I don't suppose you're doing anything organizationally fancy enough that I can take my cut in equity.

Not unless your money has caused you to find/become someone who knows how to do that. I wouldn't know where to start even with a totally human business. I'm just planning to put them on my web store and maybe look into bulk sales to Avalon magic shops.

Should you maybe have a business partner? Not me, someone who knows anything. You're going to be a major supplier, you're going to have to operate internationally...

Yeah. This all seemed so much less real before the test worked. If you don't have a better idea, I'll start looking into places that do business in multiple Avalons.

Fresh out of business contacts, alas.

Well, it'll be something to do between copying giant diagrams. I just hope this goes better than the last time I tried to scale up a magic invention by consulting experienced adults.

Find someone motivated by cold hard cash? They'll want you to raise prices but they won't jeopardize the supply of medallions.

It's worth a shot. Thanks for the advice!

Margaret returns to the sparse land of the critter internet circa 2005. What sorts of commerce are going on that involve multiple Avalons and operations slightly larger than one person?

There is apparently a shipping company that specializes in getting items discreetly into Avalons; they operate throughout North America.

She can't just call them up and ask to poach one of their employees. She has no idea what the acceptable way to go about trying to make a business connection with a total stranger is, either as a human or as a critter. Actually, it occurs to her that they might be interested in both her teleportation spell and, if they're safe enough, her expanded boxes. Do they have a contact phone or email for would-be vendors, or failing that one for would-be customers?

They have a phone number for general inquiries!

Before Margaret makes a general inquiry, she should have a complete list of things to inquire about.

According to her old notes, the best incantation she had gotten for expanded boxes was "Make the portion of the inside of this box more than an inch away from the currently taped-shut side [expansion factor] larger in all three dimensions." Now that she can detect her suppressed mistakes, she can find out if the result is safe to bring into an Avalon. She attempts to expand a shoebox by a factor of two, referring to the lid rather than to tape.

This does not light up her detector.

And if she gets on the late bus and visits the Avalon, shoebox under her arm?

The Avalon is intact! (So's the bus but that was less in question.)

And so is her box and she didn't have to do dragon magic to keep it that way! Nice. She calls the general inquiries line for the shipping company, and puts them on speaker so she can keep tracing a medallion diagram if they put her on hold. She wants to get twenty full sets so that Bella is the bottleneck, and it's going to take all her free time for many days.

They pick up right away! "Mythic Shipping, how can I help you?"

This is the number from the critterlocked website, so she says, "I'm a runecaster looking for a partnership. I can make containers bigger on the inside, and also" oh wow she's actually saying this it's actually happening "I've reverse-engineered the process of creating medallions and I'm looking to scale production and distribution. Mythic stood out as having relevant expertise."

"- we'd be absolutely delighted to work out distribution of medallions with you! What kind of volume should we expect?"

Huh, she had been semi-consciously expecting skepticism. Nice. "Eventually, something on the order of a few dozen a week if all goes well. I'm expecting a lot of demand, since I can do at least one and likely several species that aren't covered by pre-existing medallions."

"Do you have plans to scale up in the longer term?"

"I'm afraid there are some bottlenecks in the process that I haven't found a way around that make it harder to scale past a certain point." Even if and when Bella's species can be common knowledge, she isn't going to want to make medallions twenty-four/seven. And any conceivable way of getting more sphinxes is a can of worms big enough to count as a barrel.

"Okay. We have some standard option combinations that might suit you well - obviously you'll need the highest level of insurance and security on these parcels -"

"I'd also be interested in consulting with someone about the business side--this is my first venture on this scale, and I'm not an expert on things like forming a corporation and how critters handle taxes and so forth. I realize that isn't a thing you sell, but I bet you have people who know what they're doing and it would be really nice to talk to one." She is a high school student and she feels so incredibly fake right now despite this being the most honest she's been with a stranger in months.

"Hm, I can send around a memo about that in case anyone's informally interested or wants to provide consulting as a followon to the shipping service."