[quote=@Vilageidiotx] Well, "Small private business" is more of a modern thing. The modern small business comes from industrialism making things cheap. At this time period, things we would call "Businesses" were mostly owned by wealthy people, and everything else was skilled labor. This is why merchants tended to be the focus of bankers in those days. Off the top of my head, the closest thing to a small business I can think of would be an Inn or a Brothel. What you are describing is basically normal business practices between individuals, but you are inserting trademark law in there somehow. "Buying out" a Merchant would be buying his stuff and selling it yourself, which would make you just another merchant. You could definitely buy up inns and brothels and ships, that's what a wealthy merchant would do. Ships are the dangerous investment that pays off the most, while inns, stables, and brothels are the rare example of a business that doesn't require specialized labor, though they won't exactly make you super-wealthy. Other things, like blacksmiths or cobblers, wouldn't sell out because their labor set is so specialized they don't have any reason to sell out. They aren't in competition with so many other blacksmiths that they can't make do on their own. [/quote] I want to say something about guilds too. But I don't think guild practice was ever heavily competing with someone. At least not at a local level. And they wouldn't but out anything. Then again, I think guilds were fairly internalized in their structure. The apprentices would be doing the menial shit required to produce what it was the guild produced, which would pass on to the higher skilled journey men who worked on more complex shit while the masters directed it all. So it's probably not a viable model of comparison either.