NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter-105 Back and Forth
[Ewan]
Business plateaued for the next few days then skyrocketed on the last day of the offer, as the spirit blobs crammed his shop, and plunged just the day after that. The end of an offer often saw that spike on the chart.
‘Buy One Get One Free’ was never the long-term plan; it was only for the boost his business needed at the start. Since the number of transactions stopped rising and the customer base flattened out, if he continued with the same model, his profit margin would never increase. And so, he stopped the first part, and moved on to the next. To retain his regular customers and some more, and to beat the competition once again, he decreased the price of the potions he deployed by five percent.
The low price of ingredients, his high success rate, and his <Transmute> spell guaranteed his profits even with much higher discounts, let alone five percent. But a higher discount rate might push some skeptical customers away, like the last offer had some questioning the freshness of the potion, so he went slow.
The customer base fluctuated for a few days, then stabilized at a much lower number than the days with the previous sale. Still, the share of the market for the concerned level of potions Brewed-Awakening occupied alone lingered in double digits.
His inevitable rise must’ve finally alarmed his rivals as real trouble came knocking on his door soon with much larger numbers than what he hired. They complained, they cursed, they accused; they challenged his authenticity as a Potioneer. One change was that they all had the certificate this time, and they acted better, their hollers oozed with hurt emotions and suffering. The trauma of buying ‘bad potions’ laced their words that did their best to tug at people’s sympathy. Some sniffed and cried, tears would’ve fallen if their blobs were capable of it.
They were a practiced hand at this, they looked professional, it must’ve cost a lot to hire them… Ewan had already taken preventive measures for this, so he didn’t react and let the play pan out on its own, albeit with a gaping stare at their theatrics.
“They finally learned from their mistakes. They bought the potions first this time,” one of the customers inside the shop said, laughing.
“Don’t they get tired? Just drop the price instead and you can fight back,” another customer said.
“It’s not so easy. Unless you have a high success rate, you won't gain any profit with discounted pricing.”
The ‘complaining’ customers went away after causing a ruckus for a few hours, but unlike what Ewan expected, they did affect his business—far more than his initial estimate. The reviews from his customers said it was the noise; the blaring complaints and the accusations irritated them while they lined up. Those who window shopped and teetered on the edge of buying or not also walked off because of the distraction. The fickleness of the customers always reigned supreme, after all they had other options.
Nevertheless, Ewan ran a shop; the customers were the most important aspect of it. So, regardless of whether they came to cause trouble or were genuine, he had no way of refusing their entry. He was powerless against the simplest form of harassment.
All he could do in return was retaliate. He chose the variation of his potions for it. Apart from Anima Potions, he added the basic no-named healing potions and antidotes to his shop—all with the same discounts. The recipes he had for the two were simple no-named formula, there was nothing special about them. But they still sold well, their number of transactions competing head-to-head with the Anima Potions—they enriched the total customer base once again and pushed his market share up.
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The status quo stagnated for the next few days and the clamor quietened. Yet the silence and the inaction sang their story aloud. Ewan’s prediction for this stage was an alliance against him. Since he bit off a chunk from the potion business owners, it was inevitable they would fight back. The best way to do it was to come together and drown him in numbers and discounts. As per norms, if they hit the lowest discount possible without losing profit, it could kill his business. As per norms, that was…
After the calm of the few days, the potion market went up in flames again when most shops gave out ten percent discounts on all potions at once. Ewan’s shares dwindled too, as did the other small shops’—some even shut down the next day.
Before Ewan could make his move though, the small shop owners who became the collateral damage in this back and forth huddled together and came to Brewed-Awakening, grumbling, and accusing him even before they stepped through the façade. They whined to Ewan about his behavior, they warned him of the consequences, and they urged him to stop fighting against the bigwigs.
‘Small shops have their own way of surviving between the crevices,’ they said. ‘Keep your head down and earn what you can. Great ambitions might just kill a man. Learn to compromise if you want to remain on the hub.’.
Ewan sent them off politely without arguing back, regardless of the underlying threats that painted the subtext of their ‘advice’. They had their own troubles; he didn’t want to agitate and antagonize them over a small matter, let alone wrestle with them in the mud to prove his point. After all, no matter what they said or advised, it didn’t affect him. His decision was his own, their opinions mattered not. He dared to dream big, so there was no way he would settle short.
The minor episode didn’t affect his plans as he made his move soon after the shop owners left. Before the previous flame went down, he rekindled it with his fifteen percent discount. The traffic churned in the market again. The battle of cutting prices pulled on the crowd, and they shifted to where the heat blazed the hottest.
……
Ewan lacked recipes. There were several in his family’s journal, but all were of higher stages, scattered through different steps, none he could brew for now. So, his shop lacked variety, even with the healing potions and the antidotes, and this was his biggest weakness.
The other Potioneers resolved this by brewing and selling potions on order—the customer prepared the ingredients and the recipe, the Potioneer only brewed the potion.
It was efficient, and it worked. Since there was no need to reinvent the wheel, Ewan followed the same and separated a section of the counter for custom orders, assigning a specialized worker on it. This part depended on reputation; no number of discounts could move the customers to trust an unknown Potioneer with their precious ingredients and recipe. So, the chances of any order coming in any soon was nigh zero, but he still had to try. There was no loss in failure and only gains in success.
