The price you set for each product decides how much you sell, so your job is to price well, sell across the day, and clear your stock before it is written off.
Market traders do this for real every week. They buy stock with their own money, set up at a pitch, and then make the calls that matter: what to charge, when to hold a price, and when to cut it to shift the last few. Get the price right and the stock flies. Get it wrong and you are left with boxes of things nobody wanted.
You are the new trader, and Del likes the look of you. He is happy to lend you £500 from his float to try running a pitch on your own, but he wants every penny of it back, and a profit on top. Del has no patience for people who lose money. You pick where to set up, buy your stock, then trade through four selling periods, setting the price for every product. Anything you do not sell stays in the boxes for the next period.
The catch. When the last period ends and you pack up, any stock still unsold is written off. It is worth nothing to you. Every unit you fail to sell is money you spent and never got back. So buy carefully, price to sell, and do not leave it too late to clear the slow movers.
Starting float: £500.00
Each pitch draws a different crowd and sells a different set of six products. The pitch fee is the rent for your spot, and you pay it whether you sell anything or not. Pick one to begin.
| Product | Bought | Sold | Left (written off) | Took |
|---|
Every product has a price where it sells best. Push the price up and you earn more on each one, but fewer people want it. Drop the price and more people buy, but you make less on each. Somewhere in the middle is the price that brings in the most money, and that balance is different for every product.
The crowd matters too. Cheap, everyday things that people always need will still sell when you charge a bit more, because shoppers do not shop around for them. Treats, and things people can easily compare, are far fussier about price, so they have to be keener to move. Working out which is which is the heart of the job.
Buying matters as much as selling. Buy more packs of one line and the wholesaler drops the price, so your cost per unit falls: that is an economy of scale. It pays to back your strong lines hard. But there is a limit, because anything you cannot sell by the end is written off, so buying far more than the crowd will take just turns a discount into a loss.
And the clock is always running. Stock you are still holding near the end is about to be worth nothing, so a price that looked too cheap an hour ago can be the smart call now: a little money beats a write off. Buy for the crowd, price for the product, and clear the boxes before the day runs out.