| Author |
Topic |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.10.31 23:18:00 - [ 1]
Edited by: Dark Shikari on 06/11/2006 17:34:08STUFF. All too few have heard of that name, though more and more will. Most who know about probably have seen nothing more than our promotional video. But few know exactly what we do. Most of those few are part of the STUFF Consortium, a group of corporations including FIN, AATP, T2HL, T2AHL, and H-TI. We're growing every week it seems: we started with only AATP, then T2HL and H-TI joined, T2AHL joined another week later, FIN two weeks later, and now Driven's MASP (Mass Produced) corporation is planning on joining us also. We work quite simply. A T2 producer, whether large with a hundred blueprints or small with two, drops off his stuff with us. We calculate our price (based on how easy the item is to sell and the market price in Jita) and buy it when we're ready to sell it and then put it on market. I am the sole employee of STUFF on my alt Yukari Tanizaki, and thus get the grunt work of continuous undercutting, market manipulation, and managing 50 -100 orders and a massive Excel spreadsheet. Its a lot of work for me, but absolutely no work other than hauling for corporations in the STUFF Consortium. Sometimes it isn't even hauling: when FIX isn't involved in a corporate war, I'll move stuff as necessary with a freighter. Shares are sold to the corporations in the consortium at 10 million a piece to serve as corporate cash for buying T2 items to resell on market. They also represent relative profit amounts of each corporation. They aren't exact, but larger corporations of course get more of a share of profit through dividends than smaller ones, because they contributed more to that profit. Our job, simply, has been to eliminate the job of selling for our clients. As part of STUFF, you need only do the work of producing your product, leaving the rest of your time to do whatever you want: PvP, run missions... heck, even play a different game. Its up to you: we make it easy. When we began this month, we had just begun with three corporations in the STUFF consortium. Now we have five, with a total BPO value of nearly twice as much as we started. Soon we will have six. We are currently selling nearly two billion ISK worth of equipment and ships per day in a single system. Our first dividend came today. Here is our financial statement. Tech 2 Assets: 5,206,819,616.67 ISK Assets: 13,553,656,068.75 Total assets: 18,760,475,685.42 Total share value: 13,340,000,000.00 Total profit: 5,420,475,685.42 Total salary: 542,047,568.54 Total dividend: 4,878,428,116.88 |
Devilish Ledoux
Caldari
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation |
Posted - 2006.10.31 23:31:00 - [ 2]
Edited by: Devilish Ledoux on 31/10/2006 23:31:52
By "privately owned," you do mean "owned in large part by publicly traded corporations," right?
Either way, outstanding work. You provide an awesome service for all of the members of the Consortium. |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.10.31 23:36:00 - [ 3]
 Originally by: Devilish Ledoux
By "privately owned," you do mean "owned in large part by publicly traded corporations," right?
Correct, technically. By "privately owned" I mean that you cannot buy shares unless you join the consortium. Originally by: Devilish Ledoux
Either way, outstanding work. You provide an awesome service for all of the members of the Consortium.
 Also I would like to point out that we are currently accepting both new major and minor members. Major member: Pays for shares and puts an alt in the corporation to use a hangar. Must have a large number of blueprints including some relatively good ones. This is for large corporations with many blueprints. Minor member: No shares purchased, might only have one T2 blueprint. Gets a container in one of the hangars and probably uses escrow to give me the items (I will put them in the container) rather than an alt in the corporation. |
Bentus Kushani |
Posted - 2006.10.31 23:37:00 - [ 4]
Simply incredible. 30% return over 1 month? I'm quite jealous of the investors. Good job, Dark Shikari! |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.10.31 23:46:00 - [ 5]
Also, here is a roughly accurate list of our current products, for those interested.
