The Mech Touch

r efforts here has propelled the KNG to greater prominence! ”

Ves nodded.
The mech market did indeed appreciate the KNG ’s many offerings.
They enjoyed good reputation for delivering good quality products.

However, Ves privately questioned whether all of these extra efforts were really worth it.
Even though the good reputation helped them sell more mechs, would the additional revenue offset all of the extravagant costs incurred by employing so many highly qualified mech technicians?

The KNG already paid its employees above average industry rates and offered extremely generous benefits on top of that.
Certainly, employee satisfaction and subsequently their productivity all rose to the top, but Ves couldn ’t help but suspect the KNG wasted far more money without getting enough in return.

To Ves, the mech company ’s overly generous treatment of their personnel had reached beyond the bounds of common sense!

It was as wasteful as employing one of the Lyrical Kitchen ’s top chefs for the sole purpose of warming up nutrient packs!

Frontline mechs never sold for very much.
Subsequently, there wasn ’t much profit to be made out a single sale.
The Haston Complex fabricated so many frontline mechs because the KNG needed to leverage their economy of scale to the utmost in order to make a decent living out of selling these low-value mechs.

As for their operations in Ansel, while Ves genuinely found the Ansel-educated mech technicians to be a pleasure to work with, they were paid much more than their regular counterparts.

Was it worth it to pay twice as much for an Ansel mech technician when they only performed twenty to forty percent better than some basic mech technician that barely graduated out of a local trade school?

Ves looked to his own business as an example.
The LMC ’s first mech technicians consisted of a fair number of local mech technicians from Cloudy Curtain.
Even though they weren ’t nearly as good as the mech technicians from Ansel or those working from the military, the LMC still managed to fabricate premium mechs just fine!

Therefore, Ves felt profoundly uncomfortable about all of the pampering the blue collar workers received.

He continued to feel that way when he quickly toured the KNG ’s two smaller complexes.
Erected after the merger of the Kadar Group and Neyvis Mechs, the two newer sites attempted to accommodate the expanded needs of the rising mech company.

The Mosville Complex was a hybrid production and repair site, and served as the center of the KNG ’s after-sales support services.
Not only did it produce a significant quantity of spare parts and various supplies, it also ran a substantial repair operation which constantly fixed up heavily-damaged mechs sent back by their customers.

The Dorum Complex on the other hand was the smallest but also the most extravagant.
Even though the KNG excelled in selling cheap bulk mechs, they didn ’t entirely ignore the premium mech segments.
Kadar or Neyvis regularly spent time here to design, develop and fabricate custom mechs, and even without them the plant still produced various specialty premium mechs for various purposes.

Overall, Ves found these two newer complexes to be more inefficient than the older ones.
The Dorum Complex especially featured such low production volumes that he doubted it had ever turned a profit.

As for the Mosville Complex, Ves had much to say about the viability of their repair operations.
Having supervised the extensive and continuous repair efforts of the Flagrant Vandal space and ground mechs, Ves was highly adept in the amount of manpower, expertise, supplies and time needed to repair the various kinds of damage that mechs tended to incur.

What Ves found most inefficient about the repairs being performed at Mosville was that the KNG allocated a substantial amount of manpower, resources and time to fix up cheap frontline mechs which incurred heavy battle damage.
Many of them were even outright wrecked!

It was safe to say it cost a lot of time and resources to reconstruct these mechs, yet their inherently low value meant that the KNG couldn ’t charge full price to effect these repairs.

”The KNG also sells a huge amount of frontline mechs every year.
The more mechs they sell, the more their customers will send them back for repairs and restoration. ”

Ostenably, the KNG sold its frontline mechs at bottom rock prices in order to earn a profit on their after-sales services.
However, how much could they mark up their prices to service their cheapest products?

The mercenary corps and other customers that purchased these bargain bin mechs tended to be penny-pinching cheapskates.
They would always compare prices on everything and never paid for anything that wasn ’t worth the cost.

Subsequently, the KNG couldn ’t charge too much for their repair services or otherwise those cheapskate mech owners would simply bring their damaged mechs to a cheaper repair business!

Although the quality between the two services differed quite substantially, most budget-minded mech owners probably found it wasteful to put their cheap mechs in the care of the KNG ’s well-trained but overpaid mech repairers!

As Ves finished his brief tours of all four manufacturing complexes, the questions in his mind continued to grow without abating.

The profligate way the KNG spent its money paired with its business strategy of focusing on selling large amounts of economy and budget mechs seemed incredibly contradictory.

”How can the KNG even expect to make a profit? Even if they are in the green, their wasteful spending ways means that their return on investment should be a lot more morose than comparable mech companies! ”

Ves felt as if he was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle in the KNG ’s business strategy.
What he really wanted to do right now was to storm into the KNG ’s headquarters, barge into their Financial Department and read through their financial records!

However, as a liaison mech designers sent to the KNG for the sole purpose of babysitting their military production activities, checking the company ’s finances fell outside of his purview.

As a private company, the KNG also didn ’t need to report their statements in public.
Therefore, obtaining any accurate information on the true state of their finances would be very difficult.

Still, Ves had a feeling that understanding how the KNG ’s actually earned their money would help out his investigations.