Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: How do -YOU- do your business?
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Nell2ThaIzzay
Mon Mar 21, 2005 2:32 am
#1
Sure, we all take our custom orders, and have our vendors, but what makes your business stand out?
For me, I make droid engineering a social thing...
I used to be a Musician, so I've always found myself spending a lot of time in the cantinas. Unfortunatley, I've recently given up Musician because I need the skill points for other things, but I still haven't given up my love of a live entertainer. I find that I'm the "friendly neighborhood droid dealer", which is kinda funny, considering my character is a money hungry, ruthless, cold blooded Imperial mercenary 
But anyways, most of my business comes from strolling into the cantina with my Fusion droid, and crafting out some droids while conversing with the entertainers, and quite often I get them placing orders for entertainer droids that I hand craft for them on the spot.
I find it funner than just plopping some droids on a vendor, and advertising on the world map. I also find it neccesary to survive, since I don't even have Business 3, and I have a buff bot guildmate running my vendor for me. But it puts me on a more personal, intimate level with my clientelle, and if I don't yet have the skills needed to make the droid they want, I mostly find that they are willing to wait around until I have the skills to be the one to make them their droid.
(Sorry, can't clicky)
http://lillen1326.homestead.com/files/screenShot0188.jpg
Both those R2 droids were made by me that night. That's right, I got the Theed cantina on lockdown baby! 
DigitalOne
Mon Mar 21, 2005 3:07 am
#2
Altough i've been retired for the last couple of months, i still play. I burnt out hardcore afew months ago, spent some time on WOW, but came back and have been thinking about going back into business, lately ive mainly been flying around.
This game has taught me to love capitolism, and ive been taking advantage of the free market at every turn. I cant remember why i starteda DE,since i've been playing since early august 03. But once i made MDE thats been it for me,Ivebeen trueto the cause since the very beginning, and have no plans to permanently retire.
I guess we all started out in thehand crafting department, back when i wasstill working on MDE and shortly afterthat used to be my main style of play. I opened up a small shop on Talus, then a ratherpopulated world, and factory ran parts. My main income was through hand crafting in Daeric and C-netmaking to order droids. But i eventualy got tired ofdealing with morons. I started leaning towards factory run droids, and beefed up my vendor. I also made a bunch of cheap droids which i sold on the bazzare. This was decent income for me.
I truly started making money when i started to do "contract" orders for some major merchants on my server. I eventualy got afew tells from shop owners asking me if i could do larger runs of droids etc for thier shops. This worked out really well, and i started working on big runs of the most popular droids (this was pre patch 7 & 8, it was pretty easy then). Needless to say i started raking in dough. I was prepaired for the DE patches, and took good advantage of the DE patches, sometimes making 20million overnight. I did massive industrial runs of 100-200 droids, put half on my vendor and sold the rest to shop owners. At my peak i had 4 shops accross the galaxy and 5 steady franchises. Had i charged more i coulda made alot more than i did, at my richest i had 120 million, altough i spent half of that keeping my city off taxes. I also got in the habit of buying out other peoples droids, telling them to quit, and putting thier droids up on my vendor at an inflated price. I did that alot. I cant tell you how many droids i sold, somewhere around 10,000 im guessing,not including other peoples.
Im planning on coming back, im working on gathering resources and doing what i need to put togeather a business again. Right now i just have one shop left selling loose entertainer droids. Just finnished gathering enough good Tolium for 2000+ bomb R3s so im litteraly planning on busting back into the scene, taking afew jedi out in the process.
Profeting from war makes me feel all warm inside.
BusyStarWalker
Mon Mar 21, 2005 7:40 am
#3
Personally, I started off doing the "custom droid on the spot" approach to get my first few droids out and cut my teeth. Then I started placing small MSE Medical and Entertainer droids on the Bazaar for 6k each and they sold like hotcakes!
Once I moved past Master Artisian and into Merchant, I started looking for established shops that I could place a droid vendor at. The benefit here of course, is the existing traffic and regular customers. This also helps drastically with the Merchant XP (people browsing your vendors).
Recently, I have joined a fairly large guild that is doing me quite a bit of good. There are several crafters in the guild and there are quite a few active members who are online a lot. This guild also has its own player city and mall. I have added one of my vendors to this mall and am now receiving several custom orders from fellow members.
