CUEmu - Thread Posts

Otentu

Wed Feb 04, 2004 6:28 am

My alt, a soon-to-be Master Merchant, has been considering some new lines of business. If I was to obtain the necessary tissues from a BE and ALL resources, including component crates, necessary for clothing, what would be fair compensation for the hiring of a tailor (any level, not necessarily master) to create BE-clothing for me?

- Split the merchandise in some way (50/50, 60/40, etc)?

- Hourly rate (if so, how much)?

- Flat-fee (ditto)?

- Other suggestions?

Thank you

Jaela

Wed Feb 04, 2004 7:51 am

#2

Not to sound negative or discourage you ,,but I wouldnt personally consider an offer such as yours since I have my own shop well established, happy with my sales level, and really dont want a non-tailor competing with all the rest of the tailors on the server , including me.

What might even be a better idea, is to sell tailors crates of be tissues ,,ie,,buy in large quantities and sell individualy for a profit. That is really what my idea of what a merchant can do best. Crates of be tissues can be expensive for a new tailor and since there are several different types of tissues its a fairly large investment to begin selling be tissues for a new tailor. And once you have a few tailors buying tissues from you, the only challenge will be is to maintain your mark-up,,

NJ62

Wed Feb 04, 2004 8:34 am

#3

I'd have to agree with Jaela. At least for me, I want to work on my own schedule, and have my own style, not just churn out clothing at someone else's direction. My name will be on every article of clothing, and I'll get tell hell about every item. So it's all the hassle, none of the control.

n'Jessi
former correspondent, former player
All your hawtpants are belong to me.
www.swgtailor.com
PLEASE REGISTER FOR THE SWGTAILOR OFFSITE FORUM (IMAGE DESIGNERS WELCOME TOO)

Sunikka

Wed Feb 04, 2004 11:12 am

#4

I'm thinking that since you will already be in business with a tailor (you'll be obtaining from a tailor the component crates necessary for clothing ) you mighttry to work out an arrangement with that person...

But to answer your question, I believe a fair compensation for such an arrangement would be to split the merchandise, with the split dependant upon whether you supply ALL the resources or just the BE tissues...

If I were you I wouldn't bother supplying ALL the resources including components, etc., unless the tailor you're working with is a novice just starting out and would need you to... personally I run heavy harvesters and have several hundred thousand units of resources stockpiled... and when I run components I usually run up to 1000 at a time... having someone supply me with the piddly resources to be used would be more trouble than it's worth... not that I'd ever consider an arrangement like this - I'm perfectly content with my little business as it is...

I'm interested to learn how this all turns out for you... when you do find an employeewould you come back and tell us about the arrangement you made and how it worked out for you...? Good luck finding an employee...

Otentu wrote:

My alt, a soon-to-be Master Merchant, has been considering some new lines of business. If I was to obtain the necessary tissues from a BE and ALL resources, including component crates, necessary for clothing, what would be fair compensation for the hiring of a tailor (any level, not necessarily master) to create BE-clothing for me?

- Split the merchandise in some way (50/50, 60/40, etc)?

- Hourly rate (if so, how much)?

- Flat-fee (ditto)?

- Other suggestions?

Thank you

donnah42

Wed Feb 04, 2004 2:16 pm

#5

The only way I'd consider such an offer was if the merchant shop was on a different planet than my store, if they delivered the tissues and picked the finished products up at my place, and paid my regular BE clothing price (with no more than a 20% discount) then marked the price up to whatever they wanted to sell it for. But then again I probably wouldn't do it anyway because I don't need the money. You'll probably have more luck with a lower level, newer tailor who is still working on becoming established.

If you were looking for a straight split-the-price deal, where you gave them the credits after the sales, I'd say 70/30 or even 80/20 would be more fair. It's not just about the material cost, it's that the tailor is taking their time away from their own business (or their own free time) to do something for you.

I'm not sure if anyone would agree to anything other than payment up front. If they agree to let you pay them after the sales instead of on item delivery, it's much riskier for them than for you. If you pay them when you recieve the items, the risk is with you because now you have to sell the items, but since this is your business proposition that's really as it should be.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

Kara Vasa
----------------
Radiant Master Tailor
Mayor of Barsoom, Rori

RandDarkstar

Wed Feb 04, 2004 2:30 pm

#6

You're offering a tailor the chance to make you alot of clothes, taking up alot of their time for a bit of cash. To put this into perspective, let's say that the two of you agreed to 50-50 split on sales. Now the tailor is crafting her butt off to make half of what she normally charges. Oh but she doesn't have to pay for the BE tissues. SO? If she went out and paid the amount you are paying her now, she could get the full 100% of the fee.

