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The Retail Store Challenge (UPDATED)

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  • AIRIS6962AIRIS6962 Posts: 5,611 Member
    edited September 2017
    @AIRIS6962
    Flaming Fandango by #EQCreations
    https://www.thesims.com/gallery/8D2612A0966D11E7853390314CBED808
    I have only tested this store briefly.
    My idea was to keep the minimal living space locked from the public.
    The Trusty Rusty and a Potty Bush are available for public use.

    YAY! :smiley: I LOVE the name too! <3

    @kethrydrake , welcome dear! It´s very interesting what you told about your store and employees and very funny too! LOL
    As @BreeMiles said you don´t need to have the smallest lot if you can manage to have a bigger one. But try to keep your poor sim safe and happy! LOL

    @LegacySims2017 is great you can adapt this challenge to play it!

    I see you solved the questions about mannequins. I really I had no idea, so thank you very much for the info.

    I hope I didn´t forget anything and nobody! I´m going to add all you to the list :mrgreen:
  • kethrydrakekethrydrake Posts: 2,389 Member
    When you go into build mode, click on the lot name in the corner and you can change it.
  • BreeMilesBreeMiles Posts: 8,903 Member
    Oh wonderful to see your beautiful sim dear @AIRIS6962! She is lovely! Why are you not wanting to upload her?
  • AIRIS6962AIRIS6962 Posts: 5,611 Member

    Thank you very much, @kethrydrake ! Yes, I do that, but after my sim purchased the store, so nothing changed :(
  • AIRIS6962AIRIS6962 Posts: 5,611 Member

    Thank you very much, dear @BreeMiles ! Maybe I will upload her. Not sure.
  • kethrydrakekethrydrake Posts: 2,389 Member
    edited September 2017
    Huh, should work. I did it after I bought the lot.
  • EuphorialQueenEuphorialQueen Posts: 6,224 Member
    AIRIS6962 wrote: »
    @AIRIS6962
    Flaming Fandango by #EQCreations
    https://www.thesims.com/gallery/8D2612A0966D11E7853390314CBED808
    I have only tested this store briefly.
    My idea was to keep the minimal living space locked from the public.
    The Trusty Rusty and a Potty Bush are available for public use.
    YAY! :smiley: I LOVE the name too! <3
    :flushed: Oops Flaming Fandango by #EQCreations
    Edited: Lot title is Flamingo Fandango
  • EuphorialQueenEuphorialQueen Posts: 6,224 Member
    BreeMiles wrote: »
    Well @EuphorialQueen Flaming looks awesome also! :D<3
    Perhaps "Flaming" could be the title of another retail shop? Hmmm *strokes chin thoughtfully*
  • AIRIS6962AIRIS6962 Posts: 5,611 Member

    LOL I´ve changed it already, dear!
  • AIRIS6962AIRIS6962 Posts: 5,611 Member
    Huh, should work. I did it after I bought the lot.

    I will sell my Store on Sunday in game and I will purchase it again.
  • SoulGal7SoulGal7 Posts: 3,627 Member
    @AIRIS6962 - Yes, those price tags are funny. Of course you are selling a person. Meet gardener for hire -- your side business. lol
    Oh Miriam is pretty and her outfit with the roses on it is so great for a garden themed shop. I haven't had a chance to look at the lot itself yet, but it looks so pretty in your game.
    I think you can change the name of the lot if you go into build mode and then go over to the name (on the upper left had side), and then you can re-type the name.
    And thanks so much for reading my chapter. I work hard on them. :)
  • LegacySims2017LegacySims2017 Posts: 5,226 Member
    @SoulGal7 I have nominated RETAIL WARS for the Liebster Award! Nomination link here – http://legacysims.net/?page_id=1468
    Visit LegacySims.net!
    pol-reese.gif
    (Twitter Me: LSims2017)
  • Karababy52Karababy52 Posts: 5,952 Member
    Hello everyone! My internet service went down last Friday and we didn't get it back until earlier today. I literally just caught up with all my email, FB, Twitter, etc. and came here to see what's going on and update y'all on my challenge happenings. I don't have any pics yet, I took some but then accidentally deleted them. o.O

    Anyway, I haven't been in game yet either, but will be going in game soon to get some and then I'll share. My retail Sim is named Grant Forest, he's running a camping supplies store. Right now it's still just named 'Get Campin', so creative, right? lol Not... I'm having a hard time coming up with a clever name for it so it might just stay that for now. I thought of 'Into the Forest' or 'Camp Forest' or 'Go Forest Camping' or simply 'Forest Camping Supplies, but, meh.... boring! At least to me. Enough about that though. Here's what's happened so far.

