The next few days William spent most of his time training and reading the report that had been given to him by Edmund, Limiting his outings to the city, who he was now starting to get more familiar with to a couple of hours in the afternoons.
He found that Edmund's report was quite detailed covering most of the mainstream industries, such as shipping, textiles, fishing, jewelry he even looked into agricultural products.
As he went through the papers, William made sure to keep in mind his current situation as well as his status.
'I don't have a lot of capital at the moment, a substantial part of my reserves were spent purchasing Edmund's debt, though I can say that he was certainly worth it based on his ability so far. on top of that, my product should not be something that harms the territory and instead benefits it.'
William summarized.
'Though I have plenty of ideas for pyramid schemes that can get me rich quickly, I don't think it would do any good to Landow and its tax revenues. I owe at least this much to my father.' he continued.
'Finally, I cannot under any circumstances "invent" something ridiculous like cannons. That would simply turn our territory into the number one enemy of the kingdom as all the nobles will scramble to get their hand on them from us. Again too much attention is bad attention... for now.'
William summarized; frankly, he had no idea how to make the cannons in the first place, but it did not hurt to remind himself non the less.
After extensive reading, he had finally settled on a potential product that is not very costly, yet it could make a world of difference when it comes to the overall well-being of the citizens of the territory.
He would have to probably sell it for cheap and on mass if he wanted it to catch on and bring some profits. It would probably be an uphill battle to convince the population to adopt it at first, but once they feel its benefits, it would mostly sell itself.
His idea was to make soap.
The manufacturing of soap required mainly two ingredients, FATS which could be separated into animal and plant-based, and Alkali which is present in wood ash.
this primitive form of soap may not be as nice as the ones on earth with their scents, colors, and smoothness; but they get the job done while using common and cheap materials.
William drafted an overall plan with the ingredients and mixing method to manufacture soap on some parchment papers to give to Edmund for use later on.
He would leave the procuring of the ingredients, equipment, and a place to produce and make their product to Edmund, while he will mostly focus on procuring funds as well as the advertisement campaign they will no doubt have to launch later on to convince potential buyers.
It would probably take some trial and error to eventually get it right since he did not have the exact method of manufacturing but rather just knew the ingredient.
William even envisioned that later on, they could start experimenting with scented soaps to sell to wealthy customers with much higher profit margins. this was all in the future though, for now, he had to focus on what is attainable.
The very next day William once more went to the Singing stream tavern at the agreed-upon time with Edmund, he took his usual 5 disguised guards with him and left the castle at around 2 in the afternoon.
William had slowly been getting used to the morning training routine, his body starting to acclimate itself with the intensity, so being active all day was no longer a herculean task but rather more of a difficult one.
Once William entered the tavern he quickly spotted Edmund sitting in their usual spot in the corner and made his way towards him.
After they were done with the greetings William pulled the parchment papers he had brought with him and passed them to Edmund.
"Read this slowly read the papers, I have included an introduction to the product, its manufacturing method, potential benefits it could bring to the buyers, as well potentiate marketability, and a few more things; once you're done I will be waiting for all your questions."
Edmund took the papers, eager to learn about this new product. He remembered that William had promised him that the profits they would make would be so large his cut alone would be enough to cover his debt many times over if he worked with him.
Now he was going to see where has his confidence come from.
It took Edmund a few hours to read, analyze and understand what the product was all about as well as trying to imagine its future potential.
As he did so his expression went from extreme focus to confusion to doubt to realization to doubt again and on on. It was obvious to William that his "partner" here was trying to see every potential angle.
Once he had finished reading the documents, William passed Edmund a cup of ale to refresh himself a bit before they went on to the questioning part.
After a few minutes of organizing his thoughts, Edmund finally opened up with the first question.
"Why?"
"What do you mean why?" William was taken a bit by surprise, he did not expect this to be the first question to be asked.
"I mean why this soap as you call it? Don't get me wrong it seems like it would do marvels for the overall health of the population of Landow, but just because something is good for their health does not mean that they will buy it at least not at first."
" That is true" William admitted.
" So to convince people would be a difficult thing to do. On top of that, though the ingredients are cheap, we would also need to sell the soap cheaply to sell it to the common folk, meaning our profit margins will be very small, you even mentioned it in your papers. so why choose this rather than something else?"
" These are all valid reasons Edmund and to answer them we have to go over them one by one. First, we can compensate for the small profit margins with mass production, which in turn will lower our production costs further; For your second question the answer is simple, the answer is advertisement which I will explain later on. Finally for the why, let's just say that this is just a test product for many more to come and I need a lot of goodwill with the lord and officials to make it easier for us to get permits to invest further down the line."
He paused to take a breath before he finished.
" Tell me, Edmund, what better way to get a lord's favor than to be solely responsible for at least a 50% increase in the overall health of the population, resulting in more available manpower for work and therefore potentially more taxes."
Frankly, William went with the soap for two reasons, one was as a thank you to his father for being an awesome dad and simply shattering his image of what a typical lord would behave like. The other was because it was not a bad choice considering his available resources.
William and Edmund continued going back and forth for some time, one defending his plan and the other trying to poke holes in it, this was a good thing as it helped shore up any weaknesses and misconceptions about the plan.
William finished by saying. " I forgot to write it down by you will be getting 30% of the profits for your work in setting up the production and overseeing it as well, and the fact that you will be the face of our little company."
Edmund was surprised by the generous offer, William could have just used him as an employee and paid him pennies for his work.
"When do we start?" he asked, hesitating no more.
"For that, we will need to go to a more private place to discuss it in detail." William replayed with a big smile on his face.
William was not worried that his partner could go and sell his "recipe" to the highest bidder. It was untested waters and few would be interested in it, not to mention that he still legally held his debt, and considering he was the lord's son and the resources available to him, he could simply find him wherever he runs to.