Merchant Archive
Thread: Opinions on an issue
I sell resources....
I have this customer that every time I restock the vendor comes along and buys practically everything except for the 1000 amounts and leaves a few 10k amounts. i.e. 300k steel on vendor and he buys 260k of it.
This causes other customers to constantly ask me if I have anymore of such and such. I have tried to talk with this individual and he pretty much laughs and says 'I make alot of stuff.'
If it was you, what would you do and why?
1) Ban him.
2) Contact him by email and ask him not to buy you out. Mention that he is baned another you will not lift the ban on him, until you have worked some solution out that you can live with.
3) work out a solution... say he can buy 10 k of the 300K but have to leave the rest alone...
2 and 3 can be skibed if you do not feal like dealing with him. But you should explain to him why he got baned.
b) the "profit" way
1) raise your prices.
2) repeat 1 until he stops buying
I've tried most of that. Tried talkign to him, tried raising prices, etc. Doesn't phase him.
I'm seriously thinking banning. I talked with a few other resource suppliers and they are under the impression he is a resource whore. Doesn't seem to sell any of it though.
Jaxx wrote:
I've tried most of that. Tried talkign to him, tried raising prices, etc. Doesn't phase him.
I'm seriously thinking banning. I talked with a few other resource suppliers and they are under the impression he is a resource whore. Doesn't seem to sell any of it though.
I guess I never worred about that. If you raise your prices and he keeps buying... whats the beef? I mean if he is buying all your stock you are making all the money you would have made anyway? I realize that having an empty vendor can cause you to lose customers but if he is buying everything you are really his defacto exclusive supplier anyway.
Raise the prices more. If he stops buying them lower them slightly until you get a balance.
But yea banning him will probably be effective. Just not sure why you want to give up the sure revenue 
You are trying to make money, right? Work a side deal with him where you will sell him X amount of resources every other day or what ever you can work out.
Or just start selling it all at the small quantites.
I suggest that you ban him and then immediately send him an e-mail like the following:
---
I want to provide you with resources, and I want to provide other people with resources. Currently my other customers are leaving mebecause you buy out my stock and they see only a poor selection. I do not want my reputation damaged by this illusion, and I do not want my entire business to become dependant on one customer. I have banned you from my shop to let other customers see my fine selection. However, if you let me know what resources you prefer, and quantities, I will set aside a portion of my harvesters for those materials and sell them directly to you at my excellent prices. You won't miss out if someone else gets to my vendor first, and my other customers won't miss out if you get there first. So, let me know what you want and I'll start working on your order right away.
---
Then split your stock about 50/50 and charge this guy a bit more than your vendor prices-- he's paying for your extra attention and a guaranteed supply.
If you have extra vendors, offer to put one right in his workshop right next to his crafting stations, so you can drop off his orders at your convenience and he can pick them up at his. Make sure to charge him for the vendor's maintenance if you do this.
ideas wrote:
I suggest that you ban him and then immediately send him an e-mail like the following:
---
I want to provide you with resources, and I want to provide other people with resources. Currently my other customers are leaving mebecause you buy out my stock and they see only a poor selection. I do not want my reputation damaged by this illusion, and I do not want my entire business to become dependant on one customer. I have banned you from my shop to let other customers see my fine selection. However, if you let me know what resources you prefer, and quantities, I will set aside a portion of my harvesters for those materials and sell them directly to you at my excellent prices. You won't miss out if someone else gets to my vendor first, and my other customers won't miss out if you get there first. So, let me know what you want and I'll start working on your order right away.
---
Then split your stock about 50/50 and charge this guy a bit more than your vendor prices-- he's paying for your extra attention and a guaranteed supply.
If you have extra vendors, offer to put one right in his workshop right next to his crafting stations, so you can drop off his orders at your convenience and he can pick them up at his. Make sure to charge him for the vendor's maintenance if you do this.
I like that except that honestly if he is a major customer then charging him premium prices is backward. You should give him a slight price break if anything for volumn purchasing. Or just charge him the same thing.
The others have pointed out your two best options: talking to him, or banning him. If the first doesn’t work, you’ll probably have to resort to the second, like it or not. However, someone pointed out something that I have long marveled at, and only partly understand: the phenomenon that, for lack of a better name, I call “Backwards Bulk.”
In real life the odds are the giant jumbo pack of anything will cost you less per pound than the single serve, in just about every market from peanuts to baby diapers to socks. In MMORPGs on the other hand, a giant stack of resources or gems or whatnot are more likely to cost you more than if you were to shop around and purchase them one at a time. While many folks (myself included) will often make comparisons between games and real economies, we often leave out three important factors, which I believe directly lead to Backwards Bulk pricing: Limited Over-All Supply, Convenience, and Directness from Producer to Consumer.
Limited Over-All Supply is a state in which a single consumer (or very few consumers) can desire and afford more of a good than the entire market can supply. This is a nearly impossible situation to find in real life: no one consumer (or even a giant corporation) can consume all of a relatively easy to acquire resource. The Coca Cola Company uses more sugar than most if not all of the individual consumers in the entire United States, and yet you can walk into a local super market and see dozens of bags sugar in different sizes. You would simply buy the bag of sugar you need and go pay for it, since there was more than enough sugar to choose from.
