Once he signed I grabbed the paper and put it away in dimensional storage once more, then leaned back and relaxed again, but the Marquis only got more stiff.
"So, my business idea I just proposed to you is almost guaranteed to work out perfectly as I already have the backing of Queen Mia, she is already hard at work promoting my business which will open tomorrow. I bet once your wife comes back to the capital she will be asking you for some anyway."
I tossed him a free sample from dimensional storage and smiled.
"It's on the house, for your wife and daughter. Now, what if it's a bad product, then no matter who is advertising it, it won't take off, right? Well that's not an issue, as it is the exact same product that Selena sells. I just stole her formula and slapped a new label on it."
He stood up and slammed the table.
"That's preposterous! You can't do that!"
I shrugged. "I already did, plus, you can't tell anyone about it, did you read the fine print of the contract on the back of the page?"
I pulled out the paper he just signed, on the back of it, the side he didn't read as it was such a short contract was a clause that said I was allowed to kill him if he told anyone.
His eyes widened in horror.
"Fuck! What the fuck did you make me sign?!"
I smiled and leaned closer. I put my elbow on my knees, clasped my hands and let my chin rest on my thumbs.
"Make you sign? We both know you can't force someone to sign a magical contract Marquis, it would reject it and wouldn't hold up if I had forced you. It's actually the best feature of them, they can't be forged and tampered with so you know it's real if it doesn't self-destruct."
He sat down in his chair and started rubbing his temples.
"You monster."
I chuckled.
"Haha! Well, I still didn't force you to make a deal with me, you just have to not tell anyone, but I think you should keep listening, as this will be a very good deal for us both. Now, before I get started you need to know a few things. Firstly, how many people live in this kingdom?"
He looked at me. "I don't know exactly."
"12 million. And how many can afford cosmetics that cost hundreds of gold?"
A/n: (BTW, 1 gold = 100 silver, 1 silver = 100 copper, 1 silver = 1 USD, Therefore, 1 copper is 1 cent, 1 silver is 1 dollar, and 1 gold is 100 dollars.)
He looked confused. "I don't know."
"Well, considering an average salary for a commoner is somewhere between 200-250 gold coins. ($20,000 to $25,000, I understand it's not much but this economy is so fucked up with the rich being so much richer than the poor that I think it's realistic.) So I think that having to spend your yearly salary on a single cosmetic item that you will almost never use is something no one would do. There are maybe, if we are really pushing it and giving a highball ~1000 nobles in this country. Then if you take into consideration merchant associations or information guilds or other things. There are a few rich commoners, so there are maybe, again this is a high ball, ~10,000 people in this country with enough money to afford these items."
He nodded. "That sounds realistic."
I clapped my hands before returning to my original position.
"Then, what about the other 11,990,000 people? You dumbasses are trying to sell all your products to less than 0.0001% of the population that means the other 99.999% are free game."
His eyes widened. "You're not proposing we sell to commoners are you?"
My smile grew.
"Bingo! Now, I have just bought 15 buildings in highly populated areas where at least 500,000 commoners are within walking distance of the stores. Now let's say I have this product, that is disposable but in high demand, I can sell about 1 person, one bar of it per week as it runs out so quickly. Now, obviously not everyone will buy it, but let's say I get around 50% of people to start using my product, and let's say I price one bar at around 10 silver. Then let's say they buy one a week, if I do that with all 15 stores, then I will make around 1,950,000,000 silver a year in revenues. ($1.95 billion dollars)"
I gave a dramatic pause.
"W-w-what?! That much!" He freaked out.
I quickly cut back in. "Now let's say I do even half of those number's if I underestimate myself completely. That is still 975,000,000 sliver. But, what do commoners love the most in this world?"
"I-I don't know. Free money?"
"No. It's nobles, now let's say that a secondary business that is a part of the corporation of my first business proposition earlier, is to start selling to commoners?"
"They would eat it up, I heard that a noble's used toothbrush sold for 3-4 gold one time." He replied, it's weird that that toothbrush story is so well known…
Well, whatever.
"Now here is the best part, if it is a secondary business that is only connected to my other business by name, but still sells to commoners, it pays the taxes of a commoner's business. So rather than paying the 30% noble tax on all profits, we only pay the 10% that commoners have to pay."
"R-really?" He asked, totally stunned.
I already have him, but I kept pushing.
"Yes, now, what is this miracle product? It's soap."
"But, isn't that expensive and exclusive to nobles?"
"Its exclusivity only makes the people desire it more, besides, ever heard of Likrelstien?" I asked, but I already knew the answer, he has sold it in the past after all.
"Yeah, it's that cheap plant that no one uses even though it grows in abundance in the Renforths forests, well in all forests in the north." He replied.
"It also grows in the Lanchester's land and the kingdom to the north, where my half sister is about to marry into. The Creckal Kingdom."
Oh, I just had a great idea, perhaps I could get my sister to ask for lower prices for our kingdom on Likrelstien for a wedding gift. Then I could make them do all the work for me and expand the business. Well, I'll leave that to whoever takes over.
"Anyways, I learned of a way to turn this cheap plant into bars of soap, it's not nearly as luxurious as the ones nobles use, but it's still more than enough to sell to people who have never used soap in their lives."
He looked down intently and started going over things in his head.