Tailor Archive
Thread: Brainstorm New Business Models!
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Mystyrys
Sat Aug 07, 2004 3:05 pm
#1
Wooo, okay. It's pretty grim out there folks. Vendor item limits are coming. Whether they keep it at the 110 per vendor at master level or not remains to be seen.
In preparation for completely dismantling my old way of running my tailor business (average 2000-3000 items in stock at all times - wide variety in colors and at least a few of each item we can make as well as a seriously brisk business in tailor crated components) I have been bashing my head on the desk for new ways to still have fun running a tailor shop. I do not want tohave to sit on top of the vendors to keep them full nor be buried under tons of emailed customer orders. I'm a casual player. I simply do not have the free time to sit in my shop for hours on end doing private sessions or my workshop cranking out custom orders and arranging for pickups and deliveries. Running the vendors was what was fun for me.
But after this weeks' stockroom rollover and relisting that many items yet again; I had already decided a few days ago to alter the way I run my shop. I was going to reduce stock on hand anyway. Not as drastically as 110 oer vendor, but still, I was downsizing. I just hadn't figured out quite how or what to do yet though. I don't have time to play hanging out in cantinas and around starports waiting for face-to-face customer orders. Nor do I want to babysit the bazaar. (which will be a nightmare zone of overstock being dumped as soon as this nerf hits live)
So. What are some ideas for running a fun and viable tailor business within these new limits on vendors?
1) Specialize: Be the best stocked Jewelry Shop in town. Or Shoe Store. Or Accessoires Only Store. (Belts, Hats Gloves, Shoes, Jewelry, Backpacks) Dresses Only. Etc. Stuff like that there.
2) Tailor Partnerships: Two or more tailors, setting up vendors in one shop, and each vendor specialize, covering the full spectrum of tailor categories.
3) Merchant/Tailor Partnerships: Master Merchant(s) set up a Tailor mall and provide vendors for several tailors. Whoesale to retail. Walmart it.
4) Tailor Warehouse: Crated components or clothing only. Sell Black Gunman's Dusters, Red Exotic Leotards, etc., by the crate to pure Merchants, Guilds.
5) Tailor Shop v1: Tailor on duty during set business hours. Personal service. Basics inBlack & White & Red only available on vendors. All other services providedby thetailor on duty or by mail order and pickup/delivery.
6) Tailor Shop v2: Same as above, only no vendors at all.
7) Bazaar Sales Only: Crates of hot sellers on hand, visit a bazaar terminal as needed to keep 25 items listed as much as possible.
8) Cantina Travelling Salesman: Door to Door Salesman. Become a regular at a few cantinas, or just one, and provide custom order services, especially for entertainers.
9) Travelling Tailor: Carry some of everything, keep your title on and be a wandering Gypsy Tailor. Maybe set up a Merchant tent in a new place every week.
Hmmm. Any other ideas?
Wire3k
Sat Aug 07, 2004 3:39 pm
#2
Yeah, my new business model is hitting the cancel account button - on all three of my accounts.
Sorry - even if I totally gutted my shop, 110 per vendor or any other assinine number they pull out of their rumps is still not enough for any great variety in what is sold.
As for the customers - say every one of us did this - who in their right mind wants to spend the amount of time it would take travelling from small shop to small shop?
Many of my sales have always been impulse buys - they come for one thing - and usually leave with a LOT.
Nope - 500 PER VENDOR is the absolute bare min I would even consider trying to adjust too - and that's too restrictive, but I could probably live with it - don't really want to - but I'd manage to cope.
We aren't going to see that.
It was a nice ride while it lasted.
BTW - anyone want to take over a website?
ArthurDentOnBria
Sat Aug 07, 2004 3:51 pm
#3
Here is something to consider. What is to become of all the goods from people who are either (a) quitting or (b) no longer have the vendor capacity to hold all the goods they currently have in stock? I'd imagine that these goods will mostly either be given away or sold very very cheaply right? And since there will be a lot of people at the same time having this very same problem how is that going to affect the economy? owch is all I can say.
