Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Thanks for all the responses!
Example: My main character has lots of artisan skills. Early in her career I bought her a travel pack. It was 400 credits. That was the going rate in Moenia on that server (Naritus).
Later she learned to make those things, and I made 3 and went to put them up for sale, figuring to make 400 each. I looked at the bazaar and there were a buch all for sale from the same 2 people, and all at exactly 1150 credits. Seems like an odd rate. And totally ridiculous for something a base artisan with Domestic IV or something could make.
So I contacted a tailor of mine and she said on her vendor she sells them for 450. So she thought 1150 was nuts. They really don't take that many resources.
So, I put mine up for sale at 800, which is STILL nuts but substantially undercut the "market." Nobody got angry... but one person bought all 3 of them (yay! 2400 credits) and then re-sold them for 1000 (still undercutting the others but making a nice 20% profit for himself -- assuming they sold).
This game has a free-market economy. If people want to try and make an OPEC that's fine... but I will not respect any such organizations and I would DELIBERATELY undercut it if I saw it going on in my town/on my server.
Just in terms of competition I try to always put my product, whatever it is, on the bazaar for somewhat less than the lowest other version either in town (for cheap things under 200 cr that nobody sane would take a shuttle to buy for less money), or on the planet (for more expensive stuff) or even on the server (for the really big stuff, if I ever have it -- so far I never have). My main character can also make Fizzzes, an occasional-demand item. When I make one, I check all of Naboo for them. If there are none, I sell for my standard price (750). If there are some, I sell for the cheapest price minus 20%. So if someone is selling them for 1000, I will sell for 800. In general this means my stuff ALWAYS sells -- and that is my goal. I want it to SELL, or I wouldn't put it up in the first place. I'm making a profit either way, since Fizzzes take a whopping 45 resources to make, I have TONS of wood and nothing to do with it, and even at 10 per resource that'd only be 450 cr. So in my view anything over a couple of hundred credits is a HUGE profit, and so I am more than happy to undercut the overpriced people charging 1K for something like that.
What you did was just fine, and there ain't thing 1 the cartel people can do about it. The ONLY thing they could do is buy it all up and then either destroy it or sell it for their "preferred" price. Either way -- you make money.
After all, you were being ethical, evaluating your materials, and charging what you thought was a fair rate. You weren't trying to "drop the bottom out of the market" any more than I do... you were just pricing fairly and competitively, and that is what capitalism is all about, my friend.
Sure, the expensive guys aren't going to like it. Ask Macy's if they like how cheap Wal-Mart sells stuff for. But Macy's can't stop 'em, and neither can the BioEng cartel on your server stop you. What're they gonna do? Duel you? You don't accept. Send you angry tells? You /ignore. Tell people not to buy your stuff? Yeah right... just how many people are going to honor a demand by Macy's not to buy at Wal-Mart? I don't think so.
They need to wake up and smell the capitalism...
C
I just posted a useful price guide on my website lastnight. maybe that will be of use
StealthHawk wrote:
But there is something that people are doing that pisses me off..... although it doesn't affect me much...
Say you sell your pet stims for 200 each, and they sell theirs for 1200 each. THEY BUY YOUR PETSTIMS AND THEN RESELL THEM FOR 1200 EACH! They make 1000 from this. Yea it sucksm but nothing you can do...
Hehehe, I love this. I've been on both ends of this, and it's all good. When I see someone pricing *way* below market value, I buy em out, lock stock and berrel, period. I have enough cash lying around to do this, and it's easy money. A lot easier than making them yourself cause you have no overhead at all and you're taking advantage of your market savvy and their market ignorance.
However, I've seen it happen to me as well. A couple weeks ago I got a /tell from someone congratulating me on making such fine stims. He made a comment like "I bought em all". I had no clue what he was talking about since there was still plenty in my vendor and didn't currently have any on the bazar. Then after talking with him a little further I learned he was on Dathomir and had bought a bunch of my stims in the bazar there! I got a really good laugh out of that since I've never even been to Dath, but I was actually kind of flattered by the whole thing. Someone thought enough of my stims to export them to a place where they'd sell at a lot higher price. He could have bought anyon'es but he chose mine. Good for them! I got my sales, my product got out to a wider audience, and that enterprising exporter fellow hopefully made a good profit on it too. It's all good.
Now that is what the Merchant class should be doing. A good turn of events.
I want to start an airline to undercut the Transit Authority. Think the Space expansion will allow passengers?
