章 113: Chapter 113: Deal With the Devil
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18 January 1993, Hogsmeade
"Well, it's far above and beyond any other broom on the market. I guarantee you won't find any broom that's anywhere as fast or as manoeuvrable anywhere in the world," the man stated.
Harry snorted, "We both know that's not true, is it? Racing brooms are a lot faster and very manoeuvrable. The French and the Italians have that market cornered and I don't think that anything you can do that would stop that."
"Yes, but those brooms are hideously expensive. There's barely any wood in them at all. It's all practically made up of alchemically treated metals which costs a fortune. A single mediocre racing broom is even more expensive than an entire Quidditch team's state of the art brooms ten times over. And they even wouldn't work well in Quidditch; while racing brooms have impressive top speeds, they don't have the acceleration that Quidditch players need. If you think about it, Quidditch players don't really maintain high speeds, they just need to be manoeuvrable and be able to accelerate very quickly."
The Potter scion smiled, "Well said. Now when you're talking to a potential investor, please make sure that you're very objective with every fact. You're claiming that this will be the best Quidditch broom in the market. The question now, is why?"
The man shrugged, "It's the efficiency of it that's impressive. Do you know how racing brooms work, Mr. Potter?"
"I have an idea. The enchantments on the brooms act more like buffers that channel a user's magic like a wand to work the magic. It's why Quidditch players get exhausted while flying."
The broom maker nodded, "Yeah. The problem with Quidditch is that games could last very long, so the ICW department of sports and games made sure that brooms wouldn't really magically exhaust a player to unconsciousness or death. All Quidditch brooms have a certain charm designed by the association that limits the input of magic. Without that charm, it's more than easy to get a broom to move faster than the speed of sound. You just needed a rider with very large magical reserves or with enough control to not waste any magic, and the enchantment would work. Other broom manufacturers have been tinkering with the shape of the brooms, certain anti-turbulence charms, playing around with air resistance charms, stabilization charms and things like that. They even resorted to muggle means, like using actual aerodynamic features, to make sure that as much of the magic allowed was used to power the acceleration and manoeuvrability enchantments. What I did, was discover a way to make sure the magic is used more efficiently anyway, so I could leave more than enough of it to power the stability and steering mechanisms to make the flight as smooth and as responsive as possible while leaving room for a sizeable increase in acceleration and with my custom variable air resistance charm, a much higher top speed. That's what makes my broom the best one on the market, Mr. Potter."
The man took a deep breath in the end and Harry suppressed the urge to smile. He hated to admit it, but he was impressed by Terrence Smythe. The broom maker was obviously very passionate about the subject, but it was nice to see someone using a different way of going about a problem. He was a half-blood who pretty much chose to start his own company despite the market being pretty much saturated with new versions of brooms every year. He took a few years off the study physics at a muggle university, just to improve his craft. It was a common thing when it came to guilds, but for someone to do it on his own was a testament to his dedication.
But what pleased Harry the most was the fact that the man didn't take the easy way out. He could have made a decent broom that just had a couple of upgrades and presented it to Nimbus or some other broom making company as a job interview, and he would have gotten in easily. Just look at Nimbus who just adjusted the design and adjusted the wind resistance enchantments a bit on the Nimbus 2000, and released the Nimbus 2001, which really put experienced players off who often gauged their speed using the wind resistance on their faces. Harry had asked Flint permission to fly one of them after practice, and it was honestly awkward to fly. You could probably get used to it, but the learning curve would be very steep indeed.
Terrence Smythe had created something new. Alas, innovation was only half the race. The man was, of course, not willing to let him on his secrets, which was smart, but now came the big question, "Alright, then why are you here?"
The broom maker looked perplexed for a second before replying, "I don't follow. You're the one who arranged the meeting…"
"Look, if what you're saying about your broom is correct, then you should have been set for life. You would have gone to one of the distributors, sold your design or just asked them to invest in it. Trust me, they would have been all over this. You should have been batting away investments left and right with a stick. Now, if that was the case and someone randomly offered to invest, you would just ignore them. But you didn't. You came to this meeting, hoping to secure an investor, and I would like to know why no one else tried to grab you up."
