Tailor Archive
Thread: A question on consumer behavior..
seki
Master Tailor of Nashal
Valcyln
MasterJian wrote:
Sometimes I read these forums and I think to myself that I REALLY need to move.. I'm a Master Tailor based out of Nashal, Talus, and as far as I'm aware I'm the only Master Tailor on my planet currently.. There are some fairly busy days, but never anything like what I hear the tailors here talk about.. And with every passing day the no decay thing becomes more and more apparent as more and more of my regular customers just don't need clothes anymore.. I find that I do the best business when I travel to other cities, just stepping off the shuttle, and being bombarded with /tells.. Unfortunately, I could never get away with selling bustiers for 2k credits, I can barely sell them anymore at 1k in my area.. Everyone has them in a dozen colors already.. I do ok, and I'm not complaining, since I choose to stay there, at least for now.. But, when it comes to my pricing I really take demand into account more then anything else.. On Nashal, the lil city that no one seems to have even heard of, you have to.. I know my prices are lower then some on some things and higher then some on others, and I certainly hope I'm not undercutting anyone, but in my lil corner of the world, I have to do what I have to do to stay in business... And, I really don't want to move.. LOL.. moving is such a pain!! Perhaps I should have started on naboo or tattoine like everyone else.. Nahh..
seki
Master Tailor of Nashal
Valcyln
Speaking as the Master Tailor of Nashal, Chilastra, you're right. It's a lot harder to get drive-by business like you'll see in the sea of houses around Coronet or Theed. I think we may finally have a second tailor working up in town, but I can't tell yet. She's still in the artisan tree and not running a shop or anything yet. Still, I'll trade the open spaces and the lower crowding for non-stop business any day.
As for consumer behavior, I think it really does come down to two categories, but not bazaar vs vendor. It's service vs none. I've had people stop me on the street in cities on other planets asking if I have a shop. In every case where I've taken the few minutes to talk to them, I've only had maybe two shrug off Talus as too far to travel for clothes. Price never comes up in these conversations, so I think it really just comes down to accessability of the tailor. I might be 3 planets away, but I took the time to stop and talk and ask what they were looking for. At the same time, there have been days where I need to run in AFK mode for a while and set a msg along the lines of doing "X task" please mail any orders or questions. Those are the people who don't contact me twice (not all but more often that's the case, some still mail or come back later).
For me at this point, bazaar is a marketing tool. There is little chance of someone wandering across our town by accident - the no-build zone around Nashal is higher than the range on most missions.A lot ofpeople still don't understand or know about vendors on the map (I actually had one poor dancer fly to Talus and run to my shop from Tat after she saw my ad on bazaar because she honestly thought there were no Master Tailors on Tat - she had no idea about vendors let alone finding them on the map, and thought everything was sold via bazaar or hawked on the street). Everything I list on bazaar has the location of the shop and the addy for my website, and that is how I get the majority of my new business. The rest is still coming from friends and regulars who give referrals, but decay is going to slow that down eventually. I am PA'less and get a lot of orders from a few PA's who don't have tailors, and that too will stop once they eventually get their own.
At this point I'm pinning my future on BE enhancements. My prices are set with plenty of room to grow based on the power of the components I can get, so I only hope we get some form of decay before those too have flooded the market. IMO, as much as we and the BE's are looking forward to the BE's getting factories, it will be a mistake to put that in before decay.
Oh, I definitely sell on the Bazaar. But I prefer custom orders. I always did.
Since I've had it up to here with the designed-in limitations of player vendors, I'm surrendering my merchant points and closing up my vendors. In order to get any money back out of them, and in order not to have to (or want to) empty them manually, I've been tinkering with my pricing almost non-stop for the last two weeks. And what I've found is that I sell roughly the same number of items per night at any price, from 99 credits per master tailor item up to 10 credits per resource plus level multipliers. No, really.
Heck, I used to quote prices at around 7 credits per resource, just because I was doing OK on money and the higher prices offended me. Then my next two custom orders tipped me a few tens of thousands, enough to make up the difference beween what I quoted and what most tailors charge.
So yeah, I have to say that when it comes to tailoring, my experience is that it's all demand-based, not price-driven. When somebody wants a new suit, they don't seem to care what it costs. When they don't want a new suit, they don't seem to care how cheap one is.
If I'm not busy and have some spare material, I sell stuff in bazaar. I don't have that many customers (I sell maybe 20 to 30 items a day in average), and I have 3 or more items of each kind on my vendor, so sometimes I get some free time. I usually keep 2 advertising items on it, for the rest it's almost always the same kind of stuff that I sell. I always look for thegaps as well and sell accordingly, and if there is are dusters at 1500 but not black ones you can make sure I will put a black one for sale for more. And it works. In my area for some reason there is very little choice in bazaar so it's pretty nice for me, and it guarantees me a regular income.
And I agree, apart from a few people, most won't look at the price. I know that as a buyer on the other server I don't, because it's not always easy to find exactly what you want. And that's why I am a tailor, not to get money because I have plenty, but because I like seeing people get what they are looking for.
BradBradley wrote:
So yeah, I have to say that when it comes to tailoring, my experience is that it's all demand-based, not price-driven. When somebody wants a new suit, they don't seem to care what it costs. When they don't want a new suit, they don't seem to care how cheap one is.
I think this pretty much sums it up.. great post. :-)
"" 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!