Fair pricing:
There is not really any such thing as fair pricingsince everyone has their own idea of what constitutes fair.
Market price:
The effective market price in SWG is actually a range of prices for most craftering professions. If you dip below the low end of the market you will create a secondary resellers market for your goods or risk being overwhelmed by demand. If you charge above the high end of the range you will not sell your merchandise.
What do you want the quality of your goods to be, and what market segment do you see yourself serving:
Since SWG has a segmented economy, you may want to consider what kind of crafter you envision yourself as. If you price for close to optimal profit, you will be able to acquire the best resources and tools (meats, flora, stations, tools, eventually skill tapes[I have not heard of any for BE yet, butthat does not mean anything]etc...) and as a result, you will be able to consistantly manufacture the highest quality goods. If you price at the low end, you will be providing a needed goods for players that do not have as many credits. You will periodically produce the best items, but in general your quality will be more hit and miss.
Being civil (this applies to would be socialists and monopolists):
In general tellingpeople to fix their prices (either high or low)does little except spread ill will. In real life people generally have little tolerance being told what to do with their personal property and this attitude usually extends include their personal property in game. If some one is overcharging, they won't make sales. If they are really undercharging they will go under (either lose money or burn out).
Same goes to BE products, Its a free marked, thank God!
Nos,
Most lower level BEs actually grind stuff on practice mode - I sure do
If for approximately the same effort I could get 25 * 100 creds I'd cheerfully sell whatever I happened to be grinding for that price.
Frankly I'm paying for an education and any income is a bonus
Now as it happens I know some interested tailors so my bazaar slots are usually taken up by stuff I leave on their vendors but any notion of fair price or market forces really has to take into account that most pre-Master crafters in any of the professions spend a lot of time turning resources into experience with no profit whatsoever
Now if I could just find a buyer for five thousand +3% Micronutrient supplements
When you sell out faster than you can restock, you are doing something wrong.
You are underpricing your product.
You could be underpricing your product by a whole lot. But you won't know because you spend all day trying to restock that vendor, and you insist on using the same price.
You can gauge your pricing by your sales. Ideally the product sells at a rate you wish to restock your vendor. If you are always scrambling to refill that vendor, odds are your stuff is set too cheap.
You can not assume the converse. If your stuff is not selling, it may not be the price. It may be that just nobody knows where your shop is and you have an advertising problem.
So lets say Joe Blow puts his shop 3k out from Wayfar, and stocks his vendor with petstims at 0.1*ch*eff. On Day 1, they don't sell. Joe says 'hmmm, must be overpriced' and drops them to 0.05*ch*eff. He waits for weeks, and apologizes to his BE buddies (who are selling out at 0.2*ch*eff) and he drops it to 0.01*ch*eff. Sadly Joe goes out of business, and he just never got it...he had a marketing problem, not a pricing issue. Anyone who would try to gently tell Joe about his problem would get a righteous speech from Joe about how he can sell whatever he wants for whatever he wants, and nobody should be trying to control him with price fixing.
I think it is great that people are buying up stims at dump prices and reselling them for profit. This would be a really nice thing to post up on the merchant forum.
A properly advertised shop will sell out petstims at the price I mentioned at a reasonable rate. I spend about 75% of my online time doing stuff associated with restocking my petstims. It is so much that I am actually hardly progressing on my skills.
Think about it sometime. There are reasons why people pay $1M for a one minute add during a superbowl. Advertising matters alot. Merchants get this.
Lok, that's a slightly odd post
You explain very forcefully that underpricing is wrong and then admit to spending 75% of your time restocking pet stims. This sounds to me like you're selling at an unreasonable rate - a rate that forces you to spend most of your play time keeping up with demand. Would you make the same money and have more time to goof off if you simply doubled your prices?
Unless you're in the middle of a growth spurt for your business where it demands a lot of work I can't see the point of your method
It's not that labour-intensive to produce stuff. You upgrade to big harvesters, rent lots and buy factories. 4 factories = a run of each sub-component and a run of the stims. Or investigate big resource wholesalers and drop harvesting completely
The point I was making that if your vendor is selling out faster than you can restock it, you are underpricing. Ideally you have outflow of product equalling how much time you personally want to spend on restocking. On any given day I have about 5-10 crates of petstims/vits on the vendor, so I am able to keep up with demand. The question you are asking me is am I comfortable with 75% of my time allocated to restocking. I see this as a temporary bubble, and am willing to work hard for a couple weeks to grow my business.
