Merchant Archive

a) I need to drop the merchant profession - i need the skill points and why should I have to have my own vendors to sell stuff.

Which leads to the following need.

I need for merchants to be able to assign me consignment right to a certain vendor. So I can place/manage my own items for sale, and either pay the merchant a fee or ideally a percentage commission on sales.

BTW flat fees should be negotiable between the merchant and crafter, or even paid out of the system (ie between the individuals directly).

There's lots of different kinds of items. I sell 15k weapons. I buy 200 cred food items from other vendors. Charging a flat fee per sale makes no sense, a percentage (set at the time the consignment right is assigned) makes more sense.

This must happen soon !

Of course this is possible to achieve right now in a different way but it requires the Seller (craftsman) and Buyer (Merchant) to both manually track all the inventory, the sales, and calculate the commisions themselves AND incur a 5% bank penalty if they want to keep the account current real time.

I did have a workable solution with an architect once for furniture but she quit the profession on me (grrr). She sold me items at a percentage of what she wanted them to sell for. I calculated the sell price and put them up for sale. A merchant with millions in the bank could afford to do this for all items even those Mira talks about. But newer merchants and those who don't have millions in the bank could not afford to keep that kind of inventory on hand.

I'm not sure we are going to get the consignment type sales any time soon though. That being the case what is the best way to try to work out these systems? Is there sales tracking reports that might be easier to get developed that would help facilitate this kind of supply arrangement? Even if I could generate an email with a sales report for a certain vendor (perhaps even certain categories in that vendor) that email could be forwarded to my supplier. An invenotory report would be useful as well for the same reason. A REALLY big help would be a feature that would allow me to transfer money from my account to someone else's without a 5% fee! It would be reasonable for this to ONLY be possible from a bank terminal. This would still allow you to have to pay a 5% fee if you are in the middle of nowhere and need a "wire transfer" or are just too lazy to walk to the bank.

I'm trying to think of other tools that might be useful to helping the merchant better serve the master craftsman. The main issue that I think craftsman have is they don't want to give up control over their merchandise and prices. I'm not sure this is realistic (it certiainly isn't in the real world) but I am wondering if reporting tools might make it easier for the Merchant and the craftsman to work out arrangements.

This would be moot with a consignment system of course, but I'm not convinced that we are going to get that.

There is not auto way of doing this, you have to do it all by hand. Best thing you can do is find a merchant who will buy your stuff (5% off (the sales commision) and let them resale it. You can "buy" the stuff that is not selling off the vendor, that gives the merchant back the money they put out, but will save you the effort of what sold when, you have your money, from the start, and when sold, they have thiers.

You send all people to the merchants shop, and they will keep buying your stuff. Makes it MUCH easier.

Marqie that is a way to do it, but the problem is that most merchants aren't going to have the cash to have 1.5million in merchandise sitting around for one of their suppliers. Even if I could I don't know that I would want to take on that burden. And if I am taking the risk of not selling the merchandise I am going to make a lot more than 5% on the deal. If I'm not taking risks I don't have a problem with a low return (But I can't be the one running around picking up the merchandise for that. 5% gets eaten up in a hurry in travel)

The movement of merchandise is ONE of the problems in this enconomy. Right now there is no easy way for Mira to supply me except by coming in herself and giving it to me or putting it into the vendor herself or me traveling to her factory and picking up the stuff myself. I suppose we COULD hire people for that but this game doesn't have Business Insurance to cover theft!

For the record Mira and I did try a commision based deal in the past. I don't think either of us got screwed in the deal but it was a great deal of trouble keeping everything stragiht (and that was the two weeks we had email troubles with the vendors too) we have MUCH better emails now and it might work better but the point is we still have no easy way to track and share sales information in summary form other than to create those reports by hand.

I do understand your issues, and 1.5 million is a lot. That is where a savy merchant comes into place. I am not going to buy a bunch of CDEF pistols if I know they are not going to sell. Here is what I do for people who want to sell throguth me.

1. You can NOT make sales of your items in the same area as my shop. So if you are in Theed, and someone gives you a tell, you should send them to my shop (this helps us both)


2. You can sell to other vendors, as long as they are in a diff location (ie I am in Theed, they are in Arowhead)


3. You can NOT sell the items in the bazaar near the town I work from.


4. I will send special orders to you, from clients, and handle all that for you. You just place them on my vendor, as an offer, and send me an email, I will handle the rest.


5. You can not tell me what to sell your item for.

I have found few people who think the rules are to harsh. I am just protecting my intrest, and in doind so, selling more of your stuff

In short, know what sells, and you can't be burned.

All those are fine and they are similar to what I have done in the past. The rule on pricing for me is very simple. If I pay for the item outright up front I set the price based on what I think it will sell at. If I pay a small stocking fee and then pay the commission after the sale then the seller sets the price. As I said earlier. I can use this system and have with several craftsmen but it is a very cumbersome process to keep up with without better sales tracking tools.