    First of all, I thought I had spent everything on the store, except one simolean. Wrong! Once I had Grant on his empty lot in Newcrest next door to the store I'd created for him, he bought the store and ended up with 1501 simoleans leftover. Whoops! I somehow miscalculated. It was a good thing though because I spent the rest on a couple trees and other landscaping. At least that's what I thought until I realized it was Sunday and the bills would be due the next day. The rules say we can't transfer any funds until Friday and his household funds were at zero after I spent all the lovely extra simoleans he ended up with. Gah!

    Grant opened the store bright and early Monday morning and stayed open until 5 p.m. He sold everything! Yay! Now he had enough to pay the bills, but... had to wait until Friday. Tuesday they shut off the water, but his plumbing still worked! Whew! He sold 7 items that day. I thought perhaps he'd keep his power too. Nope, they shut off the power on Wednesday so he had to do business in the dark. lol It was his worst day too, only sold 1 thing. I rolled for Thursday, crossing my fingers he'd get a day off but he had to open at 50% markup. He had an okay day for sales, sold three things I think so it worked out.

    I stopped playing then because I couldn't remember the rules for Friday. I couldn't go online to check because of no internet. *sigh* So I created another Sim and spent some time building the guy a house until today when we got our internet back.

    The days he was open for business and I was playing 'truly' offline, I learned a few things:

    1. If you want to sell a picnic table or any table/surface, you can't put something on top, it won't sell and the game will change it to 'set not for sale.' I had a lantern on top of a picnic table that was just for decoration.

    2. If you use MOO to move any item for sale on top of the sales desk (or any surface?), Sims will want to buy it but they can't reach it. They will get the shopping cart above their heads, but when you try to check them out the shopping cart disappears and they wave their hands with a routing icon above their heads. I had the stuffed Granite Falls bear for sale on the desk. After I put it on the floor, the Sim wanting to buy it immediately got the shopping cart again.

    This also will happen if you MOO something on top of or inside another object. I had the stone campfire pit for sale with an orange crystal and a couple fountain lights in it to mimic a burning fire. It looked so cool! But again, it couldn't be sold like that. Also, Marcus Flex decided it would be a good idea to light a fire in it while he was shopping! o.O Thankfully it didn't start anything on fire and I had Grant put it out immediately.

    3. I had Grant's bathroom locked so only he could use it, but ended up unlocking it for customers. They would complain and do the '🐸🐸🐸🐸 dance' and then leave when it was locked. Once he can afford it, I'll have him build another bathroom just for customers. They also liked to spend time in there getting water to drink then leave glasses all over the store. *double sigh*

    4. Lastly, I always play offline because my laptop can't handle playing online. I normally log into Origin, then set Origin to offline and open the game. I've only ever had the game crash once on me playing this way. Well, playing offline with no internet connected I found out is a different matter. Every time I played, it crashed after anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour of play time. It crashed four times on me. Seems a bit suspicious to me. It makes me wonder if we're 'truly' playing offline when choosing offline mode in Origin. Just an observation...

    I'm going to catch up on all my bookmarks here and then get in the game. Can't wait to play again, Grant already almost has enough to build his dream home. I think I'll just expand his living area in the store though instead. His 'apartment' is not even 1/4 the size of the store showroom floor. lol He has a single bed, a fridge, couch, TV, bookcase and the full bathroom. I think that's it... hard to remember since it's been six days now since I played that save. I'll know for sure soon though and take some pics to share. :)

