Chef Archive
Thread: Price Undercutting
Greetings!
I am new here and most of all, I am a new chef! Thank you for all your input - I am still reading. However, I do have a very important question regarding pricing. I have noticed that there seems to have been a reduction on purchasing cooked goods as of late. I'm not sure what others think about this.
I spent some time this morning, looking over all of the pricing schematics everyone so generously supplied. What I am noticing is that the pricing is way down - at least on Scylla. Items that once sold for more seem to be selling for less now. I amcompeting withrediculous margins - making it tough to make a living. Has anyone else noticed this trend?
Is the market currently inflated with cooks who lack the education of pricing for their goods? One guy on my server is selling Ruby Bliel for 30c for a stack of 3. I buy them all up immediatly and then sell them for the fair market price. I know he is insane -wasting resources and such, but it affects the bottom line opinion of the buyer. Everyone will want that price. Here is my concern:
Undercut pricing brings a regular stocked items down by 30% or more. Buyers will now wait for that price, they will wait for the better deal. Other cooks will be forced to bring their prices down to gain access to the market that is selling. Who are the martyrs here who don't want to make a profit
Anyway, I appreciate any comments you might have on this.
Verdusk Bal - Scylla
I think its more important to actually make sales than to hold on to pre-concieved ideas of "fair prices"
I think it's a really bad idea to buy the products of a competitor who is undercutting you. If he's selling bliels at 30 it's because for some reason he wants to. If every time he places them on the market they go then that encourages him
If your relisted bliels are selling then fine, your doing the sharp merchant thing. I do the same with locked containers - I buy any cheap ones and relist them
The way I see it people who supply the market cheap effectively advertise the profession. If people buy his stuff and think this is great and want more they'll buy whatever is good and/or cheap on the bazaar. If there are none at 30 they'll buy for 300 because this is peanuts to most people.
We're in limbo economically right now because of the buff bug. When our food stops reducing people's stats the market will pick up.
For now quite frankly I'd look on it as time to grind and not even bother trying to make sales. Run missions for money andfill your stockroom for when the bug gets fixed.Last thing I want as a Novice Chef is to drive off a customer who experiences the negative buff and goes away thinking food is a waste of time forever
To some degree yes.
To some ... NOT.
Fighters are out there, i have a 2box with fighting skill. They make money, they have money. Insane amounts here and there. "Oh yesterday i had a smuggler slice 10 sets af adv. composite and he made two good sets so i tipped him 500k extra". My 2 box buays from my vendor at regular prices. I dont do any money transfers. I travel a lot, i buy all that my fighter wants/needs. Still his bank account goes up not down. Chef food is affordable but thanks to doc/ent its not desirable.
I agree that the player economy should be just that. An economy. So there everyone has its niche. If its the BoH with +600 (the ferrari) for 5k a stack, the BoH +400 (the mercedes) for 3k or a Fiat BoH for 500 creds. This is the same with weapons. Quality will cost a bit more. Chef food also was insanly expensive (up to *20 cpu) .. this was because of all that manual work as facs were broken and its still settling down that you can mass produce. Im cheap on my server (gorath). Im about 30% off the other chefs who make a little bit better food. Im a bit more into logistics and mass production so im not as good as them but cheaper.
I made an excel sheet in a 5 hour session where i classified all the ressources i need (like adjusting good insect meat for vercupti to 10 cpu since thats the market price if youre lucky), put 50 cred per stack for factory usage on it and 30-50% profit mark depending on quality and price-nice (i hate stacks that cost 1743.2 creds, so they become 1750).
With that im selling at fair price and get around 3-5 cpu. This is after i purchase needed res, use my own harvester fleet and take the time to get all those stuff to do bigger fac hauls. Well, there are people who sell ressources for just 4 cpu ... they have no mastered profession, they dont make schematics, care for vendors etc. I have had a lot of customers in the last time since im 30% under the other prices and my food is about 90% their quality.
But ... im still selling Vercupti in HQ Quality for 45k a crate. i make about 5-14k depending on how much i got myself harvested. Then i see someone selling a crate for 15k. I think "OMG what does he do ?". There are allways dumpers but belive me, the fair prices with SERVICE (i like to rpg my chef but i didnt found real good rpg in swg yet) are the ones that will stay on the market. Dumpers either loose interest since they are not a chef, they are a chef factory feeder but get their money elsewhere, or they end up broke since they got their 45k from 3 crates of vercupti and the scout asks them for 50k for the insect meat stack (+ the other ress needed, power fac etc.).
I bet my prices would drop more (if i would continue on chef) since ressources are dropping too (new harvester rates, more then sufficient money in the players pockets...) but still i want to be paid for the time i invest. Its not the customer giving me 30 cent, me putting 10 of them in my toolbox and tada, ruby bliel is there. As smuggler i charge 1,5k (again cheap). 0,5k for my material, 1k for my TIME.
All in all, most crafting profession (now after it settled) dont help you to get rich, they help you to rpg your role and help other players. Well ok chef doesnt does anything of this atm. If you want to get rich go missions. But at least the dumpers could settle the prices so that the pure crafters are able to pay their bills.
a bit offtopic ´here and there *g*
Honestly, undercutters getting a foothold in the market is fine with me. People who continue to undercut generally get really really popular and burn out. Sunburn prices generally vary from 50/use to 500/use on my server, and I know that the guy selling at 500/use still sells them.
