Merchant Archive
Thread: Vendor Admin Proposal
Bey wrote:
To be admin they should have the same skill requirement as to placing it.
I suggest two level of access : Admin and Partner
Admin is allowed to sell from, withdraw any sales, and add / withdraw maint money
Partner is allowed to sell from the vendor, but can only withdraw their own sales, and are only allowed to add to, not withdraw from vendor maint.
It should be a requirement to keep at least one admin with the skill required to place the vendor.
We do not want to be vendor dispensers.
Very good idea. This would be quite simple to do. At a lower level of Management you get the ability to allow people to be your "Partner", at a higher level you can give others full admin access. Yes, it does mean some people will just become Vendor dispensers, but there will be many who use this to its fullest potential for both role-playing and helping other crafters to sell their wares more easily.
This is what I want to be.. The merchant who rents out vendors to people, it'd be sooo nice..
I could set up a shop full of MY vendors and rent out each one to a crafter in my PA (My PA is PVP oriented, so all our "crafters" are also combatants.. It's required.. IE: CM/Pistoleer... Smuggler/Pistoleer...Ranger/Carbineer... stuff like that) And I think it'd be really nice if I paid the maint and all that and charged a commission rate of UP TO 50%!(Partners can be equal) PA mates I could do it for like 10% or 5% and others who just wanna rent a vendor I could set up a fee that's higher.
/SIGN 444 VEND0R ADM1N!
Ehecu wrote:
I'm in the process of setting up a mall for my guild and our crafters. I've spent hours of time in /tell conversations trying to figure out how to work this...and once it does get started, it won't exactly be easy work for me. Collecting the correct amount of credits in return for sales, actually setting up each item, and with four people (Architect, Smuggler, Medic, and Bio-Engineer) it's not gonna be only five items...more like five hundred...PLEASE take this load of work off my shoulders devs!
/SIGN 444 VEND0R ADM1N!
I can only imagine the pain you must be in, trying to work out how to manage this for your guild. It simply is not possible to do it with the current setup, unless you spend at least 3 hours a day managing items people offer you, drop for you, send you emails about. This is just a ridiculous amount of work, especially if you want to get out and see the rest of the galaxy...... sometimes.
At present, the only effective Merchants are those who are also skills Crafters. Why bother with the Merchant Profession at all if it is only useful to people who are also crafters? Why not put all the merchant skills into the Business discipline so at least crafters can pick up a combat profession is they want (and, god forbid, explore other aspects of the game then just crafting).
No, clearly that is a stupid idea, but what is currently in place is also stupid.
Make the Merchant useful as a stand alone profession or get rid of it so crafters are not wasting valuable skill points.
Can I sign my own petition?
/sign self
If this functionality was in game, I'd find some way to use. But to be honest? It wouldn't help me very much as merchant. Let me explain:
Most of the economic relationships I'm in (whether as a supplier or as a merchant) rely upon two balancing factors:
1) inventory cost versus risk -- when I supply to a merchant partner, they buy the inventory from me at a discount: I get my money in hand, just not as much of it, and the merchant is now taking the risk for if they can actually sell the item. Conversely, when I buy from a supplier as a merchant, I know what my sunk cost is and can experiment with pricing, raising or lower to produce the amount of volume and sweet spot income that I want. This proposed system would eliminate that ... as a supplier, I'd now offer up my items for sale and have to take the risk if they sold and, as a merchant, I'd have to rely upon my suppliers to figure out what the right price is in that particular location to sell the goods for (and hope they do it right, as my commission will be based upon that.)
2) importing/exporting -- the biggest portion of my profits as a merchant are where I sell. My shops are either in very distant corners of starting worlds (like Wayfar on Tatooine) or on advanced worlds (like Dantooine and Lok.) Because of the sunk costs of getting to those worlds, either in run time (no shuttle port in Wayfar means a 6000m run to the nearest stocked bazaar) or in cost (ticket prices from advanced worlds back to civilization) or both. This means I find suppliers in more civilized lands where good prices are cheap, and then take them up to advanced worlds where I can charge a higher price for them. Having a nice interface where those suppliers can drop off the goods themselves on the worlds would end up be unutilized by me, because now I'd have to convince those suppliers to come up to distant locations to stock venders? The only reason it works for me is because I can bring a bulk amount of goods up on each trip (letting me spread the travel costs across all those items.) Your proposal doesn't make my situation any worse, but it doesn't make it any better: my problems (with my setup) are much more related to items falling off of venders after 7 days and advertising tree settings not surviving server reboots (I think my sales would double at both of my stores if those few problems got changed.)
To keep it positive ... because the system you describe is actually a very interesting one ... how can your proposal be modified so that it doesn't necessarily change the supplier/merchant relationship on risk and cost? I fear the proposal you have will re-inforce the idea that some people have that merchants are "just middlemen that add no value and drive prices up" if we are seen just as an extra fee on top of the artisan's goods (for me, the issues of #1 above led me to setup the kind of businesses I have in #2, so that I am creating value and not just expense to the consumer.)
