Best way to start

[keshiba]

Always enter the frozen food market first. Put up a medium farm and process beef, pork and chiken. In the second medium farm produce eggs and lamb. Max your training. In about 10 years you will reach '100 quality' then you can bring training back to zero. Sell products through the retail store as running costs are low and max out training so that units reach level 9 in a few years.

At the start of game your product will start at '30 quality' and you will have sell at a loss, still no problem because your farms will make a profit. This strategy will never fail and within the decade you will lead in the frozen food section with a turnover touching 2 billion. The extra cash can then be used to enter the bottled milk industry (remember your second medium farm still has scope for an extra produce - MILK). Just R&D bottled milk and glass and within the next 5 five years you will be raking in 200-300 million just from this product.

This is a perfect cash cow business giving you enough to expand into other things. Try it

[Branes51]

This strategy doesn't work unless you have huge amounts of cash you can afford to lose. I tried this with both farms and two supermarkets both selling way below local price and at the same quality level and I was hemorrhaging cash. Even though I was the ONLY retailer in the entire city, i couldn't generate enough demand for frozen food and eggs to make any kind of profit!! Something is seriously wrong with that system.
And I was located in high traffic areas with both stores. My prices on each item were at least $1.00 lower than than the average and local prices. This should have stimulated sales, but it didn't. That doesn't fit a realistic market economy.

[carpii]

My prices on each item were at least $1.00 lower than than the average and local prices. This should have stimulated sales, but it didn't. That doesn't fit a realistic market economy.

The problem with reducing price constantly is that over time competitors reduce theirs too, so in the end neither of you are gaining.

Try to look at the rating rather than price. You may be able to bump up your price considerably, and sill have an overall rating which keeps you in a nice profit (I tend to aim for around 50 rating as a default).

I've never had real problems turning a profit from frozen foods and eggs. My latest game is about 30 years in, and Ive a full production chain of automobiles and bikes with R&D way ahead of competitors. Yet my main revenue stream still comes from eggs.

But I agree that the algorithm for retail demand has definitely changed since Cap Plus, and maybe even Cap 2 (I didn't play Cap 2 so much).
Its a lot harder to run a profitable retail store than it used to be. Maybe it was a side effect of allowing more cities, but it means you have to build retail stores in those other cities just to provide demand (and then since they are importing from a different city, its hard to compete with local suppliers)

[Philtrick2003]

I tried this today with starting cash of 30M. I built 1 med farm and 2 supermarkets. I built the markets in really expensive areas (50+ traffic) and had frozen beef, frozen pork, and eggs. The wage rate in my city was 68 (second highest of the 4 cities). None of the three items were available at the seaport. I maxed the farm training and set prices for a 50 overall rating. I added whatever the highest rated seaport item was to my 4th sales slot for additional revenue.

Within 2 months, my demand began outstripping my supply at which point I would drop my rating by 5 points per 2 weeks until demand equalled supply. The first year I came out with nearly a million dollar profit. Within 3 years I had 2 farms and 5 supermarkets supporting a pair of research facilities.

I think this is a solid and safe starter that I could jump from better. Next time I think I'll try this in every city before starting my research so that it doesn't take me as long to begin producing my target goods.

In this game, it took me about 8 years to enter the leather market - which I dominated the R&D for. Linen was available in a seaport but I grew my own cotton. At year 19, I had leather dominated in the top two markets, technological dominance on all toys, and about 12 apartments. My profits were only about $50M per year bc I think I was a bit too conservative in growing my business. I'd built up almost $150M in capital and was able to set up factories and retail for the toys in one fell swoop. Of course, I was too conservative and built small factories producing 90 quality gaming and handheld systems that I couldn't keep on the shelves.

I need to accelerate faster next time, like I said, but this seems like a good starting approach since research isn't needed to improve quality and you're sure to find 3 goods that aren't being imported in the local seaports, although I don't see it as feasible with less than 20M starting capital.

[WilliamMGary]

Frozen food is very profitable (See: http://capitalismfans.com/businessjourn ... /WMGP.html) after you get past the losses building up quality, but it isn't cheap. It doesn't seem that the AI even tries to compete in that market, you could easily make money by whole selling to the AI stores.