Early 963 ARR (37 BBY)
Business was good, more or less.
By prioritising the SecuriPADs, we had successfully fulfilled the whole order of 15,000 within three months of our trip to Vulpter, bringing in an enormous 30 million credits of profit.
Lieutenant Panaka was very pleased, or at least I think he was, he's really a bit too serious for his own good. We had even received a short thank you note from Governor Bibble. Already, we receiving inquiries from potential customers who had started to see the security forces personnel walking round with our devices.
Given the huge profit margin on the SecuriPADs, there was a lot of discussion about trying to export them to the security forces of other nearby systems. This is where we hit a major legal wall. The rechargeable ion cells, that made the SecuriPADs such a fantastic product on Naboo, meant we were banned from exporting them.
Ion cells count as a plasma product, and the Trade Federation held an absolute monopoly on all plasma exports from Naboo, period. Alternatives to ion cells made the device much heavier, or gave it a poor battery life. We could sell it 'batteries-not-included', but buying an ion cell anywhere other an Naboo was so pricey that it just wouldn't be worth it for any of our potential customers. We had made a half-hearted effort at pitching them for wider Naboo Government use, but they were a bit overkill for typical civil servants to justify the expense.
Still, the money we made on the order meant we had been able to deliver on our initial expansion plans. Jaarl had managed to automate about 80% of the manufacturing process for the SuperPADs, with his team of technicians now carefully supervising the line of machines and droids producing our devices. The manufacturing team could now keep production running smoothly provided we could get the parts.
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We had agreed a target of producing and selling 1 million SuperPADs this year. It was ambitious but would still amount to less than 1% of Naboo's human population. It would also mean 1 billion credits of revenue, which I really liked the sound of.
As ever this meant we needed components. Even on Naboo we could bulk-buy and dismantle datapads for the screens and other basic components, even that wasteful approach was a trivial part of the cost. There were however four components that we would need dedicated imports for to meet our needs. Holoprojectors, datacores, transmitters and as always, droid-brains.
Compatible holoprojectors, datacores and transmitters could be imported easily from thousands of industrial worlds all over the Republic. They weren't particularly expensive for what we needed. One of the many reasons we could out compete existing personal holocomms, was that our tablet sized device could fit cheaper droid versions of these components, rather than the pricey miniaturised electronics of our competition. Even orders of billions would be no issue so long as we had the funds and transportation.
Ona had commissioned our mini fleet of half-a-dozen chartered traders to gather these. We had deliberately chosen only to hire captains who had regular business on Naboo. She would send the captains out with the credits to purchase, for example 100,000 transmitters on a trip. We were trusting that they would not want to risk stealing from us, if it could mean a ban from Theed Spaceport.
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Ah droid-brains, always droid-brains.
I remembered that a few years ago on Earth gaming computers had shot up in price because of a graphics card shortage, the supply-chain of a single component impacting an entire industry. Droid-brains would always be our biggest potential bottleneck, and one unique to Theed Tech. The Galaxy's droid manufacturing companies tended to make their own droid-brains, a type of high-end manufacturing we couldn't hope to undertake without investing trillions of credits.
Our preferred budget droid-brain was the Reba-5C, made by Rebaxan Columni for their series of MSE mouse droids. The mouse droids had been designed based on a small rat-like pet creature on the company's home planet of Chad. They had been a huge success there as the native Chadra-Fan deemed them cute. Encouraged by the initial success, Rebaxan had started producing billions of the mouse droids for export around the galaxy as low maintenance pets and to perform a range of simple useful functions. We even had bought a few of the cleaning variant for our own building.
Unfortunately for Rebaxan, many races in the galaxy found the droids made them uncomfortable (too rodent-y) and so they were not selling half as well as they had hoped. There were high tariffs on droids created outside the Republic which didn't help matters. It was even causing rumours the centuries old company had overcommitted themselves.
In theory, this could be a big opportunity for us. In the years to come Theed Tech could theoretically be purchasing millions or even billions of budget droid-brains. Rebaxan had both the means to produce them in vast quantities and a need for new business to dig them out of the hole they had dug.
Doing a deal of this scale though would require another business trip for me. I would have to go to Chad and negotiate a major ongoing contract. If I was successful, there would be nothing stopping us in our plans to get a SuperPAD into the hands of every adult Naboo over the coming years.
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For my 22nd Birthday I had decided to keep things lowkey. I bought tickets for the Theed Music Hall, for myself, Lyra, Asherré and Una. Una was an amateur musician herself, and given what we had been through together I thought she would appreciate the thought. She had asked to bring along her boyfriend Porsh, who worked for one of our suppliers.
The Naboo prize art in all its forms, visual, music, architecture. The most valued people are creatives. It is not quite the 'fan' culture of Earth, but more a deeper respect and appreciation for their society's leading artists.
I do try to get it. I love the Naboo people, really I do, but I'm just not an artsy person. The more modern jazzy music I can kind of appreciate, though it's not what I would have listened to on Earth.
The music hall is for more classical styles, with a complex orchestra of humans and droids producing spectacular and impressive symphonies accompanied by graceful dancers. It might be a bit like a ballet on Earth, but I never went to one of those so I cannot be sure.
The show really ended up not really being my cup of tea, but I liked how much my friends were enjoying it, which mattered for more to me. I was happier after the performance, when we went for a nice quiet drink at the Leaky Hyperdrive. It is as close to the classic British experience of going for a pint down the local pub as I could have here. It is the little things in life that matter.