Tailor Archive

So lately I've been facing the quagmire of placing my tailoring shop. As everyone knows, your business will thrive or dive depending on where it is. Until then, I decided to just sell my stuff on the Bazaar. I will make two or three garmants, of multiple colors, and put them up on the bazaar. I usually make Black, white, maroon, pink, green, brown, grey, and yellow (depending on availability). For some reason yellow Wookie Jerkins were selling really well..regardless. So far, this is going EXTREMELY well for me. I'm wondering now if I should even bother with a shop.

So I guess I'm looking for other people's experiences. I'm based out of Bestine, Tattoine, Kettemoor. For those who set up shops, do you do enough business to warrant the cost of maintence on the building? I'm trying to be a pure crafter, not even having any combat skills, so running missions would probably never really be an option for me. I guess basically I'm just wondering why I should bother with opening a shop.

Comments?

Not bumping, just forgot to add my "e-mail me" option on this one

There are a couple of advantages to your own shop, but they're pretty subjective, really. The biggest is the ability to have custom fittings with some measure of privacy. Some of the most fun I've had was RPing fittings for people who needed the perfect outfit for X occasion. Second, it allows you to create your own categories of items through the use of multiple vendors. My shop has a vendor for shirts/blouses, pants/skirts, dresses/robes, and accessories. (Yes, I know the dress one is empty....this beauty pagent cleaned me out...) Finally, it allows me to display entire outfits for people to examine in game. Is it worth it? Well, it largely depends if your a RPer or not, IMO. If so, then you need the dood free zone. If not, then you're sure to do OK on the bazaar. :-)

Hope that's helpful.

I do both and quite well actually....Your own shop is definitly worth it

Not to mention you don't have a 3,000 credit price limit on your vendors.

Calama, aside from black dusters, which I believe should be 50k each, just on principle, what are you charging over 3k for?

Hmmmm, Gunman's Dusters, reinforced fiber panel crates, synthetic crates, usually any of my Field Wear IV items, Crested Battle Padding....I will also charge over 3k for cloaks when I get them, some other stuff too which I can't remember off the top of my fishead

Ah...had forgotten crates, and not hit IV's yet. Thought I might be horridly underpricing, but that sounds about on part with my own. Thanks!

Aye, I checked out your website, you've taken a different path than me so its hard to say if your overcharging. I personally don't think you should sell schematics so cheap but to each their own. You are on the lower side of pricing but if it works it works. Myself, I could charge lower but why should I when nobody complains of prices? If somebody doesn't want to pay 5k for a spec-ops duster I'll let them talk me down to 3500 or 3k. Afterall, I do tell them I have little Mon Calamaris to feed at home. IF that doesn't phase them I'll tell them how mad my wife will get at me if I give my clothes away and if THAT doesn't work then I goto my bottom price while grumbling that I'll have to just tell my wife that I left the extra money at the local cantina after a hard days work

Since I'll be running a cantina and alot of my clothes will be dancer orientated, I'm just using a room in the cantina (Naboo medium house) as a shop.

This is what I have done and I have made alot of credits doing it.

My store is in BFE...well actually half way between Anchorhead and Wayfar....literally on the route if you set a waypoint from one to the other. So I get alot of walk ins, which you wouldn't expect so far from town. If you don't want to put your store so close to town, put it on a main route to another town or toa themepark/dungeon.

Until recently, I stocked my store with tons of stuff, as well as placing the hot items on the bazaar. I priced my store items lower, as an incentive to get people out there. For example, a cloak might go for 2k on the bazaar (on my server we have several MT's now so they aren't quite as hot as on your server maybe), but its 1500 in my shop. And when people really want something and are in a hurry, they will pay top dollar anyway.

So I loaded up the bazaar every evening with bustiers, dusters, skirts, etc...and every morning logged into about 20-30k in overnight sales. The neat trick I did was price everything in my store with a 1 on the end. 2001, 451, etc. That way when I read my mail the next morning, I could see who shopped in my store and who bought from the bazaar. I wrote down anyone's name who made major purchases in my store, sent em an email thanking them and telling them to come again.

I now have a huge mailing list and people coming to my store from other planets. Some of my things are very inexpensive (cloaks perhaps), but the Master Tailor stuff is about the same as everyone elses. It's alot of work, but it's worth it!

Both.

Shop: I have a shop near Restuss, as close as possible to town in a directly that almost never spawns aggressive mobs, so walkins are definitely easy. On top of that, it's on a direct line to the areas that seem to spawn the most resources, so miners definitely wander in. But that's not what drives traffic to my shop. For one thing, when I interact with almost anyone, I ask if I may give them my card - and if they agree, I forward an email I sent to myself with directions to the shop, it's /waypoint, and the URL of my catalog. (www.infamousbrad.com/swg).

Why is it that I would never want to be without a shop? Not for the price; my most expensive item so far is 1200 credits.No, it'sbecause I flatly can not live with the 25 items for sale limit. I've got 3 vendor terminals running (Merchant) with about 260 items between the three of them, and may have to prune it soon if I don't get another level of Management skill, because I try to keep it to 100 items per vendor so it doesn't page. (Many people never figure out the Next Page button, it's too small and not set off enough from the blur of text around it.)

Bazaar: That being said, I always have 25 items on the Bazaar, unless stuff has sold since I logged in last - about 7 or so items in the other main town on Rori, and the rest in town nearest my shop. It's a good color selection of my best and best-selling items. And every single one of them has, pasted into the description, instructions that say something like, "Not exactly what you're looking for? Check my shop at /waypoint 5915 5195 or check my online catalog at www.infamousbrad.com/swg and email Brad." Thatis where I get most of my walk-ins from; the Bazaar is cheap effective advertising.

I do almost exactly what Brad does. Bazaar, vendor, in-person selling - all these techniques tie together and feed off each other.

My favorite "trick" is the Bazaar "advertising" item - a ludicrously overpriced item that just has ads for people to read and get your waypoint. Because of the 25 item limit, I can't really have a serious sales presence in every city in Corellia, but I can have an ad in each.

I only use one vendor myself, partly due to convenience for me, and partly because I think they're going to fix the ludicrously cheap NPC vendors soon, and probably set them to rates that will be backbreakingly expensive and punitive for tailors (as we generally need larger inventories than any other profession.) I put a Bone Armor Segment "sign" (another of my favorite tricks) next to my vendor reminding people about "next page." A bunch of them still don't get it....