Merchant Archive
Thread: How do I lease vendor space efficiently?
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Eobia
Thu Jul 15, 2004 9:17 am
#1
Can someone tell me what the most efficient way to lease vendor space is? I am close to master merchant and I have several vendors available for use. Is this a viable income source on the shadowfire server? Thanks for the help.
Balkstar
Thu Jul 15, 2004 9:44 am
#2
Without consignment its a little hard to do. You will either need to buy items wholesale, or work a contract out with various crafters to sell product. One will require a lot of cash, the other a little trust and a lot of time to do calculations.
lboyd1
Thu Jul 15, 2004 11:02 am
#3
I rent out 4 vendors. Two for a BE,two for a Tailor/DE (but shes not started selling anything yet, she is still leveling). The way it goes for the BE and will for the tailor/de, There is an empty house (the BE uses a factory's input station) that they put a backpack full of stuff in for me to pick up.
After I pick it up, I check my email and there is a list of things that is the price that they want from the item. Now if I want anything over that, I'll add my small markup to it, but not too much of a markup because I do want it to sell (and the BE is expensive *grin*). After all is listed, the person checks the vendor, and they keep tab of their stock.
Now what I do, is at the end of the day before I log off, I save some time to sit down and I forward all sales to the appropriate people, then calculate what they made (by going over their list) and bank tip them. Then from what they tell me, they go over what they sold and adjust their inventory supplies and their money and such. There is some trust involved, but the two ladies that I sell for are pretty nice. If anything ever goes poof on the vendor that I don't send them money for, they don't cry that I'm cheating them, they just ask me if it went to the stockroom. (and in most cases, it did).
It sounds complicated, but its really not 
I love being a merchant to not only sare my wares (and deals I happen to run across) but to sale others. I like sitting down to play with the math and stuff ... I dunno .. maybe I'm amused easily ... hehe .. but it works for us.
I love being a merchant to not only sare my wares (and deals I happen to run across) but to sale others. I like sitting down to play with the math and stuff ... I dunno .. maybe I'm amused easily ... hehe .. but it works for us.
Mkappus
Thu Jul 15, 2004 1:35 pm
#4
The most efficient way is to have a ton of money, buy things and resell it.
Otherwise, keeping track of 60 emails a day, who owns what product, who to pay, how much to pay them, it is tedious. Right now it would be next to impossible to keep track of two different suppliers selling the same product. Say you wanted to resell resources for miners and had5 suppliers. I can't think of a way to differentiate who owns what.
DragonScout
Thu Jul 15, 2004 2:51 pm
#5
Get with a guild and sell their things or find some friends that are crafters and sell theirs. You are already in a good location. might want to branch out to mos vegas too though.
I don't know whether it is viable or not. I am thinking not just because most of the crafters I know have their own vendors on shadowfire, but I am sure you can find some people if you put enough effort into it.
And another problem is that you aren't really leasing space. You are either buying their goods... or they are taking a risk on you and letting you stock your vendor and pay them once it sells. Either way, you end up doing most of the work.
I don't know whether it is viable or not. I am thinking not just because most of the crafters I know have their own vendors on shadowfire, but I am sure you can find some people if you put enough effort into it.
And another problem is that you aren't really leasing space. You are either buying their goods... or they are taking a risk on you and letting you stock your vendor and pay them once it sells. Either way, you end up doing most of the work.
StarWorker
Sun Jul 18, 2004 6:09 pm
#6
First of all: Get the program called Merchants Friend, and save all your emails.
There are several ways to run it efficiently, it really depends on how many clients you want to serve, and whether you want to do consigment or if you want to take the risk, and buy wholesale.
Its easiest to calculate the different peoples profits if you can keep each client on a separately named vendor. Merchants Friend will then give you the total amount sold for, both total for all vendors, and for each individual vendor you have.
The other way, which you also should consider, if you are going to sell what other people produce, is to require the crafters to have a Makers Mark inside the title of the product.If JoeGuns want you to market their weapons for you, you should require that every weapon they want sold through you end with "by JoeGun" or something similar.
