Merchant Archive

To me if items are on consignment a 1-5% fee is appropriate with the current system. If you are buying for resale (thus pre-paying for the goods) then a 20-40% markup is appropriate.

It is the risk and reward question. In consignment there is no risk, sure offer it on my vendor, and I will take 2%. If we enter into an arrangement and I put 2 million credits worth of good from you, I want it at a 40% discount. I can then decide my own selling price, either full price to make a 40% margin, or maybe at only 30% higher so that I am priced lower than others and can move it at a quicker pace.

I like the idea of possibly giving us different structures that are much more expensive to own but give us the ability to sell things more creatively.

Goliath
Master Shipwright, Master Architect, Master Artisan
-=V=- Shipworks 3 Locations Theed, Coronet and
Tatooine by Krayt Graveyard 5909, 4373

3 vendors at GF6 11/11 - Shipwright, Architect, Resources

Well I work for Game, in the UK and our average margin on a product is 30%, thats on console games, it's slightly more on PC games, about 80% on accessories and after package deals about -10% on consoles and other hardware. So as a Merchant in SWG.. I'd be happy with a low maintenance system that would net me somewhere between 5-10% profit, thus allowing me the time to work on those high profit deals outside of the system.

Like my normal business goes through the system, then I happen to come across a crafter who's selling up to change profession.. I make a purchase of all his stock en masse, this I can then price up how I please for as much profit as I please.. but if I'd spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week maintaining my normal weekly business I would probably have never met this crafter or found out about his stock going cheap....

Just a thought..

I think you're assuming that when I say "give merchants a game to play", I mean keep them occupied with busy work like restocking vendors (which is the "game" that merchants currently get to play, for the most part). I don't mean that at all. The game I want merchants to have is exactly what you just described - wheeling and dealing on a large scale. Ideally, the thing that merchants should be spending their time doing is striking deals and coordinating resources on a large scale - the merchant himself should not have to spend much time on the "manual labor" side of things. That would be the point behind consignment sales - the merchant strikes a deal with a crafter, sets the terms (e.g. % cut of sales), and things sort of take care of themselves from there, assuming both sides keep up their end of the bargain. The challenge of being a merchant would be staying on top of promoting the store and striking new deals. The "striking new deals" part is what you seem to enjoy - I'm saying that should be a huge part of the gameplay of the class, at least at the Master level, and you shouldn't have to "go outside the system" to do it.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

True - but where do the crafters who have very little in the way of item differentiation come in, for example, architects, artisans and probably DE's and BE's.

In the case of Architects we can have many high cost items that would need to be carried by the merchant, and on some servers some things can take ages to move (PA Halls, City Structures, etc). The merchant ould be carrying a fairly large risk with the added negative of a possibly long time till payout.

The other issue is what happens when nerfs or changes happen. Say for example a merchant was carrying a range of - what was then - a top of the range BER8 Heavy Miner. The rules got changed and suddenly the BER8 Heavy is no better than junk. Thats a lot of risk for the merchant to carry (even though these things don't happen all the time).

Just a thought.

Remember that under a consignment system, the merchant isn't obligated to buy the product before reselling it. That means that in cases where stock goes obsolete, the merchant hasn't really lost out (except that if he had been insisting that there was a huge market for these things, the crafter has probably lost some respect for his business sense).

The big-ticket items that move slowly... well, that's where the skill of knowing the market comes in. And that would be the advantage to a merchant running a "high throughput" vendor - it would allow him to stock a wide variety of items to keep the shop running while he waits for that one big sale. Small-time merchants simply wouldn't stock the big items, thereby funnelling demand for those items towards the big-time master merchants, which is as it should be.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

Honestly, I'd love to have merchant a bit more exciting - but if we want most merchants to be encouraged to sell other people's item, we have to make a choice. Most players will not want to sell other player's items if too much risk is involved. I have the impression that you really couldn't care less whether people can easily find merchants to sell their wares or not, whereas for me it should be our top priority if we get a revamp. If people have to take huge risks... They won't do it.

I agree with your ideas, I just don't think it would be reasonable to make merchants take too many risks when dealing with suppliers.

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Novice Lekku Stomper

The way I see it, is the Merchant is an institution that requires other professions above and beyond the norm, to survive and be interesting.

You give the Merchant the tools, more buildings, shops, malls, auction houses, (which in turn helps the architect a bit), you then give them the vendor options, rentable vendors, commission based vendors, commission based auction vendors and normal vendors, you then make the new types of vendors only usable in the new.. commercial properties.

This gives the Merchant all the tools he/she needs to sell a product, either at high risk or low risk. Cause low risk, they rent vendors (the crafter pays maintenance, and rent is a percentage take off the top of the maintenance for the Merchant who does nothing else to the vendor and loses shop admin rights on the vendor whilst it is rented), or use commission based vendors (the crafter is given access to the shop and a percentage is taken off the top of the product's sale price, whilst the Merchant pays maintenace still), or use the auction vendor (this vendor can only be placed in an auction house and works like a normal commission based vendor only it's taken off the final auction price of sale). As far as the crafter is concerned this works in a similiar way to the existing system with them having the control to sell their own products and Merchant taken a back seat. The high risk is the normal vendors that the Merchant can put items on, this requires the Merchant to buy the product out-right from the crafter and take all the risk of trying to sell it.

It's in the high risk situation that the Merchant goes out of their way to find the best deals and make a quick big profit, anticipating the market and providing for it in a win or lose situation. With the hard work of the merchant being running buildings (suggest they are only allowed in player cities like the cantinas etc, shanty towns suck), renting vendors, and keeping all business partners happy.