Chef is a rare enough profession where the total active chefs on a server will never reach a critical mass, causing huge deflation. Architects have this problem on most servers, where the competition drives prices into the 3cpu range (why even bother?). Ahazi has kept about 4-5 active master chefs at any one time in the last few months, and I don't see that rising much.
Naturner wrote:
Honestly, undercutters getting a foothold in the market is fine with me. People who continue to undercut generally get really really popular and burn out. Sunburn prices generally vary from 50/use to 500/use on my server, and I know that the guy selling at 500/use still sells them.
Chefs are becoming semi-popular on Lowca it seems (popular being relative) . I believe I know about 3 about to hit master Chef and a handful about the same point I am. When I see numbers such as '500/use" do you mean per dose or per stack? Would a stack of Tat Burns with 4 uses be 2K or 500?
Trying to price my crates of 4 use +1870 Burns. Right now they are going for 15K to 20K.
Undercutting to establish a customer base is smart business practice. Once you have those customers, though, it's hard to maintain that price level. I've been selling things in online games for over 6 years now, and it's been my experience that there are two types of vendors: the cheap ones who are always getting bought clean, and the higher priced ones who stay in stock. Fortunately, there are two types of customer as well: those who only want a bargain and are willing to search for it, and those for whom time is more important than money.
So there's room in the market both for undercutters, and for those who sell at higher prices. The bargain hunters go to the undercutters, and keep waiting and/or shopping around till they find what they need at the price they are willing to pay. The undercutter can't keep up with the demand, though, both in personal time and factory output (one crate of BoH alone takes 9.5 hours of factory time), so once word gets out they have trouble keeping their vendors stocked. The busy player would rather go straight to a vendor they know has what they want, even if the price is higher, so they tend to patronize the second type of shop. It all works out.
Per use, it's an extreme example to show what some people sell for...they sell stacks of 9 for 4.5k each. Of course, he might be just trying NOT to sell them because he is bitter about being a sunburn chef
wynlyndd wrote:
Naturner wrote:
Honestly, undercutters getting a foothold in the market is fine with me. People who continue to undercut generally get really really popular and burn out. Sunburn prices generally vary from 50/use to 500/use on my server, and I know that the guy selling at 500/use still sells them.
Chefs are becoming semi-popular on Lowca it seems (popular being relative) . I believe I know about 3 about to hit master Chef and a handful about the same point I am. When I see numbers such as '500/use" do you mean per dose or per stack? Would a stack of Tat Burns with 4 uses be 2K or 500?
Trying to price my crates of 4 use +1870 Burns. Right now they are going for 15K to 20K.
I personally sell crates of almond crispies for 100k, just because I don't want to make them (on the bazaar they are 2-3k/crate). I still get orders from people who don't care (after I disclose the bazaar sales). Eh Gads!
I have a loyal customer base that I love. These are about 10-12 repeat customers that are extremely nice, caring, funloving people that I enjoy doing business with greatly!!!
It's that type of relationship I seek... not money. If Joe Blow wants to come in and be a jerk, threaten to cut his prices in half to drive me out, then so be it... I make enough money off of the loyal customers to survive and I only need about 5k a day to run vendors, two houses, and my factories.
*shrugs*
Undercutters will get burned out and be unable to deliver what they promise. They'll get backlogged by tons of cheap orders and anger those who expect performance.
I started manufacturing crates of pet food to make money since I'm a novice chef and that's about all I can make that people want to buy.
I calculated my break-even cost and added what I felt was a fair profit margin as my starting point for pricing.
I got rolling only to find that another chef in another city on the same planet is selling crates for HALF of what I figure is my break-even point. Did I get mad? Heck no. I took two delivery missions over to his city, bought as many of his crates as I could afford, took two delivery missions back, then placed HIS crates on the vendor for 3 times what I paid for them. I earned 3000 cr for the missions, and I'm going to make a killing on HIS work.
The moral: this is a market driven economy. Supply and demand rules. If someone is selling TOO low, there's no reason NOT to buy his product, and resel it. The only way the price cutters will really hurt us is if their numbers and their tenacity get high enough to drive us all out of business. If they do, it will be unfortunate for us, but this game involves PvP not only in combat, but also in the market place. That's what makes it interesting and challenging.
I have decided to make quality food and drinks instead of the mass produced variety. I used to try to make Sunburns with the highest amount of uses possible. Now I make 'Braqs' High Potency High Duration SunBurns'. I dont make just any old food. I make the best food I can find with resourcethat has the OQ at least in the 900s unless I am testing a food to see if it will sell.
I see no point in selling low and killing yourself to fill orders. I refuse to spend even 2 hours a day running my factory to keep up with demand. I do large factory runs so I can stay stocked and sell for a good price.
Thanks guys! I appreciate everyone's comments. I just attained Novice Merchant and I have a restaraunt that will open next week. Does anyone have any suggestions about building your initial customer base at your own shop?
I sell a ton of stuff on the bazaar, so I guess I am becominga little noticed- but eventually I'd like people to come to my shop. Do you think it's a bad idea to send a customer, who recentlypurchased my goods off the bazaar, a friendly email to my shop? I absolutely hate SPAM mail, but I was wondering if I made it player specific and personal if this approach works.
Just curious to hear what other people have done. Thanks!