Tailor Archive
Thread: A question on consumer behavior..
Believe me, I know your pain. I made a subsistance up until I got Casual Wear III and had the niche item. I was early enough that the niche hadn't been filled, but I sold cloaks, cloaks and more cloaks and finally didn't have to wonder how I was going to pay the harvesters the next day. It does get better though. And if you're selling out in 2 days, I'd raise the prices and see if they still sold in 2 days. anything on the bazaar probably will sell regardless of price because it's "only 3k" at most.
Unless you're truly hurting though, I wouldn't make anything below novice tailor items and wouldn't sell anything for less than 1k unless it's sat through an entire cycle. Then mark it down to half and try to sell again. After that just destroy it before you lose more than it's worth to anyone...every now and again I get a really ugly item and try to sell it just to see. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.
I've enjoyed the responses on this thread..
I do think that the average customer isn't going to care about a few hundred or a thousand credits difference in price. It's all about finding what you want, in the color you want. And when the planetary bazaar contains 700+ items, and 500+ of those are hideous NPC dropped items, it can be hard to do that. I do find the idea that customers will buy the expensively priced items first interesting - I wouldn't mind doing an experiment with that, but I do put my shop coordinates on every bazaar listing. Maybe I'll get a friend to list a few "outrageously expensive" items and see what happens.
And, yes, I think tailors probably fret overpricing a whole lot more than customers do. Heck, I redid my own pricing 3 or 4 times. I started with 5cpu, then 5cpu + an assembly fee, then 10cpu, then 10cpu with a fee for subcombines and extra for factory components. Then I decided that all was WAY more complicated than it needed to be. I took my then current pricelist, adjusted pricesup, made similar items across tiers cost the same, and left it at that. So far I think I've achieved the right balance - I don't sell out every night and I don't get any complaints about pricing. When I discount for friends or in person sales, I usually get /tipped what my list price was anyhow. My prices are~double Ayane's, and maybe 1/4-1/3 less than Nivea's.
The funny thing is that an architect friend of mine and I have gotten into some heated discussions on pricing. He is just aghast that I charge 10cpu+ while he can "only" get 2.5-3cpu for his wares. The arguments never go anywhere because he just can't seem to understand how small my scale is compared to his. I sell maybe 10-20 items on an average day, more on weekends. He can easily make in one day what I make in a week. The other day he told me has 500K in the bank, and enough orders to make him a millionaire once they are filled. Lucky him! I might be a millionaire intwo or three months (not that it matters to me)!
Anyhow, from now on I'm just not going to worry about undersellers.. I'll stick to my pricing and keep building my business. I hit 350 items on my vendor last night, so I think it's time I start emailing past customers and get some momentum going.
"" Ri'a Ocoli"" Master Tailor, Kettemoor
"" Fine Attire by Ri'a is 1km north of Keren at 1190, 3770
"" .. my door is always open, stop by any time!
My prices are~double Ayane's, and maybe 1/4-1/3 less than Nivea's.
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Like are mine, and more or less equivalent for each tier (with slight overcharge on "popular" and undercharge on "uglier" items). Works well, no complaints about pricing.
The funny thing is that an architect friend of mine and I have gotten into some heated discussions on pricing. He is just aghast that I charge 10cpu+ while he can "only" get 2.5-3cpu for his wares.
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If an average tailor item takes 200 resources to craft and an average architect item takes 20000 ressources to craft (random and arbitrary numbers, not real ones, to get my point across), and both sell at the same credit per ressource pricing, then the tailor needs to sell 100 times more items to make, in the end, the same margin. Which means 100 times more work (clicking to build all items, putting them on merchant inventory, finding customers, etc ...) for the tailor.
It's the selling "in bulk" vs. selling small items.
Cost per ressource schemes do not take "bulk" effect, scale savings, andartisan's man-hours into account. This is why they are utter bullcr*p.
Anyhow, from now on I'm just not going to worry about undersellers.
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And you shouldn't. The customer do not want a 2000c flightsuit. He wants an electric blue flightsuit, with black paneled boots and a white/tan swoop helm. Whoever will provide the items he wantsthanks to a large and well maintained shop with a diverse inventory, and/or personal, custom service and fashion advice will get the credits (and, most important, the appreciation).
