Merchant Archive

I can forseeproblems with a consignment sales system that would limit its usefulness, as a crafter has to wait until their goods reach theend user before theyget paid, and they get a reduce payment as the merchant needs a cut there is very little to motivate them away fromgetting their own merchant skills and selling themselves, they get paid at the same time, but get more creditsfor each sale. Also ifanything can be bought on consignment then a novice merchant can run as big a store as a master merchant, this seems flawed to me.

My solution is a system of secure loans and credit ratings, and this is how it could work.

At novice merchant you get a credit rating, this allows you to purchase items that are offered to your vendor without having the credits to do so. The person who offered the item will recieve payment when the item is purchased 'on credit' by the merchant. The purchasescan be put into the store room, and be offered for sale, but they cannot be retrieved from the vendor by the merchant unless they pay for them at the original price.

However the value of items that can be purchased / held on credit at any one time will depend on your credit rating and this can only be increased by repaying loans already taken out, and only when the sale is to a customer, not a paid withdrawal by the merchant. There will be a maximum cap for each level of merchant and this can be increase by going up one of the trees (efficiency maybe?) but there is no automatic increase in your current credit rating, just the maximum possible.

Any time an item bought on credit drops to the stockroom and then off the vendor without being sold then your credit rating will drop, and the drop would need to be far harsher than the equivilant rise for the credits involved in the unrepayed loan. Each item that dropped off the vendor in this way would also stop the purchasing of items on credit for a certain time period, and this delay would increase rapidly if a number of items dropped according to the credit value of the loans on those items. If the value of items dropped was high enough to cause your credit limit to drop to zero (this amount would be less that the number of credits you can obtain using that credit limit) you would never be able to make use of the system again. If the merchant has the funds to pay for dropped items then they will be automatically removed, and if the merchant didn't have the credits they could be taken from the vendors maintenance pool.

The starting credit limit would need to be quite small, and take a reasonable amount of time to build up. This along with the checks on loans not repayed restricting future loans should hopefully be able to prevent the system from being exploited. Possibly a deposit of real credits may be required or other saftey measures implemented.

This system would give crafters a good reason to want to use merchants, they will get payed up front for their goods and wil not have to wait until someone decides they want them, and it also enables merchants to start a business without significant start-up cash.