A note on wands... · 6:37am Mar 20th, 2020
So I was writing OtIoPW... and I encountered a small problem: For the tone of the story to hold, I need to write the wand purchase scene... from Ollivander's perspective. And for that, I needed to have an appreciation for just how much strain thirteen thousand students would put on his shop.
So I estimated...
Assuming each wand is in a box 2' long by 3" square (wide/high)... Assume the boxes are stacked 3 high per shelf, as a compromise between storage efficiency and ease of extraction, and the shelves themselves positioned at 1' vertical intervals... They are noted to be piled right up to the ceiling, but no mention of ladders- so, 8' ceilings, 8 shelves. Assume each shelf is 4' wide, we get 48"/3"=16 wands wide, 16*3=48 wands per shelf, 48 wands *8 shelves=384 wands per 4 foot shelving unit.
Assume each "isle" has two shelves on either side, separated by 3ft for him to move around in, and each aisle unit- including the shelves on both sides- occupies a 7'x4' footprint, holding 768 wands.
His shop is noted as being 'narrow', but it's still a shop- assume 30ft. 30/7=4.3 aisles wide (=28ft, expand aisle width to 3'6" to make 30ft); each full-width 4ft segment of his shop will then hold 3072 wands.
Again, noted as being 'narrow'- for that to be an observation worth making, it MUST be significantly longer (deeper) than it is wide. Assume 60ft, with 10ft across the front bearing no shelves, for customers; his workroom is off the back, and so not observed and not counted in that length. 60-10=50ft for shelving; 50/4=12.5; 12 shelving units deep, allowing 2ft in the back for his workroom- or an extra 2ft up front for customers, total 3072*12=36,864 wands on the sales floor.
He may have an upper/lower floor of similar dimensions, though including above/below his workroom, so assume 80ft; 80/4=20*3072=61,440 wands in storage.
Neither of these numbers include any backroom storage space he has on the ground floor, nor upper/lower floor space above/below it.
I find it likely that he has an upper floor storage zone, and a basement- and uses one or the other for storage of materials, possibly the basement, excluding it from wand count estimates.
Estimates so far:
Salesfloor: 36,864
Upper floor: 61,440
Basement: None
Total: 98,304 WandsThat's enough for about 8 years of The Gate-level Equestrian attendance at Hogwarts, assuming no more are made during that interval. This also fits the canon statement that there are 'thousands' of wands in the shop.
Ollivander's shop started in 382 BC, giving him 2402 years worth of back stock (story starts in 2021). Assume 100 wands sold per year, and 1-5 produced per day, avg 3; annual increase will be 365.24*3-100=995.72 wands... backstock is 995.72*2402=2,391,719 wands. 2391719-36864=2,354,855 wands needing storage off the salesfloor. It is conceivable that a magic wand would last this long as a matter of course.
Assume he stockpiles a small number of empty wand boxes in the basement, and stores his backstock of wands in paper/fabric/etc sleeves upstairs, reducing them to a 1"x1"x24" profile, and stacks them 11 high, allowing 1/4" of space at the top of the shelf (3/4" thick shelves); 11*48=528 wands per shelf, 528*8=4,224 wands per shelving unit, 8,448 per aisle unit, 33,792 per 4ft shop length, 675,840 for the entire upper floor... approx. 2/7 of the space required.
So assume the upper floor has expansion charms on it, doubling it in every (horizontal) dimension, making it 60ftx160ft usable space; 60/7=8.5 aisles; make it 9 aisles, for 2'8" between shelves; call it 8448*9=76,032 wands per effective 4ft length, then 76032*(160/4)=76032*40=3,041,280 wands upper floor storage, exceeding the number to fill it such that 23% of this space will be empty.
Final estimates:
Salesfloor: 36,864
Upstairs (Space): 3,041,280
Upstairs (Wands): 2,354,855
Total wands: 2,391,709With this count, if we assume avg. 13,000 new Equestrians come per year, he can expect to run out in 2391709/(13000-995.72)=199.24 years... Thus, in the year 2220, he would run out of wands.
Not bad, is it?