I could be way off the mark.. but I think that system for buying/selling would work best, then it's a case of whether you think it's enough work for the Merchant or not, if not, add something else on top of it, but don't make it less user friendly.

You hit the nail on the head, Darkov. I think the best thing would be to give merchants a choice between different playstyles. It'd make the profession one of the most interesting in the game.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

Hmm I don't get it... What prevents you from buying out other vendors to sell their wares if you want to? What prevents you to go find good deals and resell the items for a profit? I do it, why can't you? We really don't need any change to do that. Even if we change to a low risk consignement system, nothing prevents you from still doing both.

I however totally disagree with renting vendors. It would be like renting weapon skills to someone for a fee or something... We are merchants, it's our role to sell things, same way pistoleers and marksmen shoot things with pistols.

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Novice Lekku Stomper

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

Hence my suggestion, you can't give people money, they have to earn it, renting vendors, limiting where they can be placed, and other things are a means for the aspiring Merchant to make money as they earn their skills, they still get xp from all the vendors they create, whether rented or not, same as the current xp system.

Though when they have the skills, like creating an auction house or having the really efficient self managed vendor, then they also have the money in theory to go out and make the big bucks deals. I like wheeling and dealing, I'm a Master Smuggler, Master Merchant, and at the moment I just sell my smuggler goods, and every now and then I make consignment deals with crafters who don't want to operate their own vendors for whatever reason, but that isn't often cause EVERYONE nearly has a vendor, whether it's from Bus3 or from previous Merchant skills. I suggest you make Bus3 vendor painful to use and let us rent vendors to others who don't want to deal with the Merchant for those people who don't want to sell to a Merchant who then adds their own price-up.

It is, imo, a solution to providing not only a more varied and fun system for current Merchants and future Merchants, but also for all those crafters out there who don't want to go find some Merchant everytime they want to sell a factory run, or level up a second account.

I make money in the current system, and when the vendor changes occur I will still make money, and I'm good at it, whether I make a big profit deal or a low profit deal, either way I know a good sale. But I would like more variation in the profession, and more dependancy on others, and more dependancy of them on us, though not complete dependancy like denying them access to the good vendors. I can rent space in my shop, why can't I rent the vendors too?

The system I proposed, combining consignment with multiple tiers of shops/vendors, handles that fairly elegantly. The merchant doesn't need to 'risk' an amount of credits anywhere near to the potential payoff, so no huge amount of capital is needed to get started, but higher initial investment will yield higher payoffs. This allows the merchant's play style to evolve as he/she moves up the ranks.

I will now pull numbers out of my ass to provide an example. I'll arbitrarily use a week as my measurement of time, since that's pretty friendly to casual players (merchant and customer alike)

Low-tier vendor

- costs 1000 cr/week to maintain

- can list/sell a maximum of 50,000 cr/week

The novice merchant who places this vendor enters into a consignment agreement with a local artisan, who manufactures weapon powerups. The merchant will keep 10% of the money from sales as his cut; the rest goes into the artisan's pocket.

If the artisan stocks the vendor up to its 50,000 credit limit for the week, and every item is purchased, the artisan makes 45,000 credits, and the merchant makes 5,000. This leaves the merchant with 4,000 credits worth of profit for the week, having invested 1,000 credits over the course of the week to keep the vendor running. Not a bad return on investment. And 1,000 credits as starting capital isn't hard for even the poorest newbie to scrouge up - the trick is finding a business partner who has product that will move off the shelves.

- costs 50,000 cr/week to maintain

- can list/sell a maximum of 5 million cr/week

Running a vendor like this is quite a bit riskier, obviously, and notfor the novice- but at that same 10% cut, it yields more than twice the return on investment! Take into account also that relatively few people will be running vendors like this (vendors of this level would probably be confined to the upper levels of the skill tree, or Master, as well as requiring a fair amount of capital to get started, and good business sense to maintain at full steam), so merchants at this tier can probably afford to charge a slightly higher percentage, since they'll have less competition. This would be how PA halls and uber-rare loot gets sold - possibly mixed in with lower-risk items to defray the chance of having a "bad week". Getting that mix right would be part of the skill on the merchant player's end, so the consignment system would need some way to limit the amount that any one crafter could list in a given week (e.g. you ration 1 mil worth of inventory to Andy the Architect, 1 mil to Arnold the Artisan, 3 mil to Mungo the Miner).

The idea is that having started at novice merchant with a low-tier vendor, you make some cash, and at the same time you make a reputation for your shop, both of which combine to allow you to progress to a mid-tier vendor that can sell more at a time... giving you more cash, more customers, more merchant XP, et cetera, until it reaches its natural conclusion (either you stop advancing up the Merchant tree once your business is as big as you want to deal with, or you go all the way to Master Merchant, which gives you the capability to run one of those uber-megastores that sells the high-ticket items.

Again, the numbers above were pulled from my nether regions, but I hope they illustrate the general thrust of the idea, which is that running a shop shouldcarry a level of risk for the merchantthat's commensurate with the level of advancement and the potential payoff. The consignment system means that the value of the inventory itself is shouldered by the crafter, not the merchant, which eliminates the need to take out huge loans in order to pre-buy stock. If the merchant bungles things and none of the stock sells, he's lost his 1000 credits worth of maintenance for the week, but the 50,000 credits worth of merchandise goes back to the crafter, no harm, no foul.

"Prettiest shim on Bria!" - Sev
Certified "cool" by the Darth Vader of Bria
Blue glowie.

But your system removes the freedom of choice from both the Merchant and the Crafter. The deal should be verbal, the deal should seat of your pants stuff, with the vendor, shop, whatever being a tool to achieve the end not a means to the end.