Managing a Store:
>> Found an excellent thread on how to have a retail lot in world, without having to currently own it:
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/838675/questions-about-retail-lots#latest
>> Find yourself struggling to look after your shop all by yourself but don't want to hire any employees just yet or you are waiting for them to show up?
If you're playing with multiple Sims you can rope in your other family members to help you out by clicking on them to summon them over to the business to help.
They can do this by restocking/cleaning or ringing up customers. My Sim's teen daughter has saved her Mom's bacon quite a few times :)
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>> Retail store tip: if you don't want to hire employees & you don't care about perk points, you can wait for the customers to choose what they want and you can ring them up. No need to talk to all of the customers, usually a lot of them buy things anyway. Less work for you :)
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>> Managing a clothing store Ive learned that at the beginning you need to start low with a few objects and mannequins to sale, after gaining some experience and profit you can hire an employee and add more items to the store, that also depend on how many customers are visiting daily. Besides that the store has two shifts, one in the morning and another in the afternoon/night with at least 2 hours between them so the workers can rest. In addition I don't restock the sold items until the store is closed that way the outgoing costs would not be affected only the retail funds would.
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>> Building a mall tip- this isn't exactly a tip but from my experience, if you're going to have multiple floors in your mall, ensure there is always at least two family members helping out instore as we all know employees are useless and for some reason the time lag between ringing up one customer until they move to ring up another is really long!
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>> My tip is when you hire employees, they're not very good at first, but stick with them! Having a good personal relationship helps & if they're not doing their assigned task yet not slacking off, don't be afraid to criticize them.
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>> Not sure if this is helpful but I recently realized putting a computer in the store keeps my household sims 'in order'. I dont have employees (I dont see a need for them, I have 8 roommates..) They will automatically go back to the PC after ringing someone up, keeping them in the same area. So when a customer goes to that area, they can easily get to customer. Useful for stores with multiple levels, IMO.
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>> If you have a large/multi-level store and cannot find the customer you need to ring up, clicking on the sale pop-up will zoom you into the required sim.
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>> If you are tired of your customers and employees dancing to music instead of shopping and selling, sell your stereo and get the venue speaker that plays classical. You can still click on it to listen and raise Fun while doing other things in the store.
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>> With running a retail store, I've learned that being in a 'confident' emotion makes selling easier, as you get the option to 'close the deal'. I always put confident décor in all my stores, even if it's an item not being sold.
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Nh6650 wrote:
Which things are included in confident décor?.
Any. I usually just have my Sim paint several confident paintings & hang them in my business & enable emotion.
One of my businesses is a bakery, so I have tons of confident paintings hung on the walls for decoration......as soon as my Sim walks in the room, they're immediately put in 'very confident' emotion.
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>> Tip: only hire workers with a high work ethic, otherwise they literally do nothing.
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>> If you've tried to make a retail restaurant with a professional bar area, you'll have found that no-one orders drinks from you, even if you tend the bar. However- you can have your owner/barman make drinks and set them for sale right there on the bar! The only catch is, you have to ring the customers up just like with any other sale.