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TCS: Slow Growing

When I first started stocking Bosena I had loose goal points in my mind. These were things I was hoping that I'd be able to accomplish. One of those things was stocking battleships on the market. My plan was to get to that point by the end of the summer. Instead, it too me a year and three months to get to that point.

What happened?

Well, the best laid plans are probably better than what I had when I started building Bosean and establishing TCS as the Religion that it would eventually become. However, I had plans. Glorious plans that I have come to realize over the last year plus.

One of those plans was to stock battleships. However, it took a while to get there due to my focus on keeping TCS' growth based around it's own profits. I promote the concept of filling the market for a PvPer to for their ships. This means from hull to ammunition, the basics of a decent fit must be available. That sounds easy but it turns out to be a lot harder than it seems.

Eve requires a lot of stuff and all of that stuff needs market orders. I once counted my preferred Jaguar fit. Including hull it will take seventeen market orders to put my Jaguar on the market. That number rapidly starts to increase as the hull side goes up. Then, mix in things like armor tanking and shield tanking. Ammo for each gun type as well as the gun types. Prop mods, meta damage control units, nanite paste, and that is a lot of stuff. That number only increases with battleships.

Now, with three fully trained market alts I have around nine hundred orders available to me. But, having the orders to be filled has not always meant having the ISK to fill them. The goal of The Cougar Store was to make it self sustainable. That means slow growth and reinvestment. I did not want finical help. While the four billion ISK I started with sounds like a lot, it isn't. It most certainly isn't' when you look at battleships and estimate them at around two hundred million ISK per hull or more.

I noticed earlier in the year that TCS had spare cash. This means that I don't drain the wallet to empty every time I restock. You may ask why don't I just buy more? The reason is the volatility of the market. Not in the area of speculation but in the area of the common use meta. Items will sell for weeks and then stop selling for weeks or months. Sinking ISK into stock is somewhat shadow. That is why I've worked to expand my options.

I started with bringing in pirate frigates. Then a few, commonly used pirate cruisers. Then I stocked multiples of them. Then, with the HAC (Heavy Assault Cruiser) rebalance I started added HACs to the market. Now I've moved up to battleships and, to my surprise, they are selling.

I decided to start with common, utility battleships that get a lot of use in low sec. That means Apocalypses and Dominix. They sold. I restocked and added a Megathron. As they sell I'll add to them. A few battleships suck up the excess ISK. They are not a high return investment and I'll have to watch how they sell. Not everything in TCS is about a high return. If they sell at a regular pace, they are worth the ISK tied up in them because people need them.

A low sec market can be stocked much faster than I am doing mine. However, some of the growth is just habit. One thing that comes with these battleships is carrying more large weapons. I'd mostly kept enough to fit one to two battleships. I'll need to increase that as well and just see how it all sells off. Suddenly, an extra billion liquid ISK vanishes into the available, purchasable stock.

And that's a good thing.

Comments

  1. I've been selling Covert Ops frigates, Bombers, T3s and occasionally other ships in Molden Heath for quite a while. I mostly just buy them locally for resale though so that business is sporadic.

    I even sell the odd RNI there. Someone keeps putting one up for over a billion ISK and I like to discourage such extreme price gouging so I'll occasionally ship one in and post it for 600-750 mil. They sell slowly but they do sell and the margin is ok. I'd probably do it anyhow at no profit just to piss off the price gouger.

    I shipped a Rattlesnake to Teon once and sold it for a decent profit too.

    I've been thinking about bringing in a few marauders and black ops battleships to see how they sell there too. In fact I just checked prices now, decided it's worth doing and placed the buy orders on Jita.

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