Carvin Abrok - Propogandist/Rogue (Lowca)
PocoHutt wrote:
To keep it positive ... because the system you describe is actually a very interesting one ... how can your proposal be modified so that it doesn't necessarily change the supplier/merchant relationship on risk and cost? I fear the proposal you have will re-inforce the idea that some people have that merchants are "just middlemen that add no value and drive prices up" if we are seen just as an extra fee on top of the artisan's goods (for me, the issues of #1 above led me to setup the kind of businesses I have in #2, so that I am creating value and not just expense to the consumer.)
A Merchant is, by nature, a middle man. If you want to do away with the need for a middle man then Merchant skills needs to be incorporated into the Artisan profession and should be considered a core skill for crafters.
The Merchant profession should be about taking the market aspect of crafting away from crafters and giving non-crafters the opportunity to influence the player economy. Naturally, crafters can pick up the Merchant profession as well and sell their own gear. However, this is not the sole purpose of the Merchant profession. Non-crafters should be able to act just as effectively as Merchants.
To answer your question directly... In one of my follow-up posts in this thread, I suggested that Admin Lists should be added to what already existing, and what already existed should also be improved. Therefore, a merchant could still operate shops on distant worlds, buy direct from crafters and take the items to the shops themselves.
And I don't see how my proposal would drive prices up anymore then your own system. You are still a middle man and you still have to make a profit. You said that your suppliers accept a lower price for their goods. This is controlled directly by you but with Vendor Admin, the supplier could ask a higher price to compensate for the commission. So, you do have a point but items will not sell if the supplier sets too high a price. The market can adjust.
I have to close by saying, it is not possible to avoid adding expense to the consumer. Retailers are not a free service for wholesalers. Fortunately, in SWG we have the luxury of having devs who can fine tune the economy so that any changes, such as this proposal, do not have an adverse impact on the overall economy.
To amplify slightly what Epoiisa said:
Your questions are reasonable, but I think they're both answered by pointing out that Merchants are simply taking advantage of the fact that time is a person's most valuable resource. Merchants can increase the cost (or diminish the profit, however you prefer to view it) by acting as middlemen, it's true, but as long as players feel that the time they gain to do the things they think are fun outweighs theexpense of hiring a Merchant to handle their sales for them, they'll use Merchants. Personally, I get the impression that there are a lot of players for whom the "risk" of spending their precious game time in not-fun ways (e.g., selling stuff) faroutweighs the "cost" of not making as much money as they could by selling their owngoods.
Our goal as a profession, therefore, should be to put that exchange in the best possible light. When otherplayers discover the Awful Truth --that selling stuff is currently tedious and unfulfilling, and overall about as much fun as stuffing a rabid wolverine into your underwear -- they'll beg us to sell their goods for them.
Perhapswe shouldbe striving to prevent the developers from making any improvements to the Merchant profession. If other playersstarted thinkingsales was fun, they'd all want to do it themselves, and then where would we be?
--Flatfingers
A Merchant is, by nature, a middle man. If you want to do away with the need for a middle man then Merchant skills needs to be incorporated into the Artisan profession and should be considered a core skill for crafters.
I'm disappointed that you didn't take the time to actually think about my post, or maybe you just shot off a hasty reply? A merchant is not, by nature, a middle man -- if they are, then you can expect them to fail miserably. A good merchant figures out how to meet the price expectations of the current market and add value for their suppliers that these suppliers couldn't have gained for themselves.
The Merchant profession should be about taking the market aspect of crafting away from crafters and giving non-crafters the opportunity to influence the player economy.
I don't think any proposal from the Merchant community that is hinged upon taking basic venders away from the Artisan class is doomed to failure, and I'd much rather see us propose something proactive instead.
And I don't see how my proposal would drive prices up anymore then your own system.
You see, my system doesn't drive up prices at all ... because as a supplier I factor in my merchant partner's profit in a wholesale discount, and because as a merchant I sell in places where product doesn't exist at all. So none of my relationships create "higher prices" for the end consumer, which keeps me, my merchant partners, and my supplier partners economically competitive in any market we chose to enter.
Which was, I assumed, the whole point of playing with the Merchant class.
You are still a middle man and you still have to make a profit.
I disagree with the former, and agree with the later. I do still make a profit, most definitely. And I do it by not being "just" a middleman. I sense this is the key issue you're not understanding from my post, which probably just means I need to clarify myself better.
You said that your suppliers accept a lower price for their goods. This is controlled directly by you but with Vendor Admin, the supplier could ask a higher price to compensate for the commission. So, you do have a point but items will not sell if the supplier sets too high a price. The market can adjust.
