TCS: Keeping Stock and Order

Warning: The price you have chosen is 59.57 % below regional average. Are you sure you want to enter this order?

I click yes each time. I know that my prices are 59.57% below the regional average. The regional average is ridiculous and I am fighting a one person war to correct it.

My slow roll concept is going very well for me.  It is creating a lot of daily work but as the store profits I will be able to buy larger amounts of stock and decrease my amount of daily effort.  Or so I think.  At the moment sales are doing very well and people are buying things left and right, sometimes more than I expect. Someone just purchased eight expanded cargohold IIs. I only realized later that I was out of cargohold II's. Someone else snapped up all of my drone damage amplifiers.  Another person drank all my isotopes off the market. 7-2 decided to have gank day and consumed a lot of random modules when they did so.

I keep selling Feroxs.  All of the local ones are very over priced so people buy mine.  I guess they want till a quiet period to get them out of low sec.  It is only a warp to the high sec gate and freedom from low sec.  I didn't realize how tempting the lower prices one jump in would be for people but all of us have seen it.  A pod or small ship jump in and a fast undock and warp back to high sec. Kira is burning through stabs he says.

I am focused on stock.  Keeping track of stock.  Keeping the market stocked.  Trying not to overstock and in general manage my budget.  As things sell out I replace them, using the profit to invest in larger quantities of commonly used items and to slowly branch out.

Most of that branching has been into hulls.  Everyone wants to have hulls available to buy when they need them.  That need is not consistent and hulls tie up a lot of ISK.  On top of that the profit is narrow.  On common hulls I am a bit higher then high sec.  I'm not going to take an ISK hit to compete with them.  On not as popular PvE hulls but popular PvP hulls I am often a good bit lower. I've had one argument so far. One person that whined that prices were to high. I was pissed. My total profit on that particular battlecruiser hull was 500k ISK after my fees.  That's it. Just to try to keep the hull costs competitive.

I sometimes wonder if I encounter market bots.  I sat in Hek buying ammo the other day.  Someone had purchased every single drop of medium projectile ammunition I had on the market.  I try not to lazy buy. The pennies count too much.  So I picked orders and watched as they were instantly replaced with the same numbers.  Vanished and next refresh they were back.

Communication is hard.  This is mostly my project but I have been open to others picking up pieces of the market.  However, people have a terrible habit of announcing that something is depleted without making it clear that they are going to restock it.  This leaves me with random excess here and there.  That, for the most part is fine.  I'll just refill the market once the other lists get low.  It is still a bit frustrated because I am trying to make my process smooth.

To smooth the process I have my little triad of market alts.  I created each one, plugged in cybernetics to IV and sent her off to Bosena.  I remapped them to trade.  At this point, I had to spend some money to buy them all implants and skill books.  But now they are all settled in, their skills training up.  This will allow me to turn my market alt into just a buying/transport alt and my The Cougar Store character's will all handle the market and sell as the store (corporation).

To prepare for that, I needed an office. I promptly discovered that all of the offices in Bosena were taken. Black Fog even had an office.  Oh the tears...  I do not know what makes an office die. I think that they sit around, unrentable, even if the corporation is not paying its bill. It was very frustrating   To create my plan of having the corporation function as its own, independent entity I needed that office.  That way the character's could deliver to each other and I could write contracts to the store to pay myself back for shopping.  I really want to keep my ISK and the store's ISK separate so that I can see how the store is doing.

The true solution is for CCP to make it so I can rent offices when I need to.

However, after begging a few people and not getting anywhere, Diz shut down THC2s Bosena office because we were not using it and for unknown reasons he loves me even thou I'm irritating and go off on tangents all the time over random things. I snapped it up and the Cougar Store is officially settled in with an office and three employees and everything.

I spent some time playing with the corporate management tools.  I set up the various hangers to help keep me organized   Sell orders, buy orders, deliveries. The corporation is just me and my own alts so everything is a director and life is much, much easier as I transition sales from my personal market alt onto the store employees.  I set up the wallets as well and I thought everything was all nice and neat and settled until I tried to have one of my TCS employees post the first sell order.

I hope to have buy orders up soon for things like expanded cargoholds and cynos.  My income ISK is tight due to the hulls on the market. However, I see some flexibility opening up after this weekend.  I am trying to get everything stocked up to the gills because my work weekends do not give me a lot of time to make what is basically a 2-4 hour round trip of buying and selling at Jita.

I'm playing with Eve Mentat.  I feel like an idiot with it.  I'll hopefully get things figured out. I've learned about corporate APIs as well.

I might undock something other then a freighter or an Orca again.