    Thanks for reading my tl;dr novel update! ;) Happy Simming! <3
  • kethrydrakekethrydrake Posts: 2,389 Member
    The customer bathroom in my store only contains a toilet. The sink and fridge are behind locked doors, so no water glasses lying about.
  • BreeMilesBreeMiles Posts: 8,903 Member
    @LegacySims2017 that is super awesome of you! I hope it wins because it is an epic story!
    @Karababy52 Glad, you have your internet back sweetie! Good luck with the name finding but I love them all! I know the feeling with the bills I have had my electric and my water turned off several times now! She has went days without both LOL! I have had two Thursday's off since I started playing the challenge, my sim has no time to get out and exercise so I got her the perk to level fun while she does her exercise! Then she can do a few push-ups and sit-ups in the store but still has packed on the pounds! I may have to go with some diet potion for her to melt it off! Good info on the Moo dear I did not know that! Thanks a bunch! They have the $) simoleons bathroom's in debug dear! From the outdoor pack, I think it's from that one, but anyway it cost $0 I had to add one to my bookstore for the same reason! Gosh sweetie I'm glad you brought up the crashing mine is crashing all the time also! I lost 3 days of sim play just the other day because I forgot to save each day! I have to start it all over from the last save it did! I couldn't find a backup save for it either! I was sure that they said the game autosaved at some points, but not mine! I have no cc or mods and I play in online mod all the time! I was hoping that you would say it works without crashing in offline mode! I was going to try that next time, no matter crying now! Can't wait to see your pic's dear! All sounds very interesting for sure!
  • LegacySims2017LegacySims2017 Posts: 5,226 Member
    @BreeMiles all nominees are winners pretty much. They just follow suit. Add their recognition on their site, answer the questions, then nominate others.
    Visit LegacySims.net!
    pol-reese.gif
    (Twitter Me: LSims2017)
  • SoulGal7SoulGal7 Posts: 3,627 Member
    @LegacySims2017 - oh wow! Thanks for nominating me. I will work on those questions this weekend :) And you, wow, nominated 3 times! Congrats!
  • SoulGal7SoulGal7 Posts: 3,627 Member
    edited September 2017
    @Karababy52 - I love your idea of a camping store. Here's some store ideas - S'More Camping or S'more Camp Gear (can you tell I like smores?) lol Pine Needle Supplies, Bear Goods...hopefully that will lead you down the path running....

    Glad that your internet is back. Wow, you have a full house on the lot. My sims are still sleeping on cots....hey...almost like a camp-out! hehehe

    @BreeMiles - I think that there are no autosaves anymore. For this one, I saved as and named it something like Backup or some other creative file name, then I have my original. Oh, that is so bad when your computer crashes and then you're back to where you began an hour ago! Pretty frustrating, especially if something unique happens and it probably won't happen again. I have had that happen, too, and it's pretty depressing.
  • Karababy52Karababy52 Posts: 5,952 Member
    edited September 2017
    BreeMiles wrote: »
    @LegacySims2017 that is super awesome of you! I hope it wins because it is an epic story!
    @Karababy52 Glad, you have your internet back sweetie! Good luck with the name finding but I love them all! I know the feeling with the bills I have had my electric and my water turned off several times now! She has went days without both LOL! I have had two Thursday's off since I started playing the challenge, my sim has no time to get out and exercise so I got her the perk to level fun while she does her exercise! Then she can do a few push-ups and sit-ups in the store but still has packed on the pounds! I may have to go with some diet potion for her to melt it off! Good info on the Moo dear I did not know that! Thanks a bunch! They have the $) simoleons bathroom's in debug dear! From the outdoor pack, I think it's from that one, but anyway it cost $0 I had to add one to my bookstore for the same reason! Gosh sweetie I'm glad you brought up the crashing mine is crashing all the time also! I lost 3 days of sim play just the other day because I forgot to save each day! I have to start it all over from the last save it did! I couldn't find a backup save for it either! I was sure that they said the game autosaved at some points, but not mine! I have no cc or mods and I play in online mod all the time! I was hoping that you would say it works without crashing in offline mode! I was going to try that next time, no matter crying now! Can't wait to see your pic's dear! All sounds very interesting for sure!

    Thanks, I'm glad I have it back too and thanks about the store names. They're okay I guess. It's still just called 'Get Campin' but I really like some of @SoulGal7's suggestions. I think I'm going to change it to "S'More Camping Gear," that's so cute! Thanks!

    Grant has now reached his goal of earning 17000 simoleans and he did it in only one week! I think selling half his stock on 50% markup Thursday & Friday, plus selling three items on 100% markup on Saturday really helped.

    I knew about the debug toilet, but he doesn't have to be frugal now so I'll probably just get a normal one. Thanks for reminding me though! Thankfully when I played last night my game didn't crash. It just compounds my theory though. Playing in Origin offline mode with an internet connection isn't fully 'offline' in my opinion. But playing with Origin in offline mode with NO connection (I have WiFi that's on all the time) truly is offline and Origin doesn't like that for some reason. Bummer that you lost 3 days of play time. I know we used to have autosave, but I think I read in a recent update they got rid of it.

