Tailor Archive

Popollo has it right. At the prices I charge (15k for master items) I still get A LOT of business, so much now that I may have to start charging a 15k Minimum price tag (15 worth of items) on custom orders. I am working on orders from 2 days ago now. /sigh. Hope to get them done today by going /anon

I'm in agreement with Popollo. Not to be nit picky, but the prices on your spreadsheet do seem quite low. I do love how everything is laid out though. I'll definitly use it as a guide and maybe add a multiplier to the price for better income.

I haven't looked at the spreadsheet, but if you just utilize it to see your own base cost, it might bea helpful tool. Multiply everything by 2 or 5 or 10 or 50, depending on your market, or factor in a level multiplier to ameleorate your training costs and effort. That realizes you a decent profit and provides more suitable compensation for your time and work.

I've started using a formula for base price, but if skirts are selling at 2000 credits over base in my market, I'll price 'em at 2000 credits over base. Chargeas much asthe market will bear; you'll be glad you did when credits get tight.

A couple of things regarding my prices:

- The only comments I’ve had from customers on my prices were that I’m charging too much.

- I don’t base my prices on a minimum cost-per-resource; then I would only charge one credit per unit and nothing for hides since I get those from friends. Right now I’m charging, even for the cheapest resources, about 300% of their cost. Even more for other resources.

- Next to basing prices on resource I also base it on tailoring level, complexity, factory stacks, demand, etc. It's all explained in the spreadsheet.

- Even at my supposedly low prices I’m hardly selling a thing. While I attribute that more to there being a very low population on Rori it does show that I can’t start charging even more, because I would only sell less. In fact, I’m considering lowering my prices to sell more. I just don’t have the market for higher prices.

- Money isn’t the only return we get for our items. There’s the UXP bit, which at this stage in my development seems far more important then the credits I use for nothing other than paying for my harvesters. And there’s the thing that’s even more valuable to me: making other players happy and seeing them look good in my clothes.

- I craft clothes because I think it is fun. I don’t see crafting as a job that needs to be rewarded, I do it because I like doing it. Why would I charge customers for my fun? Try going to an amusement park and saying: pay me so I can have fun in your park. That’s ridiculous. How you like to spend your time ingame is up to you, but don’t charge other people for it.

- I’m not a master tailor yet. So the only prices that I’ve modified by hand are for those up to Casual III. I can very well imagine myself increasing the prices of the exotic leotards and such once I actually get there.

As for the spreadsheet, thank you all for the compliments. I’ll see if in the next version I can include a general multiplier as well as one based on level. I have another good idea for it as well, but I’m not certain yet how workable it is, so you’ll just have to wait and see.

- A. Kimusume

Seeing prices like 1870cr for an Exotic Leotard, there must be something inherently wrong. If tailors would charge such low prices, there'd be no sense in the profession since you'd barely make any profit, because I can tell you that clothing decay will be slow once it works, and stuff will only decay when worn. Anyway, my spreadsheet ain't as fancy as yours, but I'm factoring in other stuff like maintenance and travel costs. Applying all skill modifiers and maintenance to the end cost, the minimum would be 2500cr for the same leotard. And that price is calculated by only charging 66% of the market value of the resources.

Anyway, I think such a spreadsheet should help to define a minimum price, but not the endprice. In my opinion, tailors should price their items based on average market value, hassles to make, wantedness, running expenses and what do I know.

- The only comments I’ve had from customers on my prices were that I’m charging too much.

They ALWAYS claim that! They want to pay as low as possible. Someone wanted an exotic leotard from me, I told her 13k as price, then she tried the guilt trip on me with stuff like "Do you even care for your customers", "A friend can get it for me for 8k" and so on, naturally totally full of spelling error because it was a big boobed dyslexic 13yr old idiot, but you get the idea.

- Next to basing prices on resource I also base it on tailoring level, complexity, factory stacks, demand, etc. It's all explained in the spreadsheet.

Yeah right. sub-2k for a master tailor shows how good your calculations are.

- Even at my supposedly low prices I’m hardly selling a thing. While I attribute that more to there being a very low population on Rori it does show that I can’t start charging even more, because I would only sell less. In fact, I’m considering lowering my prices to sell more. I just don’t have the market for higher prices.

As Novice Tailor I travelled to other planets to fill bazaars. Do one gnort missions and you have a two way ticket fully paid.

- Money isn’t the only return we get for our items. There’s the UXP bit, which at this stage in my development seems far more important then the credits I use for nothing other than paying for my harvesters. And there’s the thing that’s even more valuable to me: making other players happy and seeing them look good in my clothes.

