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Get To Work: Retail Store
PenguinFoop
Posts: 1,582 Member
Let me start by saying I love the retail store idea but there are some areas that I think need to be fixed.
Employee Scheduling; When the store opens all of the employees come in together and leave together. This means that just when the bulk of my customers are ready to buy, I have no employees left to help out. In my current store, I only have one employee and he does great! I've got him almost maxed out and so he rarely slacks and does great at his assigned task but when I need him the most, he has to go. I've thought about hiring additional employees but since they all come and go at the same time, it would just be a waste of money and not solve the problem. Employee scheduling is something that the store owner should have the ability to set and modify as needs be.
Store Hours: My poor sim spends all of his time at work for one day (he goes to work when the kids go to school but doesn't get home until around the time they need to go to school the next day) then needs the full day off to rest and spend time with his family. Because there's always one more customer to ring up or one more item to restock. Then, there's the after hour cleaning and repairs that need to be done. If the store had set hours, this wouldn't be an issue because like an event, you'd get a popup saying that the store is set to open in 1 hour and give you the option of going to the store or staying home. Also, if there's a set closing time, then you still have the evening to go home, chill with the kids, woohoo with the spouse, work on your garden and whatever else you need to do. The store hours should be something that the store owner has the ability to set and modify if needs be.
Other than that, I love the retail business. Mine is called Willow's Collectables. Willow finds the collectables and her husband Ander sells them in the store. Willow only comes in when Ander gets desperate for help because the employee has abandoned him. Their child son, Jacoby, comes in after school to do homework then go home so he can work on his needs. But the store is finally making money instead of just being a strain on their relationship. lol
Employee Scheduling; When the store opens all of the employees come in together and leave together. This means that just when the bulk of my customers are ready to buy, I have no employees left to help out. In my current store, I only have one employee and he does great! I've got him almost maxed out and so he rarely slacks and does great at his assigned task but when I need him the most, he has to go. I've thought about hiring additional employees but since they all come and go at the same time, it would just be a waste of money and not solve the problem. Employee scheduling is something that the store owner should have the ability to set and modify as needs be.
Store Hours: My poor sim spends all of his time at work for one day (he goes to work when the kids go to school but doesn't get home until around the time they need to go to school the next day) then needs the full day off to rest and spend time with his family. Because there's always one more customer to ring up or one more item to restock. Then, there's the after hour cleaning and repairs that need to be done. If the store had set hours, this wouldn't be an issue because like an event, you'd get a popup saying that the store is set to open in 1 hour and give you the option of going to the store or staying home. Also, if there's a set closing time, then you still have the evening to go home, chill with the kids, woohoo with the spouse, work on your garden and whatever else you need to do. The store hours should be something that the store owner has the ability to set and modify if needs be.
Other than that, I love the retail business. Mine is called Willow's Collectables. Willow finds the collectables and her husband Ander sells them in the store. Willow only comes in when Ander gets desperate for help because the employee has abandoned him. Their child son, Jacoby, comes in after school to do homework then go home so he can work on his needs. But the store is finally making money instead of just being a strain on their relationship. lol
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Welcome to the life of a small business owner. All the small business owners I know that actually make a living from it get to work 5:30 - 6:00 am and leave 8-9:30 pm on an average work day.
Next morning, the store would open at 7, and daughter would hang out in the store chatting up customers before heading off to school.
Play times like these really warm and fill my heart.
Side note: I really wish we had the ability to stagger employees. I have noticed that if you play as a household than the store owner's, and take them to the store, the store will open and employees show up and sell your goods, without needing to be paid or having to leave.
I'm not sure what you mean by that last part...
EDIT: I'm guessing you're not talking about employees you've hired but rather your housemates being unpaid employees.
Yes, but if you have employees that work for you, you don't schedule them all to work the same hours and leave you to do everything alone after they all leave. You stagger your employees so that you have help from open to close, right?
Yes, this is true but when it comes to the financial reports, if you close the store without restocking first, when you do restock while the store is closed, there is no report that shows total restock cost. Which is important to understand how well the Mark Up is working and whether you can safely raise it or if you need to lower it a bit.
And I'm guessing that if you close the store and immediately re-open it, the employees would come back but would they be fully rested and ready to work? Also, it seems like it would be annoying because all customers would leave and more would come back in while the store is now unstocked and not ready to receive them.
I also noticed that any customers that decide to buy at the moment you close the store wait there until you check them out yet you don't get the money and they don't get the merchandise. So here's the scenario (in real life), the store is closed but you have customers in line at checkout. You don't tell them, "sorry, I just decided to close the store so you can't have that." You would ring the remaining customers up and the store would finish closing. So something similar in the game shoud be implimented.
Of course, that still does not account for missing stock reports from restocking after hours which is realistically when most restocking and cleaning takes place.
Oooh sorry. I just meant that if Sim A's household owns the store, if you play as Sim B (from a different household) and visit Sim A's store, Sim A's store will open, and Sim A's employees will show up to work. Other customers will also come.
Sim A's employees will work until Sim B leaves the lot (no matter how long Sim B stays), and Sim A is not charged for their wages, but still receives the proceeds from any sold items.
I've never had a famous sim come to my shop or be hired by my shop. Never even met a famous sim, I guess my families just aren't there yet. lol
As for the hours, yeah, that's sort of what I had in mind. But allow me to elaborate...
Scenario
Hours of operations are from 9 am to 9 pm.
