The pharmacy industry is highly competitive, with competitors undercutting each other on prices to capture market share, thus significantly reducing profit margins. Even Starry Sky Pharmacy had to offer low prices to attract customers. Among the clientele of pharmacists, large guilds are the biggest consumer groups. They have substantial financial resources and often purchase potions in bulk to save on guild expenses. Because of their massive purchasing volumes, they aggressively drive down prices. Ordinary pharmacies, eager to secure large orders, are willing to accept orders even when the guilds offer very low prices and profit margins are slim, relying on volume to achieve profitability. Some pharmacies, in an effort to secure long-term clients, are even willing to operate at a loss initially, demonstrating the intensity of competition.
Small workshop-style pharmacies, which cannot match the scale of Starry Sky Pharmacy nor compete with its variety of potions, still manage to survive by offering low prices. However, their pharmacists often endure grueling workdays of over ten hours and receive meager compensation.
Major guilds also have their own dedicated teams of pharmacists, which are of considerable size. However, the potions they produce are generally only for internal guild use, often falling short of meeting demand. A guild pharmacy achieving the scale of Starry Sky Pharmacy in Bull Rider Tribe is extremely rare. For guilds like Angel Domination, Exterminate Gods’ Sword, Light and Darkness Empire, their pharmacists supplying 30% of the guild’s potion needs is considered a high standard, and there is certainly no surplus for sale. They mainly rely on large-scale purchases from external pharmacies.
The Bull Rider Tribe employs nearly 150,000 to 160,000 pharmacists, all at an elite level, receiving high salaries. Outside the tribe, there are millions of pharmacists of varying skill levels, and only about 100,000 are estimated to meet Starry Sky Pharmacy’s recruitment standards. Their target is mid- to high-level pharmacists, while lower-level pharmacists may also be recruited to some extent, but absorbing millions of them is simply impossible.
Therefore, his main focus is the mid- to high-level potion market. Low-level potions are abundant and sold everywhere by street vendors. Controlling this segment of the market would yield little value. Mid- to high-level potions range from five or six gold coins for cheaper ones to hundreds of gold coins for the expensive ones, while low-level potions are priced at one or two silver coins per bottle, or even as low as a few dozen copper coins, offering minimal added value and making it difficult to industrialize. By controlling mid- to high-level pharmacists, one essentially controls the market, and as for those low-level pharmacists, once they advance to mid- or high-level, Starry Sky Pharmacy can offer high salaries, making it hard for them to resist.
Considering all factors, this market still holds great potential.
Under the guidance of Nie Yan and Guo Huai, players from the Bull Rider Tribe began purchasing mid- to high-level herbs in various auction houses. Typically, low-level herbs are not sold in auction houses, as the auction fees would not even be covered by their sale.
Nie Yan estimated that to acquire about 50% of the mid- to high-level herbs generated in the market on a given day, approximately five to six million gold coins would be needed. Players consume a large quantity of potions daily, and with his purchases, the supply of herbs in the market gradually decreased, leading to the gradual depletion of existing potion stocks. Continuous buying over five or six days would be sufficient to drive up herb prices.
The more capital invested, the greater the impact on herb prices.
Since Nie Yan began raising funds, internal Bull Rider Tribe factions, including the Holy Roman Empire, Ji Lan Temple, War God Tribe, Light Holy Flame, and Crazy War Alliance, also started raising capital. After a full day of fundraising, the results were quite impressive. Nie Yan tallied up the contributions: the Holy Roman Empire raised 2.2 million gold coins, Ji Lan Temple 2 million, War God Tribe 2.8 million, Light Holy Flame 2 million, Crazy War Alliance 1.9 million, Bull Rider Tribe branches raised 3.6 million, and internal Bull Rider Tribe contributions reached 6.5 million. This totaled over 20 million gold coins, with the amount continuing to rise.
In addition to this money, Nie Yan revised the guild warehouse system, allowing each player who donates one gold coin to receive nearly 50% more guild contribution points than usual. As a result, the rate at which players donated gold coins increased significantly. Within a single day, the guild warehouse alone raised 1.2 million gold coins, although the number of items in the guild warehouse decreased by nearly 10%.
With such a large move by the Bull Rider Tribe, it quickly drew the attention of the Mone Group.
At the headquarters of Exterminate Gods’ Sword.
Qin Han was anxiously awaiting news from the necromancer Bodeman. His skeleton army remained stationary, occasionally harassing Bull Rider Tribe’s fortress. He would only resume his offensive after Bodeman returned.