Again, you misunderstand, or don't understand the economic dynamics. I don't want a supplier to set the prices in my shop, I want to do that. In order to do that, I buy the materials from my supplier and price accordingly. However, many of them do still come to my vender and "Offer" the materials to me ... I accept the sale, pay them, and price the product to sell. Under your proposal, the money flow suddenly goes directly to the supplier ... with them setting the prices and me just getting a commission if they are successful in figuring out my market better than I would have. I essentially become a homeowner with a vender placed, which is not something that I want to be.
To describe it another way ... you end up creating a "default supplier/merchant contract" with the introduction of the feature, one that says suppliers get paid upon sale and the merchant gets a commission. Now, if you were proposing a more elaborate system that could support more forms of relationships, that would be great ... what if I could even set that for each item? A toggle box of who gets paid (maybe even giving you the pulldown options for the item crafter and for yourself, the default, as well as the opportunity to type in a specific name) ... and a toggle box for when payment happens (upon delivery, upon sale, x days later) ... and a toggle box for commission (a second person who gets a cut).
Then you'd have something that would be useful to any merchant working under any particular business arrangement. Instead, this proposal is for a system that supports a single model, and not necessarily one that all merchants (like myself) would see as an improvement.
I have to close by saying, it is not possible to avoid adding expense to the consumer.
You are wrong with the above, and I suspect I could crush you out of any market we were competing in, because I would have tools to turn a profit at a lower price than you. No offense intended.
Retailers are not a free service for wholesalers.
But this proposal makes them that! Wholesalers bearing the cost and advertising in exchange for a commission on sale? Try convincing a real-world retailer that's more sophisticated than an Amazon.com affiliate of that model.
PocoHutt wrote:
A Merchant is, by nature, a middle man. If you want to do away with the need for a middle man then Merchant skills needs to be incorporated into the Artisan profession and should be considered a core skill for crafters.
I'm disappointed that you didn't take the time to actually think about my post, or maybe you just shot off a hasty reply? A merchant is not, by nature, a middle man -- if they are, then you can expect them to fail miserably. A good merchant figures out how to meet the price expectations of the current market and add value for their suppliers that these suppliers couldn't have gained for themselves.
I meant it in a simple and literal sense. The crafter does not sell to the customer, the Merchant does. The Merchant is between the crafter and the customer. I meant nothing more then that.
The Merchant profession should be about taking the market aspect of crafting away from crafters and giving non-crafters the opportunity to influence the player economy.
I don't think any proposal from the Merchant community that is hinged upon taking basic venders away from the Artisan class is doomed to failure, and I'd much rather see us propose something proactive instead.
Did you mean that you do think...?
The idea of having the Merchant profession is that crafting and selling are separated into two distinctive activities. I am speaking in a general sense, not saying Business should be removed from Artisan. In past MMORPG's crafters have usually sold their own gear. In SWG the Merchant profession allows non-crafters to participate in the player economy.
And I don't see how my proposal would drive prices up anymore then your own system.
You see, my system doesn't drive up prices at all ... because as a supplier I factor in my merchant partner's profit in a wholesale discount, and because as a merchant I sell in places where product doesn't exist at all. So none of my relationships create "higher prices" for the end consumer, which keeps me, my merchant partners, and my supplier partners economically competitive in any market we chose to enter.
And crafters who sell things on a Vendor that takes a comission will have to factor the comission in to the price they ask. Same thing, different way of getting there.
You are still a middle man and you still have to make a profit.
I disagree with the former, and agree with the later. I do still make a profit, most definitely. And I do it by not being "just" a middleman. I sense this is the key issue you're not understanding from my post, which probably just means I need to clarify myself better.
Again, I was not trying to be profound with the "middleman" statement. You are between the crafter and the customer. That is all I was pointing out.
You said that your suppliers accept a lower price for their goods. This is controlled directly by you but with Vendor Admin, the supplier could ask a higher price to compensate for the commission. So, you do have a point but items will not sell if the supplier sets too high a price. The market can adjust.
Again, you misunderstand, or don't understand the economic dynamics. I don't want a supplier to set the prices in my shop, I want to do that. In order to do that, I buy the materials from my supplier and price accordingly. However, many of them do still come to my vender and "Offer" the materials to me ... I accept the sale, pay them, and price the product to sell. Under your proposal, the money flow suddenly goes directly to the supplier ... with them setting the prices and me just getting a commission if they are successful in figuring out my market better than I would have. I essentially become a homeowner with a vender placed, which is not something that I want to be.
If you don't trust crafters to assess the market for you when setting a price, then you can continue to do it the direct and manual way. Introducing my proposal won't stop you from doing that.
