin Shengyue..." Ning Xi mumbled to herself. She knew who Gong Shangze was talking about. As one of Imperial"s most influential socialites, she had multiple roles as a model, a famous blogger, a publisher, and a fas.h.i.+on retailer. She had a column in country M"s most prestigious fas.h.i.+on magazine "FA" and she was a household name in the fas.h.i.+on industry. It would not be wrong to call her the indicator needle of fas.h.i.+on.

If they could get her to like their clothing and let her wear Spirit"s apparel for the upcoming fas.h.i.+on week...that effect would definitely be better than any celebrity advertising for them.

Most importantly, Spirit was a high-end brand, so their starting point definitely had to be cool. If the brand had taken off with smaller celebrities or even gone viral on the Internet, it would be hard to raise the ranking of the brand later on. This step was vital.

"What we can think of would naturally be something others can think of too. There will definitely be many people looking for her this time and I have tried to contact her previously, even personally going over to her office, but I couldn"t even meet her..." Gong Shangze said this looking helplessly at his boss.

"Don"t rush. You focus on your designing, I"ll come up with something. If we really can"t take this route with Qin Shengyue, then we"ll just think of something else."

After she left Spirit Studio, Ning Xi started her car and was prepared to make a trip to the company herself.

There were indeed many people waiting to meet Qin Shengyue. Ning Xi waited from evening till late at night, while everyone who waited around had slowly lost patience and left. At last, she was left alone but she still did not see Qin Shengyue.

Initially, she had refused to not give up and wanted to try her luck but rationally, not meeting her was within expectations, so Ning Xi was prepared to go home.

At the car park, after she got into her car, she was just prepared to start her engine when she had an unexpected harvest...