Tailor Archive
Thread: whats the point in selling synth cloth?
SO the FAIR price for a crate is like i think 3 or 5k or something.
But when i know how much money i could make USING THAT cloth to make outfits to sell on my vendor vs selling it I think to myself.. hey there is no point in selling a crate under 10k and even that is cheap compared to my profit if i used the cloth. I don't enjoy being glued to my factory so really i think i wont sell crates anymore, just make schimtics for people who have the resources.
I've recently gotten a really good supplier for my resource needs who sells to me at a great price, but with a certain minimum purchase. Which I'm happy with, but the upshot is that I've got tons of excess resources. So (my thinking went) why not convert a big pile of the excess into a big pile of components with a 1000-unit factory run? And then (my thinking continued) if I'm sitting on this big pile of components, why not put them up at a competitive price on a separate advertised "components" vendor?
Starting with a position similar to yours, I've thus sort of backed into being an active component seller....
I agree with this completely. While I understand that other professions need tailor made components I also can't justify all the headache involved in running them when I need them as well. I get a couple /tells a day asking for hundreds sometimes thousands (thanks to the cron grinders) of units of panels and cloth. I have two factories running practically non-stop just trying to keep up with my own needs. I can't imagine tying up one of them for nearly a full day just to make crates for people that will complain about my "ridiculous" price of 3k.
BindyBalaroo wrote:
SO the FAIR price for a crate is like i think 3 or 5k or something.
But when i know how much money i could make USING THAT cloth to make outfits to sell on my vendor vs selling it I think to myself.. hey there is no point in selling a crate under 10k and even that is cheap compared to my profit if i used the cloth. I don't enjoy being glued to my factory so really i think i wont sell crates anymore, just make schimtics for people who have the resources.
I don't mind making cloth for people if my factory is not doing anything, since I have lots of extra resources and I am always mining more. I do not sell schematics, though. First of all, I do not want to be in the schematic business because it would eat up a huge amount of time. Second, I got *really* tired of getting into arguements about the price of schematics. People would insist that I make a schematic for them and I do it for only 100-200 credits because that is how much the resources are worth (which makes no sense because I am using *their* resources!). Anyway, it is just not worth my time.
I totally agree, that's what goes through my mind every time I sell one, so I consider it a huge favor to sell someone a crate at 3k. It basically means a loss of about 10k-20k in potential clothing sales from that material by selling it.
What really kills me though, is that armorsmiths don't even want to pay that much. You get the armorsmiths that want free schematics for it and bitch like crazy if you try to charge them for it. Ugh, did I mention that I hate armorsmiths?
BindyBalaroo wrote:
SO the FAIR price for a crate is like i think 3 or 5k or something.
But when i know how much money i could make USING THAT cloth to make outfits to sell on my vendor vs selling it I think to myself.. hey there is no point in selling a crate under 10k and even that is cheap compared to my profit if i used the cloth. I don't enjoy being glued to my factory so really i think i wont sell crates anymore, just make schimtics for people who have the resources.
BindyBalaroo wrote:
I don't enjoy being glued to my factory so really i think i wont sell crates anymore, just make schimtics for people who have the resources.
The way I see it... It's a way to make a decent profit with little effort. These people buy in bulk and I get a minimum of 10k a sale. One guy asked for an order of nearly 100k for RFP. My part is simply finding the resources to fill the order, I make ONE thing, throw it all in the factory for the night, go to bed. In the morning, I'm that much richer. If time is money thenI'm making the profit that I'm content with.
What I don't seem to understand is your comment of being glued to your factory...Pop it in and run. It's not like you need the XP if you're already a Master.
Ok, but you take a single crate of syth cloth and you could make, what,6 dusters just for example, adding only a little bit of metal to it. 6 dusters = 30k for me, and that's just from a single crate of cloth. I can fully understand a lower level tailor selling synthetic cloth, makes a lot of sense to do it, but really, I agree with the original poster. Only reason to do it as a master is to "be nice". Makes no sense at all financially.
Tristine wrote:
The way I see it... It's a way to make a decent profit with little effort. These people buy in bulk and I get a minimum of 10k a sale.
I don't sell factory crates at all any more.. I did it to be "nice" a few times and it didn't work out well. I know how much fiberplast and polymer I use every week, and I know how many crates of RFP I need to have lying around. Selling crates on short notice would throw me all out of whack. One time I had someone ask me to sell them 16 crates of RFP that they needed "right that very minute".. well I only keep maybe 6-8 crates on hand.I wasn't about to sell them my entire stock,either. For me to be in the business of selling cloth, I'd need to harvest a whole heckuva a lot more resources than I do. It's not like I "need" money, so I just let the novice tailors sell the crates.
Besides, as a whole I found armorsmiths to be pretty d*mn rude. I'd do one a favor, next thing you know I'd be asked to run 4Km round-trip to make them some artisan schematic they needed (when I was MA). Another time, when I didn't know that trading schematics was working, an armorsmith asked me to fly to Corellia, run to his factory, and make him a schematic. He offered 10K, but after travel costs and time involved waiting for shuttles.. not to mention if I died on the way.. ugh, no thanks. Not saying all were rude.. but I found that doing favors backfired more often than not.
Ri'a Ocoli, Master Tailor of Keren/Naboo/Kettemoor
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Ugh, did I mention that I hate armorsmiths?
Oh, thank goodness, I thought I was the only one in the grip of serious armorsmith resentment right now! 
But, to be on-topic, I recently raised my prices on snynth crates, and will only be selling a few at a time on my vendor. It's just too much of a hassle, and I'm sick of being yelled at by armorsmiths because I won't sell at a loss to them, or because I won't go to the middle of nowhere on Talus to deliver, or whatever.
I'd say that about 85% of the rude customers I've ever had have been people wanting synth. So I am just cutting that headache out of my gametime. I have a few select regulars that I'll still run larger batches for at my old price, but they're a special exception, because they're the few synth customers that are nice and pleasant to work with.
Whereas when I was primarily harvesting my own stuff and/or buying it piecemeal on the bazaar, I had much the same attitude as the "opposing faction" in this thread, more or less wanting to keep it for myself since I'd be using it up quickly.
It's not really a matter of harvesting or not harvesting for me. And it's not a matter of inventory or capacity. I usually have so many crates lying around that it's just silly. My clothing factory generally sits with the output hopper full andso when I pull a few crates out, I'll make that many more of what I have the least of. So I have tons lying around and 75% of the time my factory is idle. Also I have huge stacks of fiberplast and petro lying around so that's not really it either.
Here's what it is: the value of a crate of synth cloth to me is a lot higher than anyone else would be willing to pay for it, so it's not worth selling. As mentioned above, the value that a crate of synth cloth has to me is probably around 20k.
The second part of it is that 50% of the Armorsmiths I've done "business" with have treated me like dirt, I'm completely unmotivated to serve them in any way. The last two asked me to stop what I'm doing and make them schematics for free, and one even wanted it delivered. So, in summary, if I meet a very nice Armorsmith that I like, and feel like doing them a favor, they get synth cloth for 2.5k/crate or a schematic of 1000 for 5k. But aside from that, I'm simply not motivated to sell them at all.
I don't like my factory. I don't like having to set it up, and the money it wastes if it isn't running. As such, my factory spends most of it's life as a deed on the floor of my storeroom. I make up the BE cloth crates with it, and occassionally basic compenents. I usually buy compenents from other people, so that my factory can remain as a deed.
It's really a personality thing. Some people think factories are great, and would rather sell components. And some don't. You can make quick money with factory crates, as they do sell faster than clothing, but if you don't like doing it, there's no real point.