Don't disturb the sorcerer's scientific research

Chapter 162 Jia Xiu's Money-Making Plan

Juan, a mage who is not particularly skilled in magic but is quite adept in other areas, is applying ice to his tongue, which has been numb from being bound by mage armor.

She cast a resentful glance at Jia Xiu, the "culprit" who caused all of this.

"I can't feel my tongue anymore."

"Um, how about I heal you?"

Jia Xiu said.

I haven't used this Silence spell for a while, so I'm a bit rusty. The Mage Armor suddenly became a bit too strong.

"No, please don't," Juan immediately refused, afraid that if he hesitated even a moment, the healing spell would be added. "I know what kind of weird healing you can do."

"The premise that prejudice can be 'cured' is that I can actually cure it normally."

Juan continued to shake his head vigorously.

"Then you can continue applying ice yourself."

After a long pause, Juan asked, looking both aggrieved and puzzled.

Why are you silent towards me?

Faced with this question, Jia Xiu was also puzzled. Did he really need to ask why?

"You're going to introduce the adult uses of the mage armor under the watchful eyes of so many reporters! If you really do it, we'll both become famous."

After calming down, Juan thought about it carefully and realized it seemed to be true.

Introducing their mage armor "toys" in public is somewhat inappropriate.

There's a certain "aesthetic" to wearing underwear on the outside while walking down the street.

"I was in a real rush and had no other choice but to do this, hoping to raise awareness and at least sell the first batch I made."

Judging from what he said, the first batch produced so far didn't seem to be selling very well.

This first batch of goods was negotiated with several alchemy workshops over a long period of time before it was finally agreed upon.

Not only was the process complicated, but the number of participants was also considerable.

Unfortunately, reliable alchemy workshops are all large and established, and they simply don't accept orders that are too small. Workshops that do small orders don't seem very legitimate.

After weighing the pros and cons, Juan still chose to cooperate with the well-regarded large workshop, even at the cost of higher costs.

This is a crucial business, and if anything goes wrong with security, it's hard to avoid being targeted by victims seeking revenge.

Thus, after paying a large production fee, several hundred toy-type mage armor magic devices and several thousand thin-film mage armors were inscribed and produced.

It embodies Juan's hope that he will transition from an informal industry to a new one that, while not exactly formal, is at least more formal than his old profession.

"So far, I've only sold 8 crowns, and all the goods are stuck in my hands. I even confidently told the alchemy workshop owner that we would cooperate in the long term."

Juan, looking distressed, described the current sales situation.

"Because I was thinking you were still in the competition, I didn't want to bother you. That's why I didn't tell you before that I have absolutely no talent for doing business. I'm afraid I'll lose all the little bit of wealth I've managed to accumulate."

Juan's eyes were filled with gloom.

He'd had enough of his old profession, but the key issue was that careers in that industry were destined to be short-lived.

Putting aside the question of whether customers will still like you when you get older, if you keep doing this, it's questionable whether you'll even live to old age.

"Um, don't be so pessimistic."

Jia Xiu said.

"Don't be pessimistic yet. How did you sell it in the first place? You only sold 8 crowns. Did you do a good job of promotion and advertising? What's the problem now? Was the pricing wrong or the quality poor? Let's analyze the reasons."

Eight crowns is really too little. If this batch of goods can be sold, there should be at least three zeros added after the eight.

Jia Xiu also cares a lot about this business. After all, whether he can fund his own research in the future, without having to worry about the approval and management departments, and research whatever he wants, depends on whether this business can succeed.

In reality, being a research-oriented spellcaster isn't as glamorous a profession as it may seem on the surface.

For those working in universities or research institutes, the amount of research funding they can obtain for each project is determined through a strict approval process.

Those who break away and build their own mage towers also face the choice of either finding a wealthy patron or working hard to earn money to support their research projects.

Although spellcasters earn a lot and belong to the top-tier high-income group on the mainland, they burn through even more money conducting experiments.

Especially as the research deepened, the level increased, and the spell ranks involved also rose accordingly.

The ostentatious displays of wealth by aristocratic children are considered thrifty compared to high-level magical experiments.

Tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of crowns are thrown in, but not a single drop is splashed.

Official support for magical research is a super "luxury" that only a handful of powerful nations on the continent can afford.

Jia Xiu didn't set too high a goal for the money he could make from this business. Setting the goal too high would easily lead to disappointment. As long as it could support him to conduct his fifth or sixth-level spell experiments at will, he would be satisfied.

It's easy to see that we are still a very long way from being satisfied.

When asked by Jia Xiu, Juan began to pour out his grievances.

“At first, I didn’t expect it to be so troublesome. I thought that once the goods were produced, I could sell them easily. I first wanted to advertise in the newspaper, but even the high-volume newspaper, Larvin, wouldn’t allow it. I asked for an advertising fee higher than their usual standard, but it still didn’t work.”

"It's quite normal. Newspapers need to maintain the 'style' of their brand. Publishing ads all the time can easily bring down the style of their newspapers."

Jia Xiu said.

Even in Larvin, one of the most developed major cities on the continent, the literacy rate among adults is barely 60%.

With 60% of that, it can already be considered a cultural highland that surpasses all others on the mainland.

In most cities, 40% is considered high, 30% is common, and 20% is not uncommon. As for villages and towns, the lord's notices are useless if they are simply posted; a special person must be assigned to read them aloud several times a day, which shows the extent of the problem.

Although countries recognized that, in the context of the integration of magic with production, literate workers were more productive than illiterate workers, they began to find ways to promote literacy exercises.

However, since the project has not been conducted for very long, we have not yet seen any particularly good results.

Therefore, reading newspapers was considered a rather refined hobby, even in Larvin.

That's what the readers think, and that's what the newspaper thinks too.

They need to work together to maintain the elegance of the newspaper.

At least outwardly polite.

Although the journalists here have figured out the tricks of taking things out of context, spreading rumors, and using exaggerated headlines to grab attention, they haven't succumbed to the level of gossip and tabloid entertainment.

It's clearly inappropriate for Juan's advertisement to appear here.

"Then I thought about cooperating with magic equipment stores, but most of them were unwilling to put our goods on the shelves. Even if we paid for display, they would only put them in a very remote and inconspicuous place."

At this point, Jia Xiu began to realize something.

If a product isn't selling, it might not be because it's bad, but because the sales method is wrong.

Wanting to advertise in a newspaper is already outrageous, but collaborating with a magic equipment store is even more bizarre.

Who would buy something like this from a magic equipment store?!

Juan continued recounting his failures, "Our membrane mage armor was even slandered, with people saying that it would shrink you, cause sores and blemishes, and so on after use."

"Who slandered you?"

"They're the people who are already in the contraceptive business, the druids who sell herbs, the crooked priests who sell amulets and scrolls, oh, and the fish bladder sellers."

"Selling fish bladders?"

Jia Xiu didn't realize what this had to do with fish bladders.

"It's just fish maw that's cleaned, dried, and then smoked. To be honest, the texture is far inferior to our thin film mage nail polish. It's also very troublesome to make, and you have to wash it again after you're done using it. There are similar products made from sheep intestines."

"Wow." I've learned something new.

Traditional contraceptive methods using biological materials.

"So, we've been slandered by our competitors."

"Yes."

Before the market could react, our competitors did. Sure enough, the real hatred among competitors is naked.

But this reaction is way too fast. It's only 8 kronor in sales. Is it really necessary to start targeting them?

"Just these questions?"

"No, it's not that. After I found that the public approach didn't work, I decided to try the private sales method, but the results were still not good. The film could sell a little, but the toys couldn't be sold at all. I suspect that people simply don't accept this kind of thing."

Privacy selling sounds like the right approach.

Buying this product openly and honestly is indeed a considerable test of the consumer's mental state.

But we shouldn't refuse to accept it.

Is it because we haven't entered an era of "great repression" yet, and therefore there's no demand for it?
How does your private sales work?

"We just find some people we know and go door-to-door to sell to them. I figured that even if we're in the newspaper shop business, they can't really stop us from doing door-to-door sales, right?"