I'm bumping my own thread, because I think this was a very good discussion.
Here are some observances from the past few days:
#1 -Price doesn't matter. My best customer to date spent over 40K in a matter of minutes, including multiple flight suits. I was amazed at how fast he kept adding to the list. I've more than doubled my net worth in the past few days from people dropping 10K and 20K at a time.
#2 - Convenience matters. If you can stand the stress, sell in town. It's not something I'd do every night, but I sold ~75K worth of clothes in a cantina Saturday night.
#3 - Selection matters. I have 300 items on my vendor and I think I need to add more. People seem to like coming in and just buying a whole coordinated outfit at once. I notice I sell a lot of clothes overnight that way (i.e. after I've logged for the evening).
#4 - Service matters, of course. Color matching seems to be a biggie (matching an existing item). Spending the extra time to give the customer exactly what they want, even when you are ready to pull your hair out.
Learning who your customers are, and what they want is the most important thing, IMHO. Are they bazaar shoppers looking for basic black or white? Keep the bazaar in one or two towns stocked with the more popular items. Make it easy for them to find what they are looking for. Are they dancers looking for anything but a fleshwrap so they stand out in the crowd? Maybe they are bargain hunters, who come in and browse 300 items and buy one 250cr pair of shoes (which is fine). Maybe they are clothes *lovers* who will buy and buy and buy as fast as you can make stuff for them. Maybe they are your neighbors who love to stop by every dayand see what's new. I'm sure there are a ton of other examples.
Anyhow.. it's been an interesting few days.. and I don't have to worry about maintenance on my shop and harvesters for quite a while now. :-)
"" 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!
Every new city I go to, I check to see what's *not* for sale and fill the niche. I keep a small list of places that never seem to have Item X listed. Then, in my travels, if I sould find X for sale at a low low price, I'll buy it and resell it where it's needed. Not only does this remove low pricing, but it also adds something fun for me to do while travelling. And 9 times out of 10 the item will sell where I bring it to.
Now if I could just get Importer/Exporter xp when I do this....
As for coustemer behaviour... I deal in large quantities of synth cloth and RFPs as my primary bread an butter. But my method of dealing with clothing has changed alot...
In the Crate business, I've discovered that the bazzar provides me a 0-1-all arrangement. People either buy 1 crate, or every crate I list. The more crates I list the less likely they are to buy all of them. If I list 5 crates, I'll sell 1 to one guy and the other 4 to a second guy. If I list 10, 3 people will buy 1 crate and the remaining 7 will go to another. Vendor sales are basically non-existant for crates. However, when dealing with someone personally, I always sell more. If someone pre-orders crates they ALWAYS order 10 or more. And they are typically repeat coustemers (Making up the majority of my repeat business). However, due to my vendors just munching my items of late, I've basically gone to pure bazzar sales.
As for clothing, everything is custom, and everything is made in a cantina, in a medical center,or near a shuttleport. I basically am playing the roving tailor because I'm pushing my medical skills (Which I'll probably drop on the road to master... Go fig.) I spend a lot of time wandering from med center to med center healing the wounded... But I also spend a lot of time on some of the more wild planets gathering difficault and rare materials for better medicines (Faster heals, more XP, shorter visits, happier victims... uh.. patients...) and spend some time in their cantinas. Since the have a lot of free time and nothing better to do (and a lot of built up cash) I'm able to sell clothes to these people. They most often have no idea what they want. They just saw a tailor and said, 'hey, I should et some new duds...' This leads to long conversations. Ironically 50% of them end up paying me double what I ask and the other half say 'I've only got 500 credits will you sell that swoop helm, leather gloves, decorative vest, stripped pants, and uniform boots to me for that?' in which I promptly laugh and offer the swoop helm... But it shows an interesting trend in the 'street tailor' approach and the risks incurred...
Then, in my travels, if I sould find X for sale at a low low price, I'll buy it and resell it where it's needed. Not only does this remove low pricing, but it also adds something fun for me to do while travelling. And 9 times out of 10 the item will sell where I bring it to.
Now if I could just get Importer/Exporter xp when I do this....
I do this as well. It makes the game fun, and also, I believe, makes me a better tailor since I get a feel for prices, demand, supply, and styles from around the galaxy and allows me to apply this knowledge to my own practice. Once you begin noticing patterns in the bazar sales you can quickly spot items that are either highly over or highly undervalued. Generally I prefer to make my own rather than import, but sometimes the prices are just so silly that I can't help myself. Like the other night finding a really nice Li'ku wrap for I think it was 500cr. I quickly snapped that up and resold it for 3k. It sold within 12 hours in another city. Occasionally, if I'm feeling just a bit "mean" I'll even buy something that is priced way too cheaply and resell it on the very same bazar from which I bought it, lol. In such cases I always wonder whether the tailor I bought it from is paying attention, and hoping that they are.
I do not have time to check bazaar prices! I barely am able to keep my own vendors stocked. In fact the vendors are quite low now but am waiting on more syn cloth.
I spend almost all my time tailoring, I get a ton of custom orders, plus now my wedding services are taking off and I have 2 more weddings coming up which I need to prepare for.
Busy, busy... I have been busy like this since day one. Even before I was Master Tailor. My favorite clients are wookies, guys that don't know what they want, and then females that let me dress them without a preconceived notion of what they want but they want something oringinal.
Take care all!