Advertising a Vendor

These are in no particular order. I will add more as I have time. Reply with any additional tips you might have, and soon we will have a lexicon of UO Forums marketing strategies! I developed these formalic ideas as I developed each newer version of Paul Mart. From Jan 2003-December 2004, I made over 500 million, and never sold an artifact or powerscroll. As I gained more of a reputation, I would upscale my home. In 2003, I started with an 8*8 in Trammel. In 2004, I had a Keep in Trammel. I credit my success to both my character and my rules on setting up a vendor house. Some of these ideas originated with other players in game. Others I adpated from either good or bad practices that I witnessed. Some even have a reflection in the real world economy.

As I no longer play, I am sharing these tips in hopes that it brings each person as rewarding an experience as it brought me. Being a merchant truly enhanced my play experience, and felt more like my place in this system of things.

Rule #1. Never miss a chance to promote your store. I also used my crafter (Mark) as a for-hire redocorator. That brought business in and spread the word about the plethora of services and goods that Paul Mart could provide.

Rule #2. Most players repay kindness with loyalty, as long as it benefits them (Machiavelli almost quote, dig it?). I used to give away a full newbie set (LRC suit for mages with some FC/FCR jewelery and skill,) (nice resists suits,weapons, and jewelry to match for dexers and paladins, plus insurance money) a day to one customer. At the start, you could do this once a month and still gain fantastic benefits from it. This was not an official Paul Mart function (i.e. contest), but it WAS a fantastic way to develop my customer base. Give a man fish, teach him to fish kind of thingie-ma-bob. SO I did both lol. When time afforded, I would even take them to the best hunting spots for their experience / character and mark a rune book for them with all the essentials (bank, town, hunt spots, moongate) (of course, there was always a rune to Paul Mart in it!). As these players made friends, guess where they took them to shop?

Rule #3. NETWORK Pick up runes at the bank and visit each shop. Establish networking with other shop owners. Ask for advice on pricing (even if they are much higher than you). This will open the door for further cooperation, and hopefully a chance to lock your store rune down in their house (you have to repay the honor of course). Sub-rule here, only network with honest merchants! One bad apple can ruin the bunch. Heed any customers you hear complaining about a shop.

Rule #3B. Price Point Keep the prices 8-10% lower than the competition all over the shard. As you network, note the prices. If you have a good inventory gain rate (your inventory replenishes through crafting, hunting, or gathering) faster than your goods are selling, setting a lower price point will turn you a quicker profit, keep you below your house item limit, and excite customers because you have a lively store with great value.

Rule #4. FREE SERVICES Put out free dye tubs and keep the dyes stacked nearby. When you are presnt, if you are veteran enough, dye things for newer players.

Throw up a library. The more full books, the better. Name each book clearly. SEll copies of these on your vendors (some people are industrious enough to copy their own from yours, but this is much easier). Sell all books fully charged with recalls. T-map libraries are the best, ESPECIALLY if you have a readily available means for them to correlate the runes to the TMAP spot. I had a purple book on top of my T-MAP library that informed the T-Hunter to use UOAM t-map numbers. When you can afford it, charge up your most popular rune books with recall scrolls. The customers appreciate the savings to them.

Put your repair deeds on a single vendor, named LEGENDARY REPAIR DEEDS (for example). Price them as cheap as you can go. I routinely put them out for free.

Name a vendor RUNES HERE. Stock it with all the runes it can hold. Name each for your store. Do not forget this step!!!! I suggest sell for 10GP, to keep people from taking them to fill out their runebooks while copying YOUR library.

Rule #5. Be present. A kind and caring owner who is willing to do little favors gets revisisted. I would reprice things in front of the customer, and whenever I had more than three customers, I would re-stock. A rep as a constantly stocked store is something that few achieve. I would also routinely announced nice items I still had in back stock. I usually did this after gating in masses from thebank. Many players assume that what you have on the vendors is all that you have for sale.

Rule #6. Inventory separation. Determine what your customers are looking for, this will help you determmine the best way to separate your vendors. Place the highet traffic vendors to the back of the store. This has a "vacuum" effect, and as shoppers get "sucked" past the slower vendors, they tend to buy stuff. This is a reverse of the supermarket and general store tactic, where they place impulse buy items at the register as you check out. Since your faster moving vendors are your msot used register, by placing them at the back of the store, you get more impulse buys.

