SL14B Shopping Event

[Chase01]

4 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Interesting. I know of one venue (what I would consider minor event) that has been doing this awhile.  Things are definitely shifting in the venue-events realm; you don't have to pay too much attention to see that. Some have closed, others apparently scrambling, owners being MIA for the most part. I am waiting to see what the next "big thing" will be in SL :D. Always an adventure watching. 

Since I really hate vendors and don't use them except for charity events, that would likely take me out  of the venue carnival. Good for the new folks maybe, not so good for the major brands unless the percentage taken was really small. What "I" foresee happening if more event owners go the split profits route is that creators would make smaller, inexpensive items -- not putting for all that much effort and consider the event advertising rather than a profit making exercise.  Probably not all that positive in the long run. 

 

From what I've heard it was 5%. It is a small percentage, but it turns out to be a rather large chunk of change. I know some were not pleased with it for obvious reasons. So I am curious what will come of that down the line. What I don't know is if those vendors were also charged an entrance fee in addition to taking a portion of their profit. I am not a fan of the concept used in mass but I do see it having a value for both parties in select situations. Say for example I run a major event. I could open up a small space for guest creators and take a portion of their profits. I have the venue with traffic and they want exposure. It seems like a fairly reasonable trade.

 

 

[Chic Aeon]

17 minutes ago, Chase01 said:

From what I've heard it was 5%. It is a small percentage, but it turns out to be a rather large chunk of change. I know some were not pleased with it for obvious reasons. So I am curious what will come of that down the line. What I don't know is if those vendors were also charged an entrance fee in addition to taking a portion of their profit. I am not a fan of the concept used in mass but I do see it having a value for both parties in select situations. Say for example I run a major event. I could open up a small space for guest creators and take a portion of their profits. I have the venue with traffic and they want exposure. It seems like a fairly reasonable trade.

 

 

Ahhhh. OK. I see. Well from my experience I would guess it was in addition unless the folks at some venues are making WAY more than anyone I know LOL.  And yes, if that was added to the entrance fee, then I suspect some folks would just pack up. 

There have been places that only took a portion of the profits for many years, but those were shops, not monthly events. The ones like that that I know about ONLY took a percentage but it was more like 25 to 50 which would be OK for some folks and definitely not OK for others.  So yes, it will be interesting to see how this flows.  

Somewhere in the long thread there was mention of new (and sometimes questionable quality) stores getting into venues when more established stores with better quality merchandise could not get in (we aren't talking about me here but folks I know who seem to want to be in a TON of events *wink*).  I am not sure if that is altruism on the event owners part or networking or what.  But in some ways the idea of new folks in events IS happening -- for whatever reason. Unfortunately that sometimes leads the more established brands to leave the event as traffic goes down (and it really does in many cases sadly).

Probably no really great answer. 

[Chase01]

It is definitely political in some regards. It's only natural that friends will generally want to help each other. I could go one step further and say that not all of them are necessarily friends, but allies with common interests. I have seen it with my own eyes.

I won't speak for everyone, but some of the bigger creators I know personally have pulled out of some events because it was becoming too demanding. They had felt that the quality of what they produced wasn't up to their expectations. Many were growing tired of catering their creation process around themes and some even came to realize that they didn't need to be in as many events to still remain successful. At the end of the day, these events garnered a lot of exposure for businesses but in a lot of ways I feel like they've marginalized the value of their mainstore to some extent, which is counterproductive. A few brands have figured out ways of continuing to drive success in their mainstore post event cycles.

 

 

[Babe Whimsy]

Is there a list of all the SLurls for the stores on the sims at all please? In particular I'm looking for the E.V.E Dystopia store. Don't know which sim it's on even  Thanks xXx

[LittleMe Jewell]

I finally got to this event yesterday - was waiting for the crowds to die off a bit.  I really loved the build - it reminded me of wandering the local malls in my teenage years.  I actually did find a freebie in every store, though there were a few that definitely were not marked very well and quite a few that you had to be pretty close to see.   I also discovered quite a few stores that are new to me, so I'll have some fun checking out their main locations later. 

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

   Never before have I been dropping L$ as much as when I started going to events like the SLB14 shopping event, Collabor88, Kustom 9, N21, and others. This is also perhaps concurrent with the increasing quality and quantity of available clothing, furnishings, and various other knick-knacks that are on offer.

[Chic Aeon]

On 6/16/2017 at 11:34 AM, Chase01 said:

I won't speak for everyone, but some of the bigger creators I know personally have pulled out of some events because it was becoming too demanding. They had felt that the quality of what they produced wasn't up to their expectations. Many were growing tired of catering their creation process around themes and some even came to realize that they didn't need to be in as many events to still remain successful. At the end of the day, these events garnered a lot of exposure for businesses but in a lot of ways I feel like they've marginalized the value of their mainstore to some extent, which is counterproductive. A few brands have figured out ways of continuing to drive success in their mainstore post event cycles.

 

 

I have watched this too, and while not a big name by any means after a year and a half on the venue merry-go-round the thrill has kind of waned for me.

I have also watched some creators push themselves too hard and definitely lower the quality of their work. You don't even have to be paying that much attention to notice that the quality of event items in general has gone down by leaps and bounds over the last year or so; that's for many events including some top ones. There are still some phenomenal items to be found and I am happy that some creators are keeping their quality high, but as someone wanted a ways back in this thread, those with less skills (not always new but sometimes) ARE getting added to events.  

