Architect Archive
Thread: What To Charge
hmmm...
2-5% sounds low to me..
How are you going to administer charging the maintenance to the crafter? keep track of every item, and calculate the maintenance depending on how long it took to sell??? - Impossibly difficult if you have a good level of trade, and will a crafter really want to pay 48% of his sale cost because the item took 2 days to sell ???
The only way it will work is if you arrange a price for items with the crafter that they sell to you, and then it is up to you to sell them as you see fit, adding a cover to allow for profit, vendor and building maintenance (which is likely to be 20-50%).
Merchant run malls are going to work better if each crafter can place his own vendors there. That way he has complete control over the sale costs, re-stocking etc, and is responsible for maintenance costs - you can then just agree a flat rate "per week" fee for his vendor - like he's renting space from you.
You can of course have your own vendors too selling whatever...
I am going to set up a mall where any artisan / crafter can rent space from me (thinking1,000 credits per vendorper week). Ill handle all the advertising etc, and will also set up my own 4-5 Resource vendors (I won't allow any artisans to place resource vendors in my mall) - This way I can sell my resources to both the general customers, and the crafters when they come to stock their vendors. I'm not at risk from everyones maintenance, and we create a huge place to shop for anything and everything..
I would get them to give me the stock and a pricelist, I would then stock the vendor in such a way as to have the right amount of availbility and keep the rest in the stockroom until one of the items sold then I would shift it over for them (I would have to be doing some work 
)
As for maintence on the vendor I would get them to pay into the machine front up whatever the maintence is for however long they wanted to, at the end of that period whatever is left in the vendor I would give back to them. After a sale is made I would keep my commission from whatever is sold and give them the rest.
So what would be an ideal ammount of commission?
As a side note, things would be greatly simplified if I could just give someone admin access to a vendor.
Upon higher consideration I have decided that it would be both easier and better to buy in bulk stock from crafters at a bulk rate and then resell these items to the public. I also believe that thecrafters would be more excepting to this.
Any thoughts?
I think what you described is an ideal, that the tools in the game just wont allow us to do without having to input masses of man hours logging every sale etc with times blah blah blah...
Every merchant will be paying for items up front, especially when they are established and the cash flow is sufficient to achieve this.. (this is why many merchants start buy selling resources which they have collected as it is maximum return from minimal cash outlay.)
Now I have the power to generate 300k in the bank I can go and buy a consignment of 30 DLT20a Rifles or whatever and pay for them up front - when they sell I'll have made 500k less the maintenance.
That is really where the merchant skill lie, in reading the market and knowing where when and how much to sell for. What is confusing people is that these are all personal skills and not in game skills like all other professions.
To actually answer your question. Iaim fora 10% return after fees / maintenance etc.
alot of your crafter merchants have been using this to sell one type of item per vendor, be it a gun in one, rifle in the other..you get the idea. But it has struck me that this obviously wasn't the plan when the dev's created this class
I'm going to disagree here.Based on Ultima Online, one of the biggest differences between a well run shop and a poorly run one was that items were sorted and easy to find.Having that background, the use of multiple vendors and how important they are was obvious.
I have gotten several complements on separating my clothing into seperate vendors. This is one of a lot of little things you can do to make your shop more attractive to customers. And that's what really differentiates a shop you go back to from one you don't.
If you want to resell, you have an uphill battle to start. I think you're going to need to pay up front for things and at least from my pricing, there's precious little room that someone could mark it up.
I understand clothing is going to be catagorized soon (on test) and that is a godsend, however - I currently have my vendors sorted somewhat by what they sell.
Most clothing items are on one.
Accessory pieces are on another.
Bulk cloth, crates of trim, shoe soles, cargo pockets - components and skill enhancements I find for a good price on the third.
Wookie Wear I have totally on it's own vendor.
4th and 5th are pets and misc. tools/supplies.
Bah - my kingdom for an edit button.
5th and 6th are pets and tools/supplies
Numtini wrote:
If you want to resell, you have an uphill battle to start. I think you're going to need to pay up front for things and at least from my pricing, there's precious little room that someone could mark it up.
There is very little mark up in clothing maybe, but the markup and weapons and armor is out of this world, as well as with high end droids (probots and protocol). For some reason the tailors have all rpiced themselves out. The other day I bought a brand new super high quality (the words were writen in yellow) heavy flightsuit off of the bazaar for only3k. Now I know that it doesn't take many resources to craft, but you have to be a master to make it, whoever was selling it should have charged at least 15k for it.
Also I am currently running a few personal harvestors to pay the bills, so all that money will go towards stock for the shop.
But would you find it more conveniant if all the elite crafter items could be found under one roof? I know I get very sick of running around the entire galaxy to find what I am looking for.
But would you find it more conveniant if all the elite crafter items could be found under one roof? I know I get very sick of running around the entire galaxy to find what I am looking for.
I think you'll find this happening as soon as we can place vendors in other people's houses.
Numtini wrote:
But would you find it more conveniant if all the elite crafter items could be found under one roof? I know I get very sick of running around the entire galaxy to find what I am looking for.
I think you'll find this happening as soon as we can place vendors in other people's houses.
Amen to that - Already got my crafters / artisans & merchants lined up to set this up as soon as it gets patched in !!!
Z