100mm Reinforced Steel Plate II
100mn Afterburner II
100mn Microwarpdrive II
150mm Light Autocannon II
1mn Afterburner II
200mm Reinforced Steel Plate II
50mm Reinforced Steel Plate II
650mm Artillery Cannon II
Ares
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Assault Missile Launcher II
Aurora M
Aurora S
Ballistic Deflection Field II
Bane Javelin Torpedo
Bane Rage Torpedo
Barrage M
Barrage S
Bloodclaw Fury Light Missile
Cataclysm Fury Cruise Missile
Cataclysm Precision Cruise Missile
Claw
Claymore
Conflagration M
Curse
Devastator Fury Cruise Missile
Devestator Precision Cruise Missile
Dual 150mm Railgun II
Dual Light Beam Laser II
Dual Light Pulse Laser II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Reactive Membrane II
Energized Reflective Membrane II
Energized Regenerative Membrane II
Explosion Dampening Amplifier II
Falcon
Flameburst Fury Light Missile
Flameburst Precision Light Missile
Foxfire Javelin Rocket
Foxfire Rage Rocket
Gleam M
Gleam S
Gremlin Javelin Rocket
Gremlin Rage Rocket
Hail L
Hail M
Hail S
Havoc Fury Heavy Missile
Havoc Precision Heavy Missile
Heavy Electron Blaster II
Hedbergite Mining Crystal II
Hemorphite Mining Crystal II
Hornet II
Impel
Inferno Javelin Torpedo
Inferno Rage Torpedo
Javelin M
Javelin S
Juggernaut Javelin Torpedo
Juggernaut Rage Torpedo
Kinetic Deflection Amplifier II
LADAR Backup Array II
Light Ion Blaster II
Light Neutron Blaster II
Magnetic Plating II
Magnetic Scattering Amplifier II
Magnetometric Backup Array II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Plasma Smartbomb II
Medium Proton Smartbomb II
Medium Pulse Laser II
Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Transporter II
Micro Capacitor Battery II
Micro Capacitor Booster II
Micro EMP Smartbomb II
Micro Graviton Smartbomb II
Micro Plasma Smartbomb II
Micro Proton Smartbomb II
Micro Shield Extender II
Miner II
Mining Drone II
Mjolnir Javelin Torpedo
Mjolnir Rage Torpedo
Null L
Null S
Omber Mining Crystal II
Paradise Fury Cruise Missile
Phalanx Javelin Rocket
Phalanx Rage Rocket
Photon Scattering Field II
Piranha Fury Light Missile
Quad Light Beam Laser II
Quake M
Quake S
Reactive Plating II
Reflective Plating II
Regenerative Plating II
Remote Sensor Dampener II
Rook
Sabretooth Fury Light Missile
Sabretooth Precision Light Missile
Scorch M
Scorch S
Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Sensor Booster II
Siege Missile Launcher II
Signal Amplifier II
Small Armor Repairer II
Small Capacitor Battery II
Small Capacitor Booster II
Small EMP Smartbomb II
Small Energy Neutralizer II
Small Energy Transfer Array II
Small Graviton Smartbomb II
Small Plasma Smartbomb II
Small Proton Smartbomb II
Small Shield Extender II
Small Shield Transporter II
Spike L
Spike M
Spike S
Standard Missile Launcher II
Taranis
Thermic Plating II
Thorn Javelin Rocket
Thorn Rage Rocket
Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Thunderbolt Precision Heavy Missile
Tracking Computer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Link II
Tremor L
Tremor S
Viator
Void L
Void M
Void S
Widowmaker Fury Heavy Missile
Widowmaker Precision Heavy Missile
Wrath Precision Cruise Missile |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.10.31 23:47:00 - [ 6]
Edited by: Dark Shikari on 31/10/2006 23:48:36 Originally by: Bentus Kushani
Simply incredible. 30% return over 1 month? I'm quite jealous of the investors. Good job, Dark Shikari!
It isn't exactly a 30% return: we are making "profit" off each item we sell, as STUFF does take a small margin on everything. However, we are also making profit by manipulating the market and trying to sell our products for the best prices possible. Of course, we also make some losses too. The dividend isn't a return on investment per se: the "investment" is simply cash needed to run the corporation. The profit comes from a combination of trading/market manipulation and (mainly) small margins on vast hoards of tech 2 items. Overall, the "investors" (STUFF Consortium) are probably making no more or less in profit than they were before, as the trading I do increases profits but at the same time I take a cut of the profits for my own salary. Thus, once the dividends go back to the corporations, the end result is probably breakeven for them. However... they did absolutely no work to sell their hundreds of items, which is why they are part of STUFF. |
EMFI AATP
Advanced Astrological Technology Production
|
Posted - 2006.11.01 00:02:00 - [ 7]
I had a dream and Dark Shikari made it come true...
