Mesh Head & Body Stats (Round 3)

[Trinity Blakewell]

Some things - 

Is that number one Genus head the free Strong Head? I guess that would make sense if that's the case. Lots of people apparently still love the Genus Baby Face head, too.

Other than that, the top 24 heads are dispersed between the top three brands, which shows how much they dominate the market.

If I were Catwa, I would have made the Queen head free for longer than just the short time that it was free. The Catwa HD Pro heads have really nice animation, and all the HDPro heads would have benefited from the increased support from skin vendors if the Queen head had been acquired by more people. When I go to events these days, most of the new release skins are for EvoX. Not many are for Catwa HD Pro. Even less for Genus...

I wonder if these stats will be impacted by the free update of all the Lelutka Evo heads to EvoX versions.

Having just picked up an Akeruka head on 50% off promotion last weekend, and given that they now can use the Lelutka Evolution skins, I'm surprised that they are so far down on the list.

Another thing that I find interesting is that given all the buzz about Kupra, it's still only in use by a small percentage.  It may have moved up to the #5 position, but more than twice as many avatars use the Legacy Body. The big story there is how dominant Maitreya Lara is, even though it's been around for a while.

 

Edited July 27, 2021 by Trinity1776

[Skell Dagger]

23 minutes ago, Trinity1776 said:

all the HDPro heads would have benefited from the increased support from skin vendors if the Queen head had been acquired by more people.

As a manager for Catwa, I know exactly how many people picked up the Queen head during that offer. I'm not going to share how many, but you - and many creators out there - would probably be very very surprised at just how many it was. 'Huge potential sales market' doesn't even cover it.

[Lucia Nightfire]

I would say Queen had a very successful adoption considering that it made it to #9 when it didn't even exist at all in my report 5 months before this latest one.

[Anna Salyx]

On 7/27/2021 at 3:09 PM, Skell Dagger said:

As a manager for Catwa, I know exactly how many people picked up the Queen head during that offer. I'm not going to share how many, but you - and many creators out there - would probably be very very surprised at just how many it was. 'Huge potential sales market' doesn't even cover it.

And a lot of people like me who play regularly but missed a day and so missed the sale.  I heard about it a day late, while I fully recognize, and support a creator's decision on how they market, the fact it was just a one day thing kinda stung stung a little.  If I was inclined to buy before, or even give some demos a try,  I am very disinclined after. 

And lest this comment be construed a whine and pout (which if I"m being honest with myself maybe it is just a little) I do offer it as a data point.  Maybe if you do a special offer again in the future  (and not necessarily *that* significant of a sale, but something eye catching level) perhaps you might consider running it just a little longer to let more people have a chance.  For now, I'll stick with my LAQ

[Skell Dagger]

6 hours ago, Anna Salyx said:

the fact it was just a one day thing kinda stung stung a little

It was originally intended to be just one day, but due to demand it was increased to two. We had people screaming blue bloody murder in the support group that we should extend it to a month, and put it in group notices, and put it in more locations (it was already on six full regions), and put it on Marketplace (it started on Marketplace and it broke Marketplace; dear god the abuse we got because of that), and restart all the regions every 5 minutes to get rid of all the "AFK campers", and where's the free head for men, and all yelling that we should have done it differently. Thousands and thousands of people for two days, all telling us we were doing it wrong and we should have done it the way they wanted it done.

If there ever is an offer again, we will do things differently. That 'differently' will answer directly some of the demands and abuse that we had to take in the support group during those two days.

[LittleMe Jewell]

29 minutes ago, Skell Dagger said:

It was originally intended to be just one day, but due to demand it was increased to two. We had people screaming blue bloody murder in the support group that we should extend it to a month, and put it in group notices, and put it in more locations (it was already on six full regions), and put it on Marketplace (it started on Marketplace and it broke Marketplace; dear god the abuse we got because of that), and restart all the regions every 5 minutes to get rid of all the "AFK campers", and where's the free head for men, and all yelling that we should have done it differently. Thousands and thousands of people for two days, all telling us we were doing it wrong and we should have done it the way they wanted it done.

If there ever is an offer again, we will do things differently. That 'differently' will answer directly some of the demands and abuse that we had to take in the support group during those two days.

Personally, I'm surprised creators still do any free (or extremely discounted) offers at all, given the abuse that everyone involved with the store takes.

[Psyche Starling]

On 7/27/2021 at 2:45 PM, Trinity1776 said:

Some things - 

Is that number one Genus head the free Strong Head? I guess that would make sense if that's the case.

 

Yep! And Lelutka Lilly was free for a little while too, which is probably why it's so high. (I say this as someone who joined SL after the giveaway and fell in love with Lilly anyway. So annoyed to have missed the promotion, LOL!)

