Managing your Shoppe
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Shoppes and stalls buy and sell commodities and process them into refined commodities, like rum and cannon balls, or tangible goods, like clothing, swords and vessels. Different shoppes produce different products and, as a result, will buy and sell different commodities to support their production.
The main interface for a shoppe can be found on the "Manage the Shoppe" menu (which is only visible to the manager of the shoppe). This menu contains the following items:
Manage Inventory
A shoppe has an on hand inventory of commodities as well as a purse that contains the money used for all financial transactions involving the shoppe. This is much like a vessel's hold and can be viewed by selecting this menu item.
Trade Commodities
Exactly like the trading interface on a vessel, this allows a shoppe owner to buy and sell commodities directly from other shoppes on the island. Generally, however, a shoppe owner will not buy commodities directly, but will instead post buy offers for traders. Unless the commodity is produced on the island, the shoppeowner will usually get a better price on goods from traders than from buying it directly from other shoppes. This is done with the Manage Prices interface.
This is also where the shoppeowner can receive delivery of orders placed at supply shoppes on the island. For example, the tailor might order fine red cloth from a local weaver and receive it through this interface when it becomes available for delivery.
Manage Prices
This interface provides the means by which a shoppe owner sets the prices at which commodities are bought and sold with traders putting into the local port. This table displays all of the commodities that are used to make products at this particular shoppe and allows the manager to configure a set of parameters for each commoditiy.
The columns of this table are as follows:
- On hand: This simply displays the quantity of this commodity that is currently on hand at the shoppe. It is not an editable field.
- Buy price: This indicates the price at which this shoppe will buy this commodity from traders. The shoppe will allow traders to sell to it units of this commodity at this price until the "On hand" quantity is at or above the "Max stock" quantity.
- Sell price: This indicates the price at which this shoppe will sell this commodity to traders. The shoppe will allow traders to buy from it units fo this commodity at the this price until the "On hand" quantity is at or below the "Min stock" quantity.
- "Cost": This is the amount charged for each unit of this commodity consumed when someone places an order at this shoppe. See the section on Margins and pricing for a more detailed explanation of "Cost".
- Min stock: This limits the amount of this commodity that will be sold to traders. A shoppe owner that manufactures product with wood, for example, will want to ensure that they have some wood on hand for manufacturing products and can set their minimum stock in these commodities to prevent some enterprising trader from coming into port and buying up all of their raw materials.
- Max stock: This limits the amount of this commodity that will be purchased from traders. A shoppe owner will only want to have enough raw materials on hand to handle the demand for their products as stockpiling commodities is not a profitable business (in the future, they will decay if they are not used to make a product after some length of time).
Note that the tick-box by each item means 'on or off', i.e. whether buying, manufacturing with, or selling the commodity is enabled. Also note that it is possible to buy commodities for zero, but not possible to sell them for zero.
Through this price management interface, shoppe owners can ensure that they are buying raw materials at competitive prices and charging competitive rates for products.
Configure Products
The "Products" tab is an interface to allow the shopkeeper to customise the products offered in their shop. Each type of product can be enabled or disabled, and a price adjustment made. The price adjustment will usually add cost to a particular product, but negative numbers may be used to subsidise goods.
Transferring Commodities
As on-board a vessel, it is possible through this interface to transfer commodities to another shop, a ship, direct to a player's location, or to destroy them.
Manage labor
This is documented in the Managing your labor force section.
Shoppe Records
The transaction history of the shoppe is available for handy reference. This is particularly useful for configuring the above rates, and for shoppes with multiple managers.
Keeping Inventory on Hand
A shoppe owner will often want to order products from her own shoppe, receive them into the shoppe's inventory and then set sell prices on said product ? perhaps slightly higher than the cost of ordering the product directly ? so that players who need immediate supplies for say, rum or cannon balls or an emergency supply of white cloth, can buy the products directly.
Escrow
Note that when products are ordered at yer shoppe the money does not immediately get paid into the coffers. Instead it is held in escrow to allow the buyer to cancel the purchase before the item is first worked on. Workers are paid out of the funds held in escrow. Once the shop has completed the item then the money will appear in yer coffers, minus the labour wages. For orders placed by shoppe managers or owners, payment for labour is taken directly from the shoppe coffers as they only pay the sales tax for items purchased at their shoppe.
Sales Tax
The Island imposes a tax of 10% on all orders placed in the shoppe, in order to fund the Navy. Curse those taxes!
Shoppe Tax
Every shoppe has a weekly tax due, displayed to Managers in the Shoppe panel. This amount is deducted each week from the coffers of the shop. If the tax is not paid then the shop is temporarily shuttered and the lights go out. Simply pay the correct tax into the coffers and after an hour or so your shop will be restored to operation.
When a shoppe does not pay the tax, all unstarted orders will be cancelled immediately. Any funds in the escrow for those orders will be returned to the persons who placed the orders. Any commodities set aside for the orders will be returned to the shoppe, unless the hold does not have enough room. In that case, any excess commodities will be destroyed.
Beware! Shops that do not pay taxes for more than two weeks may be subject to closure, repossession by the Governor, or even knocked down to make way for new buildings!
The Shoppe News
Managers can leave a notice in the Shoppe Panel for customers. Keep the first line short, and then more text can be added in subsequent paragraphs.