Bio Engineer Archive

four words: "ask for a schematic"

Every BE i know has a heart attack when someone orders 1000 units of any of the chef tissues. The meat comes with an astronomical cost of time and money up front. Then they cant guarantee quality since they have to put enough meat together and have to pull from various sources. It is much easier for us, and cost effective for chefs, if all the "work" is done by the person who would most directly benefit seeing as chefs do nothing but run factories and shop for resources.

I can't keep up with orders, every chef I deal with wants 1000's of them each day and its just too hard to gather the amount of meat needed so quickly.

Now this may be partially my fault since I charge 350 for light, 400 for medium, and 450 for heavy. This covers my cost AND a profit, so I hate to charge more but right now it looks like I'm going to have to, just to stop the bulk buying of everything I make (or put some on my vendor at higher prices for "emergency" needs).

I'm also hoping this is just the initial hit of the new food craze.

It took me a while to wade through your figures, but I think that I can explain the fundamental flaw in them to you. I hope that this doesn't come across as rude, but it is you who are seriously overcharging for your product.

I have not sold any of the BE additives yet, as I am not quite master yet, but I have been a successful Master Artisan for a long time, so I know a good bit about pricing. I sometimes have to buy components for my products, such as the Vehicle Customization Kits. When I do, I add a small charge for my time in securing these products, but I do not add a markup to the cost, only to the resources I add myself. My standard figure for pricing is 10 cpu, which covers my cost and allows a reasonable profit.

What you have done in your model is to triple not only your cost but also the cost to buy our finished product. You complain that we would make 700K on 1000 units, yet you do not mention that you would make 3.2M profit on the BE portion of your product alone! You should really not be making anything on that part, only on your own additions!

Using your figure for 1000 units, you would take the cost of the additives (1600K) andmy pricing figure (10cpu*60K=600K), and add them together for a total of 2200K per 1000 units. That would yield a cost per crate of 55K, far less than you are charging. Your profit would be at least 300K per 1000, which seems fair to me, since flora is much easier to gather than meat.

Using your pricingfigures of 15 cpu, your portion would cost 900K, for a total of 2500K This would equal 2500K per 1000 or 62.5K per crate, which is still less than you are charging. Your profit would be about 600K at this price.

Take this one step further, and charge 20 cpu, and you will get a figure of 70K per crate, and a profit for you of 900K. We still aren't up to your actual price, are we?

In reality, you are charging about 75cpu for your resources, and making a profit of well over 3M on 1000 units, while you complain that the BE makes 700K on the same amount!

I hope that now you understand why the BE's are upset with Chefs who complain that BE prices are too high!

You mentioned that I "complained" twice yet there is no mention of complaint in any thing I've written in that post. Also no business is profitable basing prices just on "cost" of ingredients. Supply and demand can itself markup prices considerably. Time is also a costable commodity and many of the chef items take 3 runs of 12-22 hours to make (up to 3 days).

And actually compared to every chef vendor I've visited on my server (and I make it my business to know what other chefs are offering and charging), and to those chefs Ive talked to on the forums, my prices are the cheapest.

At any rate just scanning your post gives evidence that a) you are small time and hardly effect the market at all with your contribution and/or b) your pricing scheme or your idea of what prices should be is visionary and has no place practically or literally and/or c) you have done little or no producing or selling of BE products up to this point and/or d) you have talked to, engaged in and done very little of the business mentioned with other chefs and/or e) you have written your post with no knowledge or any research about what is actually going on in the market concerning BE/chef products even to the extent of reading the postings on your own forum, and finally d) you are the type who would rather commicate for the gratification of adding your 2 cents rather than contributing meaningfully to the issue being discussed.

Gracchus-

My response:

Great story.

That'll be 50k a crate sir. How much do you want to order?

Thank you for pointing out the spreadsheet, it was very useful.