Excellent work, very impressed... best thing that happened to us :P
|
Rthor
Gallente
Smugglers Inc. |
Posted - 2006.11.01 00:59:00 - [ 8]
These numbers show incomplete picture at best and are meaningless at worst.
36 percent return on what?
And how do you know value of shares when they are not publicly traded?
Are not you really just showing that you have 18B in assets and then you paid out 5B as dividends and got .5B salary? Why then not pay out 10B and thus double the "36 percent" return? That would make you like, if i math is correct, twice as savvy a businessman. And so do I get .5B for thus making a suggestion for doubling the performance of your company? If so I may even make a further suggestion to pay out the whole 13B in ISK as dividend. |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.11.01 01:17:00 - [ 9]
Edited by: Dark Shikari on 01/11/2006 01:19:17 Originally by: Rthor
These numbers show incomplete picture at best and are meaningless at worst.
36 percent return on what?
And how do you know value of shares when they are not publicly traded?
Are not you really just showing that you have 18B in assets and then you paid out 5B as dividends and got .5B salary? Why then not pay out 10B and thus double the "36 percent" return? That would make you like, if i math is correct, twice as savvy a businessman. And so do I get .5B for thus making a suggestion for doubling the performance of your company? If so I may even make a further suggestion to pay out the whole 13B in ISK as dividend.
We paid out 5 billion ISK dividend because it set the corporate NAV back to what it started at. We started with 10m NAV per share and now we have above that, so we dividend to reset NAV to 10 million. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear from the information I posted, but that's how it works. If we paid 10 billion ISK dividend, the NAV would be below 10m per share, which is contrary to our goals. The value of the shares is what they were paid for. They represent solid assets and nothing more, not speculation value. |
Optic Nerve
Gallente
Rubra Libertas Militia
|
Posted - 2006.11.01 07:09:00 - [ 10]
War Dec on its way soon Mr Dark |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.11.01 22:02:00 - [ 11]
|
EMFI AATP
Advanced Astrological Technology Production
|
Posted - 2006.11.01 22:50:00 - [ 12]
|
Treelox |
Posted - 2006.11.01 23:31:00 - [ 13]
|
Devilish Ledoux
Caldari
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation |
Posted - 2006.11.02 00:05:00 - [ 14]
Camping the station 23/7, just waiting for you to peek your little head out ... |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.11.02 10:43:00 - [ 15]
|
Phoenix Pryde
Caldari
3-I Area 42
|
Posted - 2006.11.02 10:59:00 - [ 16]
Nice. Anyway, so in simple words, STUFF is essentially a reseller, right? As in, you 'buy' the T2 items for a decent price from the consortium members, and STUFF does the work of actually selling it on market, making a profit. Then you additionally sold of shares to the consortium members to get liquid cash assets. In return you pay out 90% of the made profit as a dividend on these shares. So essentially in simple words, for your reselling work you take 10% of the actual profits :) Actually a good deal for the consortium members i guess. Your income for that effort is quite moderate.  |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.11.02 11:28:00 - [ 17]
Originally by: Phoenix Pryde
Nice.
Anyway, so in simple words, STUFF is essentially a reseller, right?
As in, you 'buy' the T2 items for a decent price from the consortium members, and STUFF does the work of actually selling it on market, making a profit.
Then you additionally sold of shares to the consortium members to get liquid cash assets. In return you pay out 90% of the made profit as a dividend on these shares.
So essentially in simple words, for your reselling work you take 10% of the actual profits :)
Actually a good deal for the consortium members i guess. Your income for that effort is quite moderate.
Correct, you got it  |
Researching Princess |
Posted - 2006.11.02 16:58:00 - [ 18]
So unfair you refuse to let the public in....  |
Stoick Furious |
Posted - 2006.11.02 17:40:00 - [ 19]
I'm not entirely clear on this so forgive me if I misrepresent one of your concepts. It looks to me like your company buys tech 2 stuff from other corporations who aren't market savvy enough to sell it for market value on their own, you take a percentage of profit and then send out dividends to the people who supplied you with inventory, which actually ends up being sgnificantly less than they would have made by selling it themselves.
