Doctor Archive

A fairly common thread on this board is 'what to charge for Stim B'. There is a good one located here:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=2051

Its a great question, and a difficult one to nail down. A range of prices and quality are mentioned. It got me thinking on the topic so I decided to really drill down into the economics of my pharmecuetical business and supply that information to this community. If you are not interested in business plans, I suggest you find a more interesting thread before its too late

Ok, thanks to input from this board and the community, I have created a business of selling high quality Stim B (Look for the Ss_Ultra brand if you are on Ahazi for 700 credits. This is a 30 charge 350 heal unit that I use 2 of the 3 advanced components on. I still cannot locate Class 4 chemical.

Based on my 'market research' both on these boards and browsing competing products on the bazaar, I believe my price is on the 'fair to low' price range. I had been seriously considering raising my prices, but last night a competitor showed up in town selling a 35 charge 350heal stim B for 700 credits (plus she stole my naming convention grrr )That squelched any thought of me raising prices, and actually started me thinking about DROPPING my price...ugh.

Thus an analysis of my business model is needed. Like any ROI, lets start with revenue. On what I consider a 'normal' business day, I sell 50 units of Stim B from the bazaar at the aforementioned 700 credits per unit. On weekends its more, some weekdays its less. I frequently get emails saying how wonderful my stim b's are (makes me feel good) and inquiring about large custom orders, but very few of these inquiries turn into actual sales. Thus I base my analysis off of a 50 unit day on average, or 35k a day in revenue.

Expenses on the other hand are much more complex. Many factors in play here, lets take them one at a time:

1) Harvester & factory maintenance (8 total structures) @ 500 credits/day maintenance = 4000 credits per day.

2) Harvester & factory power (costed at 2 credits / unit * 600 units/day * 8 structures) = 9600 credits per day

3) Travel expenses to collect resources (Dantooine = 3300 round trip, Lok 3300, Talus 1400, Tatooine 1000, Correlia 800) = 9800 credits per day

So daily expenses are running at around 24k a day just to make my product. Total profit per day is 11k.

Breaking this down further, each Stim B takes 80 resources (including resources to build sub-components of course). Factor in waste such as failures, less than stellar successes, factory bugs, etc and round that up to 100 resources per Stim B.

Selling at 700 credits thats 7 credits per resource, which sounds pretty good. Normally resources on the bazaar sell for 2/unit up to around 10/unit. However factoring in the above expenses, my profit per resource unit (again based on 50 stim b's sold) is only 2.2 credits profit per unit of resource, which is the low, low end of what most resources sell for.

Factor in the actual time spent in making my high-quality stim packs compared to the time it takes to just harvest resouces and dump them in the bazaar, and I really start to question whether I should be in the Pharmacy business at all.

Now, admittedly there are some ways I could be cutting costs. Travel expenses for example are a good target. Now that I have a good supply of resources on hand, I don't realistically NEED to check harvesters every day. I've started putting enough power and maintenance in them to run for two days...but this also increases the waste amount when resources suddenly 'turn', so there is some expense associated with that.

Also, I have not located Class 4 chemical for the last 'advanced' class sub component. Once I do, I'll incur more expense (especially if its on a planet I don't currently travel to).

So thats my business plan. Its clear that I DO make a profit, but considering the incredible time and energy poured into this business, it is clearly not as attractive as some other businesses.

My options are to just be happy with it, or to increase prices and hope the demand doesn't drop off too sharply, or to get out of the pharmacy business all together and just sell resources.

I welcome input from fellow businessmen & pharmacists

Ssauron

hey server mate...oh my 2 advanced comp and only 700?! ive been selling my Super Bs for 1000 a pop...and the BHs with novice medic buy them...my Bs are lile 32 charges and just under 400 heal value...(and they buy them in crates of 30-50)

im selling crates and crates of stuff right now and im totally backlogged for days...im clearing about 30-50k a day in profits on my meds...

if u wanna check out my price list, find my thread on our server board...

I've been pondering this as well, lately. Do I make enough of a profit for this to be worth my time? I still don't know. I believe traveling to every harvester every day is too expensive. If resources shift once a week on average, then it seems like going every two or three days will save you money even if you lose a day's worth of harvesting. I can't really back that up, though, as it's just a feeling. Certainly, not having to go every day would save me my sanity at the least, which is worth every credit.

Not to nitpick, but a personal harvester costs 720 credits a day. 1200 a day for factories, I think. Also, in theory, if you sell 50 stims a day, you should still end up with a surplus of resources, unless the harvesters are all on bad spots. I suppose that translates into more credits only if you can sell them, as stim b's or as resources.

You can increase your price; people pay what they will pay. Maybe the people whining about having too much money will be willing to blow more cash on stims. If you have competitors in the bazaar who sell for less, you might be better off getting your own vendor and advertising, or making a deal with one.

