Suggestions for Adding Value to Vendors

Currently, a seller can bring a few advantages to bear
- location
- prices
- Consistent restocking
Beyond that there is little to favor one vendor over another.
What other ways are people attracting customers to their vendor?
What improvements would best help an enterprising seller to distinguish themselves?

I can think of a few.
- buy and sell from a stack, like NPC vendors allow.
- sell bundles, such as an entire outfit or packaged meals
- Customized vendors
- A way to entice customers INTO the store
- Allow sales "off the floor." If I sell rares I'd like to display an item full size yet still allow its sale. If I'm a haberdasher I'd like to display the outfits I've designed.

 

The biggest issue with Vendors in Shroud of the Avatar, is the way they take commission.

Sure, they are operating as a gold sink, but its a case where they are so focused on the pennies, they are loosing the dollars.

The way they are currently setup both punishes the player, and that in turn is punishing portalarium, and its punishing our economy.

I run a LOT of vendors. Both commission free and commission.

I wont EVER sell anything worth any major amount of gold on a vendor in which I have to pay commission FIRST, period.

Lets look at artifacts. How many times do the value of artifacts change in the game? How many times is it necessary to REMOVE an item from your vendor, reprice it, and put it back on?

Portlarium itself has said they want Artifacts to be more valuable, and that as such they are making changes.

How will new low level ore mines effect pricing on ores?


So we are in a world of a changing economy, in which we are not allowed to re-price our goods.

Beyond that, the immersion breaking aspect is ludicrous to me. As someone who sells goods for other people for a living, and yes, that includes on commissions (as a vendor.. woa! IM AN NPC IN REAL LIFE!!!), for many people.. If I ever told one of my customers..

"ok, before i go to this show, im charging you a 10% commission on that item. You may be pricing it to high, so ill take that now.... and next show if we have to lower the price, ill be taking that again.... mmmm k?"

how long would i be in business as a vendor?

And that's exactly what Portalarium is doing. they are putting the vendors out of business.... it doesn't seem that way, why? im using them, other people are using them, etc.... But the majority of people using them are using them for LOW dollar goods. Then we use Commission free vendors, EVEN IF WE PAY HIGHER COMMISSIONS on them from other players, because its REAL commission.

As long as vendors continue to take money up front, intelligent people wont put decent goods on them... and so they are missing the opportunity to actually be of value as a TRUE gold sink.

Commission at time of sale, exists economically in the real world because its feasible, it works.

We have an economical gold sink in place, that doesn't work the way it Could and should.

Until that is fixed, non-commission free vendors in this game are just something for people to put low dollar items on, and so will never have any kind of value because by definition,, they arent entrusted with anything valuable.

 

I think the biggest problem is that nearly every player dreams of being a shop-owner and nearly every house is a store of some kind. So a lot of people expects the system to help them turn in a profit in a over-saturated market.

There are also things that players can do: Not clutter the entire front-face of your store with all your vendors and junk; it ruins the vista of the residential area that your store is in.

"How do I encourage potential customers to go inside my store?" By not being an eye-sore.

That's my pro-tip as a customer.

If I could buy 1-2 items from a stack of 30, that would make shopping a lot less of a pain to deal with.

 

I do find that I price my items for sale well below what I think they might be worth in part to avoid paying the commission to the vendor. I wonder how they could scale the commissions better though...(?) I also remember @Chris once mentioning the idea that we would be able to sell items for COTOs, that wouldn't work too well on a percentage based commission system either. Maybe they should change from percentage based to flat fee only? I don't know. But even this early on in the game life I'm running into blocks on listing items for igg because of the commission costs, especially if I buy something off the Add-On store and then turns out I don't need it any more, listing it on my in-game vendor is what I want to do, but in order to recoup any sort of cost the commission ends up being too high :-/