When 8 pm rolls around an "announcement" would be made that the store is about to close. Maybe something like "Attention shoppers, the store closes in 1 hour. Please make any last minute purchases. Thank you for shopping at [Enter Store Name Here]." This is actually in the form of a pop up and is to let you know as well that the store is about to close.
Now, this serves two purposes as far as the customer goes. It would either greatly encourage them to buy or greatly discourage them from buying depending on how motivated they already are.
When 9 pm rolls around the store closes to the customers so everyone who is not waiting to be rung up leaves and those who are waiting will still get their purchase and you will still get the sale.
Now that the store is closed to customers and Employee3 is here, the only thing left to do is any restocking/cleaning. With that finished, you go to the cash register and click "close store." THEN, the financial report pops up and the final employee (if still there) leaves.
So here's how I see it playing out:
Okay so your sim is at home finishing up breakfast with the family when 8 am rolls around (since the store opens in one hour.)
A popup pops up to remind your sim that the store is set to open in one hour. The options would be "Go to work" or "Keep store closed."
Say your sim doesn't want to close the store for the entire day but isn't quite ready to go to work, (it happens, you know it does.
On a side note, I went to go to my store for work and when I went into the retail screen, it said I have no stores.
That's pretty messed up about the neat sims messing with your displays. I'd kick them out too.
Do you praise the employees or reprimand them? I was ignoring that in a previous game but in this one, I am really impressed with how quickly it raises their work ethic so they spend less time slacking and more time focused on their task. Having them answer questions brings multiple customers' desire to buy up pretty quickly for me. Don't know how it is for you.
The consumables going bad is the whole reason I didn't open the flower shop as I had originally planned. I read in the in-game description for floral arrangements that they lose freshness over time so figured that they would be more of a liability than an asset. As for the crafting club, that sounds interesting but won't really help with the wilting, will it? Of course when your sims gets proficient enough at making the arrangements, there is a fragrance that you can spray on it to keep it fresh for I longer, not sure how long though. I haven't sprayed them since I only use the arrangements to make a quick $6k per arrangement.
As for the hours, yeah that might be the issue. As I said, just when the employees are leaving, people are starting to really start buying which is why I can't close when my employees leave. It takes that long for the guests to get their buy bar full. Of course, I do have those that buy through out the day too but not as many as just after or right when my employee is going home. My advice is, if you haven't already, try staying open for a few hours after the employees leave and see if the sales don't start popping up.
I think the most expensive thing in my store is $225 and my cheapest is $5 so that's the range of prices. They all seem to sell pretty good so it's funny that our experiences are so different. For you, the customer wants mainly the most expensive, which takes longer for them to decide to buy. For me, they buy at any price so the buy times vary.
EDIT: Another thing is that I have a wall speaker and some sofas for the guests to sit on. I have a swing outside mainly for my own kid to use (which nobody ever does, including him) but other than that, I don't have anything to distract them. I've yet to catch one of my guests dancing and have only seen my employee dance once which I put the kibash all right away.
I'm gonna upload my store so you can download it and see what it's like, if you want. But be warned, it's very basic on the inside and has almost nothing but collectables so if you're going for a collection challenge, this could be a help or a hinderance depending of if you want to find these things for yourself. lol I'll post on here when I get it uploaded. That probably won't be until tomorrow.
That said, i just designed a retail shopping street and I love having them in my game just to add to the realism, I just wish they were a little bit more fun to actually play.
One of the main reasons, I think, for interacting with the customers is to get the perk points. At least that's how it seems to me.
I have uploaded two of my business lots to the gallery yesterday. If you search by EA ID, my uploads should come up.
I have a question about the perks. If I sell the business so that it will be run by NPCs, do the perks remain active?
Yeah I found them yesterday. I downloaded the one but if there was anything to sell in the floral department, it didn't set the prices or something. Also, I was limited on time so didn't really play it. I just sent my sim to check it out. You have two that seem to be exactly the same. Is there a difference in them?
That's a good question. I want to say no because the perks are mainly managerial. I would imagine the NPC lots would be run by their own set of "policies" or perks if you will.
If you're talking about selling it from one played family to another, then no they don't. I found that out the hard way. Also, you'll lose any star employees you have working for you.
Yeah, I think two are the same, there was some issue when I uploaded and it didn't show up in the gallery, then I uploaded it again and now both show up. They should be the same.
I am asking because I sold another lot with two employees and and when I went back to visit, there were indeed two employees attending the lot. Not the same ones, but two nonetheless. I am thinking of cheating my way to get all the perks and then sell off the business. I made a mall with several shops and managing it with a playable sim is not an easy task. I mainly want these shops to be used by other sims when going out and about so I want my sims to be able to buy whatever is on display but I would also like the shop to be populated with other shoppers doing shopping not just chatting or doing things they shouldn't be doing, like cleaning. Also, is there a way to get shoppers browsing all areas of a shop? I noticed that many sims tend to shop all huddled in one area of the shop and I am not sure what's causing this behaviour.
Have you played Willow's Collectables yet? I'm curious to see if the employees and guests act the same in your game as they do on mine. Because on my game, the shoppers do disburse. Yes, there is usually a clump of them chatting it up with my employee or me (which I find convenient since we're both presumably talking up the store) but they do scatter pretty well in my game.
As for your mall idea, that would be insane for a single household to manage! So yeah sounds like a serious challenge. Great idea for a community lot though.
As for the employees, I started another thread a while back about visiting Willow's Collectables with a different household and there were two employees although I know that the Wentons only hired one. So I think the store size determines how many employees perhaps...