[Tazzie Tuque]

I fail to see the point in giving abuse to creators and employees of a product, if I missed the promo or put it off till later.  It is in everyone's interest to make sure that stuff like that gets forwarded to an email address..  I would think that everyone would check email at least once a day..  It is NOT the creator's fault if someone misses a promotion or a free item.  To dole out abuse, just because they missed the boat does not make sense to me..  Why blame someone else for what I missed because I was not keeping up.

 

[Anna Salyx]

5 hours ago, Skell Dagger said:

It was originally intended to be just one day, but due to demand it was increased to two. We had people screaming blue bloody murder in the support group that we should extend it to a month, and put it in group notices, and put it in more locations (it was already on six full regions), and put it on Marketplace (it started on Marketplace and it broke Marketplace; dear god the abuse we got because of that), and restart all the regions every 5 minutes to get rid of all the "AFK campers", and where's the free head for men, and all yelling that we should have done it differently. Thousands and thousands of people for two days, all telling us we were doing it wrong and we should have done it the way they wanted it done.

If there ever is an offer again, we will do things differently. That 'differently' will answer directly some of the demands and abuse that we had to take in the support group during those two days.

I never knew it was two.  the notices I'd seen on logging in after a day away was "today only" and that was 'yesterday'.  but again, I just new I was a day late and never dug deeply into the event, I just moved on. I'm not a Catwa customer so  I think maybe the reason I only knew it was a thing for 1 day was the groups I belong two didn't boost the signal on day one, and it was only in a few select groups that I even heard about it on day two.  (That said, I'd've been interested in having a full head to test out (the demos never really give me a good feel for some products, but tbt I can't say I'd would have become a customer after so I really wasn't your target audience maybe)).

I'm sorry, truly and however,  that you all had gotten so much grief on it, and I partly would cast shade at Lelutka for some of that: They'd set the expectoration back over Christmas with Alain and Lily.  That was it's own nightmare of a give away, but they done it over a few weeks, so now everyone "needs" to do the big product give away over time.  I'm guilty of having that expectation as well, in hindsight, based on my post, but I guess that is part of human nature and I"m sorry if I opened up that can o' worms again for you.  But, IMO,  offering up abuse for those who have to implement the decisions shouldn't be part of the human nature: .  And that is partly the reason why we can't have nice things.  Sadly.   If you ever do it again, I hope it fares better for your team. I'll keep my fingers crossed for that at least.

 

[Trinity Blakewell]

Skell: please don't take my comments here as screaming blue bloody murder. I know that the situation with the Queen head was a challenging learning experience for Catwa.

just wanted to share with you my experience as a likely "target customer." I have enough expendable income that I can choose what I'd like to purchase in SL - not go all out crazy, but it's rare that I am financially unable to purchase what I'd really like to get (that said, seeing products priced much higher than products from competitive brands does give me pause -  do I really want this? Is it sufficiently unique to justify the higher cost?). My first mesh head ( and my only one for quite a while) was Catwa Catya.   Over the last few years, I have acquired 12 heads total from 5 different brands (the top three plus two other well-known brands). Of these heads, 5 were at acquired as promotions at no cost to me, or at a very minimal cost, like $L1 (one from each brand). Only two are Catwa - the Catya and the Queen head.

I am far more "plugged in" to alternative news sources than I think the average SL user would be. I check Seraphim several times a day, follow a number of SL Bloggers on YouTube, have a news feed aggregator set up to pull in articles from a number of SL-themed blogs, attempt to navigate the maze of SL-related Discord servers at least a couple of times a week (we really, really need a listing of those servers,  kept up to date, but I digress), occasionally check in the the SL SubReddit, and visit the forums here several times a day. Even with all that, I remember only seeing information about the Queen promotion less than 24 hours before it was to start. Now, one thing I don't do is frequently check SL Group Notices for brands that carry items I will only purchase infrequently (like mesh heads), so I likely would have missed it if Catwa primarily focused on putting out advance notice in their SL Group.

The only reason why I own the Catwa Queen head is that I saw the info from a YouTube Blogger (and I believe it was hours before the giveaway was due to start) and I was so highly motivated to get it that I literally woke up in the middle of the night (EST) and went to the marketplace at the time the exact time the head was released.  Yes, I was one of the few that got in before the Marketplace crashed. I could not have sat around all day and attempted to get into an overloaded sim to get it, so I'm very glad I was able to pick it up as I did.

My major criticism of Catwa's management is a failure to take into account potential demand vs. limitations of the selling platforms (first, Marketplace, and then on-sim).I know Catwa got a lot of flack about how this promotion was rolled out, but bear in mind that from the perspective of many SL users, this was a pretty big carrot that was dangled on a stick in front of them and then quickly snatched away. That doesn't justify any verbal abuse they directed towards Catwa's management, but it does explain why they were so frustrated and irate.