Now my droid business is 3 fold:
- Original "custom droid on the spot" clients
- High traffic vendors
- Local guild members and player city mall
It feels good to be able to sell a product WITHOUT having to Spam the Galaxy!
Best of luck,
TheRealTK421
Mon Mar 21, 2005 7:48 am
#4
My business 'model' has evolved over time, as my interests in-game have changed.
Originally, I:
Originally, I:
- Mined
- Hand-crafted droids in the Coronet bank (with Woody...:robotsad
- Built my client base and gathered 'start-up' funds for my shop
- Heavy, heavy 'advertising' and talking up my shop.
At that point, the DEA really took off, as did my client list. I spent most of my time hand-crafting droids.
Over time, I've moved more to:
- A few vendors with very carefully 'balanced' stock (something for everyone), so that I can keep most everything that people would want with a minimum invested in Merchant (4/0/0/0, currently).
- 'Ready-made' droids are my norm now and custom work is only by special arrangement
- I don't need to advertise in quite the same way I used to now. I don't make 100s of sales a day but I don't much care about that. I'm plenty wealthy that I don't run my business to survive.
What I do now is really just ride on word-o-mouth of my shop and my large client list. If I want to generate some credits for some reason, I just email out a special sale of some kind to my client list and sit back and watch the sales roll in over a few days.
Notoriety has really freed me from having to spend a lot of time advertising, so that I can go off and do other things in game (Mark of Hero quest, doing the FS crafting quests, finishing TKM finally, etc.).
/bow
Respectfully,
Jenden
Mon Mar 21, 2005 8:23 am
#5
I've always been a custom droid on the spot kinda guy. I started out doing quite a bit of advertising around tatooine for my mouse droids (took me something like a month and a half to get that first skill...), and kep records of everyone who bought a droid or had asked to be informed when I could make a certain type of droid. I kept those people informed of my progress and what my new droids could do for them, and by the time I got to master I already had a customer list of about 200 people. Ever since then I've still kept with on-the-spot custom jobs, though I do get large bulk orders from PA leaders from time to time. My prices are pretty cheap but I don't advertise anymore, so I keep my volume down. I tend to hang around the cantinas and will usually make a free entertainer droid for the consistantly live entertainers, and also just keep my ears open for anyone that looks like they could use a droid.
Reaperss
Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:35 am
#6
I'm a volume guy. I do almost everthing in factory runs and keep 200-300 droids in stock on my vendors. I sell tons of BH droids, a bit of everything else. I normally do runs of 40-50 identicle droids at a time. I also do custom orders, but not that much.
Straker_Atrella
Mon Mar 21, 2005 12:37 pm
#7
I stock 2 locations, each with 3 vendors. One for normal droids,another for BH droids, and droid supplie, then the 3rd has space stuff. Both locations are pretty much identicle.
I normally stock about 200 "normal" droids at each location, then add supplies and space droids.
My Combat and Harvestor droids are factory ran to ensure HAM quality, yet my med, crafting, maint, and other droids are hand crafted to give a diverse array of chasis and paints.
I advertise a lot, I also take the time to thank people for their purchases. My prices are very fair according to our server, I don't get any complaints. I usually give a 24 hour turn around on special orders. I spend lots of time gonig over questions and droids with people.
I may be a "big guy" but I try and run like a mom and pop shop.
Lukos
Tue Mar 22, 2005 1:49 am
#8
The most important to me is giving my name. I want everybody to know my name and that's why i sell so much.
I managed to be the most famous french droid engineer and french people represents a large part au kauri's population, giving a lot of information about droids on the french swg forum. And charisma also works very well as people tend to /tell as soon as they think about droids.
I have 16 factories. I haven't done a single custom order for months and i dispatch them to my favorite other DE. Everything i do is by factory, larges runs of more than 100 droids
I managed to be the most famous french droid engineer and french people represents a large part au kauri's population, giving a lot of information about droids on the french swg forum. And charisma also works very well as people tend to /tell as soon as they think about droids.
I have 16 factories. I haven't done a single custom order for months and i dispatch them to my favorite other DE. Everything i do is by factory, larges runs of more than 100 droids
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