DMS Chapter 82

“We can just sell your salt and your other spices, for that matter. Who would dare trouble a diamond rank adventurer magic caster? If anyone causes trouble, you can just send the stone golem to settle them!” Ambrose declared with his nostrils flaring, which made Olivia and Christopher smile.

“I can do that. I do have the power, but at the end of the day, I will not be the one dealing with troubles. You three will be. I know that you’ve experienced how nasty some people can be. Their revenge may not be straightforward. They can do a lot of things that may damage the family in other ways, so instead of doing something that may cause headaches and heartaches, let’s just choose a product that no other merchants are selling and something that can’t be easily copied.”

Olivia and her two brothers, Christopher and Ambrose, became quiet. Because of their family history, Flinx thought that they might truly have experienced something along the lines of encountering sly attacks like an attack on reputation, for example.

Flinx saw that Olivia visibly shook herself to shrug off whatever she was thinking about and asked him a question.

“So, do you have any suggestion which items we can sell?”

“Let me think for a few seconds,” Flinx replied.

Flinx opened his system shopping site and browsed items that Olivia could sell. He stumbled into a listing that sells soaps in bulk. What caught his eye was that a soap dealer was selling an unbranded, regular-sized, flower-scented soap bars for 10 cents apiece as long as one purchased a minimum of 1000 bars. He went to the buyers’ reviews, and most of them praised the soaps, saying that even though they were unbranded, the lather was thick and the smell was nice. One disadvantage that some of the buyers wrote was actually an advantage for Flinx if he chose to buy the soaps. Each one of the soaps was wrapped in a generic brown paper, and the only thing on that wrapping was a print of flowers in red ink.

He checked some more soap listings to compare the prices, and the cheapest branded soap that Flinx could find was priced at a dollar per bar. He returned to the seller who was selling the soap in bulk, and they also sell a smaller number of soap, even individual bars, but those cost 80 cents. Flinx purchased one to test it out.

“Can you test this out and tell me what you think?” Flinx handed the soap to Olivia.

“What is this? Some sort of food?” Olivia asked while examining the bar of soap wrapped in brown paper.

When Flinx told Olivia that it was soap, she quickly unwrapped it, went to the sink, and started washing her hands. They saw that foam quickly formed, and the smell of flowers filled the place.

“Oh my! It smells so good! My hands feel so soft,” Olivia said after she dried her hands with a towel.

“So how much do you think that soap could sell for?” Flinx asked.

“We can sell it for 1 gold coin, but only the well-off can afford it.”

“So can you sell it even if it costs 1 gold coin?”

Selling the soap for 1 gold coin would earn the family 1000 gold coins, and since the 1000 soap would only cost him 1 low-level mana stone, which was equivalent to 100 gold coins, it meant that the business would be lucrative.

Still, 1 gold coin was a lot. A normal family could eat for a few days for 1 gold coin.

“Of course. Everyone knows that women will not hesitate to spend a lot of coins for something like this,” Olivia said while eyeing the soap that was on the counter.

“Don’t Ilioven have such soaps?” Flinx asked.

“We do have those soaps, and when our family was still well off, I bought them, but the least priced among them still cost me several gold coins. They were still harsh to the skin, though, compared to this soap.

“So, you’re saying that you can sell this soap for much more?”

“I can. I can even sell it for as high as five gold coins, but only the very rich can afford such a price, and in the long term, it wouldn’t earn you much because of how limited your pool of customers will be. I think 1 gold coin is perfect since it’s an amount that even those who were just slightly well-off can afford,” Olivia said.

She happily wrapped the soap in its paper packaging after drying it with a towel and stored it in her purse after Flinx told her that she could have it.

“If that’s the case, I think the best shop that we can open is the one that would cater to rich women’s desire like that bar of soap and other luxurious but consumable items. Please think of more items we can sell,” Flinx told Olivia while he returned to browsing his system shopping site.

While looking at different item listings centered on women’s products. Flinx stumbled into scented candles. He thought of women taking baths using his soap while scented candles surrounded them.

“What about scented candles?” Flinx suddenly said, interrupting Olivia and her brothers’ musing on which items they could add to the soap.

When Olivia asked what scented candles were, Flinx explained to her the concept of scented candles and how they were usually used by people, specifically women. Like they used it while taking baths, or just simply meditating or relaxing in their room, surrounded by their chosen smell floating out of the candles. Flinx then purchased a lavender-scented candle and gave the sample to Olivia. The scented candle was inside a tiny, cheap glass. She immediately lit it up using a match, and soon, the room was filled with lavender scents.

“This is lovely! I feel myself relaxing, and the glass it came with is pretty and can be reused,” Olivia said.

“How much do you think you can sell that for?”

“Just like the soap, wherein I didn’t consider how much they were made, the best price I think is to sell them for 3 gold coins.”

Flinx went back to his system shopping site and searched for the cheapest scented candles that he could find. He found one seller, selling them for 50 cents each as long as the buyer purchases the candles for a minimum of 100 pieces. The seller was selling five types of scented candles, which were lavender, rose, jasmine, lemon, and eucalyptus.

If he purchased 1000 pieces of the scented candles with a variety of different scents, it would cost Flinx 10 low-level mana stones, but since Olivia said that she could sell them for 3 gold coins each, that meant that it would be equivalent to earning 3000 gold coins, which was 30 low-level mana stones. That calculation made Flinx decide that the family shop would sell candles as well.

“That’s it. We will sell scented soaps and candles. We can name the shop, Violet’s Scented Soap and Candles,” Flinx told Violet.

“We will sell just soap and candles?” Ambrose asked.

“For now, yes. I want to keep the shop simple since I don’t want it to take a lot of your time. I planned that you three will open the shop from morning till afternoon, and while you're looking after the shop, Olivia will teach the kids what they need to learn, which should only take a few hours. Once the children are done with their lessons, you can allow them to play outside while you three keep on selling our items.”

“You’ll allow the children to roam around Ilioven?” Olivia asked.

“They had been roaming around the streets of Ilioven even before I arrived here. They are strong survivors, and I don’t want to suddenly cause them to lose that ability. They’re not noble brats that needed to be coddled. I might ask Violet not to join her brothers, though, because her situation is different. You can ask her to help you in the shop, and I know you will have tricks up your sleeve to make her want to do it.”