What do you do when someone crashes the market?

[ChaseFV]

So here I am, a gimp 65 half-elven ranger who foolishly chose to follow Tunare to honor his mother, trying desperately to increase my fletching skill by any means possible, when I stumble across the fact that I can make some pretty nice bows, for only a few hours of farming per attempt. And maybe a little luck in the Bazaar. And I get lucky. Several times. The Druzzil's Laminated Treant Compound Bows are selling handsomely, albeit slowly, at what I feel to be a fair price: roughly half of what Legion Issue Bows are going for.

Along comes a grinder. A person with no patience whatsoever. And two accounts. One sits in /buyer all day ensuring that I'm not ever going to get a Favor of Druzzil unless a guildmate is kind enough to leave one in the bank for me. The other starts selling the bows at prices that drop lower by the day, well under half of what the market was supporting before he started flooding and crashing the market.

So what do I do? Patiently build my stock and wait for him to decide he's bored with crashing this market? Confront him and ask him why he's actively crashing the market? Suck it up and sell my bows for 1pp less than his? Give up on the market and donate my completed bows to the guild bank or other charities?

[Shortmid]

I sell mine on Bert for 15k. The others sell them for 18 to 26k. It's not crashing the market. When PoR came out, there was a high demand, low supply situation. Now there is a low demand, high supply situation. It happens every expansion.

[Greymantle]

Depends on how much you need plat. I also sell these things. On the Rathe the price fluctuates from 20k-27.5k on a regular basis. I sell mine for 25k these days, slow and steady.

[Xodar]

Selling for 9.5 k on Trib. All my auxiliary parts I farm myself doing other things, and tend to pick up favors in the bazaar at 2k. Decent margin, and the market is saturated these days, rarely see them above 12.5.

[tuis]

I just sold a Druzzil's last night for 100k and one a tier below it for 50k on Zek, heh. For awhile the prices were dropping like rocks, so I just let the bows sit on my trader and focused on another niche until it passed. That stuff will sell eventually.

[Gorse]

Remember it is a free market. While they "crashed" your market, they found a niche where they can turn a profit without close competition.

So, what are your options?

Don't change anything, hoping the other person sells out of bows, and hope that buyers don't remmeber they can get them cheaper than yours. Probably not the best route, as once the prices come down, buyers (myself included) are prone to hold out until they see the low prices again.

Match the other seller's prices, this will at least keep your bows selling, and hopefully, happy customers will come back to you, kind of hit or miss, but at least you can still move them.

You could do the 1pp cheaper thing, but I personally despise sellers that do this and I will gladly spent a couple xtra pp and buy from a reasonable vendor that someone is obviously trying to just barely undercut.

You can undercut until the other person gets out of the market.


You have plenty of choices. I got into situations like the Druzzil bows knowing at some point that it won't any longer be profitable to make for my time involved, so I jsut enjoy the good fortune as long as I can. I am still not elemental flagged and I never got any of the elemental bow business (the parts were way too expensive and rare on Tunare for me to do for profit). I was overjoyed that something else come out that does not have that kind of restriction and can turn a profit for a non-raider.



Gorse

[ChaseFV]

Well it's not that he "found a niche," it was already there. And the bows were selling steadily at double what he eventually dropped to. He just made so many so fast that he ran out of patience and dropped his price to rock bottom (or perhaps a bit below). I've decided at this point to continue to gather supplies, work on lesser bows for skill-ups, and wait for him to sell out. He's already gotten to the point where he's selling off his extra favors and bow strings.

I know that I'll never get premium first-to-market prices again, but I hope to do better than bargain basement. Time will tell.

Thanks for the feedback all!

[Elyssanda]

Favors from vendors sell for just under 500P. or they *can* drop.. personally I see more on vendors than when hunting. I get all of the wood for free. hides and hooves also free, (easy to farm) >1000 for the 2 vials of mana required, 100P for the 2 strings,...so total cost for me to make those bows is around 1600p..
they are currently in our Baz for 17k...

[Brantes]

When DoD first came out I was the only person on our server doing high end research. I was selling 65 PoP/GoD spells in the Baz for 40-50K. I sold a alot. Then a few people started getting a few spells here and there and I had to drop my stuff to 30-40K to compete. Then another researcher came on hardcore and I had to drop to 20-30K to be competative. They stopped and another came and bottomed me out again so now Im at 9-12K. At this point I wont go any lower. Im buying parchments at or around 5-7K. I am still making a profit. So while I found the niche early and made my money then, when other business comes along I can no longer have a monopoly on the niche I found first. Thus is life and a free enterprise market. So basically what im saying is that if someone finds a way to more readily stock parts and make bows, and is willing to sell them for way less theres not much you can do. So either find another niche or lower your prices to be competative. If you are even making 1-2K profit you arent losing anything.

