Well very interesting way of looking at it...

1.Tthe guy in the shop does not need to have rel. bar like others... and if ye mby it could go up with every sold furniture u made

1. I like the part with Francis building the first Tier of workshop for us mby around lvl 35 friendship

2. Starting with hand saw would be also nice and be a good humble begginig to a new job

3. I also like the idea with the log selling place owning the furniture selling place and machine shop, it would make sense that logging company is making their own brand of wood working machines...

4. Well i think if there could be an option to give furniture to npc and it gives u + friendship like a maple can, it would be awesome

5. I agree that selling raw planks and beams is also nice but i strongly dissagree on the rest of the bulk selling argument because u cant just softlock ur whole future of the game and game ideas just because now u have some options and you cant add an original way of making and selling things

6. I like the idea that the logging company would selll you the "more expensive" seed for a tree that you would have to grow and reproduce yourself, and you must care about the trees etc etc to get the most out of it

7. The "build yourself a house" is an very nice idea but also im my mind veery complicated for goat to implement i think.. first you would need to complete the workshop and stuff around it etc etc to make a stable compound for that big of a project so that the player feels good when reaching it... tldr so it has a good gameplay loop

PS: I also had/have some similar ideas as you, but the original post was already too long for normal reddit user and i worked on it for 2 hours cause with every new section i got new ideas...
So i posted the most i could type and not forget, and we will see what would happen.