Tailor Archive

This afternoon I travelled to Coronet and while I was there visited the lovely Cantina where multiple talented musicians and dancers were etertaining a large crowd. I couldn't afford to tip all of them, so I started thinking, what if instead I made each of them a similar outfit, so they all matched as a band. I had in mind smocks or formal or dress shirts, rugged jackets, boots, gloves, and think striped pants for the men, and one of three options (blouse, jacket & skirt; or dress; or same outfit as non-restricted one for the men)for the women. But, when I looked in my pack I discovered I didn't have anywhere near the amount of hides I would need, so I hopped out to the bazaar and was rather shocked that hides are typically selling for around 10 credits each.

Who is selling these things? 10 credits each! And it didn't matter what sort of hides they were either, quality-wise. A pair of gloves uses 10 hides, plus other resources. That would make the base cost of a pair of gloves around 300 credits (10 credits per resouce). We need to make a profit, so add some to the top of that. How much are you selling leather gloves for? I don't believe I have ever sold a pair of gloves for over 300 credits. In fact, I think I usually sell them for 200-250. Maybe I priced my gloves too low?

I believe that the approximate hourly income is supposed to be 500 credits per hour. So, when I price my items I try to think about how much of one hour or more theitem is worth. I also base my prices on what sells. I might lower the price of an item if I see that no one seems particularly interested in it. If I notice that an item is flying out of the bazaar faster than I can gather the resources to make another one, I might check the galaxy to make sure that I am not priced significantly below the market.

Living in Doaba Guerfel(where there aren't normally pages and pages worth of stuff for sale) and not checking the planetary or galaxy-wide bazaar for resources, I never truly realized that this is how resources were priced. What I did know was that the things I had seen for sale were overpriced, in my opinion, particularly low-quality metals, fiberplast, and polymers. Whether or not experimentation results in a better product, I believe it does result in more experience so I try to experiment as often as I can, and the quality of the resource is important!

Has anyone studied exactly how many of a given resource they can survey in an hour's time? Perhaps if we can figure out how many units we can gather in an hour we can use the 500 credits an hour figure to determine what the price should be. Maybe 10 credits isn't too much for hides. I'm not sure exactly how many hides one can gather in an hour's time. But, for the sake of argument let's say that I can gather 100 hides in an hour by killing a variety of relatively easy creatures (butterflies, durnis, gubburs, scavenger rats, and paralopes). Wouldn't that put the price closer to 5 credits each?I'm no mathematician, so maybe I didthis figuring wrong.I might consider asking for more if the hides were of particularly good quality.

What do you think?

Ipack Ackawaien, Novice Tailor & Merchant, Doaba Guerfel, Corellia on Chilastra

Actually, I think a good part of it is that the people who price their resources reasonably (5/unit) sell their stuff pretty quickly. I'd pay 5/unit not to sit and sample or have to pay for every single type of harvester. The overpriced stuff sits on the bazaar. :-(

Remember that when you see something like hides at 10 credits per piece on the bazaar, odds are that you're not seeing that because they're selling at that price, but because they're *not* selling for that price.... (Check the "days remaining" figure too - I'd bet they've been sitting there a long time.)

Though I have seen a wide variety in local prices when going from city to city. Personally, I never pay more than 4 credits per hide, and have never had trouble keeping a good inventory of them.

I'd note in passing that I've found gloves and boots to be perennial good sellers, and that I can indeed charge more than 300 for them - I sell Leather Work Gloves at 400 credits, and they move pretty fast.