Market Discussions

This morning I was running around buying all the fittings in order to outfit 25 Condor Fast Tacklers, I had decided to join a PvP Corp, in order to learn about the darker side of EvE. As I was doing all the running around I wondered to myself, I'm sure I'm not the only person doing this on a regular basis...Right?

What if I could sell Pre-Fit ships? Why not? I got to thinking, I hadn't seen mention of it in other areas of the forums so why wasn't it being offered?


Is this a viable business idea? My thinking was that at first I could offer pre-fit t1 ships, Tacklers and the like (I'm not space rich) and then steadily move up in my offerings.

What is the best way to go about this? Posting/taking orders here? A seperate website? Contracts in game? Reaching out to PvP Corp leaders?


Thanks for any insight you may have.

By big blocs do you mean something like a big alliance/or corp? I'd assume they have in house setups to fit/fill their lines. Maybe I'm missing something?

If you want to do a business like this, don't try it with common ships.

Try this instead - Fully faction fit faction ships.

Fit a Sansha frig with all Sansha stuff, A CNR fully CalNavy gear.

Don't fit rigs to them, no sense in the extra burden.

What you're selling is taking the time and effort to collect the stuff and get it all into one package.

I see a few problems with the idea.

1. As X ATM092 said, people have their own idea of how to fit a ship and they are not going to agree that your way is the best.

2. 90+% of your potential customers are not going to check contracts for ships and will never see your ships for sale.

The problem in 2 can be lessened by some type of advertising in local or with anchored cans but 1 is hard to do anything about.

I was toying with this idea for a while basically the best way to do this is to get a contract with some corps to provide various fited ships they need, another way is to post a sell order service on the forum. The second is more risky as some might ordrer ships and never take delivery forcing you to sell at a loss either in isk or time.

Personally I would use this service for things like Noctis, scanning herons etc. Those fits are pretty universal, also you may want to look into gank fits as they are pretty standard too.

Depending on the time frame for the orders, if you get a large order of 50 -100 fitted ships you would be wise to use the bulk trade mailing list to source your parts at slightly cheaper then Jita. If you have the capital, you could look into producing the parts yourself but be sure to ensure you can make them cheaper then you can buy them.

1. its been mentioned that the value of a similar product was worth 10 or 15 mill a turn. That's a nice turn. Does the local customer value flexibility enough to pay higher premiums for select modules at the same station? how much is fast reshipping worth compared to the flexibility of purchasing individual parts at a station?

2. Do you want a close customer relationship like in corp/alliance or does extension into the broader market offer different opportunities to create value.

3. What information channels to use? Private contracts are limited, corp contracts are nice, web advertisements are possible as well as order taking, general market has large potential. Each has positives and negatives you can see as well as positives and negatives that you cannot. You have to gather information from others that may have a stake in what your doing.

4. The channels you pick will start to shape your customer base or you can pick your customers and work your channels around them. For instance, desiring a PVP base may lead you to only supply via corp contract channels if people like your alliance think its wiser. Besides your own channels, what about these partners? They will create restrictions but Are you selling strictly on your own or can partners also promote your product? after you get some awareness going, can you post fits on forums and allow people to evaluate them? Do you deliver or only work in certain systems? Something I never see anymore is after sales support. I bought a prefitted hulk off of the sell forum. The guy not only delivered it in half an hour but caught me in chat a week or two later to see how I liked it and to remind me that hes there if I had any alts. :)

5. Do you have any partners, suppliers of parts, logistics, alliance and corp? Not anticipating people affected often results in conflicts that have not anticipated either.

6. What all are you going to have to do? Find popular fits, post them, keep up with patches, buy materials, move stuff and market and account, planning and forecasting, honing processes etc.

7 WHat resources do you have: people, material, isk, prints, logistics, knowledge, space access, research tools etc.

8. What Costs and operating expense will be incurred in transforming these into sales. will higher costs be associated with offering more or less flexibility to your customers. Can you handle the accounting in a manner that you don't assign to high a cost to it in your time. What are the probabilities of shipment loss and their affect on expenses, will inefficiencies in your supply line tie up large amounts of resources in partial inventories not on the market. What percentage should you be making on this money that is actually a loss due to excess inventory carrying. Is it getting worse or better?

9. Are there any alternate income streams that you can add. Are there monthly fees or stocking fees possible? Would yours or another alliance pay you extra to initialize a hub, a subscription to keep it stocked, a fee to guarantee to keep it stocked a certain way? Flat rate, subscription or percentage?

I don't know, I have a lot of fun designing business models fast and loose