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[LoSboccacc]

sure thing! with enough marketing you can sell at any price anything

and even with a minimal store, with no marketing, you can still sel one or two lemons at day for 100$ each

it's because the demand curve is implemented 'by the book' and ignores that as the price rise, the market size decreases to zero

[dei]

I can sell imported beef sausage from Germany at a farmer's market. I can sell imported beef sausage from Germany at a farmer's market. Shouldn't this piss off some people who go to a farmer's market and expect that everything they buy from there is grown and produced locally and thus when they buy it they are supporting their community and not some foreign interest?

...Surprisingly that is my only beef with this game. That and my cocoa powder sold out in one tick. I may be on to something.

[Sowelu]

I've basically stopped caring much about my store, as big as I've improved it to.  I sell things so fast on B2B that it's not even funny.  Yes, you can sell 4x as fast in your market by dropping your price 50%.  You can also sell almost instantly in B2B, almost any quantity of almost any good, by dropping your price 10%.

[Supercharazad]

I have 50 M² toystore as a side business (all run off B2B and imports).
The real money is in medium quality iron ore, for me.

[dei]

I've basically stopped caring much about my store, as big as I've improved it to.  I sell things so fast on B2B that it's not even funny.  Yes, you can sell 4x as fast in your market by dropping your price 50%.  You can also sell almost instantly in B2B, almost any quantity of almost any good, by dropping your price 10%.

So, what you're saying is that stores are generally useless when there is such a high demand for products and raw materials on the B2B market, and that people should drop their prices by around 10-50% to benefit from this? Does this include low-quality goods or is it just high quality goods?

Because if low-quality goods are included I probably could sell the q10 cocoa beans and q7 cocoa powder and make some money, especially since no one is selling cocoa powder.

[Paul]

I've been running an electronics company. Been rapidly expanding and selling on the b2b. Seems like everything I make sells out quick - cameras, monitors, gaming consoles, dvd players. Last few days I've been working on getting the stuff together and starting production of 30,000 monitors, which is apparently about 65% of the total demand (I assume that's daily demand?) for monitors. Will have them finished tomorrow. Should be able to get $20 million or so for them on b2b.

The lack of good integrated circuits and silicon on the market is slowing me down, but i'm expanding into silicon production and have begun producing my own. Still relying on the market for glass and tungsten powder, though. I might get into those two as well eventually.

I think the issue is electronics are time consuming to produce, so folks with electronics stores are relying a lot on the import market - im hoping to fill the role of the import market and sell comparable quality goods at lower prices - although it will be a while before I can keep up with the demand for all of the different electronics goods.

-edit- In a genius moment of exploiting others' epic stupidity, I made a fortune by buying up a bunch of JT Martin stock when it dipped down to $0.05 earlier (I assume from other people jumping ship and selling all their shares). I bought about $23M worth of it at an average of about 10 cents and made the price spike up to 20 cents, and other people apparently saw the dip and price rise and jumped on the bandwagon and bought it. It soon spiked up to 50 cents and I started selling it a few million shares at a time, with other people still buying it and the price still rising despite my constant selling dropping it a cent or two each time. I managed to sell it all at an average of around 50 cents, making 5 times what I initially invested. The weird thing is, it's still being bought and it's still rising in value - even though the company has absolutely no assets except for 1m in cash and a displayed net value of $0 (I was CEO for a few minutes, the database errors wiped out the 210m or so of loan and gave it 1m in cash, but it has no assets at all so the net value is a mere $1m - with 553 million shares on the market). Too bad you can't short sell in this game, I'd short sell a ton of it and buy it back when it inevitably crashes.

[LoSboccacc]

I'll drop this here:

http://www.7is7.com/otto/countdown.html?year=2012&month=19&date=04&hrs=7&ts=24&tz=local&min=0&sec=0&ryr=0&rmo=0&rwe=0&rda=1&rhr=0&rmi=0&rse=0&lang=en&show=dhms&mode=r&cdir=down&bgcolor=%23CCFFFF&fgcolor=%23000000&title=Countdown%20To

it's a countdown, the link at the bottom allow for parameterization. useful to time the production eta to a precise time (say, just before waking up)

[Paul]

I used my stock money to start Kemp Fried Comestibles. KFC.

Soon I shall sell fried chicken and other hot foods. Woo!

