Armorsmith Archive
Thread: Drumming up sales, post CU
It seems like anymore the only way for a WS to set themselves apart is with price...which is a bad place to be in. Of course, one could offer a wider variety of colors...other than just black.That's oneway foran ASto differentiatehim-or-herself post CU.
I've alsothought about having a vendor selling less than maxed out health armor. The lower-end health enhancers (anything under +10) are fairly cheap on Corbantis. But that's a large amount ofcustom work, and I've worried that no one would buy it if it isn't maxed out +50 health...no matter how I priced it. It'd suck to use all those resources and do all that work for nothing, or next to nothing.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
Message Edited by SFXBrandon on 10-09-2005 01:11 AM
my customers are not always right, a lot of them are stupid, egotistic, and could care less about me or the effort I put into my work
I have enough money and they can go to someone else
so........what are you doing creative to drum up sales?
(vendor sales, not special order sales, I should rename this thread)
It is hard to be creative, but I am trying
personally im opening up a AS store with a load of friends as well as the one i have in my home city and i plan to open up another shop in a month or so on another planet if all goes well
and hopefully have shops on lok ,dant and naboo maybe more if things dont get to hard
tanajerner wrote:
personally im opening up a AS store with a load of friends as well as the one i have in my home city and i plan to open up another shop in a month or so on another planet if all goes well
and hopefully have shops on lok ,dant and naboo maybe more if things dont get to hard
This is somewhat the right idea. Combining the abilities ,and most importantly the time, of AS's is a good idea. The ability to do custom work is a very powerful tool. A customer who feels they are being served will return to you even if it is a chore to do so. If we rely on vendor placement of our goods we will do nothing but match the goods of others. So if our shop is on Rori and anothers is on Dantooine then a customer in need standing at the Mining Outpost will be hard pressed to fly to our shop when he can recieve the exact same product and service as we offer just 800m away.
My customers return to me with respect and trust because they know that I will give them the same in return. If they have a budget I will do my best to work within it. If they need a specific color scheme they know I will stand next to them and work with them to achieve it. They do not need to buy from me, they want to. When they need a simple suit that they could find from another for the same or less price and even with better stats they STILL come to me. They know that they are my customers and not just customers.
I cannot think of a thing more grand than to make a friend from a customer. One bad customer can tell 10 people not to shop me, as long as I have 10 who do not just recommend me but outright swear by me. For they shall with that attitude bring me 10 more will continue this chain. As my fellow poster has said, I am never going to hurt for money. No AS worth his salt ever worries about going broke. And I for one would make only what I need to survive to maintain this relationship with my customers. For it is this that makes me strive to make that elusive cap. Not to reach it and claim myself Uber, but to give those who have given me so much the gift of better armor.
Message Edited by Meuw on 10-09-2005 03:01 AM
Meuw wrote:
tanajerner wrote:
personally im opening up a AS store with a load of friends as well as the one i have in my home city and i plan to open up another shop in a month or so on another planet if all goes well
and hopefully have shops on lok ,dant and naboo maybe more if things dont get to hard
This is somewhat the right idea. Combining the abilities ,and most importantly the time, of AS's is a good idea. The ability to do custom work is a very powerful tool. A customer who feels they are being served will return to you even if it is a chore to do so. If we rely on vendor placement of our goods we will do nothing but match the goods of others. So if our shop is on Rori and anothers is on Dantooine then a customer in need standing at the Mining Outpost will be hard pressed to fly to our shop when he can recieve the exact same product and service as we offer just 800m away.
My customers return to me with respect and trust because they know that I will give them the same in return. If they have a budget I will do my best to work within it. If they need a specific color scheme they know I will stand next to them and work with them to achieve it. They do not need to buy from me, they want to. When they need a simple suit that they could find from another for the same or less price and even with better stats they STILL come to me. They know that they are my customers and not just customers.
I cannot think of a thing more grand than to make a friend from a customer. One bad customer can tell 10 people not to shop me, as long as I have 10 who do not just recommend me but outright swear by me. For they shall with that attitude bring me 10 more will continue this chain. As my fellow poster has said, I am never going to hurt for money. No AS worth his salt ever worries about going broke. And I for one would make only what I need to survive to maintain this relationship with my customers. For it is this that makes me strive to make that elusive cap. Not to reach it and claim myself Uber, but to give those who have given me so much the gift of better armor.
Message Edited by Meuw on 10-09-2005 03:01 AM
im working with another AS in my guild and some tailors as well we are doing it as a group project rather than solo
on my server resources have been very hard to come by all the wrong stuff seems to be spawning so we have had to work together to produce armour in a large quantity and have had to do resource swaps with other AS
i think most of the AS on my server are strugerling with resources for AS and very few have any sort of selection
JetStrike wrote:
hi, not an armorsmith, but I would reccomend, as far as padded armor, trying out different color combos, such as yellow/black
breaking away from the "we have 3 combos, black, red, and black/red!" is great, i am personally loving this dark green padded armor I picked up.
perhaps make armor suits matched in color to certain planets? makea "Lokian Camo" set of armor or something like that.
anyways have a good day!
hello i hope you come back to check this out
we all would love to do different colours but at the moment we cant due to a colour bug with our armour so we are stuck doing certain colours unless we hand craft all our armour which is not visable with some of us
and i totally agree with you padded has some great colour ranges and they all look good ubese colours suck though
LeviticusD wrote:
Health enhanced armor. You want to stand out and be different. Start pumping out health enhanced armor as often as possible and people will always be at your doorstep....the real question is, do you want them there?