Selling this door-to-door, it seems the salespeople Brother Juan found are incredibly shameless. No wonder they're people he knows; birds of a feather flock together.

and many more.

Jia Xiu suddenly had an idea.

People who are familiar with each other tend to group together.

"Senior Brother Juan, who exactly were you looking for?"

"They are friends I met when I was working before."

"Former colleagues?"

"Former colleagues."

"Then who are they selling to?" Jia Xiu asked again. "Could it be that they're directly selling to customers they already know?"

"I think that's how it is. Is there a problem?"

"Of course there's a problem!" Jia Xiu clutched his head in disbelief. How could every step of the way be problematic? "Your former colleagues and their old clients, aren't they all people who play with real people directly? Of course they wouldn't buy toys!"

Juan paused, "Huh, that seems to be true, but actually I think the toy experience is better than the real thing..."

"Stop. Let's put aside the specific experience for now and figure out how to get our sales approach on the right track."

Jia Xiu started pacing back and forth in the lab, thinking about how to handle the situation.

It's not easy for him to get funding for his experiments.

As I strolled around, I wondered how these things were sold on the other side of Earth.

It seems to be highly dependent on online platforms.

The advertisers are mostly self-media outlets.

There are no online platforms or self-media here, but there is a group of people whose niche is similar to self-media, but with even greater daring.

Bard!

A true master of dirty jokes.

In the street, market, and pub performance industry, you can't get any business without some raunchy jokes.

The general public is happy to hear this.

They would fit in perfectly as livestreamers, and they'd probably pick it up incredibly quickly. They could even create their own advertising copy, and they'd get a commission for every sale. I imagine the bards would be incredibly motivated.

Moreover, there is another advantage.

Jia Xiu is quite well-known in the Bards' Association, having given lectures to many bards, so collaboration should be relatively easy to discuss.

The bards are responsible for the lower-tier markets.

That's even more high-end.

The market for nobles, merchants, and the wealthy might be difficult to manage with just bards.

However, what these people all have in common is that they all pursue a certain level of sophistication and are loyal readers of elegant newspapers.

Jia Xiu still cared a little about the newspaper.

Print media is currently the platform with the largest traffic.

Since they won't allow direct advertising, saying it's too low-class, how can we make it more classy?

Since we can't fight Ming Guang, we can only fight An Guang.

Perhaps only academic journals have more style than the content commonly found in newspapers.

Yes, academic journals!

Jia Xiu recalled the ways that big capital firms wanted to promote a brand new thing.

Hiring scholars to publish relevant papers directly in journals creates a high-end image and various seemingly incomprehensible but actually impressive functional values.

For example, he has never been able to accept the taste of avocado.

Although advertisements should not be misunderstood.

But the style is precisely what you need to understand in a way that you can't immediately grasp.

Jia Xiu decided to produce a lot of papers in the field of physiology and hygiene.

However, he has no reputation or class in this field. Besides the content itself being vague and pretending to be high-end, the writer also needs to be a big name, the bigger the better.

Mia is one of them; she's involved in biology and physiology, and she has a lot of "professional ethics."

As long as you pay her, she'll write anything; she has absolutely no psychological burden.

However, one Mia might not be enough.

Bribing scholars in other fields could cost a lot of money, and they may not have enough spare cash on hand right now.

Besides resolving reputation issues through academic papers, it's also necessary to find ways to deal with slander from peers.

In the competition, the film mage armor is far ahead in terms of product quality, but relying solely on product differences to directly crush competitors will definitely create enmity.

The best approach is definitely to use both carrots and sticks.

Just like when new textile machines were invented, factories chose to train the original manual textile workers to become textile workers who could use the machines.

To avoid a sudden mass unemployment that could cause conflict.

It's not impossible to have those people sell mage armor.

However, recruiting these people is a huge undertaking. It would be best to have someone with a bigger reputation to endorse them, so that even the die-hards wouldn't dare to cause trouble.

Who would be suitable?

Jaxiu stopped wandering around and looked at his beloved mentor, Margaret.

Margaret, who was studying vampire magic, was taken aback.

"What are you looking at me for?"

(End of this chapter)