Artisan Archive

I've heard some folks complaining that we as artisans are shooting ourselves in the foot by not charging 'correct' prices for stuff. Well, in any economy I guess there's no 'correct' price; however, (I happen to agree with those folks that we are selling too low) we can make our own economy.

Anywhere you go where you see a commodity that's being sold 'too low' just buy it up and resell for the price you think it should be! It'll make you a pretty penny and bring the market price up.

For example I sell my weapon repair tools for 990cr. I've seen them for 250 and even as low as 25. I send an email to the offending artisan and then buy it up. There's usually only 4-5 on the market in any one region. Then I resell them for 990cr and make a bunch myself and sell those for 990cr.

So you're buying up crappy repair tools and reselling them for the same price as your good repair tools? That sounds fun. Anyway, buying up smaller companies and selling them for the "market" price, what's that called? Oh yeah! It's called a monopoly! Some people don't know what the "market" price is, maybe you should send them a /tell or a mail before you go off buying their stuff and selling it for jacked up prices.

Personally I don't care. I sell basic weapon repair kits for 500cr (and they are not crap either). If someone wants to sit at a terminal all day and buy and sell from the bazaar, let him. I set my sale price at 500cr and he met it. I don't care what he does with it afterwards.

I set the price at 500cr because they only have a limited number of uses, only take a few resources to make and don't suck up alot of time even with experimentation. He's going to love me once I start churning them out from a factory. There are other items I sell for higher prices but I still tend to undercut the market average a bit to make the sale.

Ivaso Agri
Bestine, Tatooine, Starsider
Not a Master Artisan because I sell or use everything I make.

Interesting thought; however,in many waysit's the OPPOSITE of a monopoly. I'm trying to keep everyone in business and make everyone's profits higher. A monopoly seeks to put other people out of business.

So in reality the people who are selling for 25cr are really closer to acting like a monopoly (by underselling everyone else and forcing them out of the market).

I'm just trying to do the right thing dude.

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BorealiMag wrote:

So you're buying up crappy repair tools and reselling them for the same price as your good repair tools? That sounds fun. Anyway, buying up smaller companies and selling them for the "market" price, what's that called? Oh yeah! It's called a monopoly! Some people don't know what the "market" price is, maybe you should send them a /tell or a mail before you go off buying their stuff and selling it for jacked up prices.

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What you are doing is called 'price fixing', and in RL it is definately not the right thing to do. Who decided that the right price for a weapon repair tool was 990 cr? It sounds like you did. Some people may be willing topay 990 cr for your repair tool, but only because they can't find one for less (because you've bought up all the less expensive ones and marked them up). Other people though, may just decide to forgoe buying the repair tool because they think 990 cr is too expensive.

The 'right price' for any product is what the market will bear. You think the market will bear 990 cr, but you may only find 10 customers willing to pay that amount. If you charged only 500 per tool (just as an example), you might find 100 customers willing to pay that price. Instead of grossing only 9,900 credits you could be grossing 50,000 credits.

In general, I think attempts to fix prices or enforce the 'right price' in any economy, whether in SWG or in RL, will usually be doomed to failure unless you truely do have a monopoly (such as DeBeers in the diamond market). Heck, even OPEC can't control the price of oil anymore.

Just my 2-credits worth.

Slim Vargo, Corbantis, Mos Eisley

It's totally fair to buy up and re-sell. If you know that the item will go for 990 credits, it's a shrewd move to buy a cheaper one and mark it up. In fact, I've been accused of under-selling in my own market. I sell powerups for 300 credits, this other guy comes in and starts selling his for 1000. If I were to see my powerups start appearing under his auctions for 1000 credits, you can bet I'd raise my prices. I just never realized they'd sell for that much. He did email me, however his tone was incredibly rude so I was immediately turned off. If he had sent me a more polite email informing me that he was able to sell at a much higher price, I would have certainly worked with him. But as it is now, there's no chance I am going to change to suit him--I'll flood the market with as many powerups as I can for 300 credits. The lesson here is, it's never a bad business practice to be polite, but usually a killer to be rude-especially if it's your first impression with someone.

