Life could not always be smooth sailing, but neither could it always be full of setbacks.
Although engine development had hit a bottleneck, the bicycle, a by-product of that research, gave Xu Yi a tremendous surprise with astonishing sales far beyond his expectations.
After seven straight days of advertising and promotion in the Bunta Daily, Kennard hosted another Xinfei Merchant Guild product launch and announced that bicycles were officially on sale. On the first day alone, the Xinfei Merchant Guild received orders for a full fifty thousand bicycles.
A week later, that number had risen to one hundred thousand.
Xu Yi had originally felt that bicycles were completely out of place in a Western-style fantasy world like the Sains Continent, with its magic, elves, and dwarves. He had assumed they would not be particularly popular even if he released them, never imagining that the actual sales would be so staggering.
After all, bicycles were not cheap to manufacture, so the Xinfei Merchant Guild had not priced them cheaply, either.
For the first time, the Xinfei Merchant Guild divided one of its products into different models. The first batch of bicycles came in two main categories: men's bicycles and women's bicycles. The men's models cost eight gold coins, while the women's models cost six.
Even for Bunta City residents, whose incomes had risen considerably, those prices were quite expensive. Buying a bicycle could easily consume half a month's wages.
Residents of other cities earned far less each month than those in Bunta City.
Yet once the bicycles actually went on sale, residents of both Bunta City and several surrounding cities flocked to buy them, even scrambling to get their hands on one.
The Xinfei Merchant Guild had prepared an initial stock of ten thousand bicycles, expecting to sell them over the