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B2B or retail? What pays off better in the long run?
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Gamma Alpha RJ: Gammatron CO: Gammatron Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 104 Karma: 62 Joined: Apr 7, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 11, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 11, 2012) That is the question. Does investing in markets and stores pays off actually? To achieve good tick/sell ratio one has to invest a lot in selling space. Maybe it's better to sell on b2b market only. You've got better cash flow which compensates smaller profit margin? I dunno... What do you think guys?
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Mister Death RJ: McFlono McFloninoo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 266 Karma: 300 Joined: Feb 6, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 11, 2012 It's a mistake to build a store and only sell a few items in it. But if you can stock most of the products, there are few things to beat a store profit-wise.But it's not either-or, store or B2B. The optimal strategy will combine the two. The retail price you ideally want to set is twice what you could get on the B2B, less the commission price. Surplus amounts would go the B2B. |
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Gheed Baiwa ben sandara RJ: Bob CO: Bob Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 45 Karma: 11 Joined: Apr 3, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 11, 2012 I use both from the beginning of my company. B2B brings like 2x more for me than store sales. I think it would take alot of investment in your stores to match the income of B2B. But store sales is much steadier income. Solely depending on B2B can get frustrating with competition :)
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eric scott RJ: Erik Scott CO: Sappo Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 130 Karma: 29 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 11, 2012 Pretty much what all else said.My retail store is pretty steady sales (assuming someone doesn't suddenly drop their QL50 item overtop of my QL10 item...) And I post the surplus product on B2B, it might sit there for half a day or longer, but when it sells its usually ALL sold at once. |
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Tom Denton RJ: kaibutsu Post Rating: 34 + / - Total Posts: 24 Karma: 53 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 11, 2012 Think of it like an ecosystem...Factories and production remove money from the economy, turning it into goods. Consumers at the stores turn the goods back into money, presumably much more money than was removed to produce the goods in the first place. I think of the consumers as acting somewhat like the plant life in an ecosystem; the stores are th herbivores, at the bottom of the food chain, harvesting the relatively free money produced by the consumers. At the B2B level, you're trying to make money off of other businesses, which in turn have to be making their money off of store sales, or B2B. In short, if everyone were running only B2B, there would be no cash inputs into the economy, and everything would seize up. Just like if you only had predators in an ecosystem; one needs herbivores, too, or else the system collapses. As noted above, we'll do best with an omnivorous strategy. Maximize store sales, and then use the much chancier B2B (or stable-but-shitty export market...) to suck up excess production. |
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Gamma Alpha RJ: Gammatron CO: Gammatron Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 104 Karma: 62 Joined: Apr 7, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 12, 2012 But i believe you can easily make your business w/o B2B altogether by setting up production and store network yourself. Right now I'm not selling on B2B market at all, because the time I spend on producing goods more or less equals time I spend on selling them through my own stores. So, while I'm selling some batch of goods, I'm producing another batch and cycle is kind of mechanical. I'm investing money in store/research/factories space and so far it works. Another reason against getting involved in B2B are prices. the prices of furniture or sports goods, which I'm specializing in, are completely discouraging, so there's no sense in buying any goods from those categories from other players, because profit margin is like 5-10% when you resell them in your own stores (not even mentioning low tick/sell ratio). I sell the stuff I produce earning 1:3 and when I buy stuff from B2B i'd earn like 1:1.1. Plus, I can't imagine suffering from something like "excess production" now. |
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Roald Adriaansen RJ: Wuvil CO: Wuvil Post Rating: 1 + / - Total Posts: 146 Karma: 281 Joined: Feb 4, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 12, 2012 Factories expand faster than stores, that's something to keep in mind. The best strategies usually use both stores and B2B. Being entirely self sufficient actually earns you less money if you know there will be plenty available at a reasonable price (like water and electricity, other things are starting to fill up too)
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Gamma Alpha RJ: Gammatron CO: Gammatron Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 104 Karma: 62 Joined: Apr 7, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 12, 2012 Sure, electricity and water is cheap out there, but other goods not. Actually the game has just begun for me, we'll see in a couple of weeks from now on.
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Roald Adriaansen RJ: Wuvil CO: Wuvil Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 146 Karma: 281 Joined: Feb 4, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 12, 2012 Some stuff is overpriced yeah, but that's just business opportunities. Several other stuff that's very reasonable.
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Chad the Launderer RJ: Synreal CO: Synreal Post Rating: 1 + / - Total Posts: 148 Karma: 71 Joined: Feb 11, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 12, 2012 I make 11 million a tick selling jewelry but I have something like 20k in store size. Eventually it will pay off. Might take awhile though. It took me 2 months to build up to what I have.
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Gamma Alpha RJ: Gammatron CO: Gammatron Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 104 Karma: 62 Joined: Apr 7, 2012 |
Posted on Apr 12, 2012 (Last edited on Apr 12, 2012) 11 million - that sounds pretty impressive for someone who's happy with a hundred a tick, Chad.Not sure if i'm going OT now, but it looks like the buildings which are worth investing in most are store/market spaces, right? They're cheaper to expand and give you the most direct profit. R&D facilities for instance are much more expensive. I wonder how much money you need to invest to be able to produce Q50 goods. I'm progressing from level Q15 to Q16 and at 20sqm it grows extremely slowly (it takes 16h to advance 1Q point or something). Finally, I followed your advice and already filled my hardware store with lots of goods from B2B market. Yeah, it pays off nicely when selling 15 goods at the same time even if a profit margin is less than 50% (which is still pretty high comparing to other forms of investment in real life). in many cases I get 100% return, which means that yeah, buying on B2B market for a retail resale is a good idea. Thank you all for your remarks. |
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