Weaponsmith Archive
Thread: Attracting Business as a Weaponsmith
Tall, slim, well presented female humans or Twi'leks, dressed in the very best, and holding a really big gun. This will take some 'vendor creation grinding' but it's worth it. If you do not wish to keep skill points in Hiring, you only need it long enough to dress the vendors, then surrender them.
AlexKC wrote:
hey fellow weaponsmiths,
So i've been a master weaponsmith for a few months now. Business is decent, enough to cover costs of maintenance and still have plenty of cash leftover for armor, buffs, food/drink, etc. My problem is that on my galaxy, the weapon market is very crowded. My question is, how does one truly distinguish himself from the rest of the pack and attract repeat business? sure I have a few loyal customers, but what I'm really looking for are dozens.
Thanks for any good advice.
Have a good day!
Well, when I was a weaponsmith, I had what you are searching for, a dedicated group of a few dozen customers. One thing I would mention, is that I never picked up merchant, and I was also not reliant on a PA for business. How did I attract business? Well, for one thing, I always wore the master weaponsmith tag. Spamming never really worked for me. I hated doing it, and it never attracted more than a handful of people. I did make runs of weapons which had my shop's waypoint built into the names. I made huge runs of D18's and DLT20's and DH17's and gave them away to new players. I don't need to tell anyone what a well crafted beginer'sweapon means to a new character. So that helped considerably in getting my name out. I always took the time to use the item description space when placing items for sale on the bazaar. Each and every weapon I placed up for sale included a plug for my products declaring "when you want the best, demand T.I. and T.I. Premium Products! Tyyylowyspetily Industries". Wow. Just typing that again brings back some great memories.Next, in order to distinguish yourself, offer custom crafting services to your most devoted customers. Many of my best customers became great friends over time as well. I spent as much as 2 hours in private crafting sessions, balancing sword core experimentation vs. the final experimentation on the sword itself, or creating dozens of variants of scopes and weapons until I got the Damage, HAM's, and in some cases, range mods exactly as the customer wanted them,thenran off a crate of that exact request and sold the customer their dream weapon, along with a crate of powerups that had been custom made to enhance that specific weapon.That tended to generate even more business when word of such careful attention to each customer got out. Finally, there is the issue of price. Provide people with a great value, and they will come back. You don't need to give the stuff away, but you don't need to get rich off the sale of a single pistol either. Selling well crafted weapons for 4-6k will keep people coming back, and word of mouth is a powerful thing. It's a crowded business, and there are a lot of very dedicated, and highly talented players that put a tremendous amount of effort into being the best, and creating the best out there. Just put forth your best effort, and always place the customer first. You'll get there.
Redguard wrote:
Locations seems important as well. Corellia is the center of the galaxy and getting a shop/vendor near Coronet is a good idea. I'm toying with the idea of spreading vendors around to various planets but the travel costs concern me. (Hey I'm affluent, not rich).
As much as people may scoff at me for being cheap, try to keep things frugal. The efficiency bonus on the Merchant profession is your friend. I also do my best to keep standard weapons below the 10k threshold.
Good luck
When I tried moving to coronet earlier, I was only selling melee weapons and got a few sales. the vendor was up for two weeks and I had like 5 sales.now that i have the resources to make guns (good pistols, crappy rifle/carbines though cuz myrifle barrels stink) I may try again.
on my server,coronet is dominated by 12-point weaponsmiths whose products are better than mine (not extremely better though). my standard price for all melee weapons is 5k (except scythes which are more), guns start at 5k and go up to about 25k for the really advanced ones.
I tend to find people out hunting and offer them the occasional free weapon. I let them know about the shop and will even offer them bargains if they bring friends. I try to help out new players by making high quality low end weapons (can we say oxymoron?). I use the bazaar and I have a pricing strategy thats in line with the income of the player (even if it's the best D18 in the galaxy noone is going to buy it if I charge too much)
I may not have every weapon in stock but I probably have about 300-500 weapons on the vendors. I'm totally honest when they ask if I can make them something and I cannot. Most people appreciate the honesty.
I find that sales tend to be sporadic and I think thats in part to the playing habits of the people on the server. Weekends are generally pretty good. Patch days appear to be great for sales as well. (I'm scratching my head and wondering why but what the heck any business is good business.)
Locations seems important as well. Corellia is the center of the galaxy and getting a shop/vendor near Coronet is a good idea. I'm toying with the idea of spreading vendors around to various planets but the travel costs concern me. (Hey I'm affluent, not rich).
As much as people may scoff at me for being cheap, try to keep things frugal. The efficiency bonus on the Merchant profession is your friend. I also do my best to keep standard weapons below the 10k threshold.
Good luck
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:
And of course ... make sure you use the best resources so that your stuff is on par with the competition. You don't have to be the best, you just have to not be way less then the best :-)
I've never heard anyone say anything as remotely helpful as this. Since I started playing Galaxies, my goal was to be the bestweaponsmith on the server, not the best weaponsmith I can be (I'm like that in real life too, I have to be the absolute best not just the best that I can be). You've made me think of things in a new way. Be the best weaponsmith i can be.
Thank you 
1.customer service (i.e. thanking customers, selling some cheap things in bazaar, being available to do custom crafts having things on your vendor so people don't have to go somewhere else)
2. price / quality (so price lower if quality lower, price higher if quality higher)
3. location (i.e being somewhere where people tend to drop in, such as with other well known crafters)
All the above is equal in importance.You will make better and better things over time, when your resources improve and your customers will keep coming back and new ones will start coming to you. Then you eventually will reach the point where u simply cannot respond to every tell (all 15 at one time) or thank every customer, but still be as courteous as you can.
AlexKC wrote:
Hero_DarkJedi wrote:
And of course ... make sure you use the best resources so that your stuff is on par with the competition. You don't have to be the best, you just have to not be way less then the best :-)
I've never heard anyone say anything as remotely helpful as this. Since I started playing Galaxies, my goal was to be the bestweaponsmith on the server, not the best weaponsmith I can be (I'm like that in real life too, I have to be the absolute best not just the best that I can be). You've made me think of things in a new way. Be the best weaponsmith i can be.
Thank you
You want more advice? keep your sanity ... don't try to stock enhancedweapons.
You will find that you are a much happier smith if you make really good weapons for themass's and don't try to cater to the PvP Uber Lewt d00ds that want the best of the best.I have answered every tell for "uber weapons" with the same thing for months now: "You bringme the loot and I will make your weapon for 50k a pop".
What has this done? Well,my customers are all happy aspigs in mud. I don't have the guys thatwant just a "little bit better" ... whom generally jump ship whenever they find that extra "point". My customer know theycancount on my vendors to have top of the lineweapons when theywant them. Maybe the best, maybe just a hair off .... They are happy, I am happy.
Tell Hell? Heck no ... they ask if I have any uber weapons .. I say: "Nah, just my regular stuff, you need a waypoint to check it out??". Sometimes my regular stuff is the best they have seen ... sometimes they say nah".
Of course ... if I am not making enhanced weapons somebody else is ...and they see I am not and they make them and and make them ... and they might even have a loot enhanced weapons vendor right next to mine ... and they can get all of those tells ... and they can be building that one of a kind gun for the person that is bugging them every 5 mins with "is it done?" ... and they complain about being in tell hell ... and they end up quitting ... and the folks that bought those weapons have to settle for my weapons until they find another smith they can chase out of the profession.
Not me though ...I will just sit quietly in front of my vendorfeeding it hundreds of good weapons every couple of days and just go quietly about my business.
"Sorry, don't got that, just my normal weapons ... here is the waypoint".