It sounds more like you want to turn a tailor into your clothes factory. I've got millions and millions of credits. I've got no reason to be a tailor for profit anymore. For me, it's about spending time with each individual customer and making what they would like.

Message Edited by RandDarkstar on 02-04-2004 01:31 PM

Jame'thiel Dreamweaver

Master Tailor, Colonel - Rebel Alliance, Gorath Server

ArthurDentOnBria

Thu Feb 05, 2004 1:35 am

#7

Well, two comments. First, I think the type of arragement you're talking about would seem to be very very unappealing to me personally. You are not offering to take over the tailors operations, so presumably your shop would be in direct competition with whatever other shop the tailor happens to run, so from a financial standpoint, this enterprise would be of limited value to a tailor. But there is a more fundamental problem than that. Any tailor who has been around a while has plenty of money, and thrives mainly on the creative aspects of tailoring, so the idea of having someone say "here, sit down, load your crafting tools with this stuff, and grind me out 10 of every skill mod item that takes RFP, all in black, I'll pay you by the hour" just seems way too dreary a task. It's hard to imagine someone willing to do that, but who knows.

The second comment is that if you are a merchant looking to sell clothing as a regular part of your offerings, you might consider partnering with a tailor to take over 100% of the tailor's vendor offerings. To me, this is much more attractive from the tailors perspective, provided it's done right. With the vendor nerf coming out, tailors are being forced to either reduce their offerings, or expend more skill points into merchant, neither of which they want to do, so you definitely have an opportunity for a great relationship there if you wanted to do that.

ArthurDent - former Bio Engineer, Tailor, and Droid Engineer
Account cancelled 7/8/05 due to game breaking bugs in these professions that have been neglected for FAR too long. Last day July 27 2005
custom tailoring and droid orders welcome. "making Evil products since July 2003"
Achiever: 80%, Explorer: 60%, Socializer: 46%, Killa 13%

Otentu

Fri Mar 05, 2004 5:03 pm

#8

Well, this long-ago request has finally been resolved. And I wanted to post the results for those of you who were interested.

I play a Master Merchant with no BE or tailoring skills, but lots of vendors. So I came up with an arrangement or 3 to make some BE clothing, just to see if I could. First off, I made a deal with a Master BE - I would use his tissue and we would split the profits on clothes. I could've made an even better deal had I gotten the resources as I'd originally planned. But since he already had a tissue, and he was a friend, we simply decided to split the profit.

Second, I went hunting for tailors. Unfortunately, a disappointingly large number of them (around 5) turned out to be flakes, making promises and then disappearing completely. But I was able to find a few here and there that worked out well. I must say, those tailors that I was actually able to hook up with always turned out to be helpful, generous, and talented. Working with them was an absolute pleasure and spoke well for the profession as a whole.

The deal: I supplied ALL the resources and the tailor made the schematics, which I put in my own factory. With one tailor, I ended up paying 1k per schematic. With another, she did them for free and I gave her a some 15.00 clothing crafting tools and 99.99999% clothing repair kits as thanks (not that tailors really need these things but it seemed appropriate). I also did all my own research so I knew exactly what to ask for and which parts to provide. For example, I got a schematic and resource for metal fasteners and camo tissue, etc, then made all the sub-components, then brought the sub-components and resources to another tailor to make a schematic for an article of clothing I wanted.

In the end, because of limited tissue, I only made 1 of each type of clothing and only 1 color of each of those. So for the customer, the options were greatly limited. The win for me is that I can provide more products and can make gifts for friends. The win for the tailors (other than the price of schematics and gifts) is that I can refer customers who want something more, especially since my meager offerings don't compete with a tailor's much more varied inventory.

In the end, the experiment turned out to be a bit of a pain primarily because of unreliable contacts. But now that I have a good network of friendly service providers, I think this is a doable method that seems to benefit everyone involved.

Thank you to everyone who originally responded - the feedback was harsh at times but taught me a lot. It also gave me a much different (and much more respectful) perspective on the fine art of tailoring.

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