Since I don't run any event and don't take tea with those that do, I can only guess as to the reasoning behind the lowering of quality. I have left some events because of that after hanging in  longer than many. Eventually, being in a less than great event can actually HURT your brand and others have realized that.  People are still doing well in events, some better than others and it seems to depend a lot on WHAT you build -- and not so much on HOW WELL you build it :D.   Honestly that depresses me a bit.  But, since I try to be a glass half full gal I do my best to show of the folks that are putting forth that superior effort and producing wondrous products. 

I still plan to do events, but not as many and not as often. I sell best on the Marketplace still and I can build whatever I like with no costs there until I sell and item. So backtracking a bit in my personal business plan and paying more attention on what I "want" to build. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

After taking a break from SL for quite a few years, when I came back I noticed that the number of both Events and Hunts has increased 3 or 4 times over what it was when I stopped logging in regularly.  It is no wonder that some creators could get overwhelmed by it all.  If they actually try to participate in most everything, I can see quality suffering a bit.

[Klytyna]

6 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

After taking a break from SL for quite a few years, when I came back I noticed that the number of both Events and Hunts has increased 3 or 4 times over what it was when I stopped logging in regularly.  It is no wonder that some creators could get overwhelmed by it all.  If they actually try to participate in most everything, I can see quality suffering a bit.

A couple of hair stores come to mind...

One, used to have a mania board  with a different hair on it every month, and they released a new hair or two every couple of months.

Every month you had a reason to visit the store, and check the mania and new products area, generate trafic that helped others find the place, and to make personal recommendations  to friends.

Then they went 'event crazy' the mania vanished, so did the new releases, instead you got a new hair rushed out 3 or 4 times a month just for a particular event, to vanish when that event ended, the need to finish an endless stream of 'mew hairs' by the opening deadlines meant they tended to look more and more like minor re-edits of old hairs in 'special' color hud combos.

The inworld store is a tomb, the group mainlyt seems to be people asking if theres customer service online because the brand new limited event hair for this week was shipped with no hud, or the wrong hud, or whatever, and they can't get a redelivery yet because the vendor is still manually adding the unscripted vendor-prim event sales records to the caspervend system, and hasn't loaded the FIXED product into the caspervend server yet.

 

By contrast, another hair store I know, release new hairs WHEN they are ready, and put them in the 'new products' section of their store, right at the front. The store isn't some arty collection of jumbled pokey rooms, with dark arty product shots, it is wide clear aisles with nice large bright product pictures, and readily available demos, supplied in folders not boxes. and pose stands set in the floor at regular intervals.

You can clearly see what the stuff looks like, try it on in the store easily, the demos let you try all 116 colour options, and the hairs you buy are copymod so you can de-alpha-blend if needed, or de-script if needed once you have selected your chosen colour on a spare copy. And the hairs are a decent price for whichever of the two 56 colour huds you choose.

I no longer recommend the first hair store to anyone, but I'm happy to recommend the second, "Exxess", to everyone. 
 

[Skell Dagger]

SL14B was, for me, a different kind of event because I found so many new-to-me creators there. Granted, it's a lot bigger than other events and were it limited to the same size as, say, C88 or K9 the list of designers may comprise more of the usual suspects, but it stood out to me for that very reason.

I don't attend most events, purely because most of them contain only items for female avatars. I usually check the Seraphim blog gallery for each one in case there's the occasional item such as a tattoo or eyes etc that I can make use of, or I'll go because someone mentions in a group chat that there's a great [x] out at [y] event.

However, what I have noticed is that the items available at the two main male avatar events are almost always top-notch in terms of quality, and I think that has much to do with the scarcity of male events. While some of the designers at The Mens Dept and Men Only Monthly do create for both male and female avatars and will therefore sometimes commit to other events as well, I'd estimate that about 80% of them are not doing many of them and therefore spreading themselves (and the quality of their items) too thin.

The only time when I don't spend a lot of money between those two events each month is when the variety in style is lacking or is simply not my preference. Sometimes I'll walk into TMD only to find that it's mostly jeans, hoodies, and sneakers, with the occasional motorbike and some 'man cave' type furniture, and those are the days when I tend to walk right out again after buying the one or two items that did appeal in among all the excess testosterone. (Another 'walk out' moment for me is the the time when the collection is mostly gacha items. Nope, I'm not spending L$10,000 just to get three or four things I really want, because I don't trust my impulse control if I start to pull on those machines...) Other times I all but empty my wallet because the collection is an absolute blinder and I arrive back home with my virtual arms absolutely full of bags and boxes.

Sure, there's still the occasional dud among those items, or the designer has missed something from the package, etc. But those times are incredibly rare for me (and I am - for a guy - a serious shopaholic) so I'd say the overall quality of the items I get from those events is pretty good.

Inworld shopping has gone downhill anyway since Marketplace took off, and I'm as guilty of that as anyone else: if it's on MP I'll usually get it from there. Some stores have got around that by only offering demos on Marketplace, so that you have to visit the store to buy the full product. But event shopping is now so ubiquitous that I do think it's twisted the knife in the heart of smaller stores who just can't compete, as well as (as @Klytyna mentions) reducing the desire to shop at the mainstore locations of those designers who over-commit to too many events.

Edited June 19, 2017 by Skell Dagger

[Parhelion Palou]

This is a bit off-topic, but SL14B (the birthday party) opened yesterday. There's information here. No shopping, but there's lots to see.

 

[June Stormcrow]

Maybe I just don't shop enough, maybe I've been away too long again, but either way I did not know most of the vendors I saw at the event. Found most of the freebies and spent more than I intended. Between this and a late night spree at the Arcade my inventory is a complete disaster area.

I like the theory of one big, one small, however, I think that is hard to do in practice. 

Wish the actual sl14b sim would have rezzed as well as this one did for me, tried last night and couldn't see a thing really. My laptop is not the best though, so oh well. I'll try again another day.