Also, for those using the vendors as storage, or those simply wishing to try to store some of what is now "excess goods", I'd imagine those folks are going to try to use every trick in the book to aquire more storage right? Well as we all know this is actually pretty easy to do. You either get the help of people not using their lots, or you go the cross-server lot trading route right?
So impact on the game? Again, I'll just sum it up in one word: owch
Here is what I'd have to do if I was to remain playing swg. I'd have to relist 900+ items in my vendors. I'd have to spend a ton of energy trying to sell them for virtually nothing (while everyone else is doing the same) just so that they don't poof on me. I wouldn't be able to make any new products for over a month (since I couldn't list anything new in the vendor, being over the limit). I'd be unable to generate any substantial revenue for over a month, then I'd have to redo my template somehow which would mean giving up one of the professions that I currently have, either that or somehow try to run a shop with 120 item total limit, split between both bio engineering and tailoring. And I'd have to do all that... why? Just so I can continue playing the game and having less fun than I'm having right now? Uh uh, aint gonna happen. The only decision I have to make right now is do I go "100% gun bunny" or do I simply cancel my account and walk away from swg completely. Probably the latter.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 08-07-2004 04:08 PM
Lana
Sat Aug 07, 2004 9:54 pm
#4
I could live with the 150 item cap I thought they originally had planned, on my 5 vendors, but not the 90 items each I will get with this latest change.I love the fact that they plan to get rid of empy vendors, and remove them from the map,but this item limit is just suicide for this game. None of the above options, while creative, sound particularly fun and why play if its not fun ? My customers appreciate the variety of styles and colors I carryand I refuse to become a black and white tailor. The combat system in this game is not enough to keep me playing as a "gun bunny" either. Besides, give it a month or so, all the crafters will have quit, good luck finding armor, food, weapons or clothing. I just dont know what they think they will accomplish with this. The "cancel account" button is the only option I will be using if this happens.
Sashahh
Ahazi
Tailor since release
Alliaya
Sun Aug 08, 2004 4:33 am
#5
Well folks, i've been thinking about this long and hard for the last couple of days. I've revised my business plan, just as some of you have. I'm dropping out of the tailoring business completely. I've been working way too hard in this game. I just recently got CoH and have been playing that alot the last week. There are no crafting professions, no entertainer professions, no houses, no vehicles, no actual storage, no actual loot drops (unless you count enhancements and inspirations), no weapons, no armor. All you do in that game is run around grouping w/ folks and killing things. Either in random hunts or running missions. You don't get any money, persay, you gain "Influence" which you can use to purchase enhancements and inspirations from NPC "vendors". While the game is very different from swg, i've been having a blast. Been wondering why that is?
Well, this vendor limit made me realize why that is. I love crafting, I love being a merchant. I am stick of spending most of my game time running around restocking vendors, clearing out my mail box, paying maintance, mining resources, tracking sales......it's too much like work. i'm paying SOE $30 a month, (two accounts) to spent my time in game working a job. Not interested in doing that anymore. I think these limits are utterly ridiculous, but they have given me an excuse i can live with for closing my shops. I'm gonna keep tailor, b/c i really don't want to pay someone else for clothing, but i'm dropping merchant and closing my shops. I may, occassionally sell a few things here and there on the bazaar, but that's it.
I'm spending my limited skill points on some combat professions, and i'm gonna just run around killing things, either w/ random groups, or running some missions. I'm not gonna work for this game anymore. Appearently they do not want actual businesses in this game, they do not support them, they are nerfing them, so i'm not gonna waste my time trying to find a way around it, not gonna waste my breath begging them to change their minds. If they don't understand how important we are to this game after a year, if they don't realize how unique this game is b/c of all the "support" professions, then i don't care anymore about helping them to see our importance. They created these professions, so they should understand, they don't, that's obvious, so i'm not gonna fight it anymore.
My new business plan, make clothes for me and go hunting in style. Anyone else out there want clothing, well, go find a tailor or master it yourself, you are no longer my concern. It's been fun while it lasted and i take great memories away from this experience. I'm not going to become a bitter and resentful player, i'm gonna do in this game what it was before it became work, i'm going off to have fun! 
Just wanted to say thank you to all of you here on this forum who have been sooooo sweet to me and supportive of my effort to work my way up to master tailor and master merchant, it's been a blast and hope to still see those of you on Tarquinas every now and then! *wink wink* good luck Pink One! 