I think we can learn not only our experience but also what has worked and not worked for our competition, and I encourage Catwa to take into account their competitors experiences with these types of promotions as well. None of those other five brands, to my recollection, has offered a promotional head for only 24 hours (and I kinda doubt they will now). Most have had a one to two week timeframe. Genus has had one available for well over a year.  Some of the other brands have thoughtfully considered an upgrade path for existing customers - Lelutka is converting all their Evo heads to EvoX and giving customers a free upgrade.  Some brands have sales at least once or twice a year - I bought an EvoX head on sale the last time Lelutka had one. 

I consider Catwa's animations on the current series of heads to be the absolute best out there and I love that about the Queen head.  But, quite frankly, I would never buy one of Catwa's heads at full price right now, when another brand has much greater skin support, is updating their recent heads to the next level for free instead of just bringing out yet another new line of heads, and occasionally does sales where I can pick up another of their heads at a significantly reduced cost. 

I hope that you can take my comments in the spirit of constructive criticism, and not an attack on you or anyone associated with Catwa.

 

 

[Skell Dagger]

Thank you for your feedback, Trinity. I will take it back to Catwa.

As an aside, the Freya gift head was available for three weeks in May 2020. We had to take three weeks of similar abuse back then. It was, frankly, exhausting, with some of us putting in 15-hour days. That was one of the reasons why the Queen offer was much shorter; Catwa didn't want us to have to endure weeks of that again, but people had been clamouring for (and yes, demanding: "Lelutka did it, Genus did it, why is Catwa refusing to give us a freebie?") a bigger giveaway that was longer than the two other giveaways she'd done in March this year on Flickr and Facebook (which had a couple of thousand entries, all of which had to be manually spreadsheet collated by me before we could make the draws).

Two days this time was bad enough but it's a bit easier to cope with when it's over more quickly. In addition, we have the months of follow-up that we've done, as we're still getting people who are logging in alts they last logged to grab the head and are now realising it was either not delivered due to MP failing, or the vendors simply being overloaded. We're still manually re-delivering and registering purchases in the vendor system, and we personally followed up on hundreds of notecards and IMs that were received after the Queen offer.

[MillyWH]

18 hours ago, Tazzie Tuque said:

I fail to see the point in giving abuse to creators and employees of a product, if I missed the promo or put it off till later.  It is in everyone's interest to make sure that stuff like that gets forwarded to an email address..  I would think that everyone would check email at least once a day..  It is NOT the creator's fault if someone misses a promotion or a free item.  To dole out abuse, just because they missed the boat does not make sense to me..  Why blame someone else for what I missed because I was not keeping up.

 

It may  not be logical but it does happen. It's the same way that customers are abusive to retail or wait staff in the real world.  

 

I honestly could never be a CSR, chat mod, or a store owner and have to deal with all the stuff that I see them have to deal with. Of course I work in retail so I get to see a lot of that up close and in person on a daily basis (although I'm not working at a register right now) but I've seen customers verbally abuse employees/managers for not taking back *used underwear* . And we regularly deal with customers who get pissed they can't use a coupon on items that are already 70% off.  One memorable customer got mad and threatened to report us for false advertising because the sale sign was wrong and the item she was buying was actually CHEAPER than what was advertised  and refused to buy the item.

 

so people will complain about anything.

 

every time there is a sale anywhere people complain. Every time a popular event opens and people can't get in the first day they complain. 

[Trinity Blakewell]

You know, I don't know how I ever missed the Freya head offer. I must have already been using mesh heads last year!

[tnich2]

hi

 

 

[HunniHope]

On 6/17/2021 at 7:21 PM, Lucia Nightfire said:

So It's been over 5 months since my last report.

 

Hey Lucia, any chance you got some more recent data to toss our way and wet our whistle?

Me likes the pwitty numbers 🥰

[Lucia Nightfire]

11 minutes ago, HunniHope said:

Hey Lucia, any chance you got some more recent data to toss our way and wet our whistle?

Me likes the pwitty numbers 🥰

I was going to release something during Halloween, but I was seeing a significant amount of people wearing Halloween avatars and was worried it would affect the numbers, so I held off and decided to give that time to correct itself.

I'm thinking a date closer to Christmas would allow enough time for my bots to re-encounter most of those users to see them wearing a regular avatar again.

There have also been a bunch of mesh bodies released recently, like Reborn, Kario, Chai, Cinnamon, etc. not to mention a slew of new mesh heads that I'd like to give a little time to see how well they do in a decent short time frame.

I'll be hitting 250,000 samples soon too, so I'd like to cross that milestone as well.

I'm wanting to make some changes to my setup that will allow me to get live numbers at any time instead of having to compile them all periodically.

When I release new numbers it will be with a new "round 4" post.

About the only confident prediction I can make ATM is that Maitreya "might" not maintain its 40+% market share this time around, but we'll see.

[HunniHope]

On 12/3/2021 at 4:41 AM, Lucia Nightfire said:

I'm thinking a date closer to Christmas ....................

When I release new numbers it will be with a new "round 4" post.

Looking forward to seeing Round 4 👍