Lol, that is the real question, What's real bad for me is everybody on Bloodfin knows both Retneprac and Junior (my as) and I constantly get tells to Retneprac about armor, and anybody that /tell retneprac about armor I just addignore and wont do an order for. Anyways, back on subject, all I do is custom order RIS, BH armor health enhanced stuff, also i've been getting into health enhanced wookie garb. I cant fill all my orders, I have to turn people down every day.
Meuw wrote:
Yeah I hear you. I actually have to be very selective about who I work with. So many people want only to use your generosity to line their pockets.
MonKaiku wrote:
thanks to all who postedI should say that I went from preCU 5% custom order 95% vendor sales to about 60% special order 40% vendor sales now.I am burnt out of all the special orders and lack of gratitude from a lot of the customers. I will continue to do special orders, but it has gotten to the point where if I do not know you, you will have to pay a rediculous amount of money to get me to do a custom job for you unless I have tons of time or are in a good mood.I would like to go back to more of a vendor smith, but I also do not want to stock the same thing as everyone else.To those still reading, I think that the mall I stock in draws tons of people in. I am there with 5 other armorsmiths and we have about 15 armor vendors between all of us.After I do my presliced RIS (75% AB + energy layers) I think I will do a run of junk primus layered RIS. On our server no one has good gravatronic and neutronium sells 50-125cpu for good stuff. I have junk neutronium and gravatronic that with the other three resources good could prob get my primus layers up to 6300 or so. I sell enough 6k RIS that 6300 should be great and it shouldn't cost too much more to produce either (will prob do 12 runs of layers and make 1k cores)
QFE
I hear you all on the lack of gratitude on the customers end, people go around with the customer is always right sign tied to their chest. The fact of the matter is this isnt real life I don't have a mortgage payment and kids in university so I dont need your money to make ends meet... if dealing with you is a poor experience you can and will get a refund when i bank tip you the money back, this is a game and meant to be enjoyed. Life is too short for dealing with unpleasant people be they carbon or digitally based lifeforms.
sorry to go on a bit of a rant there, been going through a bit of a pickle with a customer. I seam to be having this happen more frequently actually and this (past 2months) has been the first time I have had a really negative experiences with a customer. If this becomes a habit I will have to do some thinking, lets hope it doesn't.
Heciv wrote:
Meuw wrote:
Yeah I hear you. I actually have to be very selective about who I work with. So many people want only to use your generosity to line their pockets.
MonKaiku wrote:
thanks to all who posted
I should say that I went from preCU 5% custom order 95% vendor sales to about 60% special order 40% vendor sales now.
I am burnt out of all the special orders and lack of gratitude from a lot of the customers. I will continue to do special orders, but it has gotten to the point where if I do not know you, you will have to pay a rediculous amount of money to get me to do a custom job for you unless I have tons of time or are in a good mood.
I would like to go back to more of a vendor smith, but I also do not want to stock the same thing as everyone else.
To those still reading, I think that the mall I stock in draws tons of people in. I am there with 5 other armorsmiths and we have about 15 armor vendors between all of us.
After I do my presliced RIS (75% AB + energy layers) I think I will do a run of junk primus layered RIS. On our server no one has good gravatronic and neutronium sells 50-125cpu for good stuff. I have junk neutronium and gravatronic that with the other three resources good could prob get my primus layers up to 6300 or so. I sell enough 6k RIS that 6300 should be great and it shouldn't cost too much more to produce either (will prob do 12 runs of layers and make 1k cores)
QFE
I hear you all on the lack of gratitude on the customers end, people go around with the customer is always right sign tied to their chest. The fact of the matter is this isnt real life I don't have a mortgage payment and kids in university so I dont need your money to make ends meet... if dealing with you is a poor experience you can and will get a refund when i bank tip you the money back, this is a game and meant to be enjoyed. Life is too short for dealing with unpleasant people be they carbon or digitally based lifeforms.
sorry to go on a bit of a rant there, been going through a bit of a pickle with a customer. I seam to be having this happen more frequently actually and this (past 2months) has been the first time I have had a really negative experiences with a customer. If this becomes a habit I will have to do some thinking, lets hope it doesn't.
I hate the customer is always right rubbish the only people that say that is people that dont provide a service for other people like someone who works in a shop or restaurant your never find someone that agrees the customer is all ways right that works in a shop because they generally arent
Kepp things in stock is all you have to do. I went froma a nobody AS before the CU to the top AS on Flurry post CU becuase I stocked all types. There was no challange before either, sickens me to hear people always brag about "how armorsmith used to be a challange"... no it wasn't so quit patting yourselvs on the back.
The top notch armor was only achieved by a lucky slice. Everything else was just resources and CA's. there's no secret mod in the game randomly handed out saying 'you'll be a xx ammount of bonuses to Armorsmith, but suck at chef'. All toons are created Equal, and so with the same stuff, all toons make the same armor. Same then, same now