Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchants and Suppliers
- Crafter has Merchant skills and sells own items.
- Merchant buys items and sells with a markup.
- Merchant sells on consignment and takes a percentage and pays the supplier after the sale.
I know there can be variations of the above.
Option 2. requires the Merchant to make a sizable investment and also take a risk on items not selling.
Option 3. has less risk, but requires more bookkeeping (plz SOE make it easier).
Now, lets assume the going rate for an item is 100K. Lets also assume that the item costs 20K in resources.
What should a merchant pay for an item that has a market price of 100K (guaranteed sale for supplier) for option 2 ?
What percentage of the 100K should the merchant get for option 3?
The merchant is doing almost all the work, all the crafter have to do is make the manufacturing schematic and put it in a factory.
So say a crafter sell price of 40K tops would properly be a fair price in relation to real life. Especially when the vendor limits kick in, and the merchant will have a limited number of items he can sell at one time.
Option 3.
If the merchant him self have to do the book keeping 40-60% minimum, all the advertisement and the limited amount of items for sale still count.
If the vendor does all the book keeping, 20-40%.
Option 3 should also be modified by weather or not the vendor is in the crafters shop. If it is the merchant cannot really use it to sell items from a 3th part. If vendor is in the merchants shop, at a good location perhaps that should cost something to.
Tanks wrote:
The way I see it there are three basic ways to sell items (not counting Bazaar).
- Crafter has Merchant skills and sells own items.
- Merchant buys items and sells with a markup.
- Merchant sells on consignment and takes a percentage and pays the supplier after the sale.
I know there can be variations of the above.
Option 2. requires the Merchant to make a sizable investment and also take a risk on items not selling.
Option 3. has less risk, but requires more bookkeeping (plz SOE make it easier).
Now, lets assume the going rate for an item is 100K. Lets also assume that the item costs 20K in resources.
What should a merchant pay for an item that has a market price of 100K (guaranteed sale for supplier) for option 2 ?
What percentage of the 100K should the merchant get for option 3?
Option 3 has the most risk...
SOE dictates that when you trade an item to someone you had best get something in return. Verbal agreement that the merchant is going to pay you after the items are sold will not get you anywhere with a CSR. What is stopping the merchant from taking the items and not ever returning the $$$?
Option 2 is the best bet...but Option 2 does not help upstarts because they will most likely not have the $$$ to fill the vendor up.
Option 2 and 3 will lead to empty vendors and frustration too.
1. crafter has to craft items and offer them up to the vendor so the merchant can sell them. This is not going to happen if the crafter is also selling on the Bazaar. The 25 item cap is combined with stuff you are selling on the Bazaar and offering to the vendor.
2. that meens the crafter and merchant have to hook up in the game and transfer the items work out a price then the merchant has to put all the items up for sale
3. merchant sells out. he just can't put up new stuff if he can't get ahold of the crafter right away...so he buys from someone else then the crafter having the stuff already running in the factory is stuck with stuff that he can't sell because the merchant has his capitol tied up in the new inventory (had this happen to me in RL once...it sucks)
I see option one as the only fullproof less stress fun alternative...people may will try option 2 and 3 but I bet there is going to be a lot more frustration then happyness in SWG over option 2 and 3.
and with option three...if the item sells for 100k I would say the crafter should get 80% merchant 20%
This can change either direction though too. The crafter is doing a lot of work crafting and crafting is harder then putting an item up for sale. Shop location could modify the % either way too...who's shop is it? merchants or crafters or someone elses? also who is advertising? both people can advertise...also who is generating the business? if items are selling because of the crafters name then he/she gets more...if it is selling because of the merchants name then he/she should get more of a % but still not higher then the crafter. rember, why is the crafter going to sell for less if he has quality goods and he/she see's what the prices are of the items that are going to be selling at the sp. The crafter may take a small loss to not have to park at the sp selling but he will not take a large loss.
Sorry if I seem negative...I am just pointing out what I think will happen. I could be way off base I hope I am. I doubt I am though.
Message Edited by Lotussutol on 08-11-2004 09:57 PM
Lotussutol wrote:
Tanks wrote:
The way I see it there are three basic ways to sell items (not counting Bazaar).
- Crafter has Merchant skills and sells own items.
- Merchant buys items and sells with a markup.
- Merchant sells on consignment and takes a percentage and pays the supplier after the sale.
I know there can be variations of the above.
Option 2. requires the Merchant to make a sizable investment and also take a risk on items not selling.
Option 3. has less risk, but requires more bookkeeping (plz SOE make it easier).
Now, lets assume the going rate for an item is 100K. Lets also assume that the item costs 20K in resources.
What should a merchant pay for an item that has a market price of 100K (guaranteed sale for supplier) for option 2 ?
What percentage of the 100K should the merchant get for option 3?
Option 3 has the most risk...
SOE dictates that when you trade an item to someone you had best get something in return. Verbal agreement that the merchant is going to pay you after the items are sold will not get you anywhere with a CSR. What is stopping the merchant from taking the items and not ever returning the $$$?