In all these discussions, I am seeing several problems. One is the size of glass, are we discussing Small Glasses, Large Glasses or Casks? Another is that because there are so many components, a multiplier for profit is often being added at more than one point in the equation.

Let's go through the pricing for Small Glasses, since that is the model used in the spreadsheet. Let's make the same assumptions used there:

5 cpu cost for resources * multiplier for profit of 4= 20 cpu final price for each resource used

We are talking about resources that can be pulled with a harvester here, so I think that is a fair figure. It builds in a fairly large profit margin to compensate for the difficulty in getting the components and making numerous factory runs.

So here is the complete breakout, per single unit:

20 fruit, 20 berries, 20 cereal = 60 flora

10 gemstone for small glass

70 total resources * 20 cpu= 1400c per small glass

This is the product before the BE additive. Once the BE additive is purchased, it must be combined with 15 units of water. 15 * 20cpu=300, bringing the sales price per glass up to 1700 for the Chef's portion.

Now let's look at the BE additive, using the same formulas. The big difference, of course, is the Meat, or "Creature Food". Let's try to come up with a reasonable price for this. I think that most of us can agree that it is no easy task to harvest or collect 20K of meat to make a factory run of 1000 units. I have seen widely varying prices quoted. Let's use 25cpu, as it is between the most commonly quoted figures of 20 and 30 cpu. So using the same profit multiplier of 4, we would price this at 100 cpu.

Here is the BE Medium additive breakout, per single unit:

35 organic, 25 flora = 60 flora at the same 20 cpu =1200 per additive

20 creature food * 100 cpu = 2000 per additive

Total sales price per additive =3200

These figures yield these total, again these are sales prices, not costs:

Chef portion = 1700 per small glass BE portion = 3200 per additive TOTAL= 4900 per small glass of Brandy with BE additive, or 122,500 per crate

A crate of the BE additive would sell for 80K at these prices., which represents about 65% of the final sales price.

I'm going to end this here, because it is getting long, but I will make a follow up post comparing the current reality to these figures. Hope this is helpful!

It's all about supply and demand right now. A typical transaction goes something like this:

"Mitsuko, do you have any additives?"

"I have a full run of BSN cooking in my factory right now, should be finished tonight. I usually sell them for 50k a crate."

"Send me a tell when they are done, I'll buy them all! Please don't offer them to anyone else :-)"

I've never had a run I haven't sold before it came out of the factory.

The problem is variety, the only meat available in any real quantity is Dath carnivore, courtesy of all the enraged rancor groups and Jedi XP grinders. All those schematics that call for domestic and wild meat will probably never see the inside of my factory.

please read SciGuyCo's nice excel spreadsheet...you have forgotten quite a bit of resource costs for vasarian brandy...let me add a few things to the brandy cost:

casks (2 trim (25 chem) + 150 gemstone) * 1000 units = 400k credits (grind quality is ok...so 2cpu)
alchohol (need 2 identical (10 flora)) * 1000 units = 40k credits (again grind quality ok so 2cpu)
medium food additive (10 water) * 1000 units = 20k credits (same as above)
brandy (40 flora) * 1000 units = 400k credits (by your cpu pricing)

add to that the 143 or so hours (someone actually calculate it...forgot who) of factory time required to produce 40 crates of enhanced brandy...using only 1 factory...thats about 6 days of 24/7 production...but more realistically...6.5 days since everyone needs to sleep...

so instead of 1.2 mil for resource cost of brandy...its more like 1.66 mil

1.76 mil/40 * 3 (using your formula) = 132k...

BE cost 900k
chef cost 860k

doesn't quite seem quite so out of balance in terms of cost now...10cpu for high quality organics is probably high...but then again so is 30 cpu for meat...

using your 40k/crate price...

1.6 mil + 860k = 2.42 mil/40 * 3 = 181.5k

now for those chefs charging 600k a crate of brandy...this isn't too bad...but for the chefs that charge 150k...40k a crate doesn't look very good at all...they're losing 31.5k per crate of brandy they sell by your calculations (yes I know part of it is labor...but its still a loss).

