Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Ideology
In this way, the interaction between my two characters will actually be close to what I feel this class should be about.
Merchant:
1. One whose occupation is the wholesale purchase and retail sale of goods for profit.
2. One who runs a retail business; a shopkeeper.
Now, I'm just asking at this point: how many of you conduct your business in the 'wholesale purchase and retail' ?
I can't see any crafter with an ounce of sense in this game giving up the position of being the final sale as there is very little benefit to them in doing so, and In many cases it is their reputation that sells the items.
Do many of you resell? If so - is it only within your guild? Friends?
On the one vendor I have now had the last week, I would like to completely change how Vendors work:
To enable "offers" to be made to a vendor and accepting them places them for sale, with a % fee added. The fee being the vendor owners payment, the offer price going back to the seller ?
If you load your own items on the vendor .. you get your fee and asking price.
Now the concept of a "merchant" starts making sense - the reputation of a good merchant should make even skilled crafters desire his services and outlet experience.
i have 2 vendors i sell my crafted items on....
Another i sell items i have bought from others....
The problem is there arent really any WHOLESALE prices...
no one has any reason to sell really cheap when they can just sell it themselves and make all the profit.
I make decent money and my markup is about 100% (though in RL retail the MU is usually closer tio 300%)
there are items, though, i sell at a small profit to me just because i want to offer them to customers.
but many items i just wont stock because my mark up would make them non-competitive in the market place
A few standing orders of 100 Stim-B, 50 Wound Packs, and some enhances for another player to sell would probably see them making a few hundred credits per item, with me making a few hundred credits per item even at bulk prices.
The problem as I see it is that it's far to easy for the crafter to get one vendor and take 2x "a few hundred credits" for themselves. Would others say that this is what the merchant class really seems to be missing?
Merchant doesnt seem to stand alone on its merits - only a crafter would possibly want it.
Draznar wrote:
I have bought tons of stuff at wholesale prices. I have bought crates and crates of items at a 50% discount. Our best weapon smith is thinking of moving to this method. I am thinking about contracting out to other crafters to help stock my Power-Ups. I can keep up with the demand on my other items, but Power-Ups sell out like crazy, even at my prices.
Oh yea good powerups won't stay on the vendor. I made 1000 of them just yesterday and I'm selling through them pretty fast. One guy came buy and cleaned out several hundred at once (and he hates me so that tells you how desparate he was for good powerups 
)
Anyone that is looking at taking a shot at the wholesale market, you may consider teaming up with a Crafter and getting Admin rights to his factory. That way, you can get around the 25 sales limit. The crafter would fill the items up in the factory that are needed, and the merchant would grab what he thinks he can sell. One of them, or both, would keep track of how much they took, and how much they owed.
It would be a great way for the Crafter to focus on Crafting and the for the Merchant to focus on Merchanting.