Merchant Archive

Good morning all,

I've been playing a combat character for a while, and it's getting rather old. So, I decided to start up a second character, aiming to be a merchant. I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me.

First, and most important, is it fun? I like the small amount of trading I get to do, talking to people, etc, but I've heard horror stories about the floods of tells, rude people, etc. Also, along same lines, do you still have time to socialize a good deal?

Also, how did you start out? Any suggestions? I am having trouble visualizing the starts to opening a vendor, what did you stock? Make it yourself? Or, how did you afford to start buying at 'wholesale'?

Any info would be vastly appreciated.

thanks,

F'sh
aka Kyn

Do you have a PA behind you ??

If so being a sucsesful merchant is easy..

If not then it will take a little more work..

Assuming you are a lone merchant. Get Artisan business 3 (1st vendor) and a house and your ready to go.

Set down the house (as close to a city, but as far from other merchants (check the planetary map) as you can.

Now to start it's best to concentrate on a particular category of items (resources & weapons are good sellers.) - Resources are probably the most popular, as you can obtain them all yourself with a few harvesters, and are always in demand.)

Set up your vendor and start to stock it (don't open up until you have a good selection of stock - if you've previously been a combat character, get a heap of cash together to make maintennace easier on yourself to start with...

Stock it with your items at a fair price. Start shouting about your shop in the local city and your good to go. (try and set up near a city that has no other PC vendors close dealing in what you want to sell..)

A few pointers to generating good trade

1. Word of mouth is god - keep customers happy

2. ALWAYS ensure your shop doesnt run out of stock

3. Create a nice environment in your shop with a few bits of furniture etc.

4. Get friends with a few crafters, who can supply you on a regular basis.

5. Never sell sub-standard goods.

As far as training up the merchant tree.. Many of the things have bugs, but Advertising and Management (for extra vendors) are probably the priority, with efficiency coming in handy to lower vendor maintenance.

As a last piece of advice, read the merchant boards here often and know all the bugs - nothing like loosing 300k of stock to a bug to re-enforce that !!!

If your on Eclipse, look me up my PA has 100+ members and only 1 merchant ME!!! - I could do with some help !!!!

Im by no means an "expert" on this but I'll retell my experience of becoming a merchant.

I am currently a weaponsmith. I started out crafting custom orders in cities and selling them on the spot. While it was a great way to make cash, the "tell-hell" was very difficult to keep up with. Add on to that the problems with the trade interface (i.e. new people unsure of how to use it, people with not enough cash, 'trade cancelled' for no reason, etc), I found the 'selling' aspect of my craft to be very burdensome.

Needless to say, this was not very much "fun" for me. In addition, I would get stopped in cities and towns inquiring about weapons. BTW, this was all before I found out that I had a "title" hovering above my head.

The first thing I did in becoming a true merchant was purchase a housing deed. The next step was finding a nice location to build it. I wanted something fairly isolated but also close to a starport. But, as I am finding out, you cannot have both. I'd recommend finding a spot as close to a city as you can. Most of these spots are fairly crowded with harvesters, factories, houses, etc. But, you will get used it it. I found a nice spot right next to a "no-build" zone which means nobody can construct a harvester on my front porch.

After building, the next step is to pay a few thousand credits into the maintenance. Obviously, this is very important to avoid losing your housing investment. You should also "Name" your shop and set access to public so people can get in. I also set the access fee to 1 credit for 60 minutes. I heard that this will give your merchant XP although I could be wrong.

Finally, it set up my vendor. My first vendor was a crummy bartender droid but as my Merchant XP rose, I trained to get some NPC vendors. They are MUCH more noticable than the tiny droid. I also named the merchant what I sold "weapons." I realize this is a bit out-of-character, however it helps people identify what you are selling. (I now have 3 vendors named "Rifles" "Pistols" and "Carbines." Again, be sure you pay some credits for maintenance into your vendor and then "initialize" them.

I then stocked my vendors with my goods and I was set! The best thing is that when folks /tell me for weapons, I can just send them a waypoint to my shop. I can adventure all I like and not get stopped for 20mins to complete a trade or craft an item.

Is it fun? You betcha! I love logging in and checking my email and bank account. Nothing equates with seeing a swell of credits and a gaggle of "auction complete" emails. In my experience, Vendors and shops are the way to go for earning credits.

