Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Multiple shops, good or bad?
The benefit of having more than one shop is that you can spread out on several planets to get the local (lazy) customers. But you have to deal with stocking several shops so one shop might get out of items while the other is not.
I am not considering lot usage here. That can be solved.
I will have 3 shops open in a couple days, however, I noticed like a 25% increase in sales after opening the 2nd shop...location is to blame though...just my info...
It all depends on what your goal is. I can speak from experience to tell you that people are unlikely to go out of their way just to come to you, unless they have a very important reason to(my shop is on Tatooine). I'm perfectly content with having items stick around for months, because that means i can serve my clientelle to the fullest. I can do special requests if someone wants it, and still keep my vendor stocked with some of every weapon that I sell. To me this is far more important. I like having a smaller group of customers to which i can be very reliable. Having just one shop in a relatively remote location, also allows me time to do other things as well (like running off to Dathomirfor 3 daysto help someone with the story arc 
) since i don't have to be constantly resupplying factories.
However, if you are looking to be very biggest supplier of guns in the galaxy, and want to spend 24 hrs every day supplying factories, as well as having several people helping you just to keep up, that's fine too. In that case, you will definately want to open more shops, especially in the major traffic areas (Coronet, Theed, AH/Bestine).
It all depends on how much you want to do. Just remember a couple things before you commit to this.
- Keep the vendors stocked!! - nothing will turn people off to you faster than continually going out to your vendor only to find nothing there.
- Weaponsmiths get the worst burnout - no matter how much you love crafting, you will eventually get sick of it and need to at least take a break. Having a smaller operation makes this easier, and the burnout isn't quite so bad. If you go the several major shops route, expect to never want to craft again within a month or two. That's the price of doing business in high demand items.
Good luck with whatever you choose
I agree with sabacc. It depends on what you want. I personally want to operate a small shop with high quality weaps 
. So, for me 1 shop is plenty andI have little need to advertise. My shop is only a couple Km's North of one of my servers largest (if not the largest) suppliers but I still get good buisness.
Since I'm not really competing with the "big boys" I can give my costomers more personal attention and just relax and enjoy being a weaponsmith. I'm a crafter not Walmart.
Thx for the input.
One question, swhen you manage your vendor there is an option to see stockroom etc for entire region/galaxy. Does this also mean that we can stock all vendors over the galaxy from onelocation (would be nice) or is it just to be able to look at what is available on other vendors?
Multiple shops = pain in the arse
Multiple Weaponsmiths in the same shop with focus on different areas = Wonderful
Silva Dor'Dali
Master Weaponsmith
Resident Anchorhead Insurgent Democracy (RAID)
Mos Quito, Tatooine (soon to open)
Anchorhead, Tatooine (-200,-5100)
sabacc1000 wrote:
I don't know how this works for different planets, or even different regions, but i have two vendors in my shop. I know that I am able to relist items that have gone unsold from either vendor. When they are relisted, they go back up on whatever vendor they were originally placed on. This means that you will at least have to stock all the vendors individually, but you may be able to manage them from elsewhere.
You can relist items on any vendor you have from any other vendor of yours. However to stock the item from inventory you will need to physically be at the location. However due to that bug (unless they fixed it) items you relist from the stockroom have the 7 day limit - to get the full 30 you need to retrieve and restock physically. I had to do this and am hoping that they fix it before they expire again.
I run three stores and it is indeed quite a bit of work (I've had offers for stores on a further two planets in player cities which I have put on hold due to Iroluun shortage ... bad, bad shortage). For the least work you will have to have at least one factory on site and some prep work - using the factory as storage for various component crates (handlers, barrels, feeds, scopes) so that you can quickly kick off gun builds without much preamble. Personally I also keep a lot of schematics - might seem a little excessive but I have a schematic for components for each of my stores. Keeps things tidy in the long run and I for hate realising my good gun schematic is now bunk because I just chewed through all my components somewhere else.
WIth vehicles it might not be so bad to run multiple stores at the same time - I do a lot of surveying for new resources anyway so it's not that much extra effort to manage some more inventory - but as stated by others here depends entirely what you want. I pretty much don't do anything that's not related to weaponsmithing (or survey missions - always take survey missions whenever you so much as twitch). Not exactly glamourous but hey
Running multiple shops is a huge pain in the ass. It was worse before with the 7 day time limit on vendor sales, but even now it's still annoying because you have to run out there all the time to restock.
I have one shop on Naboo, and I sell some stuff to a merchant on Tatooine. I win because I don't have to go to Tatooine, and he wins because he has a weapon supplier (he's a pure merchant and only resells other people's goods).