Tailor Archive
Thread: OMG Master Level Items for under 2000 credits
SWG Tailoring doesn't compare. It's a "closed" enviroment. Every item you make can be made by another Master Tailor. Every color, every combination, even the number of sockets (I get 4 almost every time.) Since clothing doesn't decay, even durabilty doesn't matter. (Although I hope this will change as I make every good clothing).
What Ford's specialist had was unique. SWG Tailors have a cookie cutter.
Someone suggested quested schematics. These would be worth a pretty penny, IMHO, as they require more input than just plugging and chugging with a crafting station.
Nice thought out post Kazey. I disagree with just about everything and you time estimates, but you did present it well. =)
The fact you enjoy doing the things you do doesn't mean they shouldn't figure into pricing. I may enjoy running my business, but the time I spend on it will be passed on to the customer. A lawyer may enjoy the work he or she does but I doubt they discount their hourly wage because of that fact.
You aren't going to get factory components in 35 seconds. If you are out of resources, this can take a full day to replenish your component supplies unless you have a hyper speed factory I don't know of. The fact you have fun while it's making them doesn't take away the time delay to actually have the product available, nor does it remove the loss of sales when your stock is depleted and down for a day to produce more factory component stock. Your 35 seconds to put the schematic in the hopper was not what I was referring to.
This applies to your gathering of hides as well. The fact you have combat skills and have fun collecting hides is great, but it doesn't remove the cost that can be added in the pricing schedule. Once again, having fun doesn't delete the fact that it's a cost consideration that the customer should compensate you for. Your philosophies don't translate into a good business platform. You provide rock bottom prices because you have fun and reduce your profits to the minimum possible amount available. Having fun is great, but economics dictate you should strive to make the most profit possible. If you're not in it to make money, then don't charge anything and pass them out for free in towns. Otherwise you are making Tailoring a very low income profession for everyone and remove all motivation for new Tailors to reach Master status where they can sell clothes for the price of one destroy mission. Money is plentiful, strive for what your most profit that can be reasonably earned is. That's how businesses thrive. Selling Master items for the same price as Novice Tailor items hurts yourself as well. Don't you even want to earn the same amount of credits as other Tailors? Don't you find it quite a chore the keep Master items in stock for 2k a piece when other Tailors sell out of them at the same rate for 10k a piece. 10 items, you earn 20k, the other earns 100k. You mean to tell me you believe so strongly in this that you're willing to lose 80k per day? What sense does this make, except you become even more overworked at the 2k rate, while the other Tailor leans back and relaxingly outdoes your earning with room to spare?
I just don't understand why you would want to sell Master Tailor items on the bazzar when it is a known fact people will pay more for them. I don't enjoy taking less credits for something that I know I can get more for (unless it's a friend or favor) My question on the competition on the bazzar translates to your prices on everything. When you heard that Master Tailor items consistently sell for 10k, why did you accept 3k for them? Why take less money when there is no reason to other than to lower the price on the market and make it impossible for lower end Tailors to have any motivation to make money in the profession. Architects don't sell small houses for 3k on the bazzar, why should a MASTER Tailor item go for 3k? Because it's "just" clothes is about the only excuse I can think of, or because you hate having too many credits. /shrug. I am definitely boggled on this. =)
--Jewel
These arguments go round and round and round.. I doubt either side will suddenly be swayed.
I do want to summarize a couple of very valid points made along the way. These points justify higher prices, IMHO.
1) Your time IS worth something. If a image designer can charge (rightly so) 2000 for a hair cut, or 10000 for a skin color change, why isn't a master tailored item worth more than just the cost of the resources and some "reasonable" markup?
2) The point about driving lower level tailors out of business, or out of the game, is very valid. Why should someone buy an artisan or novice tailor itemat all when they can get some tier IV or master item for 500 or 600 credits?
3) The resources required for an item don't SCALE from artisan through master level.An artisan level administrator's robe uses 60 resources. A master level low cut top uses 130 resources. Does ithonestly make SENSE that you would charge 300 for the adminstrators robe and 650 for the master levelitem? That's what someof you are saying!
I guess only time will tell what will happen with the tailor market. I feel that my prices are fair based on the time and effort I put into running my business, and the comparative level of the items. So far they are selling just fine.. and I won't be participatingin any price wars. If the bottom falls out of the market, I'll go find something else to do, and just make clothes for myself and my friends.
