Share Your Business Tips Here

Share Your Business Tips Here

So, we're all new at this and I thought it might be helpful if we post what does and doesn't work when trying to get a business running in OFB.

I've already learned that starting small is a good thing.

Also, apparently if you overpay an employee they then develop an attitude. At least it's happened once. It was a family member so I thought, why not give them a good salary? And then they refused to work until the owner yelled at them.

If you try to call employees in on the same day they've already worked they may refuse to come. This happened when my daughter and I were trying to run a business. This can be tricky, as it's sometimes hard to remember what day it is, since when you get home it's the same time you left.

And, home businesses are by far the easiest to run! The only problem is I REALLY want to have clothes along with makeovers so I can do a total look and I've discovered you can't sell clothing or coffee or run a restaurant from your home. You can run a bakery, though. I wonder if you could do a home cooking type of restaurant ... hmmmm ... wheels turning. I haven't tried it but that would be the logical explanation for the "Make many" option that now appears when you click the fridge.

So! Share! What have you learned?

 

Oooh I just got an idea. You can run a buffet style restaurant in the home and charge per hour with the ticket machine. You could use the buffet table or the make many/serve from the refrig. I will have to try this.

I haven't had time to play so I may not be that helpful but some tips/things I have noticed are:

- Lock your doors. Even from your own sims! While running the art gallery, the owner kept trying to go to the back and play the instruments instead of helping the customers. Locking the door keeps him out.
- Don't make customers wait long at the register. They will lose loyalty points.
- Be careful with the "make sale" social if your sim doesn't have any charisma skill points. (don't overdo it) Doing so seems to drive the buy-bar down. I noticed this with the Delorosa lady who doesn't have any charisma points but when my sims did it, the bar went up (they have points).
- When working a salon, don't have people standing in front of the chair, talking, etc. when it is time to sit, if someone is standing in front of it, the sim will not sit down and will lose interest.
- If you have loiters, kick them out! They are taking up space and preventing other sims from coming in.
- Chat up your customers, they gain loyalty quicker.

 

Don't knock yourself out with the restocking during the business day. Better to have the cash register permanantly "simmed" as well as another sim to meet and greet and shove out the time-wasters. If you have a sales-sim leave the selling to that sim and concentrate on looking out for the terminally confused ... "can I help you modom?"/"ooh! suit you, sir!"/"are you free, mister Humphries?"

The salon chair is an enigma wrapped up in a mystery. Customers will browse it and a buy bar appears ... but only if it is 'simmed' by an assigned stylist. If the stylist goes to try to encourage a sale they cease to be a stylist ... so there is no one to do the job. You need a salon sales person as well as a stylist ... or else you just hafta wait for some sim-sap to decide to have a (paid for) makeover on his/her own initiative.

Unlike real life ... a sim business is more apt to thrive on a very small range of products. If you're gonna do flowers, don't bother with statues or shrubs or any other rubbish cos the darn customers will know that your margins are tightest on the products you have to buy in. Fill a toy store with a few catalogue wabbits and teddy bears and shelvesful of Sir BrickALots and you'll sell out of wabbits long before you shift your second ruddy brick (That's the game cheating on you but don't tell anyone I said that )

 

I've had a different experience with that. Raymond's Sundries sells a wide variety of plants, but also has a Song Dynasty vase that regularly sells out and I've sold two of the huge gongy things at a ridiculously high price. The only thing that isn't selling is a horsie statue that I downloaded, but I purposely overpriced it just to see if it would sell. At the end of the day he's lucky if there's anything left but the horsie statue.

I agree to wait to restock until the customers have left, unless you have a little breathing space or are completely out of stock. I had his pregnant wife stock while he did all the rest. So far they have no employees, though little Tim looks like a born register monkey if I ever saw one ... that's another tip, put your household to work. They work for free!

If you hire a player sim who doesn't live on your lot you can't control them. They're just like any other employee, though possibly more skilled. If you go to play them their job shows them as an employee of the lot and says what they earn. Not bad, actually. Alec makes more this way than he did as a "regular" culinary guy. Only problem is, he's not saving for his own restaurant this way ...

