First Layer

You start with a second-hand printer, a kilo of PLA and a pitch at the Saturday market. Print something, put it on the table, and press Open for business. The day plays out in front of you: people wander up, pick things up, and either take them to the till or put them back down.

That is the whole game, and the hard part is that nobody tells you what sells. Every design has a hidden following in every channel, and the only way to find it is to try things and read the ledger. Watch the difference between how many people picked something up and how many bought it — plenty of interest and no sales is a price problem, while nobody even looking is the wrong design for that venue.

What worked last month stops working. Tastes drift, and a design you have flooded the market with goes stale until you rest it. Seasons are published in full so you can plan around them; the rest you have to infer. Meanwhile other people start printing this stuff too, so a shop that stands still is going backwards.

Grow from the market stall to a craft fair, an online marketplace, your own web shop and finally trade orders — each one busier than the last, and each one wanting more of your time than you have. You only get ten hours a day, so sooner or later you hire, and the wages become another thing to cover.

Seven milestones take you from the spare room to a trade unit. Clear them and the endless mode carries on, with the market getting choppier and everything getting dearer, until it finally beats you.