I don't hae a huge customer base nor am I a well known weaponsmith. Because of this, I have extremely polite and agreeable folks visit me in my shop. I have plenty of time to socialize nor do I get stuck in "tell hell" anymore.

I hope this helpful and good luck!

As for your other questions - it can be both fun, and very frustrating being a merchant

If you like player interaction, developing a raport, and chatting with customers, then merchant is definately for you.

If you get frustrated easily by bugs etc, then forget about merchant for a month or two - we have some pretty serious bugs which are restricting what we can do (who doesn't have bugs!!)

Best advice, is to play with it for a bit and see if you like it - Merchants are rare so you'll probably do quite well.

Seriously though if your starting a new character on another server, and really want to have a go at a merchant, make it eclipse (Keren on Naboo), and I will be willing to assist you all the way..

I love being a merchant. Despite the evil ghost world stock room.

The way I went about it was, I built up a supply of items in my inventory (I'm also a part time tailor). Bought stuff from other players, worked to business 3 and set up my first vender and stocked him up. I kept my prices very low and had to run destroy missions to help make ends meet. Save everything you think is even semi useful that you find. One mans junk is anothers treasure.

I also started selling on the bazaar more often. I traveled to 3 planets and sold a few items on each planet. In the description always leave a WP for people to easily find your shop. It was really hard at first to stay afloat, but after awhile of struggling revenue started to become more steady.

I picked up some harvestors with my spare money and started mining resources as well. I sell those exclusively on the bazaar or in person due to them not quite getting along with venders. Resources have been my primary way of making money lately, but clothing is also selling decently well and more and more people are buying food it seems.

The skill trees will only take you so far. A merchant relies on people skills. I think its great. You need to provide a nice positive ambiance for your shop and people will come back. Email people who buy things saying thank you is always good. I have a notebook in which I write down the names of people who buy from me and how often. When I see they keep coming back to my shop reguarly, I often times throw in a free perk, such as a backpack some resources or whatever. It's a loss of money, but the advertising power is really good.

Word of mouth is whats going to get you noticed and people coming to your store (as well as good inventory of course). You can specialize in selling one thing or sell lots fo different stuff. I run a Kwik-E-Mart type store and sell tons of different things. Weapons, armors, clothing, medical supplies, pets, resources, food, power ups and hopefully soon I'll be adding droids and deeds as well.

Some stuff made by me, but mostly I buy it from other players. Making contacts is soo important. Dont be afraid to take the extra step and tell people what your capable of. I started selling factory cloth to an armor smith this way. Look to see if they have a title over their character and see how you can best cater to that professions needs.

Developing trusting relationships with suppliers is very useful as well. Try to work out deals where you can buy bulk at a discounted price and then mark it up on your vender. Or do your best to become someones main supplier. I made contact with a master architect who goes through metals like crazy. He goes to me because he knows I'll cut him a deal for his continued patronage. Sure, I could make more selling it on the bazaar in smaller units, but now I have a steady buyer and someone whos willing to cut me deals when I go to upgrade my harvestors. Give and take.

Be willing to go out of your way for people. Show them your serious about providing service and products and always advertise yourself (dont rely on the skill tree to do it).

Merchanting is great as it's a class that really relies on player skill rather then stats and numbers.

Best of luck future enterpriser.

Thank you for all your respones!

I did just start a new character last night on Kauri, but I think I will take you up on your offer of help, and re-start on Eclipse. =8-)

One more question, do most people find that a majority of thier business is thier own crafted items, or acting as a retailer?

-F'sh
aka Kyn

First of all, get a trade. The economics of reselling are just not good--with price pressures there's very little room to mark up and until you're established people won't trust you to be there in the future. Starting making things, put them up on the bazaar at a reasonable price, and tag everything with your name.

Second location. Pick a popular city and find a location as close to the city as possible, preferably in an area where people do missions and where there aren't any real physicalimpediments to getting there. For example, I'm just outside of Theed but I went to the south where there isn't a cliff. There's a river, but also a bridge. And it's close to the popular part of town and the starport. In my case I literally went over the bridge and straight and built at the exact buildable line--I went to the trouble to try to place, still unbuildable, take a step, still unbuildable, take a step... Location is huge. Also do anything you can to stand out. I live on Naboo. Naboo houses are beautiful. But if I was starting now I'd get a generic. Why? Because everyone else has a Naboo. People will notice the one that stands out and go to it. (The generic small type 2 also opens into a room not a hallway, which is important.)