In SWG on the other hand a single crafter can easily search the bazaar and local resource merchants to purchase every last wooly hide they can find in their galaxy - and still be left wanting more. The market must there-for expand, and the scouts would have to spend more time gathering more hides, thus increasing their cost which will be passed on to customers. Since both buyers and sellers tend to agree that if the supplier has to pay more to provide the item the price should also increase, Backwards Bulk is tolerated.
Convenience is something we all (hopefully) know, and almost all of us wind up paying more for it on a day to day basis. You can make yourself a mighty fine hamburger and home-made fries for less than the cost of a greasy meal from the local fast food joint, but McDonalds sells millions of dollars worth of food every day. We pay a higher price (not to mention take greater health risks) for something of smaller value because it’s much more convenient to pull up to the Drive-Through than to peel potatoes and mash ground beef in your kitchen.
Our crafters in SWG are the other way around - they want something that will take more time to burn through, and have (virtually) all the storage space they could want. It then becomes more convenient for them to buy in larger amounts. Rather than pay more for something of a smaller size, they are willing to pay more for a larger stack of resources.
Directness from Producer to Consumer is so far removed in most parts of the USA that people rarely stop to realize their Breakfast Buddy Syrup may very well be made from the trees on some farmer’s land only a few miles from their own middle class home. There are so many steps between the raw product - the sap goes to the processing plant goes to the bottling company goes to the shipping firm goes to the distribution center goes to the supermarket - and the bottle on the shelf. When the price of something goes up we’re upset because we’re un aware and don’t realize that any one of those steps might have had to pay more to move it on down the row - all we see is that something that was 1.99 is now 2.45, and we don’t like paying more. If we could see that farmer in is 1990 rusty truck, the minimum wage workers in the bottle factory, the truck drivers who are home twice a month, the guys who work 12 hour shifts moving pallets, and the high school kid stocking the shelves ... maybe we wouldn’t mind parting with that extra 50 cents.
In SWG almost all of those steps are removed from the process: the person we buy the end product from most likely harvested it themselves, and when we come asking for a lot of something, it means that person has to do a lot more work. Because we can directly see the extra works involved (as well as sympathize), we don’t mind paying more for larger quantities. Interestingly, when we see that no extra work would be required for the larger amount of resources (such as someone dropping 10 heavy harvesters and then coming back in a week), the Backwards Bulk doesn’t apply, and you wind up paying less for large amounts than smaller ones (grinding steel at 2cpu on most servers as an example).
Comments? Ideas? Think I’m totally nuts?
Kallah wrote:
In SWG on the other hand a single crafter can easily search the bazaar and local resource merchants to purchase every last wooly hide they can find in their galaxy - and still be left wanting more.
do you know how many times its impossible to find certain resources? how often some things aren't in the galaxy? I desperately need certain resources right now but can't find them right now.
Our crafters in SWG are the other way around - they want something that will take more time to burn through, and have (virtually) all the storage space they could want. It then becomes more convenient for them to buy in larger amounts. Rather than pay more for something of a smaller size, they are willing to pay more for a larger stack of resources.
Most people I know use factories, and it's more efficient to use the largest stack you can, especially if it is a good resource. Using smaller size stacks can be tedious.
In SWG almost all of those steps are removed from the process: the person we buy the end product from most likely harvested it themselves, and when we come asking for a lot of something, it means that person has to do a lot more work. Because we can directly see the extra works involved (as well as sympathize), we don’t mind paying more for larger quantities. Interestingly, when we see that no extra work would be required for the larger amount of resources (such as someone dropping 10 heavy harvesters and then coming back in a week), the Backwards Bulk doesn’t apply, and you wind up paying less for large amounts than smaller ones (grinding steel at 2cpu on most servers as an example).
First, many products require multiple resources, which makes it difficult to keep up stocks. I have no lots available and need water, and i can't finda decent moisture vaporator at the moment. and while grind resources may be cheap, what about the quality resources that are needed to make quality products? Personally i allocate a cost of 3cpu to each unit I use, because while some I do harvest, much was purchased when available at up to 3cpu.
Comments? Ideas? Think I’m totally nuts?
Great observations, Kallah. This could be a thread on its own. Here are some more factors for your analysis:
1. Players have limited inventory space.
In the real world,25 supermarket items take up the same amount of space whether they are separated or packaged nicely -- indeed, the separate items might be arranged more efficiently in ways that the package doesn't fit. In SWG a single crate of 25 items takes up less space than 25 separate items -- 1/25 as much space!! So, customers are probably willing to pay more for the cratethan for an equivalent number of separate elements, because inventory space is a harder item to obtain than money.
2. Bulk costs the supplier more money.
In the real-world, factory production costs less than hand production, at least in the long run. In SWG factories eat up lots (which cuts down on resource harvesting), money (maintenance fees and energy), and they take longer (factory items take 90 seconds up to 4 minutes, hand items take 15-90 seconds). However, they do take up less of the crafter's personal time and effort, so maybe this balances out.