Option 2 is the best bet...but Option 2 does not help upstarts because they will most likely not have the $$$ to fill the vendor up.
Option 2 and 3 will lead to empty vendors and frustration too.
1. crafter has to craft items and offer them up to the vendor so the merchant can sell them. This is not going to happen if the crafter is also selling on the Bazaar. The 25 item cap is combined with stuff you are selling on the Bazaar and offering to the vendor.
2. that meens the crafter and merchant have to hook up in the game and transfer the items work out a price then the merchant has to put all the items up for sale
3. merchant sells out. he just can't put up new stuff if he can't get ahold of the crafter right away...so he buys from someone else then the crafter having the stuff already running in the factory is stuck with stuff that he can't sell because the merchant has his capitol tied up in the new inventory (had this happen to me in RL once...it sucks)
I see option one as the only fullproof less stress fun alternative...people may will try option 2 and 3 but I bet there is going to be a lot more frustration then happyness in SWG over option 2 and 3.
and with option three...if there the item sells for 100k I would say the crafter should get 80% merchant 20%
Sorry if I seem negative...I am just pointing out what I think will happen. I could be way off base I hope I am. I doubt I am though.
Message Edited by VarnaxDespin on 08-11-2004 10:39 PM
Crafter would craft crates of items (Weapons in this case) and put them in a house that I put down for her use. She would then send me an email with the list of items she put down. I would go by later in the day and restock the vendors with the weapons from the crates (keeping an agreeded up on stock count)
I kept track of the sales, forwarded the emails to her and we met frequently to transfer funds in person to avoid bank fees.
This required a LOT of work and a LOT of trust between us but it was a pretty profitable enterprise for both of use for a while. Eventually she retired from the business to pursue other interests.
For this I made 10% of the sale and it was all on consignment. If I had it to do over I would have charged a bit more but I really had no idea of the level of effort it would take to do it.
The most important thing Merchants need at this point is better tools for doing retail sales for crafters. A reliable, safe consignment system, and a better way to do sales reporting is a must to make the merchant profession capable of fulfilling the role it has in this game.
Tanks wrote:
What should a merchant pay for an item that has a market price of 100K (guaranteed sale for supplier) for option 2 ?
What percentage of the 100K should the merchant get for option 3?
That depends on the supplier/merchant agreements.
I think SOE is opening a serious can of worms if they are considering going to a wholesale to retail economy. This already exists to some extent but its presently controlled by the fact that crafters have the means to sell their own goods. To force a change now can be disasterous to the economy if everyone doesn't play by the rules.
Mark ups can be ridiculously highif crafters are not willing to reduce their prices and merchants want a bigger piece of the action. This is neglegible for standard items but when it comes to enhanced or specially crafted items it can be astronomical. Krayt tissue is already extremely expensive. This is a big budget luxury for even the most established weaponsmith. If he/she were to pricea krayt enhanced weaponaccordly to recoup costs and make a little money, the markup by the merchant could be severely skewed. Same with RIS armor, toolbelts, AVs, etc etc; basicly anything that has a looted component attached to it. Those items are becoming more and more common market commodities as more and more people participate in loot camping.
Option 2 is doable but would place aanother needlessstrain on theplayer base. Crafters will want to be able to do steady business but they have to rely on a retail market to communicate the market demands back to them.
How many players will simply take up merchant skills simply as a means of making easy money by filling vendors with goods they spend no effort making? You already see how many loot vendors there are. I don't see where encouraging more people to take up merchant to create more vendors will solve a database space conservation problem.
Will crafted items start to be treated in the same fashion as loot vendors? Some of these vendors are stocked regularly and some of them aren't. Most of these vendors are just an extra means of income. If it gets stocked; great! If not; oh well. Where does that leave the customer?
What percentage of the new merchant class will actually devote their profits to reinvesting for a restock of their vendors? Now everyone knows of at least a couple guys that are bad about money burning a hole in their pocket. "That new suit of 90% comp armor sure looks good but I got this vendor I need to keep stocked. Oh the hell with the customers for a couple weeks; I WANT that armor!" If I'm the crafter counting on this guy to help me move my goods and he/she keeps putting his needs first, where does that leave me? Where does that leave the customers?
I'm not even counting the revolving door of players that start up a business and decides to quit or take a break. My crafting busness needs to be attached to this?
I think option 3 is simply out of the question with the present vendor notification system. The merchant is the only one that gets an email notice that the item has sold. This is where SOE is treading on thin ice. CSRs will become inundated with tickets of the "he said, she said" variety. People will be ripped off and some will just simply claim that they have been ripped off. Contracts and agreements will be broken and demands for customer service intervention will simply be overwhealming.
So the more important question is: How will the children behave if you let them dabble with each other's bank account?
Message Edited by MaDuece on 08-11-2004 10:13 PM
I think SOE is opening a serious can of worms if they are considering going to a wholesale to retail economy. This already exists to some extent but its presently controlled by the fact that crafters have the means to sell their own goods. To force a change now can be disasterous to the economy if everyone doesn't play by the rules.
