I had the same experience when I first tried this game about a year ago. I made it about 2 days, and then failed miserably. I thought I would give it another try just recently, and it seems to be going better for me this time.
A couple things that helped:
1) Before building anything, dig around in the City Retail reports, and find a city with a group of products that have little competition, and an average price well above the available products for sale. I suggest specializing in one product category (at least to begin with), so you should consider markets for the whole category, and not just a single product. Once you found your city, build an office and a store.
2) Be very afraid to spend any money at first!! This is what caused my downfall the first time I played. Only open one office, and one store. Only supply that store with a minimum amount of goods (I started at 10 items each), then slowly increase the supply as your sales increase. Same thing goes with number of employees and advertising. Even now I get over ambitious sometimes, and it ends up biting me in the ass. Steady as she goes is the key.
3) Once that store is starting to turn a profit, use those profits to begin expanding into a few other stores. I suggest waiting to jump into production until you have a few profitable stores, because it is a large up front investment, and you may find you can't even do anything with the factory you just built due to supply issues.
4) ????
5) Profit!
I am still a newb myself, so take this advice with a grain of salt.
Best Regards,
...drkstr |