As far as the bazaar is concerned, finding a niche in which to sell seems to be -- to some degree -- more important than the price you're selling at. When I was just starting out, for instance, I did great sales in travel packs and shorts, simply because no-one else was selling them on the bazaar, and people wanted them desperately... I could pretty much set the price of my choice (as long as it was reasonable) and people would buy them happily. In some cases they did buy several.
Pricing for me impacts my in-person sales the most. At present, my store generally has eight or so people in there at night (when I have the most time online), each of them buying several garments...and often the same garment they bought before, in a different colour. I have several repeat customers who have bought entire outfits in several different shades, and ordinarily they -- and new customers -- impulse-buy from the vendor while waiting for their order to be filled. I do price about 10-20% less on high-end items, which is what I attribute the repeat-purchases to: if people can buy what they want for a bit less, I'm finding that they tend to buy a great deal more...and that in the end, I'm making twice what I would if I was actually charging the higher prices. Which is fun for both of us (I love doing custom orders -- nothing beats seeing someone delighted to find the very outfit they'd really wanted).
Repeat business is my friend. *grins*
My greatest repeat buyers are my neighbors, and I love them for it. :-) But generally I see people come in, buy a matching outfit (black), and that's about it. Sometimes I will get a person who wants 16 items (matching brown leather to brown cloth, /cry) but that's been the rarity.
I think my location and maybe my server has a bearing. Keren is almost the quietest city on Naboo (Deeja Peak wins that prize) and it just doesn't have the traffic of Theed, Kaadara and Moenia. I have a feeling Naboo is on the quiet side as well.
This weekend will be my marketing experiment.. I've been master tailor for about a week and a half, have a good stock of factory components accumulated, my vendor is looking good.. time to go out and drum up some business!
"" Ri'a Ocoli"" Master Tailor, Kettemoor
"" Fine Attire by Ri'a is 1km north of Keren at 1190, 3770
"" .. my door is always open, stop by any time!
AnitaSWG wrote:
The funny thing is that an architect friend of mine and I have gotten into some heated discussions on pricing. He is just aghast that I charge 10cpu+ while he can "only" get 2.5-3cpu for his wares. The arguments never go anywhere because he just can't seem to understand how small my scale is compared to his. I sell maybe 10-20 items on an average day, more on weekends. He can easily make in one day what I make in a week. The other day he told me has 500K in the bank, and enough orders to make him a millionaire once they are filled. Lucky him! I might be a millionaire intwo or three months (not that it matters to me)!
Anita,
In fact, I was an architect before I became a tailor (and in fact was doing both simultaneously for a while) and I can say, without question, pricing was one of the biggest reasons I got out of architect. It was just a bad situation. You do, in fact need 20,000 materials in many cases (or more) to build a structure, and for some reason, perhaps because there is no customization whatsoever about a structure, they are viewed as a "commodity" and so pricing is everything from a customer's point of view. I knew architects that would charge 1cr/unit of resource and when you tell people that it will cost 50k for a factory, priced at 3cr/unit they accuse you of being some sort of low-life thief or worse. It's just a bad situation overall. Personally, I think it is a combination of no customization ability, and the fact that structures are viewed as a necessary tool (factories, harvesters etc.) rather than a "reward" (like clothing) if you know what I mean. Anyhow, I would never ever ask an architect about how you should price your clothing, that is the most messed up, cutthroat profession there is in the game when it comes to pricing structures.
Well, I didn't exactly ask his advice.. pricing just seem to be this ongoing argument we have. It started when he wanted to sell me a clothing factory at 40K as "special deal." I wound up getting one for half that from another friend, with the provision I'd provides crates of synth cloth to him. Friend #1 then got mad at me for buying from friend #2, and insisted thathis 40K price was essentially"free." It then degraded into a somewhat heated disussion of theharvesting costs of raw materialsand how much a person's time should be valued at. I had never asked for a free factory to begin with, I just couldn't afford his 40K special deal (friend #2 would have sold it to me at 30K before the synth crates came into the equation).
So anyhow, pricing is really one of my least favorite discussions to have in game (whether for clothes, droids or houses).. nothing worse than having two architect friends in my shop hanging out, and a third person stops by and tries to get them to compete by asking prices in /say and making derogatory comments. It's the bigreason why I always discuss prices in /say, whether it's on a soft undershirt or a flight suit.
