I have noticed, that most the stores that Etain has been to...lack stock! I have only really shopped in Serenwilde and Celest, but the stores seem to have pitiful selections.

For all the tailors that Lusternia must have, why aren't the stores bursting with clothing? Why aren't they stocked with armour? I have only seen herbs and food for sale in most, and if that is all you plan to stock it is a waste of a shop. I think Chancellor's should require the shops to be at least halfway stocked, and with a respectable variety.

There is -one- store I found that was wonderfully stocked with a great selection of jewelry, shoes, clothes and herbs. I believe it was Elryn's in Serenwilde?

Am I simply missing the good stores? Where can I find a variety of clothes without having to order each piece custom? Poor little Etain has had to wear shoes that don't match forever, and the poor little dear is quite pantiless! Someone help!

and on a side note, Etain is a budding herbalist, so if anyone needs an herb supplier for their shop, let me know IC.

Rexali's shop is restocked with an assortment of clothing every few years. Daevos' shop has a -lot- of armor.

However, clothing takes a lot of comm investment, and lacks in profit (yes, a pack must be sold at 750 per to make a decent profit).

I'd restock the two branches of the Philosopher's Stone if:
a) I had a steady supply of herbs
b) I had a steady supply of really cheap vials (or gems to make 'em)
c) I could figure out how to do it more efficiently and more frequently

Don't forget to go to the Aetherways portal and search for shops there. Exarius is running a shop with lots of ladies' apparel, for instance.

Ohhh, thanks Gwylifar!

Darn straight on that. Now that I have a shop, though, I can finally make some decent coin -- until you stop and reflect on the fact I spent 350,000 gold and 1,000 credits to open the shop, 300 credits to trans tailoring, and cartels cost 1,000,000 gold. Assuming a conversion rate of just 2,500 gold per credit, that's what -- 4.6 million gold?

My most expensive item being 12,500 gold for a set of designer great robes, I'd have to sell 368 sets of those just to ever break even if I didn't have to pay anything for commodities to make them or have to cover the cost of my exclusive designs.

I know better than to discuss my actual profit margin on the comms, but once you take those into account, I'd have to literally sell thousands of my biggest ticket items before I got my business out of the red.

Anyone out there think that's gonna happen? 'Cause I don't. Still, my work's selling, unlike before I had the shop.

You do the tailoring stuff out of love of the role-play, not for the money. It was dearly bought role-play, though, and I'll be running my business like a business, slowly chipping away at that monetary loss like a prisoner digging his way out of Alcatraz with a toothbrush.

Even if it accomplishes nothing else, running it that way will ensure I can keep clothes in stock, even when every other tailor in the basin is scratching his head and asking where all the commodities go.

Shops are poorly stocked? Some of them have been mysteriously unstocked recently... Better pay up that protection money, hmm?

To more directly answer this original question, the lack of goods happens because there's a glut of tradesmen and a limited supply of commodities.

All Lusternian trade skills are things that, in real life, would be middle-to-upper-class professional skills, and nowhere close to an eighth of the population would be engaged in any single one of those enterprises. The pool of potential customers in Lusternia is thus perhaps a tenth of what it would be in a more complex economy.

This tiny customer pool means that an equal slice of the net profits from any trade skill is a miniscule thing indeed. These tiny profits make most "tradesmen" rightly view their work as a hobby. When they could make better money _and_ earn power and prestige by adventuring, it's not worth the hassle to worry about squeezing profits from a trade skill, so these hobbyists wind up simply doing volunteer work for their favorite guild, city, commune, order, or clan, so they won't feel that learning their trade skill has been a total waste.

A hobbyist will turn out goods as fast as he gets both requests and commodities, but will not stock up a supply of finished goods for those outside his pool of "clientelle". And while he has no incentive to hoard raw commodities himself, he creates incentive for his clients to grab commodities (especially cheap commodities) whenever they can, to bring them to him for making goodies for them.

The presence of hobbyists further fuels the shortage situation by encouraging the presence of dabblers. The dabblers are tradesmen who would like to make a living at their work, but bow to pressure to keep prices "fair". Fair, in this instance, meaning something that potential customers (who are notorious for holding up hobbyists' prices as the true worth of an item) won't whine about, and that will allow them to turn over their stock as quickly as possible. To the dabbler, the amount of profit on any individual sale doesn't matter. They measure success by the number of sales alone, and thus devour commodities at an alarming rate.

Now focusing on volume of sales can be a winning strategy in real life (e.g.: the monstrosity we call Wal-Mart), but real life has a much bigger resource pool to plunder than Lusternia does. There are only so many sets of great robes that can be made before, *poof*, there's no cloth available for making another set at any price.