Make sure you have adequate stock and that you are available for customers. I'm there for hours a day tending to my customers. Do special orders. Take time with them. Don't skimp on the lower end items. Maybe the rifleman you're selling the uberrifle to is working on pistols and needs a low end one. Make sure you have as much stock as possible.

Have plenty of money. I made this by selling on the bazaars and travelling between bazaars to do so by doing travel missions. I don't know about all trades, but for tailors the magic item is the backpack. They sell like crazy even now and it's an artisan 3 item.

If you have the option, consider a newer server. It's much easier to get started if you aren't competing with master level artisans.

Great to hear your going to give Eclipse a try ...

Are you interested in being part of a PA. The Northstar Alliance, is a fantastic PA European time zone mainly, with the majority being scandanavian and english.. Check out the web site at www.northstar-alliance.net and see what you think.. We have just over 100 members, and our city in game is aproaching 30 buildings now.. I am the only Merchant (to date) - We have a fantastic community and you'd get great assistance should you join.

Anyway if you are going to be on Eclipse tonight, ill be on from about 7pm GMT for a few hours, so send me a tell and I can help out all I can with questions etc.

I tried to send you a private message with my e-mail, but **edit** internet at work is crap so It didnt work

I think I've got a good handle on what I ned to do now, thanks everyone.

I would love to join you on Eclipse, and the PA looks great, but will the time zones make that rather difficult? (I tend to be on around a few hours a day betwen 5pm and 10pm PST, thats GMT 1am and 6am, I think)


-F'sh (Kauri)
aka Kyn (Corbantis)

Well, Eclipse is the Un-official European server, so the majority of people will be playing at different times to you.... Perhaps another server would be better for you... ???

Saying that we do have *some* US people in the PA, were not exclusively European.. (Also have a fair few from Singapore/ far east I believe) All I can say is give it a try and see what you think.. The invite of help is still there if you want it, or choose a different server that will meet your time zone needs if you prefer

Stay on Eclipse. There are a bunch of us americans. I am part of a smaller guild that is so far all americans. Feel free to give me a tell.

Just checked our member roster, and 20 of our 107 registered members are from the US or Canada, So if you want to join us, there should be no trouble finding people on around your time..

With Merchants, money makes money. That's how it goes.

I would start by getting yourself a good chunk of cash. Do a good number of missions.

Now, go to the various Crafter forums, read up, and figure out what are the "rare" resources that the various professions need. Also, look through your server boards, and find the most popular crafters.

Go and buy a fleet of Personal Harvesters (or make 'em yourself with Eng. 3). Set those on resources on a planet that are considered rare, or necessary, to the popular crafters on that planet. For example, I'm based in Naboo, and I'm a Weaponsmith. I'm popular, mostly known for crafting Melee weapons. For Melee weapons, one of the resources I need most is Ditanium Steel. So, if you were on Naboo, you'd jot down Ditanium Steel on your list. Now, when/if Ditanium Steel pops up on Naboo, you'd go and plunk your Harvesters down on a good source.

Now that you've got a nice, big load of these high-demand resources, open up a shop/vendor, and start selling the resources.

Once you make a good profit (which you will....resources sell like crazy, especially to guys like me who buy 20K Ditanium Steel for 60K with a huge smile on my face), go off and find some crafters, and start building up a report with them.

Buy 30 power ups from a guy working his way up from Artisan to something else...buy a bunch of Weapon Repair Kits from another guy...get yourself some Clothes from a Novice Tailor...grab a few pieces of Mabari or Chitin armor from an Armorsmith....

In other words, start low. Start with items that lots of people will want, are semi-easy to make, and have a rather flexible price.

Once the profit starts to rake in from this, move on to more advanced things...a crate of Laser Rifles from a Master Weaponsmith...a couple of sets of Composite Armor...etc. etc. etc. These are things in HIGH demand, that can yield a HUGE profit margin.

So, basically, start low, build up your capital...it takes money to make money.