"" Ri'a Ocoli"" Master Tailor, Kettemoor
"" Fine Attire by Ri'a is 1km north of Keren at 1190, 3770
"" .. my door is always open, stop by any time!
Oops, I discuss prices in /tell not /say.
Oh, and one thing I never do is try to pit people against each other.. if I'm shopping for a big ticket item I might ask a few people what their price is.. but I don't go back and forth trying to create a bidding war.
"" Ri'a Ocoli"" Master Tailor, Kettemoor
"" Fine Attire by Ri'a is 1km north of Keren at 1190, 3770
"" .. my door is always open, stop by any time!
Anita, wow, see, now your experience as a customer of an architect is *exactly* what I'm talking about. An architect offers a product for lower than the price they would buy the materials from on the bazar, and then the customer says "too much" and finds someone (and they always do find someone) that will sell it for even less than that. Believe me, I've been there and know exactly how your friend feels. This, fortunately, has never happened to me as a tailor
It's funny too how the customer behavior is so different between the two professions.Hmm.. I probably didn't explain it well. My first small house I bought, I paid 12K for. I got a couple cheaper quotes, but went with the person I felt most comfortable dealing with. Especially since I wanted the generic house with the bugged floorplan (it's listed as a Corellia house on the datapad). So I struck up a relationship with friend #2 in my above example. He was "my architect" before friend #1 even made novice architect. I referred business to him, and we got to be good (great, even) friends.
Friend #1 then got to the point of making factories and he knew I was looking into them. He sent me a /tell out of the blue that he was going to make a factory for the exp, and put it on my vendor for 40K, and give me a week to decide if I wanted to buy it. I told him that I didn't have nearly 40K and it was several weeks before I'd even need a factory. I felt uncomfortable at being pressured to buy it as well.
Then the Keren bazaar disaster happened, and I had a lot of time on my hands. I ran mindless survey missions and made some cash. At that same time, friend #2 got master architect and needed synth cloth for some of his furniture. We then struck a deal that I would provide him with cloth in the future and he would sell me the factory at a reduced price. Then friend #1 got mad at me for not buying a factory for him, and the whole argument has gone on since. It's getting a little old, to be honest.
I never asked friend #1 for a factory, and I certainly didn't ask him to give me one for free or even at a reduced price. He wanted to sell me one before I was ready for one. I did consider buying something from friend #1 as a way of making amends, but he always seemed too busy with other orders. /shrug
Anyhow, I don't want to give the impression that I go around driving these hard bargains with everyone in sight. I'm way more likely to pay full price for something if the seller gives me warm fuzzies. Heck, I bought a crafting station droid from the first person I found who could make one. I have no idea whether I got a good price or not, but he was the only person I found who could make one. I had to go off planet to get it, as a matter of fact. I see crafting station droids on the bazaar now for 25% of what I paid for mine, so maybe I did overpay. I don't regret it though. :-)
"" Ri'a Ocoli"" Master Tailor, Kettemoor
"" Fine Attire by Ri'a is 1km north of Keren at 1190, 3770
"" .. my door is always open, stop by any time!
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
It's funny too how the customer behavior is so different between the two professions.
The only real reason for this is price. The difference between an 5000cr outfit and a 10,000cr outfit doesn't really seem like a big deal to many people who are shopping for high end items. But a 40,000cr factory and a 80,000cr factory? That's a pretty huge difference! I guess that may not sound like too much to some of those folks running around with millions, but it's a huge difference to me now, and seemed even bigger when I was just getting started!
I am amazed that tailors are still selling on the bazaar. I have a busy shop which is hard enough to keep stocked and I am constantlymaking custom orders for players... so don't have time to stock vendors. It's great buisness and I love it... but I am way to busy to sell on the bazaar.
Is this unusual???
The bazaar? Whats that? 
I'm definitely NOT too busy to sell on the bazaar.. I usually keep 20 or so items up at all times. I have a little blurb about my shop in the description of each one. I view it as advertising more than anything. But I also like the supplemental income when I don't get many visitors in my shop. Keeps my harvesters fed and houses in tip top shape.
Maybe some day I will be too busy for the bazaar.. but I don't think that will be any time soon. :-)
"" Ri'a Ocoli"" Master Tailor, Kettemoor
"" Fine Attire by Ri'a is 1km north of Keren at 1190, 3770
"" .. my door is always open, stop by any time!