Here's another tip: Have one sim work a regular job. Those huge cash bonuses can really help the biz to grow. This is one place where retirees have an edge! They can receive a pension and spend all their time concentrating on their business, unlike sims who are trying to do two jobs.

 

I didn't find this to be the case in my salon. I only have one sim working there and she is doing pretty good all by herself. This is a home lot if that makes a difference. When I selected my sim to be the stylist and waited, people didn't sit in the chair, once the bar filled up, they would just walk off and lose interest. I noticed that if I left them and then selected "be stylist" after the bar filled up then they would sit in the chair or sit and wait for the chair to be free. It is better this way anyway, b/c rather then standing there doing nothing, she was able to walk around do "make sale" and encourage other people to get a makeover. She received the bronze sales badge and the bronze cosmetology badge in 2 days.

SBW, you said,
"Only problem is, he's not saving for his own restaurant this way ..."
what do you mean? The money he makes in his job at the business is not showing up in his "account"?

 

Oh, I only meant he's not reaping any profits from the restaurant, just earning a paycheck, and I'm not sure how much I can advance his salary. But his wife is a cop so if she answers her chance card questions right they may be in for some dough ... or not ... and then he could possibly afford to open his own place.

Right now they're pretty much flat broke. They have a nice house and two lovely daughters, but they're broke.

I'm going to try your advice about the salon chair. I've noticed you need to be very patient with OFB. It takes a while for the sim to do things like talk up a sale. I can get the chair to work, it just depends, but a little theory behind the practice definitely helps.

 

I have a question about how restaurants work. I'm confuzzled.

Tybalt Capp bought Londoste. He hired a townie bartender and a townie waitress. He then went to the restaurant with his household (Jessie Capp, DJ Verse and Mickey Dosser). Mickey was the chef, DJ and Jessie were alternating being hostess, and Tybalt was the "sales" guy. Seemed to work out really well while I was playing that family.

So tonight I played a different family and decided to take my sims on a date to Londoste. When I get there, the townie waitress is there, and the townie bartender is there but acting as hostess now, and Tybalt is there doing I'm not sure what. No Jessie, DJ or Mickey. So, no chef. My sims could be seated but they could not eat.

Why wasn't the rest of the family working? Does Tybalt need to officially "hire" them? I thought I tried that but I couldn't find an option for it.

 

Just received the guide yesterday so here is a tip I haven't heard about yet. I'm going to try it in my Salon.

You can sell the snacks from the refrig. (chips, cookies, soda). Have your sim get the snack, but before they get a chance to eat it, cancel the action. They will put it down and then you can select the item for sale.

You can do the same for unopened pizza boxes.

 

OH cool about the chips and sodas. Someone told me to get the individual slices of cake, pie, etc to have the sim serve it then collect each slice. Then you can either add them to your inventory or place them in the cooler for sale.

Ruth

 

Yeah, you can sell individual plates or the whole thing.

Remembered another tip,

You can put any food into the inventory now. So you can have a sim prepare a group meal and put the "leftovers" in the inventory. This is great if your sim is low on energy or time, hint: preggers. They will always have a supply of food with them. Any sim can make the food and it will go into their inventory (or you can put it there). Then when they or another sim needs it, pull it out and serve. We can finally have real "leftovers".

 

Cool! So even if you can't sell it you can eat it later. Good tip, thanks!

Always have a ticketron if you've got fun things to do that you can't charge for otherwise. The more fun things, the more you can charge. My pool hall doesn't get much $$ because all they've got is pool tables and a restaurant, but the Nova home biz gets a lot of $$ from tickets because they have so many fun things to do. They had to unlock their doors, though, because the customers were stamping their feet. Seems the chessboard and exercise machine, both upstairs, are very popular.

I suppose I could put them in the backyard, but it's already pretty crowded.

 

Adding tip...