    I play a totally vanilla game too, no mods, no CC at all. I took some pics last night and was going to post them then, but I ran into a problem. I was doing laundry and went in the basement to put the clothes in the dryer and found it flooded. Our sump pump failed. So I had to do some bailing, sweeping and drying. Ug, I'm so sore today, hope it's not worse when I wake up later.

    Anyway, here's the pics I promised. :) I put them in a spoiler because I went a little pic crazy, there's only 10, but they're kinda big. Sorry about that....
    Meet Grant Forest, proprietor of S'More Camping Gear! His aspiration is Body Builder and traits are Active, Loves Outdoors and Creative... I think. I can't remember now. lol I don't really have a backstory for him yet other than that he loves camping, nature and anything to do with sports. I gave him the creative trait because he'll eventually become a writer of wilderness survival guides.

    It's 1 a.m. Sunday morning and he's just closed the store. He worked his bum off all week and is tired, bored and hungry so he's having a PBJ before hitting the hay.

    HILmaSl.png

    Here's his lovely store. It's quite plain right now. I never did get a chance to spruce it up with debug stuff, but that's okay. I like that it's simple and rustic, just like him! :)

    yHR3jDl.png

    Here's an overhead view of the layout. Notice how tiny his apartment is in relation to the rest of the building? lol I plan to change that now that he's reached his goal. *Note - Some pics look dark because he's using Autolights and unless he's in the room, the lights are out to save money! I realize now I should've had him walk out there or turned autolights off for the pics, but oh well.

    bH8tMj5.png

    This is most of his inventory. Items for sale here are two grills (he had only one, but added the big gas grill Friday), a tent, a camp chair & bench, picnic table, double blow up mattress, and firepit.

    dNqk0Et.png

    The ninth item is a cuddly Granite Falls mascot bear sitting in front of the checkout desk. I had it sitting on the corner, but it couldn't be sold there as previously mentioned.

    iEps4D5.png

    This is the reason why I think I have to swap out the firepit for something else. Sims just can't leave it alone. Bjorn caught himself on fire in this pic, but don't worry he didn't burn up. lol

    ILGFv7D.png

    Bjorn walked away after lighting the fire again and Marcus Flex took advantage to toast some marshmellows.

    iG4BlDw.png

    Mila Munch decided to join him. *sigh* Yeah, it's gotta go!

    igskRY0.png

    After Grant had a good night's, er morning's sleep, he had a bite to eat while watching a cooking show, cleaned the toilet, fixed the broken sink and did some restocking.

    vuFlMoU.png

    Finally after all his chores were done it was time to do a body builder's idea of a fun activity, jogging, of course. :)

    zPkw2pN.png

    Annnd, that's it for now. Hope you don't mind all the pics, I promise not to keep flooding the thread with them from here on out. Have fun and Happy Simming everyone! <3
  • BreeMilesBreeMiles Posts: 8,903 Member
    @Karababy52 My My your Grant is a hunk and the store really suits him! Love the idea of the store also and really neat how you have it set up! Loving the pic's so keep sharing dear!
  • SoulGal7SoulGal7 Posts: 3,627 Member
    @Karababy52 - oh that is sweet! I love your new store name! It is such a cute store, I love how you have the register area set up with the little outdoor wildlife carpet in front of it. Looking at your little apartment layout makes me think that yes, my place is too big. I mean, really, talking about Hallie and Hank, they are hardly in there. I laughed out loud with the firepit and the fires and sims roasting their marshmallows. Hey, get them in the spirit to think about camping and then sell them everything! hehehe Love it! And how come your Grant still looks in great shape and a hunk, and my Hank is well, in need of some shape up! lol
  • SoulGal7SoulGal7 Posts: 3,627 Member
    edited September 2017
    Good evening everyone! I have a new chapter up and there is a bit of a surprise in this one! lol I can't say anymore...
    https://soulgal7.wordpress.com/2017/09/22/ch-6-retail-wars-sales-or-no-sales
  • SoulGal7SoulGal7 Posts: 3,627 Member
    Here is a pic from my new chapter
    hank_better_work_out.png

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