What a factory is
A factory is not a separate building type you rent outright; it is a warehouse that you outfit with production machines and run as a Factory business. Warehouses suited to this sit in the Garment District, Lower Manhattan, and Murray Hill near the docks, and show as brown-glow markers on the Voogle map. Once fitted, the factory consumes raw materials and outputs finished goods that flow to your stores through the logistics network.
Machine costs
Machines are bought only from the Factory Supply Depot at 57 5th Avenue. Your first order requires meeting the manager in person; afterward you can phone in orders and have machines delivered to the factory's pallet the next day. The one-time machine costs:
| Machine | Cost |
|---|---|
| Kiln Machine | $115,000 |
| Laser Cutting Machine | $145,000 |
| Consumer Goods Assembly Machine | $240,000 |
| Hydroponic Planter | $35,000 |
| Food Assembly Machine | $60,000 |
| Industrial Blending Machine | $45,000 |
| Bottling Machine | $27,500 |
| Automated Baking Machine | $75,000 |
| Industrial Sewing Machine | $95,000 |
| Polishing Machine | $125,000 |
Recipe examples
Recipes combine machines and raw inputs into finished goods. Representative outputs at 100% workstation efficiency:
- Electronics (Kiln + Laser + Assembly): Arty Fish Smartwatch, ZanaMan Phone, Noize Boss Earbuds, Rhythm By Tre Headphones.
- Garden produce (Hydroponic Planter + Food Assembly): bags of apples, bananas, carrots, lettuce, pears, tomatoes.
- Prepared food (Blending/Baking + Food Assembly): burger, chicken kabob, cheese platter, croissant, cupcake, donut, hotdog, ice cream, pizza, popcorn, salad, french fries.
- Bottled goods (Blending + Bottling + Food Assembly): beer, wine, margarita, martini, whisky, soda, energy drink, slushie.
- Clothing (Laser + Sewing + Assembly): classic and modern cheap and expensive lines, male and female.
- Gifts and jewelry: cheap and expensive gift boxes, cheap and expensive jewelry.
- Other: books, cigars, cigarettes, paper bags, umbrellas.
Workers and output
Factory Workers are recruited from Anderson Recruitment on 16 5th Avenue or headhunted through the HQ. Crucially, a Factory Worker's skill level does not affect output; only their hourly wage rises with skill. The machines, not the worker, set throughput, so hire at a wage you can afford rather than chasing top skill. Each warehouse running a factory binds one Logistic Manager, and each importer contract binds one Purchasing Agent.
The production-to-store chain
The standard chain is factory to warehouse to store. Raw materials arrive at the warehouse (often via importer), the factory converts them at workstations, and the Logistics Manager routes finished goods to stores, topping each up to its minimum stock level. Splitters can auto-feed intermediate stages, as in the french-fries example where raw fries become finished fries on a continuous line. One community source claimed 1.0 removed a prior direct factory-to-store link, but the official help documentation only describes the standard factory-to-warehouse-to-store chain, so that claim is unconfirmed and not treated as fact here.
When to build a factory
A factory makes sense once you have steady retail demand that justifies producing your own goods instead of buying them. It is a large capital outlay, between six-figure machine costs and a warehouse lease, so it pairs naturally with an established retail network and an HQ logistics team. The margin gain comes from vertical integration: you stop paying a supplier's markup and instead pay only machine and labor cost.
Connecting to the supply chain
Because a factory is a warehouse at heart, it slots into the same logistics system described in Imports & Deliveries, and its output competes on the same pricing logic covered in Goods & Prices. The 1.0 banking and tax rework affects the capital you can deploy into machines, and the Pricing Manager can keep your factory-made goods priced optimally across districts.