Tailor Archive
Thread: am I right to be angry?
I've done it before myself, once or twice, back when I was an Artisan, before Practice Mode, when some people were stuffing surveying tools onto the market at one fourth of my price. And even then, it mostly was unsuccessful on my part, because they can do what I do - shovel more stuff in at my price, and watch it sell faster.
The one that very slightly annoyed me lately is that I keep Military Travel Packs artificially low in price because they give good usage XP (nobody ever takes off their backpack, for obvious reasons) and to give new people an incentive to start buying my stuff. Lately, a couple of people have been buying 'em up almost as fast as I can make 'em - not to wear, but to hang on the walls of their houses to store stuff. Which does me no real harm, and I do make money, so it's only a nagging little peeve - but I get no usage XP for stuffthat's hanging on the wall.
Maybe you didn't realize that there is a profession called Merchant. This profession is all about the buying and selling of products, typically at a profit. Now some of these items are made by the Merchant, but they can also be made by other artisans. Now, as a merchant, I find an item for sale on the Bazaar or on someones vendor and I think I can sell this item at a higher price, I will buy that item and relist it at the higher price. This in no way reduces the amount you receive or effects the price you think you should sell that item for. What you should have done, IMHO, was to contact the buyer and ask if they would like to buy more of the helmets at that price.
Laslo Horac
Tailor and Merchant
Visit my shop located just outside Moenia, Naboo, Kettemoor at 5556, -3732 for a complete selection and a 20% savings on our Bazaar prices.
H-Brand, where Quality meets Value
I think you're very wrong to be angry at the other player. After all, what he/she did is the very concept of the Merchant profession.
There is a lot of problem in the game with establishing value, and a lot of folks that don't understand basic economics and capitalism. I made my first 10k in the game by buying 50cr CDEF weapons and selling them right back at 120cr. They were in my possession for all of 5 minutes.
The big problem is that most players don't understand pricing to begin with.
Pricing should be done in 3 stages.
Material cost... how much did the raw resources cost? This should average 3-6cr per resource unit. One of the biggest mistakes most folks make in pricing is forgetting this. They harvest their own material and forget to work in the profit for having collected the base resource. The common figure is that they figure a cost of 1cr/unit, not the 3+ they would spend if they were buying it. The base COST.of an item should be 3x or 4x the base cost.
EXAMPLE OF BASE COST: Let's assume that Product X requires 16 Fiberplast and 4 Metal. Fiberplast should cost you about 3cr/unit to buy, and metal should run 5. This means that Product X costs 48cr (16x3) for the fiberplast and 20cr (4x5), for a total BASE COST of 68cr.
Then we have wholesale cost to consider... this is the price that the artisan sells to a merchant. This is 3x to 5x the BASE COST, depending on the skills of the artisan. (In game, this has little direct application for tailors, as there is no clothing decay.) Basically, a generic version of Product X would be at 3x... a version with a socket or two and a durability at 30%+ would be at 4x, and a version with 4 sockets and 50%+ durability would be 5x.
EXAMPLE OF WHOLESALE COST: This is the price you sell to merchants in bulk... NOT the price to the guy on the street. For Product X (with a base cost of 68cr), this means the wholesale price would be 204cr for the generic version, and more for the others.
Then you come to the SRP... Suggested Retail Price. This is what the merchant who bought your wares would sell for. It's what you should sell to the average Joe in off the street (you should never undercut the merchant or merchants carrying your wares). Basically, your wholesale price should be 60% of the SRP.
EXAMPLE OF SRP: Our generic version of Product X is wholesaling at 204cr. This gives a final SRP of 340cr (204cr divided by .60).
They are the ones taking a risk that they will be able to sell it quickly at the higher price. Your sale is guaranteed - you have the creds and your bazaar slot back. They have paid 20 creds to gamble that they can make 180. If it doesnt sell within 7 days they will either have to gamble another 20 creds - or drop the prices etc.
This happens to me a lot as i charge low prices in the bazaar and in my vendor for tailor items and harvesters resources etc. I am however VERY grateful when it happens as i have made my sale and MY profit is guaranteed. I can make a new item to go in the bazaar, get more xp for making it, keep a steady flow of goods going through and have cash to offset my costs. I might not be making 'uber' money - but i am turning over lots of items. I might sell 5 backpacks at 500cr as opposed to 2 at 1000 cr - so i am happy.
Let them gamble and take the risk.
When you make your item, put the price in the description.
For example: Swoop Helm - 1000 credits by Enen
Odds are if someone resells it, his potential customers will send you a tell asking for the helm at your price. I had the same issue you did and it stopped.
I wouldn't do this. Some people just dont like it when you put prices in the name. Almost everyone is OK with tags, but not prices. Remember that people might want to resell the stuff if they dont like it anymore after a certain timespan. Maybe not so important now, because they could resell it for the same price, but dropping average market value and future clothing decay stops you from doing so.
I use to sell alot of Bounty Hunter back packs on the bazaar for3k each and they used to sell within 24 hours, there was another Tailor that I see selling them at 1.5k so I use to buy his if I had any slots left on teh bazaar and sell them for 3k aswell.
It was easy profit and young Tailors need all the cash they can get 
Ekul-nah wrote:
This is simple. Make 10 more items just liekt aht one and place them on the bizzar at 20% less than his higher price. He will never sell the item because ppl will buy yours at the cheeper price.
I wish crafters would just figure out what they needed to charge and charge it, instead of deliberately researching someone else's prices and undercutting them. The deliberate "I'll price less than these folks so their items won't ever sell" attitude is rude, unnecessary, and even ineffective. (I'm not talking about using a few items as a loss leader to get people to visit your shop or start using you as their tailor.)
Many of your fellow crafters will notice if you're constantly undercutting. And some of them will remember when you come asking for training or any other type of help! It alsodoesn't really hurt the other person's sales that much. Their bazaar items may not sell as fast (though I have had items purchased from the bazaar when I knew that there were lower priced items of the same time posted), but you're probably not hurting their face-to-face sales or their vendor business.
Tailors in the same area aren't necessarily competition, many of us focus in different areas and on different groups of customers. Wouldn't you rather have friends in your local tailor community?