Overview
A guide to career mode to follow so you can avoid starting over 400 times and hopefully make some cash.
Starting out / Working for other companies.
Alrite I will try to cut out the waffle and garbage and get on with it.
So assuming you have created a manager and completed the tutorial you will end up on the world map wondering what you are supposed to do now.
Earn as much money as possible working for other companies as you can before setting up your HQ / Own store!! If you setup your own thing too fast you will go bankrupt!
Pick a purple marker on the map and make sure you read the conditions you need to fulfil to complete that store. I tend to avoid the popup stores such as MR CYBORG as I think it might be impossibly hard at the moment. The rent is over 7k a day just to stay afloat so don’t do it unless you want to start over again and again.
You keep the cash you make per day regardless of if you fail the scenario or not so keep that in mind. My advice is to find a scenario you don’t mind doing and grind it out for as long as possible as you still earn a fixed amount of money per day for yourself and it won’t end until ALL of the conditions are met so just put off a condition until you are sure you think you have enough money to start your own business depending on what you want to pick for your first concept.
Thanks to a nice community member that reminded me it is easier to start with electronics for your first concept as you make more profit per item and you need to sell less per day but each has it’s own set of challenges.
Easy: Electronics – Save 20k
Medium: Clothes / Shoes – Save 30k+
Hard: Food & Beverage – Save 50k+
There isn’t really a negative for the scenarios other than the fact they can get a bit boring so just stick it out as long as possible.
There are certain things you can and can’t do for each scenario so make sure you read about them before you accept.
E.G: Certain stores won’t even let you hire any staff so all of the work will be on you every day.
Don’t worry about failing.
Stick it out as long as possible.
Starting A HQ / Not Going Broke!
This is the first part that you can mess up so be careful as it can be really hard to fix and you are more likely to go bankrupt really quickly.
You need a HQ before you can set up a store so you don’t have a choice.
Get the cheapest one you can.
As soon as you get one it will cost you per DAY a minimum of 200 for the cheapest HQ I have found.
As soon as you have a HQ look around first at what there is as it can be confusing.
You will need to start a Concept if you want to start a store next so talk to the man on the front desk I think and it will open a room where you can customise your concept.
A Concept is the brand for your store and includes what you are going to sell. It can be levelled up with points you earn from your store (based on the sales your store makes per day) to include more items to sell.
It includes a lot of important details including the amount of profit you earn from your store that can be sent back to your HQ to stop it going broke.
Your Concept that you have created can be applied to different stores you own and share the same reputation and stats so the more you build it up on one store the easier it will be to start another store using the same concept.
You will notice on the world map that at the start you can only have 2 stores but one concept so you can apply the same concept you have created to two different stores.
HQ’s Don’t earn money, your store earns the money that can be automatically transferred at the end of each day and it is very important you send enough as you can only be in debt for a couple of days before you get a game over!!!
You will fail if your HQ goes broke or your store goes broke so it can be quite hard to balance at the start, hence why I said grind as long as possible to give yourself a cushion of money in case you mess up.
If you go bankrupt the game has a really annoying autosave so all of that grinding you have done on those other stores will need to be done again as you will have lost a lot of money and it will be really hard to recover.
Hiring, Firing and Perspiring?
Obviously hiring staff for your stores is done at your stores so if you are looking for register workers and sales staff this is the wrong place but you do hire management here at your HQ. Downstairs is a tray you can use to interview various people for management positions that I would only recommend when you have a few stores up and running as they can be a bit expensive.
You need to assign a hired manager to a position as demonstrated in the screenshot above!
Sometimes the management you hire don’t appear right away so if they don’t just go and do a few shifts at your store and they will appear eventually.
Check the upstairs offices and your managers should appear to be working away behind their desk surrounded by their information.
You can speak directly to them if you want to fire them.
You can also check what is affecting their mood or the skill points you can invest to make them better at their job depending on what you want them to focus on. The longer they do their job the more points you earn and the better they will get.
There’s not much else to say at the moment but a lot of the information regarding HQ’s isn’t available in game and can be confusing so I hope this helps a bit.
Your First Store!
Tips:
Look for the cheapest location available for your first store.
Buy a property and never rent.
Change you opening / Closing hours in your office to max! (you have longer per day to make cash!)
Rent is way more expensive daily so buy the property and it will only cost you 1/10th of the amount each day.
You can’t afford to be picky with your first store so cheapest is best for now so pick a store and buy it!
Money, money, money. This is going to be the hardest part so far but you can do it. I chose clothes store or just Pants for now but you can make money from it regardless.
For now set up your store but don’t go too crazy and only buy a few racks of stuff and keep some money spare as the limiting factor won’t be your stock. You will be limited by reputation and foot traffic. Foot traffic is bad because of the cheap location but it is enough for now and reputation takes forever to build up with a concept. You won’t sell everything per day and that is a pretty good place to be. Just replace what has been sold daily and coast for a while, spend a few weeks doing this and building your reputation.
You may have to go outside and hustle. Talk to people and do as much selling as possible for a week or so or you might struggle to get enough people per day and won’t earn enough money.
Do not hire staff!! It may be tempting but for what you are selling you can manage everything easily by yourself and staff will be a cost you can’t afford so embrace the struggle for now!
Remember to send what you can to your HQ and Do not expand your store size. Expanding your store size will add cost per day and you don’t want that.
This is the hardest part of the game as you are building up a new store and Concept from nothing so you don’t have any reputation and customers have never heard of you so don’t expand too quickly just yet.
Building Up From Nothing!
Once again you will have to grind for a while to earn money and reputation (remember you can check your store rep in your HQ!) so do as much on your own for as long as possible.
When to hire staff:
As soon as you don’t have time to do everything yourself! you won’t need to be selling to customers by that point and people will be coming in and buying on their own so the next thing you may need that is good value for money is a Re-stock staff member.
Check the tray in your office next to your PC and find one with good enough skills they don’t destroy your stock! They can be trained but not having that trait can cost a lot of money you can’t afford to lose.
Personally I set them to work for 4ish hours per day in the morning to get the unpacking and restocking done and never give them a break or day off. Doing this will save you a lot of time as they can do it way faster than you.
Well trained staff on the cash registers are very important by this point as the max level of the final perk increases reputation for each customer they serve and doesn’t cost you extra money so prioritising their training is a good move.
Next would be somebody to do marketing, Monday – Friday usually 9am-5pm with a 1 hour break is quite important and they don’t cost too much. You will notice after a week or so of doing this there will be a slow uptick in customers and you will be selling more and more thus making more money.
Reputation is built very slowly but it is worth putting the effort into if you want the Concept growth.
Manage your office rota and keep as few people working as possible and at this point you should easily be making money and cover sick days by yourself.
For your first store that is all you need. The objective here is to just make a load of cash and keep it running by itself so don’t hire marketers or sales staff as there’s no point.
If you are worried that on the world map that it says -4k+ per day then don’t worry! that’s normal at the moment and we will talk about it next.
Optional<—–
If you want to go and work at another NPC store then good news! You can! AND if you are following the guide you can still make money. You should look to hire a new staff member to promote to store manager. This is done from your office NOT HQ! Hire anyone you like and click on their portrait then promote them to store manager and renegotiate.
If you look on the world map at your store now after that you should notice you are making 5k+ per day!!
You will earn that money every game day and this is the basic mechanic for the entire game so go get a part time job or save enough money to open a better store!
Also your store manager gives your store a bonus % based on his skill so hiring a good person is a priority or I assume they get better over time.
If you are taking time away from your store remember to check in every so often and spend a day there of you lose % and money the longer you are away.