Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

So for example I sell bread in my factory for $8.00 and in the convenience store or wherever it is being sold I sell for $2.00 (whatever the total cost + about 10 cents in the factory), my factory has an obvious profit of about $10 million because quantity at the many retail stores at the lowest price, my convenience stores loses about $100-$300k depending on the product. I do this with cheap things like bread, canned soup. With tablet PC's I do not, I sell in factory for example at $250 and sell in retail store for $440 just as example. In my first example selling bread in the retail store at $8.00 and making $10million profit while I have loss of 100-300k per store it is in, is that overall a profitable way to run the company?
I also own the gold mind for gold rings, sell the gold for $1350 it does not correlate completely in the factory and still sells the ring for about $750. So the mine I make $2-5 million on it. I am playing with the Post-Release Beta 3.4.00 version. I do not use warehouses. Do you think from what I've described that is a good way to have a continuous profit in a company? I ask because I will have 200 million in the bank and then it jumps to 185 million then up to 225 million in a couple days. I cannot explain it. I do not use COO's they have not helped. I run the media firms without any assistance from anyone. I gather the more media firms that are in one city the less money you will make, is that accurate? I also sell small things like Electronic Components for the max (about $35) which does minimal impact to the final price of a notebook computer or whichever it is being used for but that factory that makes the electronic component makes about a 10-20 million profit. Then I sell the notebooks for about $50-$75 profit per notebook in the factor from cost to sale price, then in the retail store I try to keep them with the lowest price so they just sell quanitity.. Given all I've said and my strategy, is that a way to sustain a profitable business? I'm not sure if this matters but I only have CTO and CMO, don't want a COO. But please let me know on the other issues I mentioned.
Regards,
Greg

Whether you sell for a high price in your factory or your retail store doesn't matter, as long as you are only selling to your own stores (internal sales only). So for your example, whether the factory makes $10 million and the store loses 100k or the factory makes $5 million and the store makes $5 million, it doesn't really matter. What matters is how much you can clear your production for, how much people are willing to buy enough of your quantity for. Bread and livestock products like eggs are a low margin business. They can be profitable, but a lot of the costs are from transportation and so it depends.

Computers and other electronics are a gold mine. You should never sell electronic components to other companies because you could be using them yourself to build notebooks or tablet computers and make much more that way.

It sounds like you are having problems with setting the right price. Look at your overall attractiveness (or quality) bar. If it is higher than anyone else including local competition, then it will sell decently. If it is also higher product quality, then it will sell very well. If you have competition, then often the AI will set the overall attractiveness of its product slightly higher than yours in order to steal sales away from you. It can be a pain to constantly adjust prices, so that's why I use a COO with restrictions. I don't allow them to change the product I'm selling in stores or to find other supplies. They are there only to set prices and determine marketing. The AI is pretty good at marketing and controlling media companies which I'm terrible at so I have my COO run all media companies and hire a CMO to direct the advertising.

In short, you have to price your products so that they have the best overall attractiveness rating so that they will sell. That is the right price. It's easy to hire a COO and have them do it for you. Hope that answers your questions.