I know someone else started the idea of posting their accounts and I was interested to see how much I sold per a month. So with the help of Merchants Friend I have produced a set of accounts for May. I guess I should start by explaining a little bit about myself and my shop.
History
Well I am based on eclispe server and I started the game in July 2003 my first profession was a tailor. It took me about 4-5 months to reach master tailor to start with I did not grind but as I got close to master I found more customers wanting colours that I could not make. So for business reasons I choose to grind the last 4 boxes to make master.
I started on tatooine as a player mainly selling clothes on the bazzar before joining my guild on naboo in a city. I started my shop with a few vendors and sold the basic clothes but at the time most of my sales came from the bazzar. In order to have a real player city my guild decide to move to tatooine so I moved my shop to near to bastine but kept a house in the guild city.
Being near bastine sales improved in the shop I could happly make clothes in the shop and deal with the flood of players at the same time. While the guild has moved on to lok and then to datooine I kept my shop on tatooine as I consider it my home. The shop as moved 3 times while on tatooine but never very far, once to give me more space for factories, and again just recent so I could be closer to bastine.
In the last month I also opened two vendors in the starwars mall, one of the oldest and one best malls and has a lot of customers. It is also near bastine which may seem a bit odd having my shop so close to the mall but they work differently as I will explain.
Shops and Vendors
My shop is called the emperial clothes store, its not by its nature an imperial store as you might think but being close to the imperial city bastine most of my customers where imperial. The shop currently has 4 vendors a misc resources and tailor cloth, SWG movie and theme clothes, pants, jacket and shirts vendor and gems, belts gloves vendor. I guess its quite obivious what each vendor stocks but I have to confess the tailor cloth vendor I use more as a stock room so selling items on it is a bonus. Of course all the vendors are listed on the global map.
The Starwares mall has two vendors the starwares theme vendor and the bio cloth and normal clothing vendor. What helps with the starwares vendor is the site has 20 other vednors which brings large amounts of people shopping for other items to view my stock as well.
Stocking is always a tricky problem but I believe its important to keep a good stock, each vendor has about 150 items which might not sound a lot but with 6 vendors thats 900 items between them. The key to my sales is keeping the stock up to date, I spend about 3 hours every night making and restocking the vendor. This is the only reason I can keep to 900 items, but their is also other reasons for this. I found that most people dont look beyond the first page, and certainly even less beyond page 2. The other point is the bulk of my sales can be covered by just 100 items i could have 3,000 items all listed in different colours however if I am only going to sell say the top 100 over time the items that dont sell well drift up to page 1. This would lead to sales dropping off, so I limit the vemdors but stock a lot.
Customers are important, being in the game so long I do have a lot of regular customers, I do custome orders, discounts and offer advice to these customers. Of course anyone coming into the store is treated with respect and I am always welling to help. I would guess my regular customers make up one third of my month sales.
The other important aspect to my sales is the shop display, I like to produce and change the clothes display once a month. I have a set of more static items that are not changed that often but 10-15 outfits that change monthly. I tend to stick to a theme, of course clothes from the movies are a popular choice but seaons and colours are a big factor. Currently the display is a number of summer oufit, my ideas are made up myself or ideas from other tailors and websites are a good source.
Accounts
The Basics
Total Credits Earned 3,520,900 *
Number of Unique Items446
Dates Spaned 31
Number of Unique customers 318
Number of Unique Vendors 7
Number of Unique locations 2
By Vendors
Starwares Theme Clothes 1,187,000
Starwares Clothes Bio and Normal 1,411,100
Pants Shirts Jackets and Dresses 286,500
SWG Movie and Theme Clothes 460,500
Belts, Hats, Gloves110,000
Bazzar 34,300
Misc Resources and Cloth31,500
Top 3 Items
Jedi shirt 27
Imperial Clothes25
Jedi Cloak 24
Averages
Number of Items sold a day14
Number of Cusomters a day 10
Credits per a day113,577
Notes
*This is not profit it is just sales it does not include the cost of raw materials, vendor costs, and shop rent.
I think is worth pointing out that the new starwares vendor have made a big impact in sales it was a new market for me and i suspect a lot of regular starwares customers where buying clothes as a one of. Its also worth point out that the 14 day trial has had an impact with many new players buying clothes.
Message Edited by Kirranas on 05-31-2004 04:36 AM
Kirrana
Master Tailor
Eclipse
Tatooine, Bastine
Emperial Clothes Shop
Waypoint -2011 -4172
hehe.