Chapter 550: Starting a Business is a Roller Coaster

Igor’s life had been turned upside down.

He had expected the advertisement to be successful, but he never imagined it would be *this* successful.

Almost overnight, the crude advertisement he had slapped together garnered over a hundred thousand views.

Through the link at the end of the video, his small online shop, which only had one item for sale, also received nearly ten thousand views.

Igor knew that when it came to advertising, there was a concept called “conversion rate”—it measured how many views an ad attracted, and of those people, how many actually made a purchase.

He didn’t know if his numbers were considered high or low, but that didn’t diminish his excitement when he received his first order.

At nine in the morning, a Lady Louise from 14 Seventh Avenue in the Royal City’s Lively District, with a phone number ending in 1328, became the first customer of the Igor Magic Energy Refrigerator.

The Royal City had not yet established a widespread Magic Energy supply network; it had only been installed first in a few wealthy districts.

As for a full-scale rollout, who knew how long that would take.

Every plot of land in the Royal City was the ancestral property of the lords of the Old Sutton True Silver Banner. If you wanted to excavate for Magic Energy lines, you had to negotiate with them one by one.

However, the clever Igor had already anticipated this situation. His refrigerators also came with a slot for a Magic Energy Stone. A standard-sized Magic Energy Stone could keep the refrigerator running for forty to fifty days, depending on the set temperature.

To build his brand’s reputation, he was currently in the loss-leader stage, selling at a loss to generate buzz.

Not only was he selling them at cost and offering free shipping, but he was also including a free Magic Energy Stone.

He just hadn’t expected the shipping for such a bulky item to be so expensive.

It basically used up the last of the money he had left.

Fortunately, the results were worth it.

After the first order, buyers began to appear one after another. Within three days, the entire first batch of refrigerators he had made was sold out.

The online store switched from “in stock” to “pre-order,” but that still couldn’t dampen the consumers’ enthusiasm.

He now had a backlog of hundreds of orders.

It far exceeded what he could produce by hand.

Just then, the owner of the Factory where he had interned fulfilled his promise, bringing Igor an investment, a workshop, and suppliers.

With the development of the magical industry, the old days when a Mage had to craft every Alchemy Item from raw materials were long gone.

The various components of a Magical Device were now outsourced to Factories that specialized in their production.

Efficiency increased, and costs were reduced.

Thanks to bulk ordering, the manufacturing cost of Igor’s refrigerators dropped by 25% compared to the hand-built models, while the selling price remained the same.

It wasn’t much, but at least there was now a profit margin. After covering the costs of shipping and the Magic Energy Stone, he could even make a little something.

The Factory owner even promised him an assembly line for producing the core component—the adjustable low-temperature Rune—and for final assembly.

By then, the profit margin would increase even more.

Igor now had a dozen or so workers under him, as well as two Mage Apprentices trained at a night school—new-era “Mages” who couldn’t perform Casting but understood the principles of Magic.

He had originally wanted to hire proper Mages from a Mage Academy or a Mage Tower, but they were too expensive.

He could only opt for Mage Apprentices. Fortunately, they possessed all the necessary knowledge to build the refrigerators.

Even with just these current employees, the pressure of paying salaries was immense for Igor.

Starting your own business meant taking on risks. Every day, the moment he opened his eyes, his first thought was, ‘How much debt am I in today?’

Although he currently had no savings, was deep in debt to the bank, and hadn’t yet earned enough to cover next month’s wages, Igor still felt like a “wealthy” boss.

‘Piles of Gold Coins are just sitting there waiting for me. I just haven’t earned them yet, but I will, sooner or later.’

This confidence in the future filled him with motivation, and he threw himself wholeheartedly into his work every day.

He was planning what improvements could be made to the refrigerator, what new features could be developed, different models, and, of course, filming a proper commercial.

The video piggybacking on the Snow Child’s popularity was certainly eye-catching, but… ‘what was that phrase again? Ah, right—it affects the brand image.’

It might make consumers think Igor wasn’t a serious brand, that the quality was subpar, or something along those lines.

At nine in the morning, Igor climbed out of his bedroll on the floor. He was now sleeping in a small partitioned room inside the Factory to have a zero-minute commute and avoid wasting time on the road.

‘In the early stages of a startup, you have to accept poorer material conditions.’

The small Factory’s conditions were also quite basic. It was located in a remote area on the outskirts of Deepwater City’s factory district.

It wasn’t very large, but it was only temporary. Once the new assembly line was designed, they would move to a bigger facility—one large enough to fit at least one production line.

Right now, the shed housed only a few simple machine tools, passed through who knows how many hands. They chugged along, barely operational, like old men who couldn’t stand up straight and had to lean on canes to walk.

Every now and then, they would make a strange noise, making you wonder if they’d even make it through the day.

Igor took a deep breath. The air was thick with the smell of metal and machine oil.

It wasn’t a pleasant smell by normal standards, but Igor had grown to love it. To him, it was the smell of wealth.

The workers started their shifts a bit earlier than him and were already at their stations.

It wasn’t that Igor was slacking off. He stayed up later than anyone else, often not going to sleep until three or four in the morning. It was unhealthy, but he always felt that inspiration struck best in the quiet of the early morning.

Igor quickly walked past the workers assembling refrigerators and arrived at a partitioned-off area on the east side of the shed.

This was the “laboratory,” or what barely passed for one—the place where he and the two Magic Apprentices worked.