The man looked like he was sweating and just took a deep breath, "The problem was the production cost. The moment I said how much it costs for every single one to be manufactured, they just clammed up and did their best to kick me out."
"And how much does a single broom cost?"
"Around five hundred galleons in materials. And it takes about a full day of work for me to do it."
Harry frowned, "And how much does a Nimbus 2000 cost in terms of materials?"
"Around fifty galleons, I guess. I could probably enchant a similar broom in an hour or so. The total production cost should be around a hundred galleons."
And finally, Harry understood what was going on, "So, you're telling me that you went to all these companies to use as distributors, to sell them your designs so that your company get a small profit margin but was pretty much laughed out of your proposals. You currently have no revenue stream and no gold reserves to even make a second broom."
The man looked down and nodded, "I know things aren't going well. I just don't understand why they didn't accept my offer…"
Well, that sets it. The man is a brilliant inventor but an idiot businessman.
Harry wasn't some kind of business prodigy, in fact, he didn't really care about the financial side of things, but that didn't mean that he didn't read a few books while he was bored, "Oh, it's the profit margin. Assuming that you work ten hours a day, a single person would be able to make ten Nimbus 2000 brooms, which would sell with around 250 galleons of profit each, that's around 2500 galleons of profit for the company, outside of the salaries, that is. A single one of your Firebolts could be made in a day by a single worker. So, to get the same profit margins, any distributor would need to sell every broom for over three thousand galleons, which is honestly an obscene price for a broom. That's not even mentioning the time and gold needed to train the workers to make your new brooms. It's just not worth it on what is essentially a gamble. Your broom being better doesn't mean that it's going to sell well enough for the price, which means that they'll need to drop it, which is just unprofitable. Here, show me the broom for a second."
The man who was gaping at Harry for a good minute opened his briefcase and gave him the broom. It was obviously a prototype; it didn't have any of the fancy decoration and designs that quidditch brooms often had, but it was well made. The handle was made up of mahogany and a little silver that coursed through the wood, glinting like quicksilver beneath the surface. There were runes on them, which were obviously absent in production models.
The bristles were a mix of red pine and some kind of golden metal that Harry recognized as Orichalcum from his own experimentation. The body was simple, with a sleek long birch wood with hundreds of runes glowing on it.
The moment Harry touched her and spread his Arcane Hearing; he knew that it was something special. There were a few secrecy charms, but they were never designed to protect from something like Harry's skill.
The Potter scion murmured to himself while examining the piece of art in his hands, "Interesting. Very interesting indeed. You enchanted dozens of twigs separately and combined them using Alchemy into a single body, with hundreds of veins made up of Orichalcum just to transfer the magic. You basically took inspiration from the human body and created veins to efficiently move the magic around. But it feels odd, I don't think it's Orichalcum, maybe some kind of magical metal, I'm not entirely sure."
"It's Runesteel," the man gaping at his deductions, "It's cheaper than the Orichalcum and I could use it as a core. It's not as efficient but it's far better than the competition."
I nodded, "I remember. It's some kind of metal infused with runes, isn't it? I'll look into it later. But the way you built the handle with the core being a diamond that you transmuted yourself, I assume, you use it to store magic when it's not being used. It's not as effective as using a naturally created gem, but I don't think any other broom uses something like this to store magic, they just rely on the wood to do it. No wonder it's so expensive. Oh, I see now, you used the veins in the body of the broom to not only transfer the magic to the enchantments but to also act as a secondary nerve network to transmit the information that the player gives. It's very fast and the broom will act like its rider's extended limb. Holy shit, you added a self-learning magical algorithm that would fine-tune itself on the rider, which would estimate a player's movement by his past decisions and adapt to it which would make the reactions even faster. And the enchantments on the bristles to accelerate and stabilize the broom are exemplary. Oh, that breaking mechanism is brilliant. You didn't mention that did you?"