UXP wont pay your skill trainer, nor your maintenance fees, nor will it finance your future spaceship.

- I craft clothes because I think it is fun. I don’t see crafting as a job that needs to be rewarded, I do it because I like doing it. Why would I charge customers for my fun? Try going to an amusement park and saying: pay me so I can have fun in your park. That’s ridiculous. How you like to spend your time ingame is up to you, but don’t charge other people for it.

Your fun and ignorance for a market contributes to a failing economy. If people would have the same ideas like you in RL, I could get my Dodge Viper SRT-10 for 2500 dollar and my future Dual Opteron for 200 dollar.

Well, these are my comments and opinion to that.

AND TO SOE: GET A GODDAMN BETTER FORUM SOFTWARE, I'M SICK OF CORRECTING HTML ERRORS THIS **edit** EDIT BOX INTRODUCES ON ITS OWN!!!

They ALWAYS claim that! They want to pay as low as possible. Someone wanted an exotic leotard from me, I told her 13k as price, then she tried the guilt trip on me with stuff like "Do you even care for your customers", "A friend can get it for me for 8k" and so on, naturally totally full of spelling error because it was a big boobed dyslexic 13yr old idiot, but you get the idea.

I stated it in response to the statement that people were telling Popollo that he was charging too little. By that reasoning, seeing as my prices are apparently lower than even his were, I should have even more people tell me I'm charging too little. But instead all I get is people telling me I charge too much. So much for that theory.

Yeah right. sub-2k for a master tailor shows how good your calculations are.

My calculations are right I think (and if not, tell me how to improve them). It's just my base values that you disagree with. So change them to something that you do find acceptable. For instance, just changing the "Level Price" value to 100 will get rid off all those sub 2k master tailor prices. And if you change the "Factory Stack Price" to 100 and the "Complexity High Price" to 500 I think the prices are much more in line with what most people feel they should be. Those just aren't my prices.

As Novice Tailor I travelled to other planets to fill bazaars. Do one gnort missions and you have a two way ticket fully paid.

And as a Novice Tailor I'm staying on the same planet and fill the bazaar there. Like that I don't have travel cost to put into my prices, keeping them low. And doing a mission to find your tailoring market really defeats the purpose, doesn't it.

And tell me, how exactly did you get to Master Tailor in such a short time? Don't tell me you actually grinded there (which is the only way I see that you could have gotten there that fast). And tell me then, how did you pay for that grinding? By gouging your customers and have them pay ten times your cost in resources?

UXP wont pay your skill trainer, nor your maintenance fees, nor will it finance your future spaceship.

No, selling my clothes pays for skill training and maintenance fees. That UXP comment was in response to wanting some value return for your 'work'. And why would a tailor need a spaceship for their work anyway? Even if you need one then I've got that covered as well. In the first place I am making a profit and in the second place I've got a number of friends that I'm working together with on all luxery items (like a spaceship, vehicles, mounts, houses, etc). Besides, we have a whole year to get together the money for a spaceship. Who knows, one of my friends (or even myself) might even learn how to make them ourselves, bypassing a lot of the cost to begin with.

Your fun and ignorance for a market contributes to a failing economy. If people would have the same ideas like you in RL, I could get my Dodge Viper SRT-10 for 2500 dollar and my future Dual Opteron for 200 dollar.

What failing economy? The economy works fine for me. Maybe your vision of the economy doesn't work. I work in RL to have fun ingame. I don't work in RL to work ingame in the hopes of also squeezing a little fun out of it. This is a game… get over it. In RL you can't spend a few days and get the skill to make your own Dodge Viper, in the game you can (providing they had Dodge Vipers ingame).

And in all this ranting on my prices, not a single suggestion for how to improve the spreadsheet. Thank you very much.

Well, at least I was right about people being more interested in flaming me than in offering helpful suggestions.

- A. Kimusume

I certainly hope you're not selling your items for the default prices that came up. My Grand ball gowns and Grand Healers robes are 3 times what you're charging, and I'm still cheaper than the other Master Tailors on my server. (Starsider)

What's up with charging 2.5 credits per resource for some of them? Aren't professionals out to make a profit? 10 credits per resource is reasonable on all items, I charge as much as 20 for the rare gems / hides.

Overall, I think the prices listed are far to low, and you're hurting the profession by listing them at what they are. 4650 for a flight suit is cheap enough, and 5710 for a Robe of Honor is a price that I've never had anyone even flinch at.