“Boss, recently the Bull Rider Tribe has been raising funds continuously, and they have already raised at least nearly 20 million gold coins,” said Divine Sword No Double, who was also shocked upon receiving this information. A guild’s ability to raise funds is directly proportional to its creditworthiness. Ordinary guilds spend money quickly, disbursing large sums daily to maintain normal operations, but extracting money from members is extremely difficult. Taking Exterminate Gods’ Sword as an example, raising one million gold coins from members is already quite impressive, but the Bull Rider Tribe managed to raise over 20 million gold coins, which is terrifying.
Qin Han frowned and asked, “What does the Bull Rider Tribe intend to do with so much money?”
“We don’t know; we haven’t found any trace of where this money is going,” Divine Sword No Double replied.
With the enormous daily trading volume in auction houses, even if there are anomalies, they are difficult to detect, especially considering Nie Yan’s widespread operations, purchasing herbs simultaneously in many cities without causing any market fluctuations. In this situation, Divine Sword No Double had no way of tracking Nie Yan’s fund flows.
“Keep a close watch!” Qin Han said gravely. Nie Yan raising such a large sum of money definitely meant he had a major plan.
“Yes!” Divine Sword No Double replied and dispatched people to investigate Nie Yan’s fund flows.
In the auction house of Thunderfire City, a player wearing ordinary production class robes, appearing unremarkable, entered the auction house.
He opened the herb section of the auction house and began purchasing in large quantities, buying everything priced within a reasonable range.
Soon, the 80,000 gold coins were completely spent. After finishing, he quietly disappeared into the crowd.
Several players in the auction house who had just sold large quantities of herbs and had their gold coins secured were smiling broadly.
“Today’s herb sales were really good. All three of my herb bundles were sold out, fetching twenty gold coins.”
“Same with mine.”
“Tomorrow I’ll sell all my remaining herbs.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the auction house, the potion makers, who had originally come to purchase some herbs at low prices to make potions, left one after another as they found no suitable priced herbs. Anyway, their pharmacies still had some stock left and could last for a few more days.
Almost every city’s auction house experienced similar situations, but due to the small scale, players didn’t notice.
The second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, the same situation continued. Although the first few days drew attention from some players, they did not give it enough importance. By the fifth day, the shortage of medicinal herbs began to gradually show. Players selling medicinal herbs started to consciously raise their prices, while the potion makers, due to the high cost of herbs and concerns about no one buying the potions they made, remained in a wait-and-see state, hoping to wait for herb prices to drop before buying. Some reluctantly purchased high-priced herbs because their pharmacies had sold out of certain potions and needed to make new ones to avoid running out of stock.
Many people thought that the price of medicinal herbs would eventually drop because the market demand wasn’t that high. However, the era of low-priced herbs was gone for good. The price of herbs skyrocketed day by day. The price of each mid- to high-level herb had risen by at least 50%, and some rarer herbs even surged by two or three times.
Nie Yan returned to Starry Sky Pharmacy. To store the herbs, Starry Sky Pharmacy specially customized a large warehouse, which only Nie Yan could open.
These herbs were Nie Yan’s lifeblood. If anything went wrong, the Bull Rider Tribe would be finished. He had to be cautious.
Nie Yan walked up to the warehouse, opened it, and immediately a lot of warehouse space appeared. Each page had 5,000 slots. The herbs here were placed in categories, with each page storing a large quantity of the same type of herb. Some herbs numbered up to tens of thousands of bundles, while others had five or six thousand bundles, each bundle containing twenty herbs.
Nie Yan checked the number of pages, totaling nearly five or six hundred.
Currently, nearly 60% of the herbs in the market had been acquired by him!
All the Bull Rider Tribe’s potion makers were mobilized. They received large quantities of herbs and began working at full capacity, producing potions on a large scale. Every day, large quantities of potions were transported to various branches of Starry Sky Pharmacy.
The prices of potions in all branches of Starry Sky Pharmacy had basically increased by more than 50%. Some were even more extreme, with prices soaring several times. However, such prices were only just keeping up with the market price of the raw herb materials.
“Guo Huai, how much funding do we have left?” Nie Yan asked.
“Only about five or six million left,” Guo Huai replied. In recent days, the money had been spent like water. More than 30 million gold coins had been consumed in just a few days. Even with money, it wasn’t spent like this!
“It’s okay. The price of herbs has already entered an upward trend. even if we stop buying, the prices will continue to rise,” Nie Yan smiled.
Guo Huai thought for a moment and understood. Their purchase of herbs was similar to trading futures in the market. A tenth of the buying pressure could drive up the price of futures. Let alone Nie Yan’s massive purchases, the shortage of herbs had already determined the price surge.
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