Retail Stores

Cost to Operate: Varies

Expansion: Increases storage space and selling speed.

Conversion: Yes

Other Factors: Store Reputation: earned by selling variety. Increases sales. Training: pay for period boost. Increases sales directly and can boost Reputation.

• Retail Stores are the only building that can sell products to the public. (As opposed to selling to other companies on the Market, for example.) For that reason they are recommended as the starting point for most businesses.
• Products must be in your warehouse before you can retail them. When the sale starts, the inventory will be taken from the warehouse and moved to the store.

Operation

• Simunomics takes a flexible, strategy-driven approach to retail sales. When putting products up for sale there are three interchangeable factors:
  • Price
  • Quantity
  • Time
• Normal operation is to choose a price and tell the store what quantity to stock from the warehouse. Your store managers will determine how much time will be needed to sell all of them. You can come back when the sale is done, collect the money and give the next instruction.
• However, to approach it differently, you can also set a time and price and the manager will tell you how many to stock. Or use a time and quantity to determine the right price.

Example: Suppose that you want to sell 100 units of Fruit, and you would like to charge the customers β50 each. When you set these numbers at your store, the system calculates that it will take 3 hours to get enough customers to sell them all..

You change your mind, and decide you'd rather sell in 2 hours instead of 3. To sell 100 units in 2 hours, the game calculates that you must lower your price to β41.

Lastly, you decide that you don't really need to sell them all, and would rather stick with that β50 price. So you put in 2 hours and β50 each, and are told that you will sell 65 units in that time.

• Because time, quantity, and price are all interchangeable, anything that makes your store more efficient can be interpreted as "higher price" or "less time" or "greater quantity". All are the same effect, earning you more money per day.
  • For companies below level 10 the terms locked in will remain for the entire sale. Starting at level 10 the sales will update daily according to new market conditions.
• Every store has 3 slots for selling up to 3 different products simultaneously.
• A retail store is built to cover one or more categories of goods.
Example:
• Snack Bars can only sell prepared food, but it is very efficient at doing so.
• A Grocery Store sells prepared food and raw groceries too, but will require slightly lower prices (or longer time, etc).
• A Megastore can sell any product but will be the least effective.

Capacity

• All retail stores have a limit to how much product they can store for sale. Expanding increases that but some products may still be limited.
• Certain types of land may increase or restrict the capacity of stores built on them.

  Fees

• Employees are paid for the time worked, at a rate based on the type and size of your store.
• When you start a sale you'll know how long it will take (either because you set the time or because it was calculated off price and quantity).
• In order to run the sale you must pay employees for the time they'll be working. For this reason, always keep some cash on hand.

Product Improvements

• Anything that makes products more desirable to the public will improve their sales.
• Quality Appeal is an indication of how much better a product is than the baseline. Customers will pay more for higher quality
• The basic price improvement for quality appeal is 3.20% for each point up to qa60, then 0.80% for each point after that.
• Additionally, products above the market average are worth an extra bonus. The formula is:
  
  2.125 x Difference - 0.125 x Difference²
  which can be estimated by this table:



How much you beat the average by	% more retail customers will pay
1 point	2.00%
2 points	3.75%
3 points	5.25%
4 points	6.50%
5 points	7.50%
6 points	8.25%
7 points	8.75%
8 points	9.00%
9 points or more	still 9.00%



Example: If the average quality appeal of Fruit is qa6, and your product is qa12, it will be worth 46.65% more than qa0 would be. (38.40% for your quality improvements plus 8.25% for beating the average.)
• Brand is the other way to offer more appealing products. The two attributes, Awareness and Reputation, each range from 0-500 and yield a result of approximately 1% per 100 points.

Local Promotions

• A store can't get customers if people aren't aware of it. Running a local promotion campaign (e.g. sending out flyers) gets people interested in your store, making them more likely to visit.
• To get enough customers, larger stores need to serve a bigger area. So the prices for a promotional campaign are based on the size of your building (as well as the land type and the local economy's Labor adjustment).
• Over time that promotion wears off, resulting in a drop of 2% per day.
• As the promotion level drops, the store gets less efficient at selling. At first it is only a small effect, but as training get lower the efficiency penalty gets bigger. The formula is:
  
  SquareRoot(1-(Training/100 - 1)²) * 20 + .2 x Training + 60
  which can be estimated by this table:

Promotion	Efficiency
90%	97.9%
80%	95.6%
70%	93.1%
60%	90.3%
50%	87%
40%	84%
30%	80%
20%	76%
10%	71%
0%	60%

• As a bonus, at the end of any day in which your Promotion Level is greater than 90% you will get +1 to your Store Reputation.

Store Reputation

• Once your store has been opened, the public will start to form an impression. Store Reputation rewards rewards you for selling variety..
• Every night, Store Reputation gets +1 for each different brand and +1 for each different product. But it also fades 4 points per per day.

Example: You have 3 Jewelery Stores:

Store 1 only sells Gold Rings of the brand "Allmart Jewelery" in all three slots. This is a total of 1 product and 1 brand. So each night (1 + 1 - 4 = -2) two points will be subtracted from its Store Reputation.

Store 2 sells Gold Rings of the brand "Allmart Jewelery" in the first slot. Then they sell Digital Watches of the brand "Allmart Jewelery" in the second slot. And in the third slot, they sell Silver Necklaces brand "Allmart Jewelery." This is a total of 3 products and 1 brand. So each night (3 + 1 - 4 = 0) zero points will be added or subtracted to the Store Reputation.

Store 3 sells Gold Rings of the brand "Allmart Jewelery" in the first slot. Then they sell Digital Watches of their own brand (lets call it "Players Watches"). And in the third slot, they sell Silver Necklaces made by another player's company (we'll call it "Friends Silver"). This is a total of 3 different products, and 3 different brands. So each night (3 + 3 - 4 = 2) two points will be added to its Store Reputation.

• To get the best Store Reputation, try to always sell 3 different products and 3 different brands. Customers will appreciate that your store has variety, and will come back more often. (Which means that products sell faster, or for a higher price.)
• It is possible to have 3 different brands all made by you, if you like. Just use the Individual Brand strategy and use three different products. They will naturally have 3 different brands, so you will always gain 2 points. Of course this isn't the only way, you can also buy products from other companies, which will of course have different brands than your own.
• Store Reputation is neither increased nor decreased when expanding. However, if the store sits empty, it will lose points. So always keep your stores selling or expanding. The exception is a well-trained staff (training above 90%) will improve your store's reputation 1 point per day, and this happens regardless of expansion.
• The minimum Reputation is 0 and maximum is 500. Each 100 points is worth roughly 1% in net selling price.
• Store Reputation is a bonus. If you only want to sell one product at all of your stores, you can do that. You just won't gain any Store Rep bonus. But if the one product is profitable enough, it might be worthwhile.