Cæ wasn't particularly emotional or sentimental when it came to the name of the business; he chose the name Trinity simply because it made a reference to the three of them who had contributed to the business from the ground up and had contributed very fundamentally to the business.
"And with that, it's done," Cæ remarked, putting the pen away. "I suppose the only thing is to confirm with the Registration Department of the Ministry of Commercial Affairs."
The Democratic Republic of Elendir had abnormal protocols for the creation of businesses that favored ease of doing business, allowing great autonomy and liberty when it came to the process of officially creating a business registered with the government. The rationale was to lower the barrier of entry when it came to government coordination when creating businesses.
Doing this would eliminate the government speed as a constraint and increase the throughput for business creation flux, a process that helped shape the Democratic Republic of Elendir to have as strong a manufacturing industry as it did.
"I'll send it to them immediately," Feidin remarked, taking the signed contract that was already binding. "We should get confirmation soon."
Cæ nodded, turning back to Seliphaz. "We will soon need to begin fleshing out a precise timeline for our marketing endeavors, which means we will need to have a proper name for our product. We can't just keep calling it the MHU-HS-6A482 as we have."
It was common business practice to shorten long names into abreviations for prototypes, followed by another series of numbers that indicated which model number or iteration a prototype. In this case, 'MHU' stood for a micro-housing unit, and HS stood for hybrid solutions.
"It's true…" she murmured with an uncertain expression. "We need an actual product name. Hmmm, how about…"
She stirred where she stood, immersed in thought as her short blue hair swayed with her, "…Haven?"
Cæ stared at her with an unimpressed expression.
"W-What? I can't think of something else that would be good."
"I think Haven is just fine," Feidin called out from across their office space on the second floor. "After all, isn't that what we're offering them? It certainly is… limited, but given their circumstances, it is exactly the haven they need, isn't it?"
Cæ fell into thought as he considered the name. "With that in mind, it isn't bad, even if on the nose. Good enough, I suppose. One thing that I'm considering is that it might be bad optics if it ever gets coverage in the inner city, but I suppose that doesn't really matter since our target market segment is disconnected from the media environment."
He shrugged. "Haven, it is."
Seliphaz smiled at him with delight. "Thank you for taking that suggestion."
"You are the one who built it, after all," Cæ replied. "You deserve the right to name it. You have done an incredible job with the project and have done your role splendidly, and now…"
His expression grew determined, "you just need to leave the rest to Feidin and I."
Feidin nodded with agreement as he browsed through his magiputer. "For now, I have already begun posting job offers on the most popular labor brokers and platforms on the maginet to get our hands on some qualified operators for the alchemizers, fabricators, and other enchanted machinery in our factory needed for the production of the havens. Also…"
He shifted his gaze to another monitor to his right, "I'm also trying to flesh out what our advertisement operations will look like precisely on the ground."
He gestured to a map of Colohen City that highlighted the innermost ring of the slums. "This is our estimated geographic market segment, comprising the wealthiest or the least-poor people in the slums. It all depends on how you want to go about the advertisement campaign, but I'm imagining that what we're doing is quite unprecedented."
Cæ nodded as he walked over to Feidin's workstation, leaning over as he studied the map on the screen. "I still think going district by district is the most prudent option at our disposal. I understand how information flows among people in the slums. They are more connected with each other because they don't have the maginet at their disposal. Word of a single demonstration of the haven will spread across the entire district within a matter of days, a week at most, but not any further."
Feidin thoughtfully considered the matter with a thoughtful expression. "In that case, we will need about… forty-eight such demonstrations across the innermost perimeter of districts of the slums."
He gazed at Cæ with a dubious expression. "We're stretching our magicapita thin within that, Cæ. Even with the Elendir Institute of Magic's shocking generosity for your business, it will take a lot of money to fabricate forty-eight haven units and then market them across all forty-eight districts bordering the inner city."
Cæ's expression grew grim.
He knew that Feidin was right, he had done pay-outs for their employees, and even bought a large plant-cum-add quarters factory-base. He highly doubted that Headmistress Lenolia would be willing to grant him a bigger break than that.
"Then we'll just have to take business loans."
In reality, they would have had to take it a lot sooner if they didn't have a rather solid base of venture magicapita. They would have to rely on more painful advertisement campaigns, including but not limited to simply giving a small sample of haven units for free just to spread the word and generate interest for their customers.
