Droid Engineer Archive

How do other DE's deal with people that want to place large droid orders to sell your droids in a mall to compete against you? I have had 3 people contact me in the past few weeks wanting 100's of droids that would compete against my mall. One I won't really count because he asked for 5 of every droid I could make. I had one of them start buying up JTL droids from my mall to resell at their shop. Normally I wouldn't care about what happens to droids once they leave my vendors, but this causes me to work 3 times harder. I am essentially trying to keep 3 vendors stocked, in addition to my other vendors.

I like having people come to my mall to buy their droids, because I also sell weapons. I have a friend with a couple Architect vendors and an Attachments vendor in the mall. If people are coming in to buy droids, they might find something else they like. My friend recently took up Armorsmith and is going to need alot of exposure to get his name out there.

Cuore

This is actually what I did when I first started making droids. I hooked up with mall merchants and sold large orders of droids to them for millions upon millions. The thing is that they just want them there to complete their mall and usually have plenty of money to throw around. What they don't know is what makes a good droid and that droids don't really sell that well anyway.

Find ways to use this to your advantage. Make them droids of a lower quality and sell better one on your own vendor for instance.

Is it in the same mall? I had an issue with someone buying all my bomb droids a few months ago. He wasn't in thesame mall, though. After he wiped my vendor twice (and 10 mil credtis later), we made an agreement that I would supply for him, but he would have to "order" a full run of something (123 R3 detonation droids, for example). Good business arrangement - he would get the droids he needed for his vendor, I would sell at a lower price, but sell them in mass.

If it's in the same mall, then I'd suggest talking to the guy. If that doesn't work, them let him stock up, and keep making runs of whatever it is he's buying. Then flood the market with lower priced. Your going to either prevent him from selling or make a boatload in credits. This is certainly not a long term strategy, but may flush him out.

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Napard wrote:

Is it in the same mall? I had an issue with someone buying all my bomb droids a few months ago. He wasn't in thesame mall, though. After he wiped my vendor twice (and 10 mil credtis later), we made an agreement that I would supply for him, but he would have to "order" a full run of something (123 R3 detonation droids, for example). Good business arrangement - he would get the droids he needed for his vendor, I would sell at a lower price, but sell them in mass.

If it's in the same mall, then I'd suggest talking to the guy. If that doesn't work, them let him stock up, and keep making runs of whatever it is he's buying. Then flood the market with lower priced. Your going to either prevent him from selling or make a boatload in credits. This is certainly not a long term strategy, but may flush him out.

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No, we're not in the same mall, but we're close by. They're one of the largest SW's on the server and I'm one of the largest DE's on the server. But I have a guildie that has his SW vendor in my mall too.

Cuore

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CuoreDE wrote:

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Napard wrote:

Is it in the same mall? I had an issue with someone buying all my bomb droids a few months ago. He wasn't in the same mall, though. After he wiped my vendor twice (and 10 mil credtis later), we made an agreement that I would supply for him, but he would have to "order" a full run of something (123 R3 detonation droids, for example). Good business arrangement - he would get the droids he needed for his vendor, I would sell at a lower price, but sell them in mass.

If it's in the same mall, then I'd suggest talking to the guy. If that doesn't work, them let him stock up, and keep making runs of whatever it is he's buying. Then flood the market with lower priced. Your going to either prevent him from selling or make a boatload in credits. This is certainly not a long term strategy, but may flush him out.

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No, we're not in the same mall, but we're close by. They're one of the largest SW's on the server and I'm one of the largest DE's on the server. But I have a guildie that has his SW vendor in my mall too.

Cuore

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start raising prices, and all of the above.

Close your vendors - use the points elsewhere and sell onto the Mall....

It's not that bad to deal with. Price your droids at what is considered the "normal" server price. Make sure this price is such that you are making what you feel you should be from each droid. Then a couple of things can happen.

1. They buy from you, then sell them with a slight markup at their mall. This is actually good for you, because you are selling your droids, and people will see you are cheaper and come to your mall first.


2. They buy from you, and sell at the same price. Again this doesn't hurt you at all. The loss of traffic flow in your mall may suck, but at the same time, you are getting what you thought was a fair price for your droids.

As long as your prices are good, there really is no downside. It is only when you vastly underprice your droids that this should become an issue.

I do not like people coming to my mall stripping my vendors to resell on their vendors so I use the ban function on the house I use as a mall.

Yep, if it bothers you ban them. I've had a few people buy stuff to resell on other vendors, since I'm quite low on my prices, and I just ban them when I see them buying more droids than any one person could use. I usually send them an email first asking what they are doing, but now with vendor search it would be easy to see if they were indeed being resold.

Ban them, name your products with your name, AND if it realy bothers you put cords in the name like sugested above.

I don't think I've ever had that problem, but if I did, I think I would speak to them first. If they were pissy about it, or unresponsive, it's banning time. But if they were honest, I would arrange a huge order of what they wanted. My pride and joy of being a DE is having stock of a relatively wide assortment of product *in stock*. Low sales don't bother me too much these days.

Message Edited by RasalTheWise on 06-29-2005 04:45 PM