Doesn't the only benefit to member corporations seem to be an easy way to dump merchandise that the corporation doesn't have a person skilled enough to sell properly? If that is the case is there really enough corporations out there that actually see this profit drain as a strategy to support you?
I mean it makes great business sense for you. Who wouldn't want to run a corporation where some guy who has valuable inventory, brings the inventory to you, then you click "Sell Item" set a reasonable price and take 10%.
I must be missing something here because I'm baffled as to why people do this. I'm new to the game, just finished my first month, but in the real world if someone developed a toy for walmart, manufactured the toy, shipped the toy to the walmart and then allowed another corporation to take 10% for handling the invoicing they'd be fired pretty quickly by the shareholders. |
Stoick Furious |
Posted - 2006.11.02 17:48:00 - [ 20]
ok after reviewing my post I think I may have made it sound a little more stand-offish than intend. In reality I'm actually baffled by this concept and am honestly curious as to why corporations would be interested in joining this thing when it means a reduction of 10% over what they could make themselves with no other real benefit that I can see other than moving slow inventory. |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.11.02 20:19:00 - [ 21]
Edited by: Dark Shikari on 02/11/2006 20:21:52 Originally by: Stoick Furious
ok after reviewing my post I think I may have made it sound a little more stand-offish than intend. In reality I'm actually baffled by this concept and am honestly curious as to why corporations would be interested in joining this thing when it means a reduction of 10% over what they could make themselves with no other real benefit that I can see other than moving slow inventory.
First of all, the corporations probably make almost exactly the same profits as they would otherwise. You appear to have selectively read this thread, ignoring information that would destroy your argument. Second, they do not compete with each other, avoiding crashing prices. Third, do you realize how much work it takes to effectively sell 80+ items? One person can easily run a large T2 production corp, but the selling is often 10 times more work than the production. Some people have lives, and want to go PvP or do something else with their time in EVE. You know that STUFF wasn't even my idea, right? EMFI, the head of two large T2 production corps, came up with it. He installed me as head of STUFF and got a number of other major conglomerates to join. Perhaps as a lowly newbie (or alt, I can't tell), you have no idea what it takes to run a Tech 2 production corp. This is probably the likely answer. If you have no experience with something, don't talk about it. Seriously. Originally by: Researching Princess
So unfair you refuse to let the public in....
Anyone can join as long as they have at least one T2 blueprint whose product they want to sell to STUFF. |
Femintaki
Gallente
Pan-Galactic Production And Logistics |
Posted - 2006.11.02 20:25:00 - [ 22]
Well - I consider myself extremely market savvy given my record.
Why do I sell my 80+ tech 2 items through STUFF? Because having given 3 years to the market in EVE and managing my products on market myself I felt like a change of scenery, Dark Shikari and STUFF offered a service that I felt quite happy paying a percentage of my profit for.
My personal goal is no longer isk driven as isk is not something I lack.
Incidentally - STUFF only buys items it can sell, there is no danger of me "Dumping" anything on them as Dark Shikari is way too savvy to allow that to happen.
Have fun
Love
Fem |
Trebor Locke
Gallente
Nexus Aerospace Corporation
|
Posted - 2006.11.02 21:51:00 - [ 23]
While your concept seems to be working for you, your customers are actually getting less for those Tech 2 items than they normally would. There are tons of traders on EVE who are market savy AND enjoy doing purely trade. All one has to do is hire an expert trader to their corp and they are set (this would be a trader who also has the wholesale skill on hand).
I applaud your work on this but sooner or later you'll need to have an assistant if you keep growing rapidly. |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.11.02 21:58:00 - [ 24]
Originally by: Trebor Locke
While your concept seems to be working for you, your customers are actually getting less for those Tech 2 items than they normally would.
Yes, but they are getting dividends that are approximately equal to the difference in price. Originally by: Trebor Locke
There are tons of traders on EVE who are market savy AND enjoy doing purely trade. All one has to do is hire an expert trader to their corp and they are set
Guess what? I'm one of those traders. They hired me. Originally by: Trebor Locke
(this would be a trader who also has the wholesale skill on hand).
Guess what? I have it on my trading alt, along with level 4 broker/sales tax skills. Originally by: Trebor Locke
I applaud your work on this but sooner or later you'll need to have an assistant if you keep growing rapidly.