The trick of doing business on Lusternia -- one which I've been preaching since I first took up tailoring -- is knowing that whenever you can't keep goods in stock, it means your goods are under-priced.

If you own no shop, you should have a baseline level of useful commodities you try to always maintain in your rift so you can fill orders in an instant. If you do own a shop, try creating a list of "inventory items" you mean to replace as quickly as they sell, and thus always have in stock. If you ever find you can't get your hands on enough commodities at the price you need to maintain this baseline or inventory goal, it's time to raise the price of your services.

Thank you for that answer Exarius, I understand it a little better now. What I still don't understand is...if you aren't capable of keeping a store well stocked, why do you have a store?

Because they dabble or it's thier hobby, they just own a store to feel good.

That was one of the best posts on the subject of the Lusternian market I've ever seen.

This is the hardest thing that I have to deal with, as I have more important things to do, I'd be considered a "dabbler". Comm prices change. I never know what to sell at, and as I enjoy sales volume, I also like to see some profit, and when I know that I bought ten steel at 100 each, twenty steel at 125 each, and 40 steel at anywhere from 100-150 (because I've forgotten by then), I'm not sure what to charge for things.

Personally, I guesstimate a lot. After a lot of buying commodities piecemeal, I've developed what I consider "standard" costs -- what I can reliably expect to pay for commodities, even during times of shortage, as long as they can be had at all.

By basing my costs on times of famine instead of times of feast, I at least know I'm not going to spend endless hours of ratting just to pay for the privilege of giving other people cheap clothes. If you wanted to be more fair/scientific/competetive, you could calculate your actual costs for materials by averaging.

Back before I developed my list of standard costs, I kept a journal listing all my commodities and wares. Every time I sold something, I subtracted it from the stock. Every time I bought something, I added it to the stock and averaged its costs with those of my current stock.

WARNING: Word Problem Ahead!

Few if any will want to bother with the algebra involved in averaging their costs in Lusternia, but you might try to follow my example below if you want to feel more confident about making cost guesstimates in Lusternia's wildly fluctuating marketplace.



Heck, even I decided that was more trouble than it was worth with the play money of Lusternia, and I like math. But that's how it would be done if you wanted to do it.

Maybe someday I'll program my own little accounting database to handle the job.

Maybe I'll just find a good price for each comm and stick with it.

Though the math makes sense, I don't want to overcomplicate.

Richter's basically right. But there is a more complete answer:

When something goes wrong, human beings are predisposed to blame the problem on anything and everything but themselves. They cast themselves as victims of circumstance, helpless to fight for change in any way but kicking their feet and pouting until some parental figure gets sick of the tantrum and sets things right for them.

Most store owners who want to but can't keep their stores stocked believe that they're doing a perfectly fine job, and its all the fault of the admins that commodities are scarce. Why on earth would they want to give up the cool factor of owning a store just so someone else could take over and not keep it stocked, either? Or worse, what if they sold out their interest in the store and suddenly, the next day, the gods came to their senses and started raining commodities from the heavens?

So there are a whole lot of store-owners who merely dabble because they honestly believe they're being forced to.

A lot of people -- myself included -- are also conditioned to feel guilty about accepting more than a survival wage for their efforts, no matter how hard they work. After all, taking money means someone else loses it, and who wants to be the bad guy who steals food from the mouth of his friends? Who would rather be seen as the despised and miserly Christmas Eve Scrooge than the generous, beloved, warm-hearted Christmas Day Scrooge?

More people than not live in constant fear of the sin of greed, so the moment someone starts whining that we're trying to gouge them, our first instinct is to believe them and try to placate them. So the typical Lusternian storeowner will erre on the side of underpricing, and -- for all intents and purposes -- run himself out of business in the process.

This guy's smart... Trans a tradeskill if you haven't already, come join the Merchant's Guild.

The Silver Stag is always stocked with all kinds of jewelery,herbs gems and things like that. N, NE from the Northern Square.

I'll add that Ialie's shop is always well stocked. When it's not, it's because I bought all her gems hehe.

Hmm, just so you know... that's not mine. I have a family shop in my manse Avaerin, which is the glade of sacred stones. I don't want to take credit for someone else's shop.

Thanks, I might, if you want to tell me about it. Transed Tailoring as soon as I felt confident I was going to stick around Lusternia.

I see the problem with shops and I'm pondering on what I can do about it, Chancellor wise. Thought about offering rewards to very well-stocked shops and that. We'll see.

Feel free to offer suggestions if you know anything that could bring improvements!