This article is part of a directory: The Sims 4: Complete Guide | Tips, Packs, Careers, Skills, Scenarios, & More
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Released on March 30, 2015, The Sims 4: Get to Work expansion pack offers a unique and exciting way for Sims to earn money by owning and managing their own retail store. This expansion pack introduces a new lot type that allows players to turn any lot into a personalized retail store with any merchandise they choose to sell, including clothing, food, and items from Buy Mode.

Related: Mods That Are Basically Free Expansion Packs In The Sims 4

Sims can hire and fire employees, manage uniforms, promotions, and more, similar to restaurant management in Dine Out and vet clinic management in Cats & Dogs. However, running a successful and profitable retail store in The Sims 4 requires time and money investment, with factors like curb appeal and retail perks playing a role in the store's success. This expansion pack offers players the opportunity to explore a more entrepreneurial career path, with the freedom to create and customize their own store.

How To Own A Retail Store

The Sims 4 Buying Retail

To own a retail store, players must select the "Buy a Retail Store" option from the Career or Household tab on their Sim's phone. This takes them to the world screen where they can choose the lot they want for their store. Get to Work expansion includes a new world called Magnolia Promenade, a small world compared to others with three pre-built retail stores and an empty lot designed for this purpose. However, players can select any empty lot in any world. Once an empty lot is selected, it is automatically converted to a retail lot type. For non-empty lots, players must choose a lot marked as Retail to use for the same purpose. Players can build and customize their own retail stores and mark them as Retail for purchase later, or download them from the Gallery.

Related: The Sims 4: Lot Traits, Explained

Retail lots are community lots, so households cannot permanently live in them. Changing an occupied residential lot to a retail lot will result in eviction. Players who want to combine a retail lot with their primary residence can use mods like LittleMsSam's Live In Business Mod. This mod allows players to designate additional lot challenges, such as combining residential and business lots or other venues like gyms or cafes.

Retail Store Funds

The Sims 4 Transferring Funds To Retail

To make the most of the store, players must invest a reasonable amount of money. When players first purchase the store, they will be prompted to transfer funds from the household funds. They can manage this aspect anytime in the Business screen next to the Needs in the bottom right corner, indicated by the cash register icon. Therefore, players do not need to invest all at once. If they realize they invested more than necessary, they can convert it back to household funds at any time. These funds will be used for employee salaries, additional item purchases, or retail store customization.

If designing a lot from scratch, players will require more funds than usual. However, a cash register and a business counter are the only functional items necessary for this lot type. It is recommended to add shelves or pedestals to showcase products, as well as toilets and decorative items to improve the shop's convenience and appeal, which will help with attracting more customers.

Curb Appeal

female sim the sims 4

Curb appeal plays a crucial role in attracting customers to the retail store. Consequently, the more attractive the store appears, the higher the chance of getting customers. While the store's basic design may not matter much, the items placed on the lot do have a significant impact. To help attract people to the store, players can place signs on the outside of the building. These include the 'open' sign and various other objects in build mode that boost the chance of customers visiting.

Players can look into Buy Mode for the retail items to see the extensive list of objects they can use to help out the curb appeal metric. Incorporating these items into the design will make it aesthetically pleasing and also improve the gameplay mechanics of the retail system. To make the store more visually appealing, players can also consider adding decorative items, paintings, and seating. Advertising can also provide a short-term boost in cash and help raise curb appeal.

Managing The Store

The Sims 4 Retail Management

While on the store lot, the Sim owner can make changes to the store through the cash register icon or by interacting directly with the cash register object. This screen allows players to manage the store's price markup, advertising, employees, and other features. Furthermore, it's crucial for players to keep the shop stocked with items.

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When restocking, it's advisable to prioritize higher-value items as they have the potential to bring in more profits. The task of restocking can also be delegated to employees, freeing up the player's attention to focus on customers.

Price Markup

The Sims 4 Retail Price Markup

Players have control over the profit made by their store through the markup rate. The default markup rate is 25%, but players can set varying rates between 5% for clearance sales and 100% for double the profit.

