"I have no problem in joining hands with you provided that your plan is based on reason and mutual benefit. I wouldn't want to be a pawn for your Hunter family to get all the benefit from this alliance. Share the details of your strategy so we can consider whether to work with you or on our own." Austin had been playing this game for a while and knew that Hogan probably didn't have their best interests at heart and was only using them for his own benefit.
Austin wasn't averse to being used by Hogan, but he couldn't bear to part with the benefits of toppling the Windsor family at such a crucial juncture. He wanted to make sure that the benefits from the alliance would be distributed among the three families equally or at least based on their individual contribution. Otherwise, Hogan would end up hoarding all the benefits in the end and the difference between the three families would increase even further. The Hunter family would end up replacing the Windsor family but the end result would be the same.
"You don't need to be so apprehensive. I can assure you that the benefits from this alliance would be divided amongst the three families equally. The alliance would share both costs and the profit until we succeed in our objective of disrupting the sugar business and stifle the Windsor family's growth as much as possible until there are only three large families left in Byzantium city." replied Hogan with venom laced in his words as he tried to reassure his future partners. But he didn't know he looked like a snake coaxing its children as it prepared to swallow them whole.
…
The Windsor family was preparing to enter the market keeping in view a slightly higher profit margin than previously anticipated. They already knew that the rivaling families would create trouble but they had only recently come to understand the true extent of it. Therefore, the initial plan to reach the grassroots level had to be altered slightly.
Instead of reaching the true bottom of the society, the Windsor family decided to make their new product accessible to the middle class families who had enough buying power to use salt throughout the month.
While salt was the most basic condiment being utilized by normal households, the lowest tier didn't even have access to salt in some areas. Therefore, Marico was of the opinion that they would be needlessly decreasing the value of their product if they even included the lowest tier of buyers in their potential customers list.
As a result, the final price was decided to be a silver coin per pound which was equivalent to the price of salt in this world. The extremely poor still couldn't afford this price since their total wages for the month didn't exceed a few silver coins in the slightly better cases. No one could afford such luxuries when faced with starvation as the only other alternative.
The middle class families on the other hand would be able to squeeze this sum in, if they wanted to, in their weekly or monthly expenditure.
Based on this new marketing strategy, the new product that could add sweetness to anything and everything, every household in Byzantium city knew about Windsor family and their latest achievement. While the middle and elite tier of the population enjoyed this overwhelmingly sweet taste, the poor could only hope to taste such a thing once in their lifetime. This helped the product gain popularity through word of mouth and the overwhelming demand of the product in all kinds of demographic groups.
The reason why food industries rarely went bankrupt was that they didn't need to stress whether there would be any customers for their product or not. As long as it was food and could be eaten without vomiting out, there would definitely be buyers for it and those who would become regulars in the future.
Sugar was one such project that only required investment once. Afterwards, there would be nothing but benefits that would keep rolling in to be counted with both hands and feet at the same time.
As Marico and Violet began preparations to produce and launch their new product, several families tried to put a wrench in their plans by creating difficulties where there were none previously. For example, the land they had leased for one of the sugar mills got involved in trouble all of a sudden. The government claimed to have the ownership of the land still and asked Marico to move out his people as soon as possible.
Marico was an old player and knew that someone was targeting him from behind the scenes otherwise they wouldn't have been so blatant in their actions.
Since these people weren't afraid, Marico felt that it was only right that he trample on these people through his success. Their obstructions and strange plots only made Marico more determined to make the sale of sugar a success. This was also the reason that the price of Sugar had been raised slightly compared to the initial plan.
Being a tough soul himself, Marico took pleasure in overcoming all the troubles headed his way. As if in retaliation to those who wouldn't stop trying to throw stones in his path, he didn't stop until the marketing efforts for his product seeped into every nook and cranny of the city and any random individual of Byzantium city knew what sugar was and its use.
It didn't take long for the demand for their product to reach the skies. The factories had to be run overtime in order to meet the demand of the masses. Some of these people saw this as a business opportunity to buy the sugar at low rates which they could sell at a higher rate in far off areas where Windsor family's promotion had yet to reach. It was easy money without any investment after all.
Another reason that the masses were crazily buying sugar was that they felt that sugar prices would see an upward trend in the near future seeing as the demand was already so crazy. They believed that the Windsor family would not be able to keep meeting the demand very soon and they would have to revise their business model to promote sugar as a luxury product as it should have been. Therefore, they planned to hoard as much sugar as they possibly could to wait for the time when the production ran low and there wasn't enough sugar to go around.
Unfortunately, these people failed to take into account the enormous capital that Marico was willing to invest into this business and his plans to take this chain global. The processing plants in Byzantium city were just the beginning. There were many more that were under construction and ever more that were waiting for the newly planted sugar cane crop to yield a bountiful result before they could be processed.
Marico didn't try to stop these people either because he knew that they were only bringing benefit to the Windsor family by buying more of his product. Only after some time passed would they understand how useless their scheme to hoard sugar had been.
As Zach had promised Marico, the tastes of the people began to change once they knew that there was another option available.
Not a single one of the aristocrats chose to put salt in their coffee after they tasted cane sugar mixed in their coffees as an experiment.
It was impossible to go back to their primitive ways after tasting it once. Zach was a living proof. He would gag at just the mention of coffee laced with salt or other spices. It felt nothing less than poison to him.
The new aristocracy chose to take coffee with cane sugar as the new ultimate treat as they began to curse their old selves for not finding such a useful product sooner.
Only now did they understand what they had been missing out on previously and despised their other counterparts who had yet to taste the ultimate sweetness that went perfectly with the mellow and creamy texture of coffee and made their hearts bubble with happiness and bliss.
Since the demand for sugar was constantly on the rise, Marico had no other choice but to use all the manpower available in order to supplement the production of sugar. Currently, almost all the servants of the Windsor family were engaged in one way or the other leaving only the bare minimum personnel to take care of the family mansion so it would not accumulate dust.
All the human resource had been deployed in various locations to produce and distribute sugar across the city. This allowed the Windsor family to rein in money as if they were printing their own money with the machines working overtime every single day.
The bountiful luck brought joy to the Windsor family who felt acknowledged for their perfect planning and execution of the business idea given to them by Zach. As a result of their new business, their wealth was expected to multiply in the near future. The amount of money they had earned in a scope of few weeks was more than what they had made in the last five years from all their businesses combined.
Happiness of one individual was a painful memory to another. While the Windsor family couldn't stop celebrating their success, the rival families who had done their best to stop them in their tracks were eyeing a single opportunity to bulldoze everything the Windsor family had built during this time.
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