This is your friendly neighborhood Tarquinas Tailor turning her sign in the window around to say "Closed for business." By the way, i'm not going to rock bottom my prices. I might leave my vendors up a few days, announcinga going out of business sale, but then i'm just going to quietly delete them w/ any items still left in them. Then, i'm going to buy myself a nice new big gun and go kill some of those dam* monkey things on Naboo!
Mystyrys
Sun Aug 08, 2004 5:29 am
#6
Sadly, I have to agree on many points made here. This drastic change to the merchant profession completely ruins the fun of the game for almost everyone; merchants and customers. Those championing the changes are few. Yes, we are deliriously happy empty vendors will go off the global map and be deleted if abandoned (Though anyone who knows in advance they will be gone RL for more than 2 weeks will have to empty the vendor, find storage for their merchandise, and close shop till they come back? Emergencies? PC troubles? Gone 2 weeks, it'sALL deleted?Argh.) The vendor to skill level issue, specifically those who have vendors, then dropped all or most merchant skills? That's a volatile ethics issue. Not going there.
It was fun at first. Working my way slowly up to Master Tailor, setting up a shop, helping customers, eventually moving half a dozen times... but I had already decided days ago that running a full service tailor business was taking far too much time and work and wasn't fun anymore. I have been a Master Tailor with a shop in my guild's city for 11 months now, and despite not selling BE clothes, I have done fairly well and have regular traffic and lots of repeat customers. It just takes far, far, FAR too much time to keep the vendors stocked at those levels, factories running, handling all that vendor spam mail, scrounging for affordable resources, storage for everything, etc. It's just mind-boggling the micro-managing needed to "play" a merchant-tailor. Bah. Done with it.
I have chars on other servers for variety in professions and game play. I do not want to drop tailor nor merchant on my main char. I already do lots of other things in-game with her; city and guild things, hanging out with friends, stuff like that. I want to have enough time to do more of that. There's a very intriguing role playing adventure in progress on Intrepid - "The GF5Q" quest event - and I wanted to participate but simply never could steal enough time for it due to having to tend to merchant tasks. So I've been wracking my brain for a new business model to still have a tailor shop but one that is still fun to operate and not take so MUCH time to manage it all.
The nerf to the vendor limits forces the decision on stock limits. But there's still a lot of variety open to just how and what to stock and in what kind of venue. So I came here to get some help coming up with ideas. I still have fun in game. I don't want to quit. I don't want to quit being a tailor or merchant either. I just want to find new ways to still have fun doing it.
Gyopi
Sun Aug 08, 2004 7:23 am
#7
Well, *if* I stay (which I doubt right now) I will probably just keep the vendors for special orders and have it bark out that if the customer wants anything to send email with the order to Momoko. I will leave the orders on the vendor for them to pick up.
Unfortunately, I have been burned out for a very long time now. Every time think I might recover something happens to make things worse. 
captenjonny
Sun Aug 08, 2004 9:05 am
#8
Why new business models? We HAD a perfectly good business model and like rats in a caged expereiment we have to develop something new. I enjoyed being a tailor but I agree with the vendor nerf i will end up doing one of two things in my business model. Where my Tailor was the money maker for my gunbunny account they will switch for a time. I believe the vendor nerf will (short term) put a glut of cheap clothing into the market. After a few months players will change the way they buy clothes. They will quickly tire of searching limited merchant after limited merchant and, just to save time, will place custom orders. (Of course this assumes that the devs will stay with thier plans to make 0 level items unequipable)
Option 2 is to quit. I would miss the game but the only way to lessen the continuing string of disappointemetns coming out of SOE would be to leave. I hate to have to go out looking for another game, but to continue to support this kind of nonsense is problematic for me.
Mystyrys
Sun Aug 08, 2004 9:31 am
#9
*sigh* Okay. Nevermind. I guess it's too early to plan ahead. The mood is too glum.
One note ofslight amusementI found on a post in the merchant forum. With only 110 or less items allowed per vendor, we'll never have to tell or mail someone to please use the next items button ever again. There's a hidden silver lining. 
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