The man was still stupefied by Harry's guesses, "How in Merlin's name did you figure it out?"
"It's not important how I figured it out," the Potter scion interjected, "I now see what the problem is…"
"And what is it?"
"That's very easy, you're targeting the wrong audience. You're treating broom making as an art and I can see how you would with the masterpiece you created. But the other companies, they treat it like a business and the truth is that for a broom like that, there just isn't a good market for it. Here's the thing, outside of spoilt children and rich Quidditch enthusiasts, your main buyers will have to be professional teams. You should have never gone to other companies."
"Then who would be making my brooms then?" Smythe asked.
"Look, I don't think you realized what you've done. Your business isn't making brooms, it's your idea and the improvements you made. And an idea will only take you so far. What you need to do is turn Firebolt into a brand, to market it as 'the broom' that professional Quidditch players use. It certainly seems good enough for it. No matter what you think, your brooms are not meant for the common wizard and witch to fly, but you can make it something that's a sign of luxury, of importance, but targeted towards younger wizards and witches, who are obsessed with Quidditch."
"And how am I supposed to do that?"
Harry let out a large grin, "Make seven brooms and loan them out to a professional league team for a few games. The top teams will probably not bother answering you, but a team at the bottom of the leaderboard, and that has nothing to lose will accept your offer. If your brooms offer such a large advantage, they should be winning. Players will talk to each other, managers to each other, and slowly, you'll start selling brooms. You'll be getting orders left and right. Make sure to number each broom, this way they're more like collectables than products, and if things grow from there, you should be contacted by one of the big companies."
"And I accept their offer then?"
"Of course not," Harry snorted, "You ignore them completely. If your brooms are this superior, everyone needing the advantage will order one and with the World Cup around the corner, you'll be practically the unofficial sponsor of the World Cup. The important thing is that you enchant every broom yourself like it's a point of pride. However, the moment the World Cup starts, you sell the entire company to the highest bidder."
"I don't understand. Why would I do that?"
"How long do you think it would take for a company like Nimbus to reverse engineer your broom? Two, three years, I'm guessing, if you use better concealing enchantments. Assuming the time to train people to make their substitute brooms is around an extra year, you'll be completely out of business in five years when they undercut the prices. Your value as a company will be the highest during the World Cup. If you sell then, you won't be just selling your broom, but the Firebolt name which will be on everyone's mind. You could add a stipulation for you to head any future developments and they will be bending themselves in front of you just to have a taste of your profits. You have a small window to profit as much as possible with your product and you need to capitalize on that."
The man looked pensive for a second, "This could work, but I don't have the capital to build seven brooms from scratch."
"That's where I come in. I'm willing to give you five thousand galleons in exchange for forty per cent of your company. That should get things started easily enough."
"Five thousand?" the man exclaimed, "Are you mad? This is far too low for forty per cent."
Harry grinned, "Yes, but that's the offer I'm willing to give."
"Well, I refuse!"
"That would be unwise, Mr. Smythe. You see, you're on your last leg and you know it. Now, I'm offering you a paltry sum, but in return, I will not involve myself in the working of the company. Other investors might be willing to help you, but I can almost guarantee that they'll want control over your company, and your baby. They will make you change things that you won't agree with, but you'll have no choice but to do it. However, I'm like you, I like the art of it, the beauty of your broom. And I'm also someone who figured out how it really works, and I appreciate the magic involved."
The man blanched when he recognized the implied threat. He had lost any bargaining power the moment he gave Harry access to the broom for more than a minute. The Potter scion could technically create his own copy and since he already had the capital necessary to start the plan, he would be able to steal Smythe's invention.
Harry had a grin not too dissimilar to that of a fox when he asked, "So, do we have a deal, Mr. Smythe?"
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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.
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