Personally, I think it is a shrewd move to buy something you think is too cheap and sell it for higher. In fact, there needs to be no other solution. The origional seller gets what he wanted, the new seller makes a profit while tweaking the rest of the market in his favor (and the origional sellers favor). Everyone's happy. For example, I had to undercut everyone in the steel market today because if I don't sell by the time I go home from work my harvestor will go poof. If someone bought it in speculation it would make my day!

I'd like to adress the ideas of "correct" price. Namely, I'd like to assert that there is not one, or if there is one, it is a lot lower then you think it is.

I only work with wind generators, so that is my point of reference. In order to run a wind generator for 1 day it costs 1440 credits, plus whatever time it takes to run from point A to point B. I'm calculating that time as without value, because I enjoy doing it (I fight along the way.)

My wind generators create 3 units per minute, so I make 4320 units/per day, at a cost of 1440. In other words, it costs me .3 credits to make 1 unit of wind energy. Even if I sell for 1 credit each, that's still .67 credits of profit!

My point: The right price is anything over .3 credits/unit.

Note: I realize that there are startup costs involved as well, but for me there were none because I made my own generator.

I completely agree with this. In the end, the bottom line is that it's nice to be polite in-game just like it is in real-life. People will treat you with respect if you can have a good conversation even if you completely disagree with him/her.

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kasuta wrote:
with as many powerups as I can for 300 credits. The lesson here is, it's never a bad business practice to be polite, but usually a killer to be rude-especially if it's your first impression with someone.

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Like I said in my original post, I agree there is no such thing as a 'correct' price. However, if a particular region only has 5 tools for 200cr and you buy 'em up and sell 'em for 990cr and the market bears it, yay for you! I see nothing wrong with this. The reason there's nothing wrong with this is because anyone can5 minutes laterput another 5 on the market for 200cr if they want. I haven't put anyone out of business by selling at what the market will bear.

Isn't price-fixing more along the lines of severalcompanies agreeing to 'jack-up' prices, thereby eliminating competition? Not someone reselling. I'm not disagreeing with you just keeping the discussion going.

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EdOWar wrote:

The 'right price' for any product is what the market will bear. You think the market will bear 990 cr, but you may only find 10 customers willing to pay that amount. If you charged only 500 per

in a small closed system like this price has very little to no effect on demand.

At some point I agree with the first poster. I have seen minerals being sold way under market price, wich is really shooting our own proffesion in the foot.
If the market price is 4cr per unit of copper f. exampel, why start selling your copper for 2cr p. u. Its a stupid way of getting the customers to think that they allways can get cheap products.

I have regular clients that gets the resources cheaper because I know they need alot, so theres a bonus for them. "If you can take 10k steel every two days you get it for 2cr p. u."

But please artisans, especially those in the mining industry - please try and keep the marketprice at fair price, not to low - not to high. It helps us all in the end...

Price fixing as you described is illegal IRL not because its a monopoly, its what's called a Trust. Where a group of corporations in the same field agree to set certain price standards to protect their bottom lines (profit margins) at the expense of the consumer. When faced with new competition, a trust can bottom the price out of a product, effectively operating at a loss for a stretch of time (with the assumption that prior to this they had stockpiled capital and could write off the loss) wait till the new guy folds, then resume price jacking. This became pretty blatant in the US in the boom years of the 20's and later during the bust years in the 30's bringing about new legislation in the form of Anti-Trust laws. Most recent example of this is Microsoft facing antitrust litigation because they, through a series of deals which are independantly legal, created an environment where they could force other companies into deals which prevented competitors from securing a foothold in the OS software market, then out of the peripheral software market by 'bundling' software packages that were incompatible with competing softwares. Relevant to us, this hasn't really occurred yet, since the major players in the manufacturing field haven't acheived this level of cooperation. For the most part, the heavy hitters can sustain themselves on higher prices because of reputation and quality, it remains to be seen how long this holds up.