Armorsmith Archive
Thread: A professional business solution
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Vileshrew
Mon Aug 09, 2004 4:57 am
#1
Hello fellow armoursmiths,
before i start, please try to read this in an open frame of mind. the suggestions go against the actions taken by alot of smiths in the past so i know there will be resistance but it is worth thinking about
If you have a commodity to sell and u charge 500k, u will sell to those with 500k to spare and that audience will naturally be limited to those with that level of finance. Offer the same product at 200k and you will find a much greater number of buyers because more people will have 200k to spare and spend. In RL, think about the video recorder (VCR to american's) or the DVD player. When they first came out they were several hundred (or sometimes thousand) pounds and very few got sold. As they were offered cheaper, suddenly everyone has one and the manufacturers are racking in the cash because people buy new ones all the time (after all , they r so cheap). Had they stayed high in price, the businesses would never have had a good return on their initial investment and hard work. The reason they can offer these devices cheaper now is that they swallowed their development costs (the equivelent of skill tapes) with the first few sales and afetr that they negotiated cheaper deals with the companies that supplied the resources to make the players.
So, there's the economic analogy.
The reason, as I see it, that AS's have to charge so much in SWG is that they are willing to pay so much for resources. I was promted to write this after calls on this AS forum for players to cancel their accounts in order to get a better deal from the DEVS. We also need to do the in game equivelent with the players trying to sell resources for more than 10cpu. If we all refuse to buy the resources what will those players do?? Destroy the resources? I think not. They will offer them for less, and less, and less til they finally sell them. We need to use the power we have to push down the cost of raw materials to allow us to make a good set of composite armour with 60%+ base, 80% special protection and low encumb. I refuse to pay the high prices for resources and skill tapes and the result is I make 80%kinetic, 60% base comp and sell it at 150k per suit, but the encumb is scary and the players need to be buffed and that can't be what buyers really want. The only way we can have top quality armour and still charge affordable prices is to take the fight to our suppliers. If we all stick together on this we DO have the power to force a change. (are you with me brothers? lol). Serously though, this is a real life economic solution that could make us all alot of money. I currently produce 15 suits per batch and so bring in 2.25mil with a profit of around 1.5 mil and it takes me about 4 days to sell ALL the suits. If I had paid more for the resources and had to charge say 250k, they would take soooo much longer to sell to make the same profit.
Blimey, i have been ranting there and i apologies for that but it IS important.
All constructive comments comments gratefully received
Atitude Adjuster
Master Armoursmith
Tatooine -5707, 64000
DirthNader
Mon Aug 09, 2004 5:22 am
#3
I don't charge based on cpu. To be honest with you, I've got so much stuff in my warehouse I don't remember the exact cpu I paid for specfic resources. I've never calculated what my break-even cpu is for a set of armor.
I price based on how fast I can tolerate my armor selling, not cpu. I don't want to sell more than I do. I already sell out of a full restock (about 900-1000 pieces of sliced composite) in a week. Frankly, I probably need to raise my prices, not lower them, to keep a decent selection on the vendor for more than a day or two after a restock.
Any vendor limits will hurt even more. I hate restocking. With the clumsy vendor interface it's about as much fun as pulling out my toenails with pliers. Ifit takes me a day or twotosell out of a restock under some new vendor limit imposed by the devs, I'll simply raise my prices so that whatever I'm permitted to put on the vendor lasts a week. I'm not going to play nursemaid to a vendor every day.
Blimigerite
Mon Aug 09, 2004 7:16 am
#4
DirthNader wrote:
I'm not going to play nursemaid to a vendor every day.
This is exactly what will be happening. Inflation is going to make a lot of unhappy customers and bring more accusations of price fixing, price gouging, and in-general Armorsmiths ripping people off. Oh the joy of being a crafter 
Vileshrew
Mon Aug 09, 2004 9:01 am
#5
Thank you for these early contributions. Do the DEVS comb these threads to see the concerns people have over vendors I wonder.
AA
Mo-Ti
Mon Aug 09, 2004 3:32 pm
#6
Vileshrew wrote:
Thank you for these early contributions. Do the DEVS comb these threads to see the concerns people have over vendors I wonder.
AA
Of course they don't. They didn't even know it was impossible to get horn from an animal until a day after Hunting Armorhit TC.
Message Edited by Mo-Ti on 08-09-2004 03:32 PM
Sobyv
Tue Aug 10, 2004 12:28 am
#7
There is a way of reducing costs of armor, and like you said that is to reduce the costs of production.
Specifically, armorsmiths rely a whole lot on creatureharvested resources.A good interdependency idea, but it increases our production costs as generally creatureharvested resources are much more expensive and in lower quality than mined resources. This is one large reason why composite is so tempting for armorsmiths: It requires very little creature harvested resources.
Solutionnumber 1:Increase the amount of creature harvested resources. This will drop their price per unit as there will be more available, and armorsmiths will be able to pass on their savings to their customers (everyone) and increase the variety of armor being produced.
Solutionnumber 1:Increase the amount of creature harvested resources. This will drop their price per unit as there will be more available, and armorsmiths will be able to pass on their savings to their customers (everyone) and increase the variety of armor being produced.
Solution number 2: Either reduce the amount of creature harvested resource or have an option to replace that resource with a TAILOR product, this way, the tailors will have a marketable, mon(k)ey making arrangement. 
Personally, I vote for both. This will help everyone out, especially the users of armor. It will also present some nice choices (Do I make this out of real leather, or do I get that synthetic one that is way cheaper) ? More importantly, Tailors and Scouts/Rangers will be more appreciated and respected. I mean, does SWAT wears kevlar armor, and I don't see any wooly hide on that.
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