Well, now that vendor limits are coming in and merchant skills will be required to use vendors, that is where we are going.
The main question is how many pure merchants there will be or will it be crafter/merchant? I know some professions will have no choice but to grind Merchant. I do not seethat many Merchants agreeing to carry Tailor items with the vendor limits, not much profit per item there.
2. (CASH SINK!!!) If the 6k limit is dropped people will be selling some items that are a million credits plus on the Bazaar. Instead of a flat fee for selling items make it so there is a 2% fee applied to buyer or taken from the sellers price. Allow merchants that have the proper skill to have this reduced to a 1% fee. That will remove quite a bit of money from the game.
3. non merchants would still get a 25 item limit. Merchants could scale up in limits based upon what ever the new vendor limit is going to be.
4. make is so we can view the bazaar OR view player vendors on the planet or in the galaxy. We should be able to buy an item off of the Bazaar and pick it up at the shop. (this can be tricky but can be worked out)
Some of the problems I see with # 4 are. The person should not be able to buy an item if they are banned from the shop. A person should not be able to be banned from the shop if they have bought an item and have not picked it up. Items should be able to be picked up for a week. Vendor can't be destroyed if items are still waiting to be picked up. If those hurdles can be worked out this would make it so location is not as important and price would be the driving force in the galaxy.
This benifits Merchants and non Merchants...
(this is just a repost of another post I have...sorry if it is hi-jacking but we all want the same thing...the game to improve and thrive).
Tanks wrote:
Well, now that vendor limits are coming in and merchant skills will be required to use vendors, that is where we are going.
I'm not entirely against vendor limits. However, a limit that is so low that it will encourage widespread wholesale to retail sales is not a good thing in this game in my opinion.
I think there needs to be a limit that is still large enough for most crafters to still stock their own vendors. Forcing crafters to become strictly suppliers is not a good thing in this game environment. There is simply too little means of accountability on the part of merchants and vendors for this to become a healthy economic environment.
Thats not to say that a good crafter to merchant relationship can't or doesn't exist. But that takes a great deal of trust and maturity. Both of these are seriously lacking to various degrees on all servers. I certainly hope the Devs keep this in mind when they make their final decision on the exact number for those limits.
Message Edited by MaDuece on 08-11-2004 11:35 PM
As he was a friend, I didn't take any profit in it.
Here is how we worked :
He goes and see what's on his vendor.
Offer items to the vendor for 1 credit and put the price in the description.
Then send me a mail so I know he offered to vendor (something SWG should do...)
Then, I pick the items from the offer on the vendor, and put them on sale for the price he wrote.
I forwarded e-mail of sales to him.
To make the payment to him, he offered an item on the vendor with the price corresponding to the result of the previous sales.
This way, we avoid the 5% fee, and we don't have to be online at the same time.
The problems with this methods are :
- Price in description is annoying as you have to do items 1 by 1.
- Since the change that automatically retrieve an item when you buy it, when you accept an offer, it goes to your backpack, and not in stockroom. Very annoying.
- If the merchant forgot a 0 in the price, it can be a problem
.
Tarnak_Archvold wrote:
Option 2.
The merchant is doing almost all the work, all the crafter have to do is make the manufacturing schematic and put it in a factory...
...So say a crafter sell price of 40K tops would properly be a fair price in relation to real life...
Whoa now, the merchant is doing almost all the work?
Was the merchant the one grinding out a master elite crafting box? Was the merchant the one out collecting, cataloging and storing resources? Was the merchant the one searching high and low and/or getting in bidding wars for 30-50 million credit +20 experimentation suits? Was the merchant the one who kept making and destroyingdozens (sometimes hundreds)of schematics before they got the one that had all amazing successes, to eek out that last tiny bit of quality?
A full run of composite armor, for example, takes about a week to produce. It takes thousands of units of resources, some of which in my case cost over 100cpu and/or are over a year old. It takes me about half an hour to stock that run of unsliced composite, and by the time it sells out I've incurred maybe a thousand or two credits of merchant cost in tent and vendor maintenance. Sorry, but you'll never see me selling in bulk at a price where the merchant makes the same amount of credits on the sale as I do.
Of course, in option 2, the response will vary depending on what item we're talking about. I can see a merchant asking for a significant discount on items like droids, tailor goods, or anything slightly less than the best it can be. In cases like that, they are taking a bit of a risk, and they may be sitting on stock for a while.
in the case of the server's top armor/weapons/food/buffs, I'd actually say that the merchant is taking no risk whatsoever. Every piece of armor I make gets sold. Usually within a week of me putting it up on my vendor(s). If a merchant buys in bulk from me, or someone like me, they're buying a sure thing. In a case like that, you're looking at a 5%-10% discount from me. To get on the high side of that, you'd better bring some serious capital (I'm talking about buying roughly 50 suits of composite, or about half of my week's production).
I don't see option 3 working for any high volume product. To use my vendors as an example again, you're talking about dozens and dozens of e-mails every time you log on. Consignment isn't going to work for vendors like that until systems are put in place to do it automatically.