Just my thoughts.

-KalTheo Klepto
Finally aMT on Starsider!

Ayane-- cool spreadsheet!

My one concern in looking it over is the way you account for factory made items. You count the "stacks", where as I would count the total number of items. For example, for pantaloons, you count two stacks and charge for those, where as I would count 5 components that must be factory made, and charge for each one. My reasoning is that the number of components per stack likely goes up (haven't actually looked); it certainly can vary within a schematic.

All other things being equal, a factory takes longer to produce 3 items than it does to produce 2. I have to wait longer for the completed items, the factory requires more energy and more maintenance. I think this should be passed on to the customer a little more accurately.

But, it's a pretty minor quibble

And don't let the cries of "Undercutter!" get ya down. I've recently been called that, but I make a darn good profit without trying to wring every last credit out of my customers- except for those who actually LIKE cloaks...those I'll wring (would you believe, I give a discount to people who want them in colors other than brown, black or white?)

What failing economy? The economy works fine for me. Maybe your vision of the economy doesn't work.

An economy where someone makes 2k and more within 15minutes and "exclusive" items as master tailor items go for less than 2k, it's failing for me. You're contributing to this.

Well discussing over this is a lost cause, just as it was in beta.

I'm done.

TripleDES :
Well discussing over this is a lost cause, just as it was in beta.

I think fatalism like that is far more damaging to peoples enjoyment of the game than low prices ever will be.

KalTheo:
What's up with charging 2.5 credits per resource for some of them?

That's my way of charging down on very generic resources. Metal is very generic and as such very common and inert petrochemical is more common than polymer as well. Overal the .5 difference isn't going to make too much of a difference, particularly since I'm rounding down to the nearest multiple of 10 anyway.

KalTheo:
Aren't professionals out to make a profit?

Maybe I'm not a 'professional', but no. I'm not out to make a profit (even though even at these prices I still do). I'm out to have fun and make people happy with my clothes.

JennyDragon:
Ayane-- cool spreadsheet!
Thank you Jenny.

JennyDragon:
My one concern in looking it over is the way you account for factory made items. You count the "stacks", where as I would count the total number of items.

My original thought there was that the cost of the components themselves is already accounted for and that the difference in stack counts is too small for that to matter (I think it's either two or three items).

But you're right. And for the next version I'll see if I can turn that from stack count into identical item count. For calculations it doesn't matter, I just have to change the numbers in that one column.

JennyDragon:
And don't let the cries of "Undercutter!" get ya down.

Oh, don't worry about me there. It takes a lot to get me down. And as long as I'm having fun and still making a profit it's all fine with me.

I'll probably work on the next version this weekend… don't know if I'll finish it then too.

- A. Kimusume

I base my pricing solely on customer demand and the time it takes me to craft a particular item, nocredits perresourceor rigid price per tier level. When I first get a new tier, I make someitems and toss them on my vendorswith a price. If after a couple days they get snapped up and the demand seems to be high, I raise the price. Of course, just because my ribbed shirts sell like hotcakes at 500cr doesn't mean they'll eventually hit 5k a piece, that's where my time comes in. They are easy for me to make, no having to click crates for identical components forwhat seems like hours. I'm sure my method will come as a shock to many a tailor, but the whole time I've had my shop open, I only had one person complain my pricing was to high. My repeat customers certainly don't have a problem with it at all. Also, I honestly feel that my presence in the store helps keep me afloat where others have already failed. There are other tailors in my area who have prices way lower than what I have. I also never see them around.I don't badmouth anyones pricing structure and expect the same in return. . Sure, I can run around all day looking for the cheapest deal on a probot or solar generator. Instead I head to my personal architect or droid engineer for any of my needs. I know I'll get what I want, how I want it, when I need it. I'm willing to pay extra for their services. If the time comes where I can't turn a profit for my high tier items(yes I play a tailorfor the joy of seeing happy customers deckedout in a dream outfit, but I also don't want to be a pauper ^_^), I have other interests that I can pursue. But I'll be the best dressed gimp carbineer out there, cause after all the work I put into reaching master(when I finally do reach it) theres no way I'll surrender those skill point. ^_^

"That's my way of charging down on very generic resources. Metal is very generic and as such very common and inert petrochemical is more common than polymer as well."

Just because they are "generic" doesn't mean they cost any less to harvest. A harvester costs the same if you're pulling up generic or rare materials. There's no reason at all for "charging down on very generic resources".