Cheaper products are more likely to sell without interaction, but with higher prices, players need to pay attention to other factors such as curb appeal, customer mood, and interactions to close sales. Gradually increasing prices after obtaining some retail store perks and skilled employees is recommended to balance profit and customer appeal.

Managing Employees

The Sims 4 Retail Manage Employees

Players have a variety of features they can utilize when managing employees in their retail store. Not only can they designate employee outfits, but they can also hire, fire, train, promote, demote, and manage them through various other actions. However, players should keep in mind that managing employees in a retail store is considerably more hands-on than managing employees in a vet or restaurant. While these other businesses also require a lot of interaction from the player at the beginning, players can eventually run them from home while still seeing a reasonable amount of profit.

In contrast, while it is possible to open a retail store from home, employees will not be able to take care of everything on their own and may end up not selling a lot of items. Additionally, players will not receive any Retail Perk points for their interactions with customers. Therefore, players should be present in the store as much as possible, particularly interacting with customers, while assigning staff roles such as restocking or cleaning. If players have more staff than needed, they can also assign them to take care of some customer interactions. However, players should still keep an eye on their interactions with customers, as they may end up in long conversations instead of closing sales.

In the "manage employees" screen, players can view their employees' satisfaction and skills. It is important to keep their satisfaction neutral or above to ensure effective task handling. As employees level up their skills, their satisfaction may decrease due to expecting fair compensation. With 5 salary ranges available, players must balance skill and pay for their employees. It is necessary to promote employees when due and use "Check Up On" and "Praise" interactions frequently to maintain their satisfaction. If employees are slacking, players can use the "Berate for Slacking" interaction, which is only available when they are actually slacking.

To help employees improve their skills, it's important to keep them happy. Players should focus on assigning them the same tasks every day to ensure they are leveling up skills relevant to their roles. The available skills for employees are maintenance, sales, and work ethic. Work ethic should take priority in training to reduce the potential for slacking. This can be trained by berating or praising them. When employees have a high work ethic, players can focus on customers instead of micromanaging. Maintenance is the next priority and is improved through tasks like cleaning or restocking. Sales skills come in handy for more customer interactions, but players have better chances of higher profits if they deal with customers themselves. Assigning customer interaction tasks such as answering customers' questions or ringing up customers may still be useful when employees have nothing else to do.

Managing The Customers

The Sims 4 Retail Manage Customers

Closing a sale requires more than just curb appeal and advertising, especially with higher markup prices. Some customers may buy items without any interaction, but many will require retail social interactions. How they will interact also depends on the customers moods to some extent. Players can view a blue bar above customers' heads, indicating their likelihood to purchase items, and should focus on raising it quickly. As the bar increases, more retail social interactions will unlock, and players can earn retail perk points for their interactions.

Related: The Sims 4: Dine Out - How To Run A Restaurant

Once a customer is ready to purchase, a shopping cart icon will appear above their head, and players should Ring them up within a short time (45min to 1h Sim time) to close the sale; otherwise, they will lose it. This may be challenging with multiple customers, but players should focus on those interested in higher-value items for more profit. In case of an overwhelming number of customers and difficult management, increasing the price markup can be a good strategy as it may reduce the sales interest but result in higher profit margins with fewer lost sales. Additionally, assigning employees to handle the Ring up task in such scenarios can be beneficial.

Retail Perks

The Sims 4 Retail Perks

Perk Points in Retail are awarded for various business-related activities such as customer interactions, sales completion, and restocking items. These perks range from purely decorative to those that can entice customers and increase profits for the store, allowing players to make more money.

However, it's essential to keep in mind that if players sell their store to get a new one, they will lose the accumulated Perk Points, which cannot be transferred to the new store. There are 20 perks in total for players to choose from, and focusing on perks like Additional Employees, Slick Salesman, Serious Shopper and Cheaper Restocking is some of the best perks to focus on.

The Sims 4 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.