... 700 words of estimation and calculation, just to decide how many wands he had in his shop, and so whether he should be worried about 13,000 new students. Apparently, he shouldn't be... for two hundred years, because he's got so much backstock he'll have zero strain whatsoever. I've seen other great authors, like Gerandakis, go to town with their worldbuilding, and make expansive, engaging worlds... but I don't think very may of them have spent an hour and seven hundred words to decide what one man will say in the story, when said words will be completely and totally inconsequential either way...
Thoughts?
When you word it like that... yes, I can really see the headache coming. Not to mention how many materials he has to order, or where they are coming from. The woods might not be as much as issue as the core. Maybe he would ask Equestrians to bring their own core material? This way, he doesn't have to guess which wand suit who. Equestria pony's own mane/tail hair would suit them better than any from the Earth. Subsequently, he doesn't have to stock pile too many wands for Equestrians - just make one that match them the best.
You're ignoring an even more obvious bottleneck: customer service. Ollivander, so far as we see, runs his shop alone. He usually finds the right wand for the right person first try, but sometimes it takes several wands to find the right one. Let's be optimistic and assume five minutes average service time per customer.
Now, further, let's assume that the human incoming Hogwarts students are already taken care of, and that absolutely nobody else needs wand repair or replacement. Ollivander is able to give his full attention solely to Gate-driven business.
13,000 X 5 = 65,000 minutes. 1,083 hours, 20 minutes.
Assuming the shop is open from 9 to 9 and that there's a line waiting when he opens in the morning, Ollivander will have to work full twelve-hour days for THREE MONTHS to get wands for every Equestrian student.
It might be time to put a Help Wanted sign in the window.
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Another rather glaring omission: the fact that there's even such thing as "the right wand" in the first place. It's not a given that any of his existing stock will work at all, and it's practically certain that his heuristics won't.
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Yap, he really need to hire more workers to handle the incoming mass.
Hmm. First, I love your math on his stock. I am not sure that he has 2000 years worth of backstock though. Consider things like an occasional fire, or some sort of wood rot problem.
As for getting help? Sounds like he'll need someone that knows ponies, knows their abilities, likes, dislikes. What makes them tick, etc.
Knows their abililties? Well, cutie marks are kinda a dead giveaway. You just have to know what cutie marks mean, have some sort of talent for working with cutie marks.
Know the ponies? Know what they are destinied for? Work with them to understand them?
There are only 4 ponies that fit this description.
The first, obviously, is Glim Glam herself. Starlight has cutie mark magic. She's also done her time as a school counselor, so she's learned how to talk to ponies and understand them.
The second? CMC Wand Assistants Go!
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The idea being that the magic of the wand would protect it from such things as rot when properly stored... and we already know that magic can douse flames quickly- it can probably render the shop inflammable too.
As for getting help... The problem would be not so much in working with the customer, but in finding the wand... and in the training to know exactly what the numbers the measuring tape is giving them mean. Knowing where to look on the shelves, and so on. Then of course, say he had one assistant that knew the shop and process as well as he did, put them both with customer at the same time... they'd run into each other a lot, so he'd get a lot less than a 100% speed increase- probably closer to 25-50%... because finding the right wand really can't be done in parallel like clothing tailoring can. This is where, guess who, Starlight Glimmer could come in, with a little time distortion spell to give him more time... Or even a time travel spell, so the Equestrians start buying them in late July, and finish sometime in December, yet all have their wands in time for September First.
In a few minutes, I'll be making a second blog post on the topic, to reflect a slower production rate (3/day average makes it sound like a production line, and honestly, it gives him way too many spares. Sure, I don't want him to run out prematurely and leave ponies without wands, but I also don't want him to not need to worry about that...)
But you can work on two different customers at once. That is where having someone else that knows the shop well is useful, especially with a crowd of customers.
Hmm. Someone who can transfer a copy of everything Olivander knows about his wands to someone else. Who knows mind magic well enough to give that kind of knowledge to another?
Did COVID-19 happen in this universe?
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This is a very good question.
I'm actually contemplating including it as a side mention, albeit one and a half years delayed from reality.
But no, it hasn't happened in the story's past.