“These are the new boxes I propose,” Quinn said, handing three boxes to the nearest three Blades. “These are the salts and beads containers,” she added, handing those out as well. “We’ll continue to use the same plain shipping boxes.” She paused a moment as the boxes and plastic containers were handed around. “As you can feel, the container boxes are much smoother and slicker, and you can see the B3 logo and the leaves like on the website are on the box.”
“Looks expensive,” Zane said as he turned one of the boxes over his hand.
“It does cost more than our current boxes, but only about ten percent more. The plastic containers are quite a bit more expensive than the plastic bags you’re using, but I think they are worth the extra cost.”
“Why?” Alex asked as he looked over one of the jars then handed it on.
“Because women like pretty things. The bath salts, especially, are pretty to look at. You put them in that jar, women might buy them as decoration.”
“So what are we looking at, price wise?” Arsen asked, cutting to the chase. Quinn had already convinced him it was a good idea. Now she had to convince the rest of the club.
“Box for box, these are ten percent more. The soap box goes from thirty-nine cents to forty-two. The small box for the containers are forty-eight, fifty-one and fifty-six, from small to large. You were using only one box before, and it cost forty-seven. The big price increase comes from the plastic containers. The bags were about a penny apiece. The containers are sixty-eight, seventy-two and eight-three, if you buy them in cases. If you spend ten-thousand in one order, you save twenty-percent.”
“We might could absorb the boxes, maybe, but that’s almost a hundred-percent increase in packaging costs. We can’t eat that,” Zane said.
“I’m not saying you should,” Quinn explained. “I think you should raise the price of the product by ten-percent to cover all of this and still increase your profit.”
“Ten percent?” Zane cried.
“I did some comparison shopping. You’re already twenty to thirty percent below market. I bet you are losing sales because you are so cheap. You’re packaging makes you look like you’re selling crap. This will fix that, and with a ten percent increase, you’re still ten to twenty percent below everyone else.”
“What about the bags? We use those for other things,” Chet pointed out.
“We thought about that,” Arsen said. “We’re going to continue to offer the salts in bags, shipped loose, at a discount. Where we had two size bags before, we’ll only have one now, the large one. If you want the smaller quantity, you have to buy it in the plastic jar.”
“What’s it going to take to switch over the loader, and how much?” Berk asked. He could care less about the packaging, but since he would be responsible for changing the machine from bagging to bottling, that he did care about.
“Not as much as I thought,” Arsen said. “They make plates for the packager that will handle all three bottles. All we have to do is buy the gripper plates and change them over, just like we do now when we change bag sizes.” Arsen smiled. “You got lucky. No machine modifications required. But to answer the rest of your question, about thirty thousand for the forty-eight plates.”
“And you think this will make that big of a difference in the way people look at our product?” Greg asked.
Quinn smiled. She reached behind her and brought out their bath salts in their current bag and the same salts in one of their new jars. “Which one would you rather buy?” she asked, holding them up. “Which one would you rather give as a gift?” She put both packages into their boxes and held them up again. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know which one I would buy, even if it did cost a little bit more.”
“Same here,” Toni agreed. “I know it’s the same stuff, but I still want it in the pretty jar.”
“She’s right,” Michelle agreed. “I would buy the stuff in the jar before I would the bag unless I knew it was the same stuff. Even then, I might still buy the jar because it is just easier to handle.”
Greg looked around and most of the people were nodding in agreement, men and women alike.
“Anyone have any questions?” Quinn asked with a grin. She had them eating out of the palm of her hand.
There were none. Arsen stood up. “Do we even need to vote this?” he asked. “Does anyone not think we should do this? Don’t forget, we need to increase sales to cover our increased demand for our other product.” Nobody said anything, so he turned to Quinn. “This is your project. Make it happen. Work with Berk to get what we need for the packager.”
She thought the club would go for it, but it was an easier sales job than she expected. She didn’t even have to use her chart that showed that with the ten percent increase in price, they could absorb a five percent drop in sales and still make more money than they earned now. She grinned then pulled him in for a quick kiss.
It had been two weeks since they hit the Chrome Horsemen. The Horsemen had ceased to function as a club. The police hadn’t been back, apparently unable to break their alibi, and she had gradually relaxed.
