Her Beasts

1.58 Expanding Business

Iris was finally feeling better, but it was once again a rainy day. Thanks to her mates' hard work, Iris was enjoying some jerky for breakfast. Iris found the jerky to be rather pleasant and an easy snack.

Since the meat was small and thin when it was smoked and dried, it was already safe for consumption and required no other work. However, four pounds of fresh meat would only make a single pound of jerky. This meant that jerky was still a rather luxurious food, even in the beast world.

Iris found the salted honey jerky to be quite delicious as it reminded her of teriyaki flavored jerky from the modern world. The black pepper jerky was a little plain and Iris lamented that it'd be better with some wild onion grass and garlic added in next time.

The plain salted one seemed to lack flavor the most in Iris's opinion, but her mates quite enjoyed it. While Iris preferred stronger flavors, beastmen were more sensitive and used to plainer flavors so the plain salted jerky was well suited to their tastes.

Ember had caught close to ten large prey after hunting all day yesterday so Iris now had a large amount of jerky. As a large prey weighs an average of three hundred pounds, that means nearly two-thousand-four-hundred pounds of usable meat had been turned into jerky. Six hundred pounds worth of jerky was certainly more than Iris had ever seen while living in the modern world and she felt quite lucky.

Turning to Caspian, Iris inquired

"How much of the honey and herbs are left after making all of this?"

Basil answered for Caspian as he explained

"I used all of the honey, but there is more than half of the other seasonings left. I can easily gather more of everything the next time it isn't raining. Honey is a little rarer, but the others grow in abundance and are easy to get as long as you know where they grow."

Iris nodded as this made sense. Iris was tempted to share some jerky with her tribe mates during the next feast day or try selling some of it. However, Iris felt it would be a shame to make her mates work so hard for such a thing. Thus, Iris decided to save the honey jerky for herself and only share the easier to make pepper jerky.

"Alright, well, since I'm feeling better today, we should talk about the business. As I was saying previously, it is better to increase the variety of products rather than simply increasing the quantity of the same product when demand is limited.

Males probably won't pay as much money for items that are for themselves as they will for their females. Thus, it's best to try to cater mostly towards females and family groups.

In my world, women liked jewelry, nice handbags, and beauty products alongside fashion. It seems like most of the jewelry is stone or bone jewelry and fairly simplistic. The bags are designed more for efficiency rather than looks. As for beauty products, I haven't seen anything like that around here. Thoughts?"

Ember had no notes and just stood guard at the bedroom door. However, he had a gentle look on his face today as he was quite happy to see Iris was feeling better. He had been worried that she might die from catching a cold as females were known to be quite fragile.

Basil was curious about what beauty products were and questioned

"What are beauty products exactly?"

Iris tried to think of how to explain it in simple terms. Iris didn't have a ton of experience with making lotions, soaps, or makeup from scratch and felt unsure. Thus she could only offer

"Well, it's generally items that add to one's beauty. Whether it's staining one's lips a more dramatic color like one might see with berry stains or pleasant smelling soaps similar to the soap I use. We also had lotions for softening skin and combs like the one I use."

Basil found the concept of such items intriguing and began to wrack his brain for herbs that might accomplish a similar effect. Flowers and herbs could likely be crushed and mixed with soap to scent them. Basil would just have to learn how Iris concocted the soap she uses and perhaps see if there were other ways to make soap as well.

As for combs, Basil was an excellent craftsman when it came to the fine details. He would easily be able to carve bones of high enough quality and thickness into a comb. Basil was even confident that he could carve ornate details like flowers into the handle like he often saw on stone boxes.

As for Caspian, he was interested in expanding on the tailoring as he asked

"How exactly should we make a bag in order to make it more beautiful? Also, I feel like we should make some new designs for clothing. We haven't tried making capes or boots like yours before either. I don't mind helping with the jewelry, but I'd like to expand on the tailoring first."

Iris smiled at Caspian's eagerness to learn how to sew new things as she explained

"Well, there are multiple ways we can do that. First, we might want to look for reeds along the riverside. This can be weaved similarly to grass mats to create baskets. They can also be used as a frame for handbags. If we sew extra pockets in the bags to store things in separate sections within the same bag, that could be good.

Also, using buttons and long grass, strips of vine, or strips of animal hide for straps or ribbons could add nice aesthetic details. Plus, there is the concept of embroidery where we use sinew or long grass to sew an area with the intention of making visible designs with the thread. This combined with flowers and such made from sewing bunched up animal hide can add lots of interesting details to the designs.

The best part is that we can use a similar concept for making new clothing designs too, not just bags. It would take two to five times the work just to complete a single piece compared to the more simplistic designs we make now, though."

Caspian looked thoughtful as he tried to imagine what any of that would even look like. Caspian ultimately had no idea what Iris was talking about and could only wait for her to show him what to do.

Ember began to feel left out as he listened to Iris assigning everyone else jobs. He quietly asked

"What about me?"

Iris gave Ember a sweet smile as she reassured him

"You've already been a huge help. You have been carefully taking care of the fields, always help hunt prey, and keep guard. You are already doing so much for me that I couldn't possibly distract you from such important tasks for this stuff."

Ember knew Iris was just trying to make him feel better and it worked. Ember was very happy that Iris noticed his contributions to the family and he happily continued to guard her.

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