-Name a vendor for each general class of goods(BOWS, SWORDS, FENCING, MED ARMOR, FURNITURE, SLAYER WEPS, BRACELETS, RINGS, LUCK ITEMS, 120+LUCK Items, LRC SUITS, ETC). Clear and visible marking of vendors draws them in like flies, especially if they are marked in ways that they can relate to. STUFF would be a bad name for a vendor, as would MORE STUFFS (I have SEEN this, REALLY!)

- Style counts. Use BOD reward clothing to craft outfits for each vendor. Style them after what they sell.

- DO NOT LAYER backpack upon back pack. The fewer clicks someone has to make to find something, the more likely they are to buy. Use books (not for sale) in the vendor back pack to announce what each pack contains.

- Sort and advertise jewlery and armor by most significant type. High resists (add all resists together) (high skills = # of skills on a piece of jewlery or total number of skill points, whichever is greater) (High Luck, enhanced and unenhanced). The higher the total, the more it will earn you. See Stratics for a list of highest possible totals

- Less clutter, more vendors. This is especially true if you have even some aggressive spawn around your house. You might pay a little more in vendor fees for the extra vendors, BUT you will make more because your layout is easily understood. All my vendors were color coded in reward cloth. Weapons were White, Jewlery was Arctic, Luck Items were GOLD, Runes books and runes were brownish, and so on. Put all the like vendors together (weapons in one spot, armor in a row across from them).

- Communicate with all shoppers. Put a book in the CENTER of each vendor pack, that concisely explains the layout of your store (i.e. CHECK EACH VENDOR NAME FOR ITEMS SOLD) - There is no harm in taking down vendors if the product does not move, or combining inventories for slower vendors, but TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS about it. They appreciate the interest.

Rule #7. Let your store dictate your decorating. A well decorated house is a draw in itself, and well worth the time invested. You should strive to decorate your house to suit your vendors. Since I sold a ton of weaps and armor, plus some rares, and crafted items, my house was full of home made armor stands, rares, and stacking art (my piano is from the Paul Mart Tower is still posted somewhere on the internet). For the opposite, imagine seeing a store that sells only crafter goods, is poorly stocked, yet is decked out with server birth rares, artifacts, and all the other pixel crack. Most customers leave that scene immediately.

Rule #8. Location is NOT an issue. If you are way out in BFE, that is OK. Better to be in Luna, but hey, we aren't all lucky. None of my shops was ever in a high traffic zone ( well, maybe the tower 6 screens below skymall 1 on Baja ), but they all had TONS of visits. The secret is the tips above, plus training your mage at the bank. Yup, take that newbie mage skill and gate away, gaining skill and gold at the same time!. Some laugh at you, and call you a newb. For the shrewd vendor, this is the PERFECT scene. You can parlay that into a request to visit your store to give YOU tips. They usually buy something when they get there to see a well set up home.

Rule #9. Never stock all that you have on a vendor. Stock only 50% of your available items on any single vendor. This establishes a percieved shortage of a good deal at a cheap price, and encourages people to buy buy buy. I cannot recall the number of items I sold that I saw re-stocked on a vendor for a 25% mark up. BUT those items also stayed there so long that I bet the vendor ate all the mark up profit in fees! To elicit this point, I often experienced a 100% turnover in inventory each week. Indicating that I was selling every possible thing I made or recovered from a monster every single week. With 30+ hours of play a week on a well tuned Peace Tamer, that is a TON of inventory.

Rule #10. Create a clearance vendor. If something does not move for a week, lower the price. If it does not sell for 3 weeks, move it to the clearance vendor for a nominal low price. As your customer base expands, visits increase, and your inventory increases, you should boost this up. I did this daily near the end.

Rule #11. Rearrange the goods on your vendor. If you are lacking in re-stock items, move them around in the vendor back pack. Also, collapse sub-packs and put them in the main layer if you do not have enough to fill half a pack. Be creative with taking up as much space as possible with as few items as you can. This will create an illusion of stocking while you gather more goods. Good shoppers can key in on placement, and rapidly tell if anything new has been put out. If you move it, they will shop (lol). Stale inventories do NOT move.

Rule #12. General tips for Crafter type stores:

              Tinker

(a) Lockpick boxes. Follow the guide lines for naming vendors and vendor set up. You can do this several ways, but the biggest call is for GM locked boxes. There is also a good market for 80-90 skill level boxes. Name the vendor with the skill range and the word "smal chests". No matter the skill level, the main focus to drive sales is presentation. Put 25 boxes and a key ring with all keys in a large container. Dye the container, or use a paragon chest. Something that catches the eye. These will sell faster than a pouch with 25 boxes in it. One reason is, you can then name UOA macroes by the color code of the main box they are in. Another is that they feel they are getting a good deal for the large container already colored.