At each period where you will be calculating sales, you will filter all you vendor emails (with the help of Merchants Friend) to show only sales of items containing "by JoeGun"
If you do this weekly, its the matter of sorting the the sales pr day, and adding the sales for the 7 days and you get the total sales JoeGun made.
Divide the total sale with (1+P/100), where P is the sales tax where the vendor is located. Multiply with the share you have agreed (e.g. 0.8 to the crafter, 0,2 to you), and voila, you have the sum you can bank tip to the crafter).
I do suggest doing it via bank-tips, as that is the best way to document payments. Tips, and secure trades don't leave many traces, and suddenly you forget who you paid what.
These are just some ideas on how you can do it...I am sure there are more ways.
It is definetely dependent on what you want to sell though. Items that can be named, is easy to filter get a makers mark added. Resources and loot items on the other hand, is best bought up by the merchant wholesale, or kept on a separate vendor for that person, instead of trying to track who offered what.
There are several ways to run it efficiently, it really depends on how many clients you want to serve, and whether you want to do consigment or if you want to take the risk, and buy wholesale.
Its easiest to calculate the different peoples profits if you can keep each client on a separately named vendor. Merchants Friend will then give you the total amount sold for, both total for all vendors, and for each individual vendor you have.
The other way, which you also should consider, if you are going to sell what other people produce, is to require the crafters to have a Makers Mark inside the title of the product.If JoeGuns want you to market their weapons for you, you should require that every weapon they want sold through you end with "by JoeGun" or something similar.
At each period where you will be calculating sales, you will filter all you vendor emails (with the help of Merchants Friend) to show only sales of items containing "by JoeGun"
If you do this weekly, its the matter of sorting the the sales pr day, and adding the sales for the 7 days and you get the total sales JoeGun made.
Divide the total sale with (1+P/100), where P is the sales tax where the vendor is located. Multiply with the share you have agreed (e.g. 0.8 to the crafter, 0,2 to you), and voila, you have the sum you can bank tip to the crafter).
I do suggest doing it via bank-tips, as that is the best way to document payments. Tips, and secure trades don't leave many traces, and suddenly you forget who you paid what.
These are just some ideas on how you can do it...I am sure there are more ways.
It is definetely dependent on what you want to sell though. Items that can be named, is easy to filter get a makers mark added. Resources and loot items on the other hand, is best bought up by the merchant wholesale, or kept on a separate vendor for that person, instead of trying to track who offered what.
TreborIrtad
Mon Jul 19, 2004 9:25 am
#7
This is kind of dumb but the items I sell I always end the price in 00. I have assigned a different number for each person i sell for. So even if 3 of us are selling the exact same item, if one is sold for 20,002 I know it was Jims item and if it sold for 20,000 i know it was my item. Nothing really ground breaking here but in some situations makes things easier, hope it helped.
RellikCro
Mon Jul 19, 2004 12:47 pm
#8
lboyd1 wrote:
I rent out 4 vendors. Two for a BE,two for a Tailor/DE (but shes not started selling anything yet, she is still leveling). The way it goes for the BE and will for the tailor/de, There is an empty house (the BE uses a factory's input station) that they put a backpack full of stuff in for me to pick up.
After I pick it up, I check my email and there is a list of things that is the price that they want from the item. Now if I want anything over that, I'll add my small markup to it, but not too much of a markup because I do want it to sell (and the BE is expensive *grin*). After all is listed, the person checks the vendor, and they keep tab of their stock.
Now what I do, is at the end of the day before I log off, I save some time to sit down and I forward all sales to the appropriate people, then calculate what they made (by going over their list) and bank tip them. Then from what they tell me, they go over what they sold and adjust their inventory supplies and their money and such. There is some trust involved, but the two ladies that I sell for are pretty nice. If anything ever goes poof on the vendor that I don't send them money for, they don't cry that I'm cheating them, they just ask me if it went to the stockroom. (and in most cases, it did).
It sounds complicated, but its really not
That is basically how I rent my vendors out right now also, time consuming but enjoyable on the most part.
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