She’d gotten over her initial shock that the Blades had so ruthlessly killed the Horsemen, and after a few days, had realized that having them wiped out had removed a little of the blackness she still carried inside. Each day she spent happy and productive with the Blades, and each night she spent in Arsen’s arms, chipped away at the dark lump inside of her. She would be a long time forgetting, but each day, the darkness became just a little bit less bleak.
She’d received her first share payment, and even though it was only half the full amount, it was still more money than she’d ever made in a single month in her life, and she enjoyed the work far more than working in a motel.
The first thing she did with the money was pay Arsen back for her clothes, despite his protests. As a small thank you for his kindness, she bought him a leather jacket with the Indian Motorcycle logo for times when he didn’t want to wear his colors.
She continued to live with him, sharing his bed, and by silent agreement, they hadn’t even talked about her moving into her own place. It seemed rather pointless considering she would in his bed, or he would be in hers, every night anyway.
Now that the threat of the Horsemen was eliminated, she’d returned to Flagstaff and collected a few personal items, her car, and what clothes she wanted, donating the rest of her stuff to the Salvation Army. After the men had removed her old and slightly tatty furniture, she’d turned in the key for her apartment and contacted the police. She’d spun a tale of narrowly escaping the hit by the Horsemen and how she’d been hiding with a friend because she’d been too terrified to come forward until she’d heard someone had eliminated them. She’d spent several hours being grilled by the Flagstaff police, but in the end, they had to release her. She’d broken no laws and claimed ignorance on all matters relating to the drug dealing of the Desert Riders.
When she returned to Tucson, Arsen made her sell her fifteen-year-old Chevy, claiming he didn’t like the car dripping oil in his driveway, and had given her the keys to his car. She’d priced the car low, and it had sold in three days to a kid for his first car. She’d tried to give Arsen the money, but he refused to take it, and they were still arguing over how she was going to contribute to his living expenses. She was buying their food, but that wasn’t enough in her opinion, and she was still casting about for ways to help with expenses.
With her old life behind her, and her new one looking so bright she had to wear sunglasses, she could barely contain her enthusiasm for life again, and she shared that excitement with Arsen every night. Not that he seemed to mind. He was all the lover she could ask for, and she enjoyed the erotic games they engaged in nearly every night. She was often the one left gasping for breath and begging, but she out fucked him frequently enough to keep their games interesting, and she looked forward to upping her game to match his. He was a dynamic and imaginative lover, and she was looking forward to exploring her sexuality with him.
Finished putting away her sample boxes and containers, she joined the rest of the Blades behind the clubhouse where they were cooking steaks over an open fire. She couldn’t believe it, but she was finally adjusting to the stifling Tucson heat. The sun was down and the temperature had dropped into the low nineties, but with the mister fogging the area to cool it, she was surprisingly comfortable.
“Beer?” Arsen asked as he approach, a pair of sweaty bottles in his hand.
“Kiss?” she responded, accepting his quick kiss before taking the bottle. “Thanks.”
He grinned at her. “If you can sell our bath stuff half as well as you can sell your ideas, we may have to expand.”
“So, let me ask you something. Theoretically, if B3 grows large enough, would you get out of the drug business?”
He chuckled. “I suppose. Why take the risk? But it has a long way to go before that happens. We make four-thousand percent markup on the drugs. Even with your ten percent increase, we only make something like thirty percent on the bath stuff.”
“Obviously the bath stuff will never be as profitable as the drugs, but if I can grow B3 so you’re making the same money from the bath stuff as you are making now from the drugs and bath stuff combined, would you give up the molly? The club has plenty of money, now, right?”
He chuckled again. “I’ll make you this promise. When we hit $750,000 a month in profit from the bath stuff, you come see me and we’ll talk about it, okay?”
She grinned and took a pull on her beer. She may never be able to get B3 there, but she was going to try like hell. “Deal.”
“If you like your steak rare, it’s ready!” Zane called from the big open fire pit, forking big pieces of meat and flipping them over.
“Come on,” Arsen said with a grin, nodding at the group with his head. “All this business talk has worked up an appetite.”