[Sowelu]

I've basically stopped caring much about my store, as big as I've improved it to.  I sell things so fast on B2B that it's not even funny.  Yes, you can sell 4x as fast in your market by dropping your price 50%.  You can also sell almost instantly in B2B, almost any quantity of almost any good, by dropping your price 10%.

So, what you're saying is that stores are generally useless when there is such a high demand for products and raw materials on the B2B market, and that people should drop their prices by around 10-50% to benefit from this? Does this include low-quality goods or is it just high quality goods?

Because if low-quality goods are included I probably could sell the q10 cocoa beans and q7 cocoa powder and make some money, especially since no one is selling cocoa powder.

See, here's the thing.  You know all the advice we give to newbies?  "Fill up EVERY slot in your store, even if you have to buy things at just a little under their sale price to do it"?  The result of this advice is that the world's newbies are like one big, huge, gigantic store, ready to hoover up all the things.  All together they can move a massive volume, way more than you can, so they are willing to accept not-very-low prices.  If there's something you can make that a newbie might sell (not airplanes), isn't on B2B, and it isn't importable, find a price that you think a newbie would buy it for.  Find a price that YOU would buy it for, if you were a newbie.  They'll take it off your hands.  The only thing you have to worry about is being undercut...that is very dangerous when there's nothing else of that item on the B2B market, because there is no comparison point and B2B prices are not always logical.  So I advise aiming low at first and working your way up with smallish quantities, until people start undercutting you.  They will eventually sell out, people will buy your junk, and then you can aim a little lower than the guy who stole your buyers...Eh.  Anyway, the market is all about volume, just make sure you always sell for lower than average store price, eyeball-adjusted for quality.  If you want to play the volume game, especially with low qual products, your target audience is newbies who will sell it on the spot instead of producing with it.

Smart players with lots of money to burn will go for high-qual ingredients that are early in the supply chain, so if your stuff is low qual, you can price for newbies all up and down the chain.  Also, q5 is not all that bad for a newbie; they won't be making pies with your pumpkins so they don't care so much.

Zero quality will certainly get you buyers, as long as you price it low.  (Newbies can sometimes overestimate the importance of quality, so Q0 looks awful to them.  They only have the import market to go off of.)  Higher quality is a great way to distinguish yourself; if someone else is selling Q0 for ten bucks, and you can sell Q10 for ten bucks, guess who gets the sales?  Prices can be really wild sometimes, too... for example, I sell my vanilla extract for like $95 (I think it goes for like $110 on the market?  Maybe I'm misremembering), and there's some guys who are selling higher-Q for like $140.  Their products are just sitting there, not moving.  Mine is always eaten up within 8 hours, no matter how much I sell...but then, I price it so that I think I can sell it sometime in 8 hours.  I could lower it to sell within five minutes if I wanted.  Raising it by very much more might never get me a sale, because someone could perpetually undercut me.  (Finding someone with an absurdly high price, and aiming a little bit under them, is also a good way to make people think you are cheaper than you are~)

But yeah.  Stores are good for stuff that you can't move regularly on the B2B market.  If you can't win a price war, put it in your store.  But like...if I put a million vanilla extract for half-price in my store, it would move pretty quick, but it's still a million units.  It would take weeks!  If I put a million units of vanilla extract for half-price on B2B, seriously everyone with a grocery store or an ice cream factory or whatever would dogpile it in a snap, and then they would each individually put it up for 90% of average price in their store, where it would sell over the course of a few days...because the collective newbie stores in the world can move a Really Big Volume.  They get their profit, and I get my money right this instant, plant a larger farm, rinse repeat.

[LoSboccacc]

I'd say that 0 quality is good for items you build and sell at retail: retail doesn't compete in the same way that b2b and you don't risk being undercut to 0: you always have some sales going on, even if you sell quite over than the world

if you push quality on a long chain, you have good margins and such on b2b, but: if you want to retail for even bigger margins, the store costs way more and it's quite harder to keep stocked; if anyone gets on the same quality but has bigger factories and such, it can undercut you forever

a mix seems the best strategy to me. cheapo stuff for the market, and now that people started undercutting my lemonade I had enough money to switch in half a day to build lemon-lime, all while researching cola (always keep a second option ready!)

[Funk]

you cant fail with a farmers market, and as thay make a good return rate you then have the money to go off and build the things that let you do other things.
 

[dei]

I've basically stopped caring much about my store, as big as I've improved it to.  I sell things so fast on B2B that it's not even funny.  Yes, you can sell 4x as fast in your market by dropping your price 50%.  You can also sell almost instantly in B2B, almost any quantity of almost any good, by dropping your price 10%.

