Fashion Mogul

[bdubbs]

I'm not sure if acquiring your competition will do the trick in this scenario. It's been so long since I've played without the subsidiary dlc but I know this scenario won't use it at all. So if you acquire all the competition's stock I'm not sure if it will give you the dominance as if its your own. Granted I think you can still force a merger, so you could just acquire them out right which would also complete the goal.

[colonel_truman]

I'm not sure if acquiring your competition will do the trick in this scenario. It's been so long since I've played without the subsidiary dlc but I know this scenario won't use it at all. So if you acquire all the competition's stock I'm not sure if it will give you the dominance as if its your own. Granted I think you can still force a merger, so you could just acquire them out right which would also complete the goal.

Ok, to give a bit more detail, first, the game started with loose financial conditions, so I immediately built a RE stronghold in Paris. From there I could watch the apparel competitor and its evolution.
I saw they had good sales, no competition, lots of R&D labs, not enough stores or factories, and a slow moving stock price, so I started buying them: with bank money and also by diluting my stock. Maybe their stock was moving slow because all the research costs.
The price started going up from 20$ because of my buying, but I didn´t care because I had plenty of assets to fund the purchase. I went steadily and stealthily through that part.
I observed their research, and calculated when their last tech breakthrough would be (1999), for both apparel&leather. At that time I had 50% of the company. The price was about 50-60$.
I decided to give manufacturing a try, so I purchased all their tech (they can´t refuse when you have a 50% ownership) instead of keep buying their stock.
There could have been strong hands asking for too much to grow the ownership to 75% (and then you have to include paying for the other 25%!). I think I considered that way easier than an outright merger... and cheaper, because...
The stock price went straight through the roof after that because of the one-time tech sale, so I sold my take and used all the money to set up factories and stores at once. Discount megastores first, then specialized stores.
I hired the best talents around in the HQ so I could have good manufacturing and sales levels in the firms really fast.
The competition was a bit slow in setting up proper "distribution channels", and as I had been observing them for four years I knew beforehand their behavior. By the time they were in a position to fight a proper war I had the dominance (maybe I couldnt have held to it for very long, but hey, mission accomplished!).

By the way, I´m waiting for Gorillatore´s re-make, and for you to do some gameplay too...

EDIT: really, the forum server should give us more time before logging one off !!

[bdubbs]

I was actually going to make a gameplay video, but I haven't been able to get the capture software to work so maybe I'll do some kind of game play write up tonight.

[Gorillatore]

To Galactic Product Stakeholders,

GP has been successful in achieving all objectives. Below is a summary of our learnings from our 1st try (not a success) and our 2nd try, in which we were victorious in a competitive and sustainable way.

Learnings 1st try

Before continuing operations we've decided to briefly analyze our current and our competitors standing in order to build a new aggressive strategy. Our last efforts resulted in a loss. We were unable to achieve market domination in both apparel and leather. As the years went, our brand didn't increase as favourably as we needed. This didn't give us enough advantage over our competitors, so we had to turn to more aggressive pricing. By the end of the decade, our negative progress in brand and our low margins had become unsustainable.

GP will focus on creating the following Repeatable Flywheel:

1) Start by selling other people's product immediately to garner profits and gain market share
2) Saturate market share within 1 city in 1 product category (with Range Brand) by spreading many retail shops across town to capture higher customer index
3) With good recurring revenue, move down the value chain and start manufacturing 1 product. Advertise heavily to create brand awareness and loyalty as fast as possible to capture more market share and profits.
4) With a cash war chest and high brand in one product category, create factories for the 2nd product within that category and repeat process.
5) Move into the next city.
6) Having captured dominance within one product category, buy tech or build R&D before moving into next product category.

NOTES:
1) Use debt as it comes to push growth forward fast.
2) When the price war begins, the key is to have more cash than the other competitors
3) Focus our manufacturing centers in one city, then when I go down the value chain I can integrate without shipping costs
4) Hire a great management to improve qualities for current needs. But if they are too shy to lower prices to gain market share, take control.
5) Keep R&D moving forward. Quality is key to competitive advantage.

----------------------

GP's 2nd try summary

We've completed the 1st subgoal in only 1 year in 2 months. Our strategy has been to create an initial income generator with low investment. Then using that safe capital margin to producing 1 product, quickly increasing quality through research and then aggressively pricing it along with heavily advertising it within the biggest city available.

We have achieved full domination for 1 product within 1 market very quickly. This has provided us with fast capital growth which we used to move into the 2nd product category. Once our 2nd target product has enough quality through research, we'll build a new factory and new retail to start selling. Because we've operated under a Range Brand, the initial advertising investment has directly translated into our new product line and jointly with a high quality, our 2nd product has started selling from an extremely advantageous position of power. This competitive advantage allowed us to dominate the 2nd product and allow
us to repeat the process with the 3rd and 4th product.

Once we achieved complete domination for all 4 Apparel products in 1 city. We had generated such a big pile of cash that repeating the same process in the other cities was a question of few years. The money generated was used mostly to re-advertise our products to new markets where our competitors had a strong brand positioning and erode their advantage through product quality and low prices.

A specially important aspect of fueling our growth has been the effective use of debt in order to gain leverage through speed to either avoid competition in the beginning by dominating a small circle of competence fast, or to enter a price war with maximum aggressivity fueled by an gigantic war chest.

-----

Further notes:
- We tried to buy out other companies and even reached a 75% share, but we didn't know what to do with this advantage once we had it. Maybe somebody can advise? Is it just the capacity to buy the Technology?

Now we will created a new thread and begin a new mission.

[colonel_truman]

- We tried to buy out other companies and even reached a 75% share, but we didn't know what to do with this advantage once we had it. Maybe somebody can advise? Is it just the capacity to buy the Technology?

I think you can make a bid for the entire corporation once you have 75% ownership.

Besides: Have you tried hiring a CMO? I always do as they do their job better than I do... I mostly delegate all tasks to the AI so I can focus on the competitors.

Congrats!