OK, now that I've presented one way to compute pricing figures on the small glasses of Brandy with the BE additive, let's do a reality check and look at the figures another way. As many of you have rightfully pointed out, much of pricing is about supply and demand. We can discuss pricing models all day, but in the end you must consider the going rate for any item. If you just plan to charge whatever the market will bear, then these models may not be helpful for you. At least I find it useful to know if I am indeed making a profit at all, and if it is even worth my time to make an item. So if you are still with me, let's go back and reconsider the figures used in my analysis of the BE additive pricing.

I think that we can live with the 20 cpu pricing for the flora ingredients as being a fair profit figure. We pay 5 or less for this resource, and therefore, when we multiply that figure by 4, we end up with a mark up of 15 cpu. However, since we paid 25 for our meat, when we multiply that figure by the same 4, we end up with a mark up of 75 cpu! Meat is a lot harder to get in volume, but that is a pretty big mark up! Let's go with a 25 cpu mark up instead, pricing the meat at 50 cpu. Now we are more in line with the prices I have seen most BE's quote.

Let's see how this translates to the prices for the Medium Nutrition Additive:

60 flora * 20 cpu = 1200 per additive

20 meat * 50 cpu = 1000 per additive

Total cost per medium additive = 2200 or 55K per crate

So let's say we are nice people and we round this down to 50K per crate. What's our profit per crate, based on these figures? 30K per crate.

Let me go ahead and price out the Light and Heavy Additives as well.

Light Additive

35 flora * 20 cpu = 700 per additive

15meat * 50 cpu =750 per additive

Total cost per light additive = 1450 or 36250 per crate Round down to 35K, profit per crate = 21,250

Heavy Additive

90flora * 20 cpu =1800 per additive

20meat * 50 cpu =1000 per additive

Total cost per light additive =2800 or70K per crate A nice round number, 70K, profit per crate = 46,250

Again, I am going to end this here, as it is long. I will shortly add another post figuring out the costing on the Brandy with these revised figures. Please let me know if you feel these numbers are reasonable, and if not, please explain how you arrive at your numbers. Thanks!

Now for one last model, combining the BE Medium Additive and the Chef's portion of the Brandy. What are the Chef's actual costs? Based on 85 resource units at 5 cpu, 425 per small glass, or 10625 per crate. Add the 50K per the BE crate of additive, which brings the total to 60625 per crate.

If the Chef charges 100K per crate, his profit will be 39375 per crate.

If the Chef charges 120K per crate, his profit will be 59375 per crate.

the norm for chefs is either casks (this is mostly the case for those 200k+ crates of brandy...with few exceptions)..or large glasses.

when chefs speak of selling non-be brandy for 75k...its likely in casks...if not...ummm thats more than just a tad high.

at 75k it works out to somewhere around 12cpu average cost...not entirely too high (assuming casks were used).

I don't really know of any (there may be 1 per server...maybe) that would use small glasses for BE brandy...mostly its casks, with large glasses being for people wanting to cater to the non-mission grinding crowd. small glasses would mainly see use in testing what kind of buff numbers a chef would get using different resources (i.e. seeing how much a low flavor would have an effect on something, etc.)

so for purposes of calculating resource costs use the casks...200 total resources...or at the very least...large glasses...and if barrels ever get fixed...it would either be barrels or casks...large glasses being very rarely used.

in general a 4x modifier is much higher than what chefs would use...probably closer to a 3x if not a 2.5x. the chefs that may use something like a 4x modifier are likely the ones charging 300k+.

just as a warning...if BE's charge all chefs (price gaugers, and otherwise) the same prices...only the price gaugers will stay in buisiness...or the other chefs will pick up BE. while it may seem unusual to charge different prices for different people...it might be the only way to "stay in the loop". it also may be more worthwhile to find a reasonable chef to partner up with, and work out a long term deal.