So, what you're saying is that stores are generally useless when there is such a high demand for products and raw materials on the B2B market, and that people should drop their prices by around 10-50% to benefit from this? Does this include low-quality goods or is it just high quality goods?

Because if low-quality goods are included I probably could sell the q10 cocoa beans and q7 cocoa powder and make some money, especially since no one is selling cocoa powder.

See, here's the thing.  You know all the advice we give to newbies?  "Fill up EVERY slot in your store, even if you have to buy things at just a little under their sale price to do it"?  The result of this advice is that the world's newbies are like one big, huge, gigantic store, ready to hoover up all the things.  All together they can move a massive volume, way more than you can, so they are willing to accept not-very-low prices.  If there's something you can make that a newbie might sell (not airplanes), isn't on B2B, and it isn't importable, find a price that you think a newbie would buy it for.  Find a price that YOU would buy it for, if you were a newbie.  They'll take it off your hands.  The only thing you have to worry about is being undercut...that is very dangerous when there's nothing else of that item on the B2B market, because there is no comparison point and B2B prices are not always logical.  So I advise aiming low at first and working your way up with smallish quantities, until people start undercutting you.  They will eventually sell out, people will buy your junk, and then you can aim a little lower than the guy who stole your buyers...Eh.  Anyway, the market is all about volume, just make sure you always sell for lower than average store price, eyeball-adjusted for quality.  If you want to play the volume game, especially with low qual products, your target audience is newbies who will sell it on the spot instead of producing with it.

Smart players with lots of money to burn will go for high-qual ingredients that are early in the supply chain, so if your stuff is low qual, you can price for newbies all up and down the chain.  Also, q5 is not all that bad for a newbie; they won't be making pies with your pumpkins so they don't care so much.

Zero quality will certainly get you buyers, as long as you price it low.  (Newbies can sometimes overestimate the importance of quality, so Q0 looks awful to them.  They only have the import market to go off of.)  Higher quality is a great way to distinguish yourself; if someone else is selling Q0 for ten bucks, and you can sell Q10 for ten bucks, guess who gets the sales?  Prices can be really wild sometimes, too... for example, I sell my vanilla extract for like $95 (I think it goes for like $110 on the market?  Maybe I'm misremembering), and there's some guys who are selling higher-Q for like $140.  Their products are just sitting there, not moving.  Mine is always eaten up within 8 hours, no matter how much I sell...but then, I price it so that I think I can sell it sometime in 8 hours.  I could lower it to sell within five minutes if I wanted.  Raising it by very much more might never get me a sale, because someone could perpetually undercut me.  (Finding someone with an absurdly high price, and aiming a little bit under them, is also a good way to make people think you are cheaper than you are~)

But yeah.  Stores are good for stuff that you can't move regularly on the B2B market.  If you can't win a price war, put it in your store.  But like...if I put a million vanilla extract for half-price in my store, it would move pretty quick, but it's still a million units.  It would take weeks!  If I put a million units of vanilla extract for half-price on B2B, seriously everyone with a grocery store or an ice cream factory or whatever would dogpile it in a snap, and then they would each individually put it up for 90% of average price in their store, where it would sell over the course of a few days...because the collective newbie stores in the world can move a Really Big Volume.  They get their profit, and I get my money right this instant, plant a larger farm, rinse repeat.

Thank you very much for the advice. I'll put this advice to use after I rest for a while. I blacked out a little bit ago and somehow while in this fugue state managed to fuck up my account and my company royally, to the point where I will have to start all over again. That and what else I found in my browser has me very scared.

Never mind that though, I don't mean to go off-topic. I'll be fine.

[LoSboccacc]

everyone here is constantly exploring, as market change continually and messing up a line or choosing badly about what produce internally and what buy can really set you back a lot. check any company graph: you'll see what I mean when you see a huge valley on company value 

[Paul]

Stores can be very profitable as long as you can get all the goods though. I intend to make my own electronics store eventually, once I'm making enough of everything to have the entire store stocked with goods that I produced. You can generally sell stuff in a store for quite a bit more than you could get on b2b (except for the cases where the markets are ridiculous and idiots are paying more than the import price, but that's bound to change eventually).

[ndkid]

How does reset work? Does the new company get free money? Or, at the least, the $5M loan despite having no assets to start? That could influence the stupidity of the B2B market, if people can just reset and, in the process, get $5M of someone else's money to spend.