You can sell the rose/flowers received from dates.

.....

SBW, do the townies that use the items gain skill points? From the guide it says that your Playable sims will gain badges if they use the work benches on lots but I didn't see anything about townies. (still reading it)

 

Oops, PlayLives, we did it at the same time and now your post is completely gone.

The tip was, you can sell roses and flowers from a date.

And as far as I know the only way you can get skill points on a community lot is if you own it. It counts as being "home."

So to answer your question, no I don't think the NPCs actually gain points.

 

The ticketron is definately the "must have" item from this EP. After experimenting with a community lot robot shop with one sim and a home business bakery with another and struggling to keep up with inventory, I created a sloppy-grumpy pleasure-seeking sim (Elroy Drifter) and had him open "Drifter's Roadhouse". It started out as a shack with a card table, pool table, and jukebox with an adjoining room (locked from the public) containing a cot, dorm fridge with microwave, toilet and tub. I put the ticketron outside the front door and set it on "cheap", then had Elroy focus solely on his LTW of 50 1st dates. Without any effort on Elroy's part (except for occaisionally setting out a free platter of lunchmeat sandwiches for his patrons), the roadhouse achieved level 10 in *5* sim days. A little remodeling to add a guest bathroom, esspresso (and sandwich) island, and a bubble hooka and videogame resulted in even more customers. After shutting down and re-establishing the home business a few times, Elroy is now wealthier than the Landgrabs and his "business perks" panel is full.

An interesting side note: Servos are your best customers. They seem to be hardwired with a severe gambling addiction and will almost live at the roadhouse. It's really fun to see them run outside just before dusk and try (but fail) to recharge befor the sun goes down, resulting in them spending the night slumped over in the front yard being charged the hourly ticketron rate over and over until sunrise! When awake they also stop whatever they are doing every 15 min or so and "do chores" cleaning up the sandwich plates, scrubing and plunging the guest toilet, etc.

Attachments: 1. Drifter's Roadhouse 2. DJ Elroy freestylin' for the crowd

 

a little help please

Hmmm lots of good tips but i'm still struggling with the simplest thing!:depressed:
I'm running this home business and i found out i can put food in the coolers and such..but then what? No one buys any and i can't click the food to sell it ..it's just there for decoration or what?actually anything i put on display doesn't get sold..dunno how to do ity ..and to restock...u need to have stock in ur backpack? and ahm..the pies and yummy looking things for a bakery store..are u supposed to make em yourself? Wow cuz i've never been able to do that..maybe i just need to get to a higher level of cooking ..meh please give me some guidelines! I'm desperate
thanks !

 

I don't get how running the salon will earn you money - say you have a salon, you open up, and sims flock to be restyled. When your customers have been served, do they go and pay?

 

1. Have you used the phone (or computer) to get your business license? The only "unlicensed" business you can run is a lemonaid stand.
2. To make your items "for sale" click on the price tag on the corner of business menu to "set price" (cheap, average, expensive, etc.) then click on each item to give it a sales price.
3. Did you buy an "open/closed" sign from the catalog menu and put it on a wall? Did you flip the sign over to "open"?
4. Did you buy a cash register to ring up customer sales? Is anybody working the cash register?
5. Yes, in order to restock you must have items in your backpack to restock with. If your selling food someone actually has to cook it. Use the "Make One" or "Make Many" command on the fridge or stove instead of "Serve Meal" to keep your sim family from eating up your stock! Special flower arrangements, certain toys, and "robotic" items (including Servo's) must be made on special workbenches available in the catalog menu, listed under "knowledge:misc". Most any catalog item may be purchased and used to stock, but this is kind of cost-prohibitive for most start-up businesses. The profit margin is much better for home-crafted items.

HTH...Happy Simming!

 

you both have cash registers?? and are you pricing your services or giving them away free?

 

Sorry about that, the tip about the date flowers is incorrect

 

Wow, Werebear, I think you have this business thing down to a science.

With a salon, the customers pay "automatically". They don't go to the register.