Shipwright Archive

Like many of you, The Shipwright profession has been good to me. Credits on hand are up 8x over getting Novice Shipwright. I am fairly happy about the management of the process, but I am hoping to cut the time spent on activities, while keeping my customer service, products, and margins on the higher side. I'm hoping a few of you can share some of your business magic and show me a better way to do it? BTW, I am a master merchant/shipwright. My shipyard targets the high end market.

Here's how I've got it set up so far.

Shop Location. My shop is located on the North East edge of Coronet. My preference would be due East of Coronet. What do you think of Theed? Bestine? Dantooine MO? A Player City? Any other recommendations? (I do understand that we are all on different servers, but I see that there is a natural gravitation to some planets/cities over others across all servers). I use a generic medium house rather than a tent to help create a shipyard office's ambience. I do believe it helps sales.

Acquisition. Resources. With 10 lots, I supply my own SW resources, but go to the wholesale market for everything else. I work with a few solid providers and scour the trade boards for old high end resources that I can use to make top end components and Firesprays. RE Components. I have a barker vendor in the shop that offers to buy all loot, and I try to make sure all of my customers know that I buy them.

Organization. I store all of my resources inside my starship crafting station or in backpacks on a vendor (99999999). All RE components are likewise thrown on a vendor (both of these are off the main sales floor). I will not RE parts until I have over 100 of any type of component (e.g. capacitors) to insure that I get a few great combines in the batch so I can resell them later. I sell about 1 in 5 RE parts on my vendors, the rest goes back to the Chassis Dealer as a loss.

Marketing/Sales. Factory sales make up the largest percentage of transactions, and provide a good margin. I believe people come to the shop because of the focus on top end components and the easy location. I found a great Computer supplier and have found we do a brisk business here as well. I have vendors for Chassis, Computers, Performance RE, Ordnance/CM, Performance Components, the RE Buyer/Barker, and a separate vendor for the KSE Firespray (so it shows on the planetary map).

I don't play the price-war game and try to focus on service and quality. My big Time Savers are the vendors I use for organizing and buying wholesale resources. How do you manage your shipyard? Is there a better way?

Thanks in advance everyone - hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season

Message Edited by Theodis_Darkstar on 12-20-2004 01:53 AM

Shop Location. I'm located just South East of Coronet. I doubt there's a better planet to be on as I'm on Infinity and the population is too low on the other planets. Maybe Tatooine would work but I'm happy where I am. I agree with you regarding having a house instead of a tent, it creates more of a nice ambience. Plus, I do all of my crafting in there so if customer walks in I'm always on hand to help them out.

Acquisition. Resources. I harvest a lot of my resources. I have 6 lots remaining plus an alt char, which helps a lot. I also get the help of several friends or hire miners where possible. As well as harvesting I supplement my resource stock with purchases where appropriate (i.e. I desperately need a good resource quickly, or I've spotted a good price for a decent resource).

Organization. I store all of my resources inside house or factories. I've stopped reverse engineering other than for specific customer request. I spend too much time crafting or searching for resources to also spend time reverse engineering and I don't get that much game time each week so I decided to drop that part of my business.

Marketing/Sales. I sell most components and factory-consumables. I have a vendor for each type of component, or groupings of components (e.g. Blasters and Cannons, Shields and Armor...). I don't bother ad-barking any more and just rely on the planetary map ad. As I only get to spend 2 to 3 nights a week playing the game I don't want to sell my stock too quickly and I found that with ad-barking I'd have a small party of people lining up in my vendor either buying out my stock in 5 minutes or flooding me with requests for all sorts. I've found that with the planetary map ads my stock sells slowly but surely but it means that I've almost always got fully stocked vendors. I might log in every now and then for a 15 minute crafting session to replace sold stock.

My biggest money saver is having friends that are willing to lend me their lots for harvesting. My biggest time saver is not performing any ad-barking and just letting the planetary ad do its job.

When I'm not crafting or looking for resources I'm flying in space - giving my ships a bit of a test run

Shop Location.

800m out of Coronet. I also have a barker vendor that buys loot.

Acquisition. Resources.

Between alt accounts and people that I pay for harvesting I have more than enough lots for harvesters. An example when a 982OQ and 982CD Copper spawned on my server I was able to place 67 heavies on a 80+% spot.

Organization.

I have a SW resource vendor that I store resources. I store each individually, so I do not have to make room in my inventory to pull a back pack. I store optional component crates in backpacks around the crafting station (named Mark II, III etc.).

Marketing/Sales.

I try to have at least several of everything on my vendor at all times so people buying ships can completely outfit their ship. I have a vendor for chassis and another for everything else. I also have my architect deeds and furniture vendors there too. So, each drive the sales of the other as well. I can not keep furniture in stock .

I don't play the price-war game and try to focus on service and quality. My big Time Savers are the vendors I use for organizing and buying wholesale resources. How do you manage your shipyard? Is there a better way?

Each to his own, I'd say most work pretty similar to you. I also do not play the price game, as it is I still have to be pretty active in keeping the vendors stocked.

Thanks in advance everyone - hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season

Ditto.

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Shop Location.

The City of RIverlands, Corellia Tempest, we are a crafters guild and have a massive retail area and sell just about all items

Acquisition. Resources.

I have 7 Toons in total and many in my guild that help, but with the sales I do I can use 5-10 million resources per week so I often buy a lot

Organization.

1 shop which has1 vendor per type of part, 1 for kits, 1 for Chassis, and 1 for missiles (a lot of vendors ).I have 10 facotries, a parts warehouse that holds all enhancers, a crafting house which holds all current resources, a resource store house for additional resources, and a 3rd store house for named resources.

As for the shop each vendor normally has 25 of each part on it (I also keep a backpack of 25 crafted parts as a back stock of each item)

Marketing/Sales.

Just some posts on the forum and word of mouth.

Message Edited by Theodis_Darkstar on 12-20-2004 01:53 AM

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