No, I'll just need the Tycoon skill. I have over 50 orders left, on average--I'm having no issues with load at the moment. |
Trebor Locke
Gallente
Nexus Aerospace Corporation
|
Posted - 2006.11.03 08:42:00 - [ 25]
I'm not bashing your business :-P I'm just saying that even humans have their limits :) |
Stoick Furious |
Posted - 2006.11.03 12:11:00 - [ 26]
Edited by: Stoick Furious on 03/11/2006 12:13:30
Agreed. There's no reason to get defensive. Nobody is trying to point out that what you're doing doesn't make economic sense. If you think I've selectively read what your posted, then enlighten me to what I've missed. That's a constructive debate.
From my perspective and as your own customer and you have both seemed to be saying, your company really is for those who are willing to surrender a portion of their sales to have someone else put them on the market for them.
I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out that for most corporations, paticularly those which have public shareholders, your corporation takes 10% of what they could make themselves.
This seems more geared towards, as your customer pointed out, people who don't care as much about money anymore and would rather pvp or enjoy other aspects of the game other than market economy. Feel free to correct me if I've missed something here.
I agree that this is a great business concept and a superb service for those who are interested in it. I guess I'm just surprised that there are so many manufacturing based businesses - whom I would assume are players heavily interested in trade - willing to participate in your business. |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.11.03 13:27:00 - [ 27]
Edited by: Dark Shikari on 03/11/2006 13:40:30 Originally by: Stoick Furious
I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out that for most corporations, paticularly those which have public shareholders, your corporation takes 10% of what they could make themselves.
But the profits are dividended back to the companies involved. Even if STUFF made no better sales than the corporations would themselves, the companies would still only "lose" 1% of their profits or so for my salary. One percent. But I am quite confident that STUFF sells considerably better than these corporations would alone and probably makes up for that 1% easily. I think it would be an accurate statement to say that the corporations involved are making more now than they were before. |
Devilish Ledoux
Caldari
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation |
Posted - 2006.11.03 14:28:00 - [ 28]
The first and final test of STUFF's success is the reaction from its client corporations. They seem happy, so STUFF is cool in my book. |
Rthor
Gallente
Smugglers Inc. |
Posted - 2006.11.03 15:04:00 - [ 29]
DS can do whatever he wants with his businesses but why does this require a post with numbers written with colorful and oversized fonts and some meaningless percentages I dunno.
The purpose of this is actually that he is just marketing himself so that he will get some other good deals in the future from you. Whether these deals will be cheap for you is another thing. There is no business value generated by creating overly complicated schemes and the lack of full disclosure. These deals are how they are for a reason. The person who creates those overly complicated schemes usually benefits the most and the reason you take part in them is because either you dont know everything about the specific deal or agree to it without understanding it and, in general, you agree to these schemes because you want to be cutting-edge intellectual and financial innovator. So you are in them and DS is making a bunch. |
Dark Shikari
Caldari
Deep Core Mining Inc.
|
Posted - 2006.11.03 15:07:00 - [ 30]
Edited by: Dark Shikari on 03/11/2006 15:23:10 Originally by: Rthor
DS can do whatever he wants with his businesses but why does this require a post with numbers written with colorful and oversized fonts and some meaningless percentages I dunno.
The purpose of this is actually that he is just marketing himself so that he will get some other good deals in the future from you. Whether these deals will be cheap for you is another thing. There is no business value generated by creating overly complicated schemes and the lack of full disclosure. These deals are how they are for a reason. The person who creates those overly complicated schemes usually benefits the most and the reason you take part in them is because either you dont know everything about the specific deal or agree to it without understanding it and, in general, you agree to these schemes because you want to be cutting-edge intellectual and financial innovator. So you are in them and DS is making a bunch.
I did not create STUFF, EMFI did. I was simply hired as the CEO. And what is this about "lack of full disclosure"? You ask me a question, and I will answer it. The business is entirely open to auditing. It is not complex: it is extremely simple, and I can even send you the Excel sheet if you want the formulas. If you want complex, check out Gavin's scheme for calculating building costs that uses differential equations to model prices! Honestly, if you know so little about what you're talking about that you have to make things up in order to flame me, don't post. You flame me for "lack of full disclosure" yet you still haven't asked me to disclose anything--your post is meaningless. |
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