Tailor Archive

After reading numerous post about overcharging and undercharging, I want to get an idea of what everyone else is doing? I would never want to be the one everyone is complaining about so here are my questions.

(1) Should I be selling based on a per item or per resource?

(2) Based on your answer in (1), how do i determine the price per item or how do I determine the per resource?

(3) I am currently charging per resource at around 5c - 8c. Isnt the standard pricing for resources 3c per resource?

(4) What are other crafting professions charging?

Since you've read the other threads, you know you'll be hard pressed to get people to agree on the correct answer for you. Instead of looking at it the way you've asked, think about some other things first: Where are you basing your shop? What time do you normally play? Do you get your own resources or buy them? Are you happier playing a vendor owner or a customizer (meaning do you plan to do more sales by vendor or by doing custom orders while you're online)?

If you've lucked into a high-traffic area with no other tailors around, your prices will bear being higher, but if you're in a tailor heavy area or a low-traffic area, you may need to go a bit lower. If you're playing off-hours, you can afford to pad some since you'll be one of the few tailors available to people, but if you're prime-time only, again you're competing with every tailor on the server. If you're buying all your resources you'll have to charge more just to break even, since you will never buy resources as low as it costs to get them. If you're planning to restock your vendors when you log in and spend the rest of your time doing quests and hunting, you'll be hard pressed to get people to pay more for non-custom items on a vendor than someone standing in their shop making items to order.

Figure those things out first, then decide how you want to do your pricing. The main thing to remember is, no matter what you charge, someone else is going to complain about it. You can't avoid it. There will always be someone charging more who think's you are undercutting them or someone who charges less that thinks you're nuts. The upside is very little of this complaining actually goes on in-game, it's mostly reserved for here where people have the safety of doing their complaining about you from another server without ever actually meeting you. The few admitted pricing "griefers" who either buy you out and destroy if you're too low, or open up shop 3 meters away and charge half your cost are kind enough to brag about it here, so they're easy to avoid also.

I take my prices from the real-world approach.

(Cost of resources) x (Skill/Experience modifier) = Wholesale Price.

(Wholesale Price) / 0.6 = Retail Price

Cost of Resources = How much it would cost you to buy the resources (whether or not you bought them, or harvest yourself). Check the bazaar periodically for pricing if you are not buying your materials.

Skill/Experience Modifier = Most manufacturers in the real world use a multiplier somewhere between 3-5. Artiste' often go into double digits. I find 3 to be adequate for Novice levels and 5 to be adequate for Masters.

Wholesale Price = The price you sell to other merchants so that they may carry your goods. In a perfect world, you should never need Merchant/Business skills.

Retail Price = The price that the Merchant actually lists your ware at. (You should never undersell your merchant!)

If you give up running your own shop and just work through Merchants, then you can actually be a Master Armorsmith, Master Droid Engineer, Master Weaponsmith, and be able to make all manner of harvesters below large. How nice would that be?