Tailor Archive
Thread: End of the Month Report (April) plus a quarterly review
Our guild closed the main mall on Dantooine (which had just begun to do regular business for me) and moved to Naboo (which seemed like a good idea for me at the time as Naboo is the home world for the clothing whores of our server). This move drastically reduced my numbers for this month as I am starting over in building a customer base. }. I had way too much fun w/ this dungeon and it occupied a lot of my time, time that I negelected my tailoring business.I always enjoy reading your reports
I've faced a similar situation. The player city I used to be in folded, as the mayor quit the gameand everybody left. Then I moved to another city, where pvp ruled the day, and my sales were absolutely horrible there (probably 2-3 items per day from my clothing vendor), everybody runs around in composite and nobody wants clothing, and then the mayor there quit too, lol, so now I've had it with player cities and I moved to Kaadara and am setting up shop there, and partnering with some friends to do our own shop. I don't know how successful it will be, but at least now I have more control over it, and my success is no longer tied to the fate of a player city in the middle of nowhere.
Bazar sales continue to soar though, and thank goodness for that, otherwise I'd be completely sunk. I'm able to gross several hundred k a week on the bazar with minimal effor so I'm able to stay afloat.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 05-12-2004 10:24 AM
This is the conclusion that I've come to as well. Unless the guild town is crafter-centric, and doing big-time commerce, it's death to put your vendor there. I've *finally* learned that lesson. I may very well join another guild, but my shop stays right where it is, where I can actually get business and not worry about the whims of the restless pvp crowd.
NJ62 wrote:
When my guild went under, I ended up moving to Dantooine permanently, but my point is that you can have your shop wherever you want, and not necessarily in your guild's town.
I love your reports.. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us and hang in there..
I applaud your efforts at tracking sales and the ways and means and fads. Great information! I wish I had the motivation to do the same, and the time. I guesstimate for the most part, or will track vendor sales/cashflow for a few days and then go back to being lazy. Your businesss seems to be growing steadily, and if traffic patterns of customers don't alter suddenly, it should continue and gain you loyal customers that will follow you should you choose to ever move again.
As for tracking sales, I keep a rough tally of weekly expensesand income. I check my bank balance on Monday, andafter my last large contract order delivery on Saturday, I note mybank balance on Sunday morning (allowing for bank lagged credits to arrive).Some days I do 500-700k, some days I do diddly squat, lol! But I average 500k a week off 3 vendors plus custom orders. One regular, one wookiee only, one crates. (My expenses run about 3/4ths of my income per week, so it's a slow, steady gain.)
The player city I am in is in a great location just outside Espa and near the Squill Caves and gets tons of traffic. We are also neutral and crafter-centric. (We have a mixture of citizens, mostly Rebel, Neutral and a few Imperials.) Almost all the merchants and shops are within sight of the shuttleport, including an expanding merchant tent bazaar right in front of it. The Mayor also recently set up a City Directory merchant tent with a vendor listing the city's merchants, professions, waypoints and listed details. That helped a lot. And citizens do not have to belong to the guild to live there, so we have several non-guilded or other guild citizensas well. It works out really nicely.
I recently moved out of my large house/shop that was within sight of the port and set up all over again in one of the merchant tents. My sales increased dramatically, especially crates sales. People waiting on that shuttle drop in to browse and impulse shop! It's all good. And now I don't have quite so much space and effort tied up in shop decor or maintenance and freed up lots for more tents and other things. (I am merchant host for all the tents in the city at this time) And now all my decor is in my personal home and I can focus on keeping my vendors stocked and am always within /shout distance of the business district.
Cutting to the chase... moving is hard work. Making a move takes a lot of consideration and planning. And weighing the pros and cons. And sometimes you just have to try it and see if it succeeds or fails. So far, my latest move seems to have been a good idea. I needed to consolidate from multi-planet locations and large shop upkeep, and cut down on time-consumingmicro-managing type tasks, and the tent filled the bill for me.
It will be very interesting to see your second quarterly report.
Qitu