At present I am growing my business, mainly gaining capital to buy heavies. Right now I have about 4-5 heavies, a medium house, and a fusion generator now. I bought these all in the last week. I am moving about 200k worth of product a day. I figure another 20 heavies or so and I will have all of the equipment I need for the duration of my business. So I am willing to work hard now to see life get easier later. Once I have say 5 heavy floras, 5 heavy chems, 5 heavy waters I will be able to find which of the big sub component resources has the best QQ and dump 5 heavies on it. Over a week I would say pull up around 10k per harvester, or 50k per day, so say 300k units of the good stuff per week. And I would only have one site to check on once per week. This is considerable less than running multiple personals on multiple planets, with the idea being that once you have a reasonable resource stock, you can pick and choose which to harvest as you have months of backlog of resources.
WHolesalers of meat have been inadequate on Flurry for me. I have a few nice people who have been bringing in good lots for me, but its not keeping up with demand. So I have been personally harvesting meat. It is not so bad as I need CH xp, and I get something like 3k xp per Bolle Bol lair now with 300 units of herbavore...its win win. The wholesalers want absurd amounts for the product they sell, and that is because some people with very deep pockets are paying like 24c per unit of herbavore...so all the rangers are dumping all thier yield on these few PA backed people.
My personal acessment is that my chem/flora/etc harvesters are keeping up, and I am seeing a nice resource stockpile occurring now, and my days of personal harvesters are ending. More heavies will just be more free time for me. My factory is producing enough to keep my vendor stocked, so upping production there is uncecessary. The rate limiting step is meat harvest for me at the moment. When I get the heavies, I still will be in a meat bind, and I am seeking out harvesters to help me get beyond that.
I am a Master BE, as a result what I make is worth much more. There is stuff in the bazaar that is much cheaper. As an up and coming BE, nothing you make is worth much, get what you can. Sell furniture pets in bazaar and label them as such. Sell your tissues to tailors as suppliment tissues. Sometime a cloth requires like 3 tissues but will only get the attributes from one. There are people with Gualamas that do not want my Pet Stim C's that heal for 1k.
I have never charged for training, never will. THe BE that was ahead of me charged... hehe, screw it. I paid for the training from the trainer. She was always available.
I do have one beef though... selling bugged pets in the bazaar that are not clearly labeled and I refuse to train anyone that does that.
Well, that's one strategy, but certainly not mine. I price above much of the competition, there, I admitted it. So why are sales so good? I try to win in the other areas: availability, convenience, and quality.
quality: I'm not a master, so my stims are not the best, but darn good (and getting better, look out Ryfew, lol). Rather than making components myself I buy most of them off high level doctors which sure helps both in terms of my capacity to deliver them, and the quality.
availability: I keep the vendor stocked, even though it sells out each day. Each morning you'll find a couple hundred new stims and vit packs in it, so people know that when they go there, they'll find what they are looking for generally.
convenience: I'm part of a mall, so people come to buy clothing, droids, food, etc. and buy pet supplies too. Also we're in a primo location right on the build line of a huge city in an area where there are a lot of other buildings.
So price is definitely not the only thing. For bazar sales, I think price is much more important, because you obviously can't win on convenience, but for vendor sales I actually think price is not near as important as people make it out to be.
That's one distinction I think that should be made in this thread. I think it's altogether different pricing your stims way low in some whole-in-the-wall place with a bulky vendor that nobody knows about, then doing it on the open bazar.
cult22 wrote:
As a novice BE, I havent really made up my mind on how to price my stims and pets. But, What I do know, is that as almost all of you point out, marginally cutting the prices so you always stay a tidy bit below he others, is good business. I sell recources for 2 cred per unit. I make heaps of money on it. Maybe, I make 1 - 1.2 crep per unit, and when you sell out faster then youre able to stock up, You know youre doing something right. Maybe I could rise my prices, but then again, I wouldnt compete at the same level as I do now.
Same goes to BE products, Its a free marked, thank God!
Nos,
Plz read my whole post before posting a comment about it, thanks
StealthHawk wrote:
But there is something that people are doing that pisses me off..... although it doesn't affect me much...
Say you sell your pet stims for 200 each, and they sell theirs for 1200 each. THEY BUY YOUR PETSTIMS AND THEN RESELL THEM FOR 1200 EACH! They make 1000 from this. Yea it sucksm but nothing you can do...
