East Jade Sea Trading Company

The East Jade Sea Trading Company is a trading company that operates out of the city of Rosewick in Balihr. It owns a large number of trading routes between Rosewick and other cities on Qopith, as well as intercontinental routes to cities in the Jade Sea and beyond.

Structure

The EJS Trading Company is owned by a collective of about thirty merchants, who make up its board. The board makes wider decisions about where the company should do trades and the size of its fleet, as well as bestows membership to other merchants. These merchants enter either with their own ships or can buy their way into one of the Company's ships over time. Each merchant operates their own trading routes and do the actual trading. They may choose which trade route they operate from among the open offers from the company, and give the company part of their profits. In exchange, the company's board negotiates with the target city and with Rosewick to ensure that the merchant is allowed to sail there and sell their goods, and to make sure they have sufficient buyers of those goods when in port.

Although merchants can certainly operate independently, it is much more difficult to get larger and more lucrative contracts when not backed by a larger trading company; this backing tells the buyers that the merchant is trustworthy and won't try to make any unfair offers.

Assets

Currently, the EJS Trading Company has a fleet of 25 vessels. Each of these generally makes several trips per year buying and selling textiles, grains, spices, and other goods. Although the company does not make its earnings public, it is estimated that it currently has saved about 10,000 golds' worth of coin, and brings in about one thousand more per year. Much of this is used to pay the salaries of the board members, secure political backing, and to expand their fleet.

History

This trading company was founded in AV 1432 by a group of merchants who decided to pool their capital and start working together. These merchants believed that having a larger number of ships under one well-known organization would make it easier to get better contracts for buying and selling large amounts of goods, and that even if a portion of those profits were put towards expanding the company each would still walk away with heavier pockets.

The company started slowly, at first consisting only of the founding members. They began to post notices of their search for other merchants to join them, and as the company slowly grew it was able to expand its reach. Although it had started with only a few routes between Rosewick and some of the other cities in the Jade Sea region, with more merchants the company was able to secure longer and more lucrative routes until it became known as one of the largest and most successful trading companies on Galactus.