(b) Right next to the lock boxes, sell lockpicks.

(c) Set up a vendor with glass blowing and stone mason tools, plus books. sell for 10% markup. Few are willing to make the trip into Ilsh to get them themselves.

(d) GM tool vendors do WELL. Again, make sure you sort them intuitively, and avoid clutter. Bullk tools sold in bags or pouches sell real well. If bags are still dyeable, those beat everything else as a container. Avoid darker colors.

(e) Potion Kegs always sell, but you find that the mark-up is insignifcant compared to the effort and materials to make them. Best bet is to set up a non-vendor driven potion keg exchange program. Offer a full keg of pots, at reg cost +20%, in exchange for their empty keg.

2.Carpenter There is always a need for furniture. I understand there is alot more content in the game than when I played, however, these simple ideas should still apply. Set up each vendor in a group by type ( wood, stone, glass, etc), then sub-group them by function (chair, table, deeds, etc.). Make sure you have furniture dye sets set up.

3. Bod Vendor - A MUST for any crafter account.

4. BOD Rewards- Need I say more? Separate them by type, cost, rarity.

5. Enhanced items. You can charge (off vendor) to enhance things for people, or trade enhancing services for goods. Another good idea is turn around. Go to all the vendors you have found from the above, and buy the cheapest unenhanced items you can find that may yield medium to high end goods. Then enahnce them yourself and sell for a pretty mark-up.

Rule #13 General Tips For the Weapons Vendor: Create separate weapon vendors, sroted by type, then by general useage. The amount of segregation you have will be dictated by the amount of stock you have. If you are pulling 20 keeper weapons a day, then you will need quite a few vendors.

Generally, people are looking for good PvP, Good PvM, Slayers, and luck weapons.

Swords sell better than Fencing, Fencing better than Mace. Bows sell better than X-bows mostly. Fast repeaters sell almost as well as bows.

If you overstock slow movers, they move even slower. People see it as a glut, and then demand a lower price.

Be wary of understocking. A slayer weapon vendor with 3 slayers on it is considered empty by most buyers.

If you are a crafter, create a separate vendor for runic weapons. These are a HUGE draw.

Enhance everything that needs it. MUCH higher mark-up.

Rule #14. High end items Put 2 vendors in the rarest, brightest hue you can get at the very front of your store. Give them weapons or armor (depending on what they sell) that are really distinct. I had a friend that had his Artifact Vendor decked out in all artifacts. He could not keep anything in stock. They sold in minutes. Name them *HIGH END WEAPONS* and *HIGH END ARMOR*. YOu can even put some more up there depending on your inventory, or rename them to reflect the high end items you are moving. You have to approach this with some research, due to the high prices and vendor fees. Do target market research on Tradespot, other vendors, and the WBB for a rough estimate of value. Then lower the average by 15%, and the item will move in a day or less.

Rule #15. Outsourcing. Once you have progressed to a point where you are rewarding newbie players with outfits, then you are in a position to outsource some of your more tedious work in gathering. This lowers profit per unit, BUT has the potential to dramatically increase available stock, thus resulting in greater overall profit.

While you are recruiting your new players and outfitting them, make an offer of part time employment. Sort of like barter, you will outfit them with better than average gear at a fair exchange for whatever commodity you are looking for. For example, I had 3 newer players who I set up. I offered each a barter system, since gold was hard to get for them. Once they agreed, I gave each a copy of my Ant Quests rune book and in-game written guide (I am a chump for detail), and walked them through the steps to get translocation powders, pet summon balls, and bags of sending. I then set them loose. Much to my surprise, I found myself with 60K of powder a month!!!!! By trading my gear for the powder, I was able to sell such large quantities at a higher mark-up than average. I also found the regular stocking of bags of sending and translocation powders was a great return incentive for my customers. Talk about a bonanaza!!! The 3 players, until the day I quit (this went on for 10 months or so) still brought me powder, even though the amounts went down as they made other characters, found more interesting things, etc. But as they slowed down, I had more starting, so I was always on the up-slope of supply. And the others starting were recommended to me by the first three!! I had to work even less than I did to start it all.

I then took this idea to other raw materials, arrows, and such. The only thing I never got going for barter was ingots, and that is easy to see why.

--Baldguy (aka Paul B) 17:58, 13 February 2007 (PST)