Btw the 65 spell market is about dried up now. The only thing that would make that take off again is opening a 2nd char slot on the FV server. So for now I have switched and I am making my pp selling mechanoinstructions.

[Chakua]

I created and crashed the market on PoR bows. It wasn't intentional. It just happened. I didn't use any unfair tactics. I had the supplies and I had the skill to make the bows. Plain and simple. I had already sold two dozen bows before anyone else on my server had the recipe. When others started making them, we matched prices for awhile but as more entered the market, I dropped my prices to dump my inventory. I had already made all the plat I would ever need so it didn't matter if I made 5-10k less per sale than I was used to. Some got pissed that I was crashing the market but I had really just got to the point where I no longer cared about my profit margin.

I don't even know what they are selling for on my server anymore. I have enough supplies to make another 30 bows and enough for another 150 or so after that depending on how fast the Favors roll my way. The point is, it WAS a great way to make plat and now it's just a great way to skillup and a decent way to make plat. Just enjoy your skillup plat and take what you can get for the bows. They are ridiculously cheap and easy to make so take the plat and roll with it.

[Ravenswood]

He just made so many so fast that he ran out of patience and dropped his price to rock bottom (or perhaps a bit below).

Assuming that he's under some obligation to keep his prices as high as yours were (regardless if that was the market mean at the time) is as faulty as assuming that you should have to drop yours to compensate. Vendors are not all alike, and some use the bazaar sporadically. Some are long-term bazaar dwellers, and others simply use it as a means to an end. I guess my opinion all comes back to the fact that I think that all else being equal (ie, no cheating, not using multiple accounts, etc), people can and should charge whatever they want.

From what I recall, you fall into the long-term bazaar dweller category. I agree with most of the suggestions here, and have nothing more to add, except that it seems like you may have been the one to run out of patience, and may have forgotten that vendors like him come and go (but mostly just go!). If you can afford it, stuff those bows away for a while.

[Liwsa]

The thing about non-consumables is the market is limited. With bows, once everyone has one: there is no market.

[Bobaten]

They are consumable to a certain extent because they are attuneable. So at least you don't have to worry about a secondary market. But once you accept that you are mostly selling to new characters, you might notice that you actually have the chance to sell to them twice: once at 63, and again at 68. I wouldn't dream of making a druzzil bow these days, they sell for the same price (or less) as the non-druzzil level 63 bow, and cost more to make.
So my answer: When someone crashes the market you are in, move to a better one.

[Xodar]

Remember it is a free market. While they "crashed" your market, they found a niche where they can turn a profit without close competition.

So, what are your options?

Don't change anything, hoping the other person sells out of bows, and hope that buyers don't remmeber they can get them cheaper than yours. Probably not the best route, as once the prices come down, buyers (myself included) are prone to hold out until they see the low prices again.

Match the other seller's prices, this will at least keep your bows selling, and hopefully, happy customers will come back to you, kind of hit or miss, but at least you can still move them.

You could do the 1pp cheaper thing, but I personally despise sellers that do this and I will gladly spent a couple xtra pp and buy from a reasonable vendor that someone is obviously trying to just barely undercut.

You can undercut until the other person gets out of the market.


You have plenty of choices. I got into situations like the Druzzil bows knowing at some point that it won't any longer be profitable to make for my time involved, so I jsut enjoy the good fortune as long as I can. I am still not elemental flagged and I never got any of the elemental bow business (the parts were way too expensive and rare on Tunare for me to do for profit). I was overjoyed that something else come out that does not have that kind of restriction and can turn a profit for a non-raider.



Gorse

Well written Gorse. I rode the bows from 120k all the way down, made a mint doing it. I am not selling nearly as many anymore, or making as much, but it's still a steady source of 5k every few days for minimal time.

And I hate the 1p thing too, drives me nuts. Match my price is fine, undercut me by a real # is fine. If wanting every single plat you can squeeze out of it drives you to price yours at 84,999 then I make the next drop 10k. Now mine are 75, feel like coming down here? Bet you wish you had just matched me at 85 = P

Same thing buying something, I go for the one with the zero on the end on principle.

[Chakua]

And I hate the 1p thing too, drives me nuts. Match my price is fine, undercut me by a real # is fine. If wanting every single plat you can squeeze out of it drives you to price yours at 84,999 then I make the next drop 10k. Now mine are 75, feel like coming down here? Bet you wish you had just matched me at 85 = P

Amen. I rarely undercut by less than 10% on anything that I sell. Bazaar shopping is no different than shopping in real life. If you are going to have a "sale" (and that is essentially what undercutters are offering), at least make it worth my time.