"Hmmm…" Feidin fell into thought before nodding. "I think that makes sense. Most manufacturing companies have some model of debt financing to fund their working magicapita to finance their operations."
Debt financing was one of the lesser-known and less romantic realities of business.
Many companies, particularly those that offered discrete manufactured goods that weren't made-to-order, relied on a post-paid payment model where the customer paid for the product entirely after the product was delivered.
While Cæ had considered other models for Trinity Housings, it simply didn't make any sense, considering their customer base was comprised of the slums.
Businesses with these models would not get paid until after the product was delivered, leaving them unable to finance the operations needed to manufacture the product in the first place. Thus, they underwent business cycles of debt, borrowing money to fund their working capital and operations, paying it off in the short term before much interest was accrued after they collected their payments.
"In fact." He glanced at Cæ with eyes of relief. "If not for your identity as a graduate, a prodigious graduate at that, of the Elendir Institute of Magic, we would not be eligible for debt financing business loans from any bank and certainly any private financial firm providing loans for working capital."
Most banks and other financial institutions had sophisticated ways of evaluating the quality of borrowers based on credit scores, history of debt, history of defaulting, profile of the borrowers in question, and most importantly, the actual corporation borrowing the debt.
"The moment they see that we're selling to the slums, they will look at us like we're crazy," Cæ heaved a sigh. "I cannot imagine any bank being enthusiastic about funding the operations of a company that is selling to a market, the median income of which is one thousand five hundred leenars."
Each loan given was a risk, after all. Banks needed to evaluate if a company was profitable by looking at its valuation and even its finances if it were a publicly traded company. The moment they looked at a puny manufacturing company in the housing sector aiming to sell homes to the poor people of the slums, they would reject them.
That was why Cæ's identity was so important. His profile as a graduate of the Elendir Institute of Magic and as a member of the Student Council would give him a lot of credibility, something that he had foreseen almost a year ago when President Mileila offered him a seat on the council.
"That should give banks and other financial institutions a pause and genuinely consider funding our working capital," Cæ remarked. "Even if we don't get the best of offers, it should be enough to allow us to continue with our advertisement campaigns across all forty-eight districts of the slums bordering the inner city."
Cæ was confident that the people of the slums would fall in love with his product, more so than even Feidin and Seliphaz were.
He understood more than anybody just how desperate they were for something as fundamentally important as shelter. He did believe that, even though his motivations were profit-minded, they would benefit from the havens. It lasted eighteen months, which was longer than most of the little shacks and huts that the people of the slums put together, which crumbled, often injuring and even killing them.
Compared to the poorest of civil laborers of the slums whose skills were incomplete without magical technology to operate, leading to poor quality housing, Cæ's solution was superior in every single conceivable way that it wasn't even debatable.
"Well, we should focus on conveying that message to all the people of the slums," Cæ narrowed his eyes. "Once Dlint is done training his men on the protocols of using the havens, they will be ready to immediately begin using the havens in the slums to show off their effectiveness to all the people of the slums."
Feidin nodded, his gaze shifting to the screen in front of him. "Of course, we will need to hire the laborers to produce forty-eight units of havens within a short amount of time, about thirty for all ten production lines, as we agreed. That should take about two weeks, unfortunately. Thankfully, Dlint's men should be done with their training by then, so they will be immediately ready to go into action."
Cæ nodded. "Well, that marks all immediate business that we have to deal with. Of course, there are tertiary branding considerations like our logo, as well as the details regarding the other matters, but we can handle that in due time."
With the slums, branding was not nearly as important when they weren't competing in an oversaturated market segment.
"W-We should indulge ourselves in a toast for formally launching our business today!" Seliphaz interjected with an enthusiastic smile. "After all, isn't that an important milestone?"
Cæ and Feidin stirred.
It wasn't something that they would have considered themselves, but…
"You're right," a rare smile appeared on Cæ's face. "A year of effort has finally crystallized into an actual business that will soon commence operations in full force. We should celebrate with a few drinks tonight with Dlint and the others."
Seliphaz's eyes lit up as Feidin nodded with a friendly smile. "We have accomplished a lot, and we should celebrate it."
And they did.
It wasn't half an hour late before food and drinks had found their way into the factory base, with a glass of alcohol poured for all of them present.
"To Trinity Housings."
Cæ felt himself relaxing as the alcohol ran down his throat for the first time in a while.
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