To describe it another way ... you end up creating a "default supplier/merchant contract" with the introduction of the feature, one that says suppliers get paid upon sale and the merchant gets a commission. Now, if you were proposing a more elaborate system that could support more forms of relationships, that would be great ... what if I could even set that for each item? A toggle box of who gets paid (maybe even giving you the pulldown options for the item crafter and for yourself, the default, as well as the opportunity to type in a specific name) ... and a toggle box for when payment happens (upon delivery, upon sale, x days later) ... and a toggle box for commission (a second person who gets a cut).
I've no qualm with coming up with some more complex forms of relationships. That would be great. I am cognoscente of the fact that more options means more programming work for the devs.
I think there are plenty of ways that my proposal could be improved as you suggest, without making too much more work for the devs. For example, the supplier could elect to increase the commission rate above what the Merchant has set for them. They could set it to 100%, which means the Merchant gets all the profit. This might be useful for close business partners.
The toggle box is also a good idea. A third party option also sounds useful. Excellent suggestions.
Then you'd have something that would be useful to any merchant working under any particular business arrangement. Instead, this proposal is for a system that supports a single model, and not necessarily one that all merchants (like myself) would see as an improvement.
I have to close by saying, it is not possible to avoid adding expense to the consumer.
You are wrong with the above, and I suspect I could crush you out of any market we were competing in, because I would have tools to turn a profit at a lower price than you. No offense intended.
Well, I am a Master Merchant and I have a shop close to Coronet. I could quite easily pull together the collective power of my crafting PA and establish a super shop (in fact our PA is starting a Vendor Mall that I will be helping to manage).If I devoted more time toestablishing more suppliers outside my PA then I could probably fully stock all 6 of my vendors and sell the products at prices that undercut almost any other Merchant.
Don't consider that a challenge because I really am not that much of an SWG addict.
No offense taken, I have no doubt you are are skilled and successful Merchant.
Retailers are not a free service for wholesalers.
But this proposal makes them that! Wholesalers bearing the cost and advertising in exchange for a commission on sale? Try convincing a real-world retailer that's more sophisticated than an Amazon.com affiliate of that model.
No. There is a commission which represents the terms of contract between the supplier and retailer.
You make a convincing argument(s). I am happy to see that I can agree to some of your ideas, especially the one about adding some more complex features to the Vendor Admin system.
This is a great idea!! And you could finally remove the Buisness 3 vendors from budding artisans---which I have been against since they need a place to sell. But this would actually provide a great relationship for artisans and merchants, and allow the merchants to retain a unique skill.
Get a code cruncher to work on this SOE!
Epoiisa, great discussion we're having, but our quoting is getting confusing! So I'm clipping liberally.
Epoissa said: The Merchant is between the crafter and the customer.
Gotcha, I'll buy that. Perhaps I get my feathers ruffled because of all the arguments I've had with some crafters who seem offended when I even ask if they'd be willing to wholesale to me for retail on distant markets that they aren't even selling in. I've got to remember that merchants don't necessarily mean the same thing when they say, "You're just a middleman."
Epoissa said: The idea of having the Merchant profession is that crafting and selling are separated into two distinctive activities. I am speaking in a general sense, not saying Business should be removed from Artisan.
I agree totally, or at the very least Merchants should be far more effective sellers than crafters without merchant skills.
Epoissa said: And crafters who sell things on a Vendor that takes a comission will have to factor the comission in to the price they ask. Same thing, different way of getting there.
Also agreed ... my fears in that regard relate more to my role as a supplier to other merchants, and my fear that those merchants will expect a commission of similar value to their current wholesaler discount (I tend to make sure merchants can double my wholesale price and still price compete in their retail marketplace, but that's because they are pre-purchasing the supply from me) and that then suddenly I might have to maintain stock on another vender (if I as a supplier post an item on someone else merchant, and that sale expires after a week ... who has access to that item in the Stockroom to repost it? If it is just the supplier, then suppliers develop the problem of having to maintain sales inventory at every vender.)
Epoissa said: If you don't trust crafters to assess the market for you when setting a price, then you can continue to do it the direct and manual way. Introducing my proposal won't stop you from doing that.
Also agreed (sensing a theme here?) That's why I started my comments with noting that while this improvement wouldn't directly benefit the style of business I'm conducting, I'd probably find some way to put it to good use, and it would at least increase the variety of business relationships possible. Ah, to have this functionality on a guild vender and let the guild members manage their own stock? That would be a beautiful thing.
Epoissa said: Well, I am a Master Merchant and I have a shop close to Coronet.
Eeek! Okay, I withdraw my challenge *evil grin* Coronet is the evilest marketplace in any galaxy. I've still not figured out a way to make money selling something there (ie, margins are thin for anyone but a crafter or any product that isn't a high price to resource ratio.)
Good thread going here.
/supper bumps
yes ive bumped it 2-5 times...it need bumping..maby a sticky 
just pay no attition to the man behind the buttion