We definitely can't sell crates of 50 on the bazaar, after all. Even a 10-pack wouldn't work, due to the 3k cap. I think a vendor is useful in moving more meds, as you can provide in bulk and give a discount on them.

do you really do resource runs to ALL the planets you have harvesters on every day? If you have so much demand that you have to do those runs daily to keep up, couldn't you afford to up your prices? And my personal opinion on the lowball game is that the more you play, the lower it goes. So long as you keep selling, why change your prices? Unless you're trying to put other people out of business (which doesn't work too well, people can run missions easily to make up for lost venture capital) you should keep your prices as high as you can without losing your customers. But that's just my opinion.

honestly i keep my harvesting to 1-2 planets one if possible..

i find that i have enuff stocks to survive a bad resource shift...

usually i can find good stuff high OQ stuff (800+ oq) for 80% of my packs at one time...

sometimes ill be missing a certain type of resource say like berries(this shift has been bad for berries for me) for oneshift and the next shift ill be lacking something else, but i have enuff resources to basically cover myself...

usually i keep all my harvesters on naboo...with the occational trip for tattooine fiberplast...but otherwise i try to keep my harvesters on one planet...

Ifind that using advanced materials that require interplanetary travel can really play havoc with your profit margin (unless of course you plan to travel anyways, in which case you would be paying the travel costs anyway).

To keep a more stable business structure, I deal in only local resources anddon't useadvanced subcomponents. My stims are in the range of 22-24 charges and 200-220 healing andI sell them for 350 credits each with full crates being 17.5K. Planetary travel on shuttle is cheap so that keeps my travel overhead low and allows me to stay on top of shifts in resources for the planet and avoid having harvesters with nothing to harvest. This allows me to gather my resources more efficiently in a cost-per-unit perspective.

Additionally, I don't look for "top of the Line" resources. Instead I look for the good resources which people tend to mine in less quantity - fewer miners means the resource lasts longer and thus I don't have to cycle through new materials or move my harvesters as often. This also allows me to produce a consistent quailty of stim pack.

I advertise on my galaxy forum and have had many happy and repeat customers and through word of mouth I have gained more. The bazaar is definitely not for crates, so I handle those through e-mails or through my own vendor.

My only concern is that I can't find a resource gatherer (miner) who will mine the resources I want at a decent price (if I pay more than 2.5-3 credits per unit, it's not worth it. most of them want 4-5 credits per). This has forced me to "borrow" lots from my PA members in order to gather the kind of resources I need.

oh big ears i think ur problem is that u are trying to sell off the bazaar...

i havent used the bazaar since day 3...its flooded with junk and people dont wanna sift through it...

i do all my sales directly no vendor...i do it using my server boards and making advertisement macros so i can spam (yes im sry i spam) as i run through towns..

i also started by giving out free samples to people so they would know how high quality my packs are...for the most part people are impressed and become customers...

and as u build a base of customers, word of mouth will spread and u will get people emailing u with orders...

right now i have more orders than i can handle...i usually have about 3 days of bad orders...people order large amounts to like crates for 30-50 packs...if i have more lots id make a 2nd factory but im trying to keep my resource input the same as the output to retain balance and not have to say to someone that i cant make u meds right now because i have no resources...

I very rarely sell meds. The only times I have sold them are when I was asked directly on a hostile planet, and I charged 350 for unexperimented, unadvanced Stim Bs. This is for two reasons. The first is that I don't have a factory yet, so selling product in a volume worth doing would be grinding, pure and simple. I don't grind. Ergo, I don't sell much medicine. The other reason is that rather than go through the time to sell meds, I just sell straight advanced resources on the bazaar. I've found that I can sell Dantooine Berries at 20:1, and Lokian Wild Wheat between 20:1 and 25:1. I'm mostly interested in making enough medicines to support my healing habits, and I sell resources and escourt raiding parties on Dathomir to make my real money. Selling resources is mostly to cover travel and maintenence expenses.

Being on Ahazi, I haven't found Class 4 petro either (but has anyone found Dolovite Iron?).

yeah i have about 2000 solovite from a few weeks ago...advanced SDS rock

Is there a current Dolovite deposit?

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Elenora wrote:

oh big ears i think ur problem is that u are trying to sell off the bazaar...

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Eh? Are you talking to me or the original poster? I use the bazaar, yah, but it's probably not as flooded as yours. Maybe 1 to 1.5 pages of pharmaceuticals in Mos Eisley, and my stuff can easily be found. If there was a larger limit on bazaar items, I could probably sell in every major city. I also found a vendor to take my crates and 20-packs, for customers who want to buy in bulk.

I don't advertise, though, because I don't have the time to do a bunch of personal sales, and I don't want to spend all of my online time manufacturing/selling meds.

Elenora I'm curious. You make an extremely high quality stim, which you can only do with advanced components + high quality resources, yet you also:

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usually i keep all my harvesters on naboo...with the occational trip for tattooine fiberplast...but otherwise i try to keep my harvesters on one planet...

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How do you manage this? I know some people have reported success in buying some resources off the bazaar, but in my experience its not only incredibly tedius to browse & examine each item to see if its the specific type you need, but that by relying on the bazaar you will always be without some critical resource or another.

I do pay a high premium for self sufficiency no doubt, but I'd really like to know how you are so successful in your business without harvesting your own premium resources?

Does your PA help you out in this area?

LuvHandles states:

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fewer miners means the resource lasts longer

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Is that true? I was not aware of that, I thought all resources were on a timer.