"" Ri'a Ocoli"" Uniform Marshall, Kettemoor
"" Clothes by Ri'a is 1km north of Keren at 1190, 3770
"" .. my door is always open, stop by any time!
When you heard that Master Tailor items consistently sell for 10k, why did you accept 3k for them? Why take less money when there is no reason to other than to lower the price on the market and make it impossible for lower end Tailors to have any motivation to make money in the profession.
There is something I've tried to make clear in each of my posts, but I guess it doesn't get through so easily. My shop is on Talus. Master Tailor items sell consistently for 10k (more like 15k) on Naboo, Corellia, and Tatooine. On the other hand, black smocks for 500 and gunman's dusters for 900 will sit on the bazaarin Nashalfor a week and not sell. I don't mean now that everyone has one, I mean weeks ago when everyone and they're brother was still looking for one. It is my choice to live there, just like it is your choice to set up shop in a city competing with 100 other tailors. I doubt you'd be in business long trying to sell 10k items to entertainers who can't even take a town to town delivery mission without first flying to another planet, well especially when you consider we have maybe 3 "resident" entertainers who ever stick around longer than a few days.
I've had master tailor items priced at 3k sitting on bazaar for 3 days now- if I was such a drain on the tailoring profession, do you really think they'd last longer than a few hours? If I was such a threat you'd think by now at least another tailor would have flown in to buy and destroy or resell. As far as new tailors, my low prices on Talus have far less impact on a new Nabooian tailor than the dozen or so Masters already in their town busy slicing the population amongst themselves. And oddly enough, my post yesterday gained me a new customer, who happens to be a novice tailor.
It seems to me most of the problems people have with the low-end pricing is that it might make them look bad. If your prices are fair and justified, you can explain to your customers exactly why you charge what you do. If you have no reason to look bad, they won't think any less of you, and if they throw my prices at you, mention the fact that it's all well and good if they don't mind paying the shuttle fees and climbing the mountain next to town to get to my shop.
Or, you can handle it like that infamous 60k robe. Yes the robe exists, no it wasn't a master tailor item. It was a renamed novice tailor smock with a whopping +10 total biosensor enhancement. And when LaoTzu asked what it was, for some reason he couldn't get that particular piece of information. It took a few days and finally having him come to my shop to determine what he'd actually seen - a white smock with semi-decent BE enhancements that may or may not work. You can do like that tailor, and lead customers to believe that you sell items they can't find anywhere else since flat out lying is easier than trying to justifyambiguouspricing.
Or, on the other hand, you can just /ban them and /addignore like so many suggested in that other thread...
If your prices really are fair, and you have no doubts in them yourself, you have nothing to worry about from me or the handful of others who can't stomach what they see as ripping people off. Then again, just the fact that someone had to start a thread amounting to: someone asked me why I charge so much and I have idea what to tell them, maybe all those right and fair prices aren't so right and fair across the boards. Just because you think it's worth someone spending 2 of the 3 hours they login for the night running missions to buy one thing you make, doesn't mean every casual gamer out there agrees with you.
You can charge anything you want.
Don't compare the rest of us to a con artist because we disagree with you on a message board.
Don't accuse us of "ripping people off" because we charge a bit more than you do for your items.
Thanks.
None of our customers could really care less why something costs the way it does, by the way. I can't imagine anything more likely to make people leave my store than giving them a breakdown of how I gather my materials or how I think a tactical skinsuit fits in to the overall economy. They care about whether they like it, and whether they can afford it.
I did argue with a customer about a price just half an hour ago. They insisted I add on another 1,000 for the good service.
Look at the title of the thread. It's not the "underchargers" who get upset. It's the "overchargers". And when the "underchargers" fire back that the accuzations of the "overchargers", some "overcharger" always gets upset.
Simple solution to that. If people would stop making "OMG Master Level Items for under 2000 credits" thread where they accuse the underchargers of ruining the economy then the "underchargers" would stop explaining why they feel the "overchargers" are "ripping people off".
I've yet to see a post like this started by one of the "underchargers". It's always an "overchargers". We've beat this topic to death in at least 15 threads. It's becoming repetative. It's fairly obvious that neither side is going to change the opinion of the others.
I sold a white smock with a red sash and +25 skill bonuses (the maximum per item) to injury healing, wound healind, and whatever the third skill is for 60K. It's clearly labeled as a smock but the bonuses are noted. This was off my vendor. Several Medics had come in and bought swoop helms with bonuses between +10 and +13, so I figured the smock would sell as well.
Whoever bought the smock (I can look it up in my email), but be perfectly happy with it. The equation I'm using is 1K x Total skill bonuses, so in this case it's 25 X 3 X 1K or 75K... I marked it down to 60K just to see if I was way off base.
Someone bought it, and has not complained to me one bit. If he/she has issues with it, they can always return it for a full refund. I have heard that BE components don't work, but I have sold many Active Biosensor enhanced items with no complaint. Either the customer is getting the result they want, or they know that it doesn't work but that it will some day, or they don't know any better. I am hoping my customers fall into the first two categories, but since I'm not a Medic myself I can't really test these things.
Am I really a monster?
Are the undercharge philosphy folks the same type that I saw putting gloves and boots and shirts up on the bazzar for 10 credits? Ya know the auctions where ya had to scratch you head and wonder why are these folks PAYING for people to take their items. You make it sounds like these poor poor people have no money and it takes them hours and hours to earn credits. Um, unless someone is lazy and can't sit still for more than 15 minutes, they can aquire 10k before half an episode of a re-run of Friends is over. Money is plentiful, why not take your share too?
sidenote - I bet half the people who subscribe to the /ban /ignore club are folks that deal with customers who whine, complain, argue, harass, and curse at us for being evil vendors. And why are we evil vendors? Because some Tailors sell for 75% less then the previous pricing schedule. And when customers see and realize that, they can be extremely rude and angry.
One question to underchargers, Would you sell Composite Armor sets for 10k? Would you sell Factories for 5k? These things make about as much sense as putting Master Tailor items on the bazzar. Those professions don't do looney things such as that, so why do it here?
As to one of your questions that no one answered, no one is willing to drop their prices, because that was the established range of what players WOULD pay. Charging 75% less than that makes no sense, hence, people with business sense want to sell things for what people will pay for them. It is illogical to price it lower, until no more sales occur or more competition lowers it. A healthy, gradual decrease should take place, not the knee jerk reaction that has happened instead. That could have been you lowering it, seeing the range at say 8-12k, but instead, it got plumeted to 2-3k. It's not worth the time for the VAST majority of Tailors to sell at that price, so until those Tailors show some sort of reason behind their madness of selling at prices that don't justify the effort to make, what is the reason for trying to come to agreement with such madness. =)
--Jewel
--Jewel
Orkomage wrote:
One question to underchargers, Would you sell Composite Armor sets for 10k? Would you sell Factories for 5k? These things make about as much sense as putting Master Tailor items on the bazzar. Those professions don't do looney things such as that, so why do it here?
If I were an architect, I would charge about 20K for a factory based upon 13000 reseources and a failure rate that seems very high. Id' have to actually see how bad that failure rate is to determine if the 7K is enough to cover it. I'm assuming it is w/o hard numbers.
If I were an armorsmith, I would charge the cost of my RFP or SC component + my cost and profit. Meaning that a Chest plate would go for about 1000 credits or so. I'd factor in a cost for failures, but off hand I think 1200 will work. SO yes, it's possible I would sell a suit for about 10k. I'd have to do all the math, but it's definately in the ballpark. We'll say 15k iffailures are really bad.
And using my numbers, I'd still make a profit. It would just be a different group of overpricers complaining about me.
AnitaSWG wrote:
2) The point about driving lower level tailors out of business, or out of the game, is very valid. Why should someone buy an artisan or novice tailor itemat all when they can get some tier IV or master item for 500 or 600 credits?
I wrote a post about this on this board a few weeks ago. That was my biggest concern about getting into this industry, When I was making clothes on the domestics line, I couldn't move any of them unless I sold them for 50 - 100cr. I started to worry then about what was going to happen, were people going to start charging 2k for master items at that rate? And hey, look they are. I spent weeks practically paying my customers to buy my clothes. I didn't make any profit from the clothes, only the extra resources that I had.
So now I am wondering if I will always be broke as a tailor. I was always broke as a dancer. Will I be able to pay maintenence on my house? Which by the way, I can't afford a large house. With the way the economy is going, I don't